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The Republican resistance to Todd Blanche was never serious

Two key Republican senators drew a line in the sand. It wasn’t far from where Trump already stood.

For a brief moment late last week, it looked like acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s bid to get the word “acting” removed from his job title was in serious trouble. But that moment appears to have passed, as two key Republican senators just signalled that they will vote to move his nomination forward.

Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) halted Blanche’s nomination because of concerns about a $1.8 billion slush fund that Blanche helped create as the Justice Department’s acting leader, as well as some objections to a collusive deal between President Donald Trump and the IRS that could have shut down tax investigations into Trump, his family, and his businesses. Both senators announced on Monday that they will no longer block the nomination.

Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser.

Though these two senators, both of whom are retiring in January, did extract some minor concessions from the Justice Department in return for their votes, they objected to only a small fraction of Blanche’s efforts to transform DOJ’s lawyers into Trump’s personal advocates and enforcers. The fact that Blanche is likely to be confirmed, despite his sycophancy towards Trump, suggests that any meaningful guardrails on a weaponized Justice Department have ceased to exist.

Cornyn and Tillis both currently serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee. That committee, where Republicans currently have a two-vote majority, was originally scheduled to vote on Blanche’s nomination Thursday — but that vote would have failed if Cornyn and Tillis rejected the nominee. And, now, it’s likely to go ahead.

Cornyn and Tillis’ objections to Blanche were quite narrow in scope. They demanded a written order from Blanche “terminating the anti-weaponization fund,” a reference to the $1.8 billion........

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