The act itself — appointing a crony and longtime friend to an important government job — was not unusual. It’s not even unprecedented for them to appoint family members. (See: Kennedy, President John F. and Attorney General Robert F.) But Donald Trump’s appointment of Todd Blanche, his former criminal defense attorney, as attorney general may be a first, and not because Blanche has been a close associate. What’s striking about it is the fact that the president needed a criminal defense attorney in the first place.

On Sunday Blanche made his first appearance since his confirmation on “Meet the Press”, and from the first seconds of the interview he made it clear that his new, permanent position would not change his understanding of his role as the president’s apparatchik. When host Kristen Welker pressed him on whether he would act independently, Blanche did not mince words. “No, I’m not going to pledge that,” he said. “No attorney general should ever pledge that.”

Blanche clearly believes that his job is to run the Justice Department by doing the president’s bidding. But he did take time to assure the country that Trump had never, and would never, ask him to do anything unethical or illegal, so we needn’t worry our pretty little heads about that. “There is this extraordinarily false narrative that the president wakes up in the morning and calls me and says, ‘Todd, go prosecute X or Y,’” Blanche said. “He does not do that. He has never done that. He will never do that.”

Well, we know that isn’t true, don’t we? Aside from the mountain of evidence of Trump’s unethical, vengeful public rhetoric, we also have the September 2025 Truth Social draft post he mistakenly published in which he demanded that then-Attorney General Pam Bondi prosecute his political enemies, saying “They’re all guilty as hell” and complaining “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” Ultimately, Bondi was fired in part for failing to get the indictments he ordered for former FBI director James Comey, California Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Blanche won’t make that same mistake.

When Welker asked him how he squares his and the president’s commitment to prosecute anyone who “inappropriately touches” a law enforcement officer after Trump’s pardons of the violent Jan. 6 criminals, Blanche essentially replied that pardons are the president’s business and they have nothing to do with him. (In fact, the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney has traditionally had oversight of the process.) Unfortunately, Welker didn’t point this out in a follow-up, nor did she ask him about his role as deputy attorney general in overseeing the firings of the department’s prosecutors and staff members who worked on the Jan. 6 cases. 

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The irony is that this is exactly the kind of interference in the Justice Department that precipitated the rules and norms that call for the attorney general to operate at arm’s length from the White House. Admittedly, it’s a complicated role; the attorney general is a prominent member of the Cabinet, but is also expected to act independently. Some have been more successful at that than others, and at times attorneys general on both sides of the aisle have been thorns in the side of the presidents they serve. 

In the 1990s, Janet Reno’s liberal use of the independent counsel statute, which resulted in several investigations against the Clinton administration, caused the president and his staff heartburn. But although he may have groused privately, Bill Clinton did not retaliate against her; Reno remained at the Justice Department throughout his two terms. On the other hand, John Ashcroft’s refusal to allow the George W. Bush administration to override the Justice Department’s finding that a covert domestic surveillance program was illegal — which included a “showdown” at the severely ill Ashcroft’s hospital bedside in March 2004 — helped ensure he was replaced in Bush’s second term.

By and large, administrations respected the formal guardrails that were enacted in the wake of Watergate, which saw Richard Nixon manipulate the Justice Department for his own political protection.

After the so-called Saturday Night Massacre on Oct. 20, 1973, which saw Nixon fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate break-in, and subsequent revelations of Nixon’s abuses of power — including the fact that his Attorney General John Mitchell was personally involved in the planning of the Watergate break-in — Congress enacted a series of reforms to insulate the Justice Department from political pressure and interference. The Justice Department itself created guidelines to make the department a “neutral zone” to ensure that while the president could set national law enforcement goals, the White House would not be involved in specific investigations and prosecutions.

For the most part, administrations stuck to those regulations for decades, although the Republicans started pushing the envelope even before Trump came along. Recall that in 2007 Bush’s second attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, was forced to resign when it became known that he had fired several U.S. attorneys when they failed to follow orders to go after Democratic politicians on dubious charges before elections.

While serious, even that is small potatoes to how Trump has blown the guidelines to smithereens. Like Nixon, Trump sees the Justice Department as a personal law firm that possesses all the power of the U.S. government to use for his own purposes. And since vengeance against his enemies is his top priority, the department is his chosen weapon.

At every step of the way — from deputy to acting attorney general, and now to holding the post in his own right following his narrow Senate confirmation — Todd Blanche has acted in Trump’s interest over that of the people of the United States. In further insult to the public, Blanche told NBC in April that they should be “happy” Trump is meddling in matters of the Justice Department. In his various roles, Blanche has helped cover up the Epstein files, and he personally signed a memorandum of understanding assuring the president that he and his family would never face an IRS audit again. Since he took office as deputy attorney general, some 16,000 to 20,000 personnel have left the Justice Department, apparently unwilling to go along with an edict bearing his imprimatur that Donald Trump is their “chief client.” Here, they’d been thinking their chief client was the American people.

During his interview with Welker, Blanche attempted to spin his refusal to ensure the department’s independence from Trump. “If I were to pledge I were to be independent of the White House, what that means is that if President Trump says, ‘I want the Department of Justice to go after every violent criminal in this country, which is what he has said — what you’re saying to me is I should say, ‘No sir, I’m not gonna do it,’” Blanche said. “So I will act with integrity, our prosecutors will act with integrity, we will prosecute without fear or any sort of favor, and that’s exactly what we have been doing.”

With over two years left in Trump’s presidency, I can’t even begin to contemplate what Blanche will do on his behalf. Whatever happens will be cloaked in lies — and followed by gaslighting.

The post Todd Blanche’s dangerous lie sets the stage for more DOJ abuses appeared first on Salon.com.

‘We’re Not Going to Stop’

Newly-confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche made headlines over the weekend for other, arguably, more alarming remarks and actions than what I am about to unpack. During an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Blanche refused to say that the Justice Department would act independently from the White House. On Friday, he and FBI Director Kash Patel openly campaigned for a Republican midterms candidate alongside President Trump.

But during his sprint of weekend public appearances, Blanche also acknowledged that he might take the Justice Department’s obviously-failing effort to seize election administration rights from states all the way to the Supreme Court. During an interview with Kristin Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Welker asked whether Blanche would be willing to take his campaign to seize voter roll data from states to the Supreme Court. The DOJ’s efforts to sue for states’ voter roll data has been hit with 22 district court losses thus far, most recently in Nevada.

“We’ll see what happens,” Blanche said when asked about involving the high court in the floundering campaign that began under fired Attorney General Pam Bondi. “Absolutely, it’s a possibility.”

As TPM’s Khaya Himmelman has been tracking for months now, the Justice Department is trying to force states to hand over unredacted voter roll data ostensibly to purge states’ voters rolls of supposed noncitizens, whom President Trump has claimed are illegally voting en masse for Democrats in federal elections. This is a widely debunked myth that Republicans and Trump tend to elevate when it is politically convenient for them, but the truth is, noncitizens voting in federal elections is vanishingly rare, in part because it is illegal and the consequences for doing so are already incredibly harsh.

That said, the Justice Department has sued 30 states overall to try to exert authority over state’s constitutional right to administer elections. It wants this data so it can run it through a faulty database — known to mistakenly identify eligible voters as ineligible — and purge supposed noncitizens from the rolls, which states already do on a regular basis to clean up voter rolls ahead of elections.

When NBC’s Welker asked Blanche if it’d suffered enough legal defeats to give up the crusade, Blanche said, “we’re not going to stop.”

“We’re relying on a statute passed by Congress that allows us, in the right circumstances, to review and get those voter rolls,” said Blanche. “So, no, we’re not going to stop doing what I think every American should expect us to do.”

So far, not one single federal judge has sided with the Trump Justice Department’s argument for why it should have access to the data — and we’re talking about judges who have been appointed by Democratic and Republican administrations alike. As Khaya has reported for TPM:

Fox News Host Makes Fun of U.S. Sailors Experiencing Mental Health Crisis

Amid reports of both a lack of supplies and food, and a deteriorating mental health situation onboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln where multiple service members have tried to jump overboard, a Fox News host and former Marine made fun of the sailors, saying, “how weak are you?” The ship is stationed in the Arabian Sea, supporting the U.S.’s military operations in Iran and has not made a port call for over 200 days.

“I just do not understand the mentality,” Fox host Joey Jones said. “If this is a representation of who our military is now… we’re just Rome sitting here waiting to burn. We’ve got nothing left.”

Joey Jones on concerns of service members on the USS Lincoln: pic.twitter.com/Va2npYmA9x

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 15, 2026

Trump Defends Decision to Cut Exercises With South Korea

After directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” the U.S. military’s ongoing drills with South Korea, citing his “very good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un,” Trump defended the decision in the Oval Office today. Trump argued that the U.S. should not be engaging in joint military exercises with South Korea if they’re not willing to help aid the U.S. in Trump’s ongoing, unpopular war with Iran.

“He said, ‘No, thanks,’” Trump said. “And I said … we have 39,000 soldiers over there guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next-door neighbor, and you’re not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran? … I see. Well, why are we involved in helping you?”

“We’re guarding them from a country … that’s costing us billions and billions of dollars to protect not only them, but other countries,” he continued. “Look at NATO. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars protecting Europe from Russia, hundreds of billions, mostly from Russia, but from other things, too. And then they say, well, they don’t want to get involved with guarding the strait where they get most of their oil.”

If You Read One More Thing From TPM Today, Read This

Sarah Posner reports on the evangelical community as it looks for the Christian right’s next political leader when Trump’s term is up in 2028. They’ve somehow set their sights on … Mike Huckabee: Evangelicals Think They’ve Found Their Post-Trump Era Leader in … Mike Huckabee?

Yesterday’s Top Story

Let’s Take a Look-See at What ‘Far Left’ vs. ‘Far Right’ Candidates Actually Want

What I’m Reading

Planned Parenthood to spend more than $600,000 against Susan Collins in Maine 

Burnham exchanged messages with impersonator of top Trump aide  

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books.  It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility 

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes.

Earlier this week, Todd Blanche was sworn in as the newest attorney general of the United States. Administering the oath of office to Blanche, who previously served as President Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyer, was another former member of Trump’s legal team: Judge Emil Bove, whom Trump nominated in 2025 to a life-tenured seat on the Third Circuit. 

For both Blanche and Bove, the reunion must have been a real treat. Three years ago, they were unknown New York City-area law firm partners taking a long-shot bet on a disgraced ex-president who stood accused of, among other things, sexually assaulting a magazine writer, storing classified government documents in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom, making illegal hush money payments to kill an unflattering news story about his philandering, and trying to fraudulently overturn his loss in the 2020 election in Georgia. (That last list item should not be confused with separate federal charges stemming from Trump’s involvement in efforts to foment a violent insurrection and overthrow the government on January 6.)

Thanks in part to the work of Blanche and Bove, though, none of those cases resulted in meaningful consequences for Trump. And now that he is president again, their respective appointments are best understood as hard-earned rewards for their troubles. After Bove finished conducting Blanche’s swearing-in ceremony Monday, the two former colleagues got to hug it out in the Oval Office as their bored-looking benefactor clapped politely.

Top congressional Democrats on Tuesday pushed back on a new memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) arguing that President Donald Trump can assert executive privilege over communications with advisors even if they do not work at the White House or within the government at all.

“Executive privilege can apply to presidential communications with private advisers so long as the communications relate to official presidential decisionmaking, involve or reflect communications with the President or his direct advisers, and are confidential,” the OLC opinion, published on Monday, reads.

The Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general early Saturday morning, narrowly elevating President Donald Trump‘s former personal lawyer to lead the Justice Department after Republicans rushed his nomination through before leaving Washington for their August recess.

Blanche was confirmed 50-49 during an overnight Senate session that stretched into the predawn hours Saturday. Every Democrat opposed the nomination, joined by Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has been absent from the Senate while dealing with health issues, was the only senator who did not vote.

The razor-thin margin capped a confirmation process that remained uncertain until its final hours.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., announced Friday that he would support Blanche, effectively giving Republicans the final vote they needed. Cassidy had previously raised concerns about Blanche’s leadership at the Justice Department, including his involvement in a controversial $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” compensation fund and an agreement providing broad protections from IRS audits for Trump and members of his family.

Cassidy ultimately argued that the choice was between Blanche and whoever Trump might install as acting attorney general if Blanche failed.

Collins and Murkowski went the other direction. Both had supported Blanche when the Senate confirmed him as deputy attorney general in March 2025, but broke with their party this time amid concerns about the politicization of the Justice Department and Blanche’s conduct while serving as acting attorney general.

Two other Republicans who had threatened Blanche’s nomination, Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, ultimately voted to confirm him after extracting concessions. Blanche terminated the anti-weaponization fund and narrowed the scope of the tax agreement before his nomination advanced from the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Senate approved Blanche as lawmakers raced through a roughly 20-hour session before departing Washington for their summer recess.

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Blanche, who defended Trump in his New York criminal trial and federal criminal cases before joining the administration, has served as acting attorney general since Trump fired Pam Bondi in April.

He now takes the job permanently — with essentially no margin to spare.

The post Senate rushes through Blanche confirmation overnight appeared first on Salon.com.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said he will support Todd Blanche’s nomination for Attorney General in a Senate floor speech Friday morning, effectively guaranteeing Blanche’s confirmation. 

“Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this,” Cassidy said. “But the choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche. It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under President Trump and who indeed may not be as good as Mr. Blanche. This puts at risk the progress made fighting violent crime, human and drug trafficking and fraud, and this does not serve the American people well.”

This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Todd Blanche — whom Republicans hope to confirm as attorney general by the end of the week — has indicated he could steer the Justice Department to prioritize national abortion restrictions, a major shift from how the Trump administration has handled the issue thus far.

In a call last week, Blanche, who is serving as both acting attorney general and deputy attorney general and has previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer, suggested that under his leadership, the department would prioritize restrictions on medication abortion.

“If states have said we are going to protect the unborn and we’re going to protect every life from the moment of conception, we’re putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations can’t attack that,” Blanche said on a call organized by the White House Faith Office and posted online in full by Intercessors for America, a Christian organization. The call’s contents were first reported by Politico.

The remarks are only the latest to suggest that if confirmed, Blanche might take a more aggressive approach than his predecessor. In a July hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Blanche said that if confirmed, he would commit to reviewing how the federal government interprets the Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law from the 1800s that abortion opponents believe could be interpreted to prohibit the mailing of any drug used to terminate a pregnancy. 

Anti-abortion activists have been pressing the administration to revive the Comstock Act since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term; Trump has declined to do so.

When asked about the possibility of enforcing the law to ban mailing of abortion medications, the Department of Justice confirmed that its Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the president and attorney general, “is undertaking a thorough review” of policies and procedures related to abortion.

Blanche requires one more vote to secure support from a majority of the Senate. Two Senate Republicans — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — have not yet indicated whether they would vote to confirm him. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican up for re-election, said Tuesday she would not vote to confirm Blanche, citing his abortion-related remarks as a key factor.

The confirmation fight comes months before a midterm election in which Republicans — already facing an uphill battle to control both chambers of Congress — have largely avoided talking about abortion. Though reproductive rights dominated the 2024 election, polling suggests that the issue has taken a backseat, with voters primarily concerned about the cost of living. 

Still, national restrictions on abortion remain unpopular. 

Abortion pill restrictions have emerged as a top priority for the anti-abortion movement. Even as bans have proliferated across the country, medical professionals in protective states have continued to prescribe and mail them to people living under abortion bans. This telehealth practice is medically safe and has enabled thousands of people to circumvent their states’ laws and end their pregnancies. 

Anti-abortion activists have called on the federal government to intervene, arguing that the existence of this telehealth model has undercut states’ abilities to enforce bans. But so far, the Trump administration has taken no action to block telehealth abortion, despite pressure from top anti-abortion groups.

Blanche’s remarks suggest that could be changing, though it’s unclear when or how that shift might take place. 

In the White House Faith Office call, he did not reveal what approach the administration might take to limit the availability of abortion medication, or when any switch might take effect — only saying that “victory will be soon and victory will be permanent.” 

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Abortion opponents have pressed for the Food and Drug Administration to reverse its decision approving mifepristone, one of two drugs used in most abortions, to be dispensed without an in-person visit. The FDA is currently reviewing mifepristone’s approval, despite a vast body of medical research showing the drug’s safety and effectiveness, including by telehealth. 

They have also pressed for the Department of Justice to revive the Comstock Act to bar the mailing not only of mifepristone, but also misoprostol, an ulcer medication that is prescribed off-label as part of the abortion medication regimen. Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department argued that the Comstock Act could not be enforced to enforce a blanket ban on the mailing of mifepristone or misoprostol. 

Democrats have argued that Blanche’s remarks are disqualifying. 

“He wants to strip Americans of their right to choose and strip states of their right to govern,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, said Tuesday during a meeting of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, posted on the social media platform X that “Senators who vote for Blanche are voting for an Attorney General who will attack abortion rights in EVERY state.”

Abortion opponents are concurrently pursuing restrictions on mifepristone through the courts, notably in a case filed by Louisiana, in which the state has argued for the government to reverse its decision approving mifepristone for telehealth. That case is set to be heard by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in September.

The post Trump’s attorney general pick hints at making national abortion restrictions a priority appeared first on Salon.com.

Michigan election officials oversaw primary elections this week and also dealt with the Trump administration sending federal elections monitors to oversee polling sites in three blue municipalities — one of which Trump has repeatedly targeted with his election conspiracy theories. 

While the Justice Department, under Democratic and Republican administrations, does regularly send election monitors to observe voting in Michigan and other states, the decision to send DOJ monitors to key polling sites in Michigan was suspect given this DOJ’s focus on investigating Trump’s election conspiracy theories. And, although, as election officials have noted, the presence of federal monitors in Detroit, Lansing, East Lansing, and Hamtramck was uneventful — their presence did still stir up fear and unease, election officials said. 

“The fact that the DOJ felt it was necessary in the first place, it served to cast doubt,” Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum told Votebeat. “Now, tomorrow, they can speak with authority having been here — is that going to lend credit to future claims, even when they’re nonsense?”

It is, of course, no coincidence that the administration sent federal monitors to oversee elections in parts of Michigan where voters typically elect Democrats in an important battleground state that has previously been ground zero for 2020 election conspiracy theories. It’s just one of many ways that the Trump administration has tried to exert control over election administration and sow seeds of doubt in the election system. 

Back in June, as my colleague Josh Kovensky reported, DOJ Voting Section Deputy Chief Timothy Mellett wrote in a letter to Detroit officials that voting monitors that were present in 2024 identified voting concerns related to allegedly long voting lines caused by a lack of provisional ballots. This is something that Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey disputes.

Mellet sent similar letters to officials in Lansing and East Lansing as well.

In response to the letter sent to Detroit, Winfrey said that the DOJ had drawn a “baseless conclusion that then becomes the pretext for additional monitoring of Detroit elections,” and that Mellet’s claims “are not a valid pretext for increasing monitoring in Detroit.”

“Michigan law provides not only a variety of ways to vote, but also plenty of opportunities to get involved in the election process,” Michigan’s Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel wrote in response to the DOJ’s letter last month. 

“The law even provides parameters for federal and congressional poll monitors. We encourage everyone to participate and see for themselves how secure and fair our elections are – but make no mistake, my office stands ready to hold accountable those who attempt to unlawfully interfere with or intimidate Michigan election workers,” she added. 

Nevertheless, the monitors were present at several polling places during Tuesday’s primary election and no issues have been reported by the DOJ thus far. But that did not stop President Trump from immediately promoting conspiracy theories about how the vote was counted in Detroit in the wake of Abdul El-Sayed’s victory. 

“Wayne County (Detroit) in Michigan is one of the most corrupt voting areas in the United States, if not the World. It is strictly Third World! Miracles happen in Wayne County, including more votes being cast than there are voters, by a lot,” he wrote in a Truth Social post Wednesday. 

As always, there’s lots more to unpack this week. Let’s dig in.

Two More Losses for the DOJ’s Campaign to Seize Voter Data

Yes, the DOJ has been handed two more losses in its failing campaign to seize sensitive voter data from the states. Last week, the DOJ earned its 19th loss to date (with zero wins) after a federal judge dismissed a case against Illinois with prejudice. Days later, it was handed its 20th loss after a federal judge similarly dismissed a case against Colorado. 

Like the many other judges in the cases before him have concluded, U.S. District Judge Colleen Lawless ruled that the federal government is simply not entitled to the state’s sensitive voter data, which includes Social Security and driver’s license numbers. 

For many many months now, the DOJ has been demanding that at least 44 states and Washington, D.C. hand over sensitive voter roll data. The DOJ has been relying on provisions in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA) to make its (very weak) case. 

Lawless pointed out in his ruling that the CRA does not entitle the federal government to this type of information. 

“…,the Court finds Title III does not provide the Attorney General with the authority to compel production of the unredacted voter registration list, and the written demand was deficient as a matter of law,” he wrote. 

“Dismissal is additionally warranted because the Attorney General’s written demand did not include both a sufficient basis and legitimate purpose for requesting the unredacted voter registration list,” he added.  

Then, early this week, U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer, also ruled that the state’s unredacted voter rolls are not something the federal government is entitled to and also pointed out the administration never provided a “basis” for its request. 

Voters Incorrectly Flagged As Potential Noncitizens in Texas

Over 2,000 voters were recently incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens in Texas. The Secretary of State’s office is now directing election officials to reinstate the voters that it had incorrectly flagged as ineligible, Votebeat reported. 

Per Votebeat, the state elections director, Christina Adkins, confirmed the citizenship status of some of the 2,724 registered voters who were flagged as potential being noncitizens. Adkins, however, did not confirm how many of the 2,724 voters flagged provided proof of citizenship to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Yikes. So, how does such a mistake happen?

The voters were flagged after the state put its voter rolls through the Federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, which has recently been used by the Trump administration to purge supposed noncitizens from the voter rolls. The system, however, which was originally developed as an immigration tool to verify immigration status of people applying for certain governmental benefits, is known to be unreliable. 

So, it’s no surprise that a mistake like this happened and the whole episode helps bolster the case for why the database that the Department of Homeland Security is trying to force states to run their voter rolls through is not effective. 

Votebeat reported that we don’t know exactly how many voter registrations have been canceled in total. Kristin Miles, the Bastrop County elections administrator and president of the Texas Association of County Election Official, made the following statement to Votebeat: “Counties are following appropriate list maintenance procedures under Texas law, and will ensure eligible voters whose registrations were cancelled are reinstated, and that only U.S. citizens remain on the voter rolls.” 

In Other Election News:

TPM: Missouri Republicans Count on Foot Dragging to Help Jam Through Gerrymander

NBC News: Democrats put redistricting amendment on Maryland’s midterm ballot

The New York Times: For Trump, the Year Is Always 2020

While Jeffrey Epstein’s island or his various mansions get a lot of attention, the late sex offender and financier’s New Mexico Zorro Ranch was also allegedly the site of extensive abuse and criminal activity. Now, in a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the Department of Justice and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, are accused of “stonewalling” New Mexico’s criminal investigation of Epstein’s activities at the ranch outside of Santa Fe.

New Mexico’s Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who is behind the lawsuit, argues that the DOJ unlawfully withheld records, therefore delaying justice for victims. The lawsuit accuses Blanche and the DOJ of perpetuating “that disgrace” of failing to investigate or hold Epstein accountable before his death. The suit requests the court to order the DOJ to provide the requested unredacted records.

“USDOJ and Acting Attorney General Blanche are refusing to facilitate the investigation of state law crimes by hiding information about Epstein and his co-conspirators from Attorney General Torrez and state law enforcement, when New Mexico is one of few jurisdictions that still may have an opportunity to hold Epstein’s associates accountable or otherwise provide some sense of justice to survivors,” the lawsuit reads.

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Meanwhile, New Mexico’s legislative “truth commission” released its first report on Zorro Ranch Wednesday, but the 119-page document offers little in the way of new revelations or recommendations. It draws heavily on news reports and what has so far been released from the Epstein files, but does underscore numerous hurdles the investigation has faced. 

“Those in law enforcement most responsible for protecting New Mexicans from Epstein played a passive role in investigating him, letting others in Miami and in New York do it. As a result, the conduct of Epstein and his co-conspirators in New Mexico went unexamined and unpunished,” the authors conclude. “Going forward, this commission endeavors to uncover the truth so many for too long were blind to.”

The post New Mexico sues DOJ over Epstein files and releases “truth commission” report appeared first on Salon.com.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and a handful of women’s rights and reproductive freedom groups are sounding the alarm over recent reporting that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has vowed to use the Justice Department to roll back abortion access nationwide — a break with both President Trump’s own campaign promises that places him much further out on a limb on abortion than other Trump admin officials have been willing to go.

Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, promises Americans that he has no intention of going forward with a $1.8 billion slush fund designed to funnel money out of the Treasury and into the pockets of right-wing attorneys. The outcry that followed the Justice Department’s May 19 announcement of the fund, which would pay the legal bills of political allies charged with crimes ranging from fraud to storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, was deafening. In addition to blowback from many congressional Republicans, a federal judge halted the administration’s disbursement of the money, which was created as part of Trump’s agreement with the federal government stemming from his lawsuit  for the leak of his tax returns. Blanche, in his role as acting attorney general, claimed the administration would voluntarily walk away from using the money.

Now, months later, he has resolutely avoided putting this promise in writing, and his failure to formally give up the slush fund is putting at risk his Senate confirmation to permanently head the Justice Department.

The reason behind Blanche’s refusal is obvious: He and Trump want to keep the option to re-open the fund at a later date, along with the ability to write fat checks, paid for with taxpayer money, to the lawyers working on behalf of unsavory right-wing figures.

Blanche knows that world quite well; he has become personally wealthy doing exactly this kind of work. Before taking his job at the Justice Department, first as Pam Bondi’s deputy attorney general, and then as her replacement, Blanche was making millions representing Trump in everything from a civil rape case to criminal fraud. Blanche also knows how such funds pay for that type of work. According to ABC News, between March 2023 and December 2024, his law firm was paid almost $10 million, not by Trump personally, but by a political action committee that was supposed to be funding Republican campaigns. 

Blanche’s nomination is imperiled by his refusal to let go of the chance to flood the coffers of right-wing lawyers defending shady characters like his former client and current boss. Thursday’s vote to approve his nomination by the Senate Judiciary Committee was delayed. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex. and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., both who are leaving the Senate at the end of the year, are threatening to vote no unless Blanche formally commits to rolling back the deal that created this slush fund and also gave Trump and his family eternal immunity from IRS audits.

“This is not popular,” Tillis told the New York Times. “It is killing some of our candidates because they can’t explain it. And now it looks like they weren’t being honest when they said it was inoperative.”

It’s not just a “looks like” issue. Anyone who said the fund was inoperative because of Blanche’s informal say-so is either ignorant or lying. As the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee wrote in June, Blanche and Trump remain committed to funding a “pipeline of taxpayer-funded payouts to political allies and convicted criminals.” Even the conservative National Review’s Andrew McCarthy agrees, writing on Wednesday that “Blanche has resisted memorializing in writing his claim that the fund is kaput, because President Trump wants the fund.”

The White House has already been funneling taxpayer funds to these bad actors through a slightly different but related process. As the Washington Post reported in June, the Justice Department has paid out millions to Trump allies who claim victimization because they were investigated or even convicted of crimes. The family of Ashli Babbitt got a nearly $5 million check over baseless claims that her shooting death during the Jan. 6 riot was unwarranted, even though video footage clearly showed her climbing through a window in an apparent attempt to chase down congressional members and staff fleeing in fear. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported on a seven-figure check written to Paul Vaughn, who was convicted of a federal crime in 2024 for conspiring to blockade an abortion clinic before being pardoned by Trump last year. 

Vaughn’s legal representation by the Thomas More Society is a reminder of who really benefits if Blanche and Trump succeed in reviving the fund after the midterm elections: right-wing lawyers, who started licking their lips within moments of the Justice Department’s announcement. 

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“Everybody’s very excited about it,” Mark McCloskey, a lawyer representing Jan. 6 defendants, told the Washington Post. Even though his clients have been pardoned by Trump, he has been lobbying for the fund, hoping to see a big payday by claiming wrongful prosecution. Such a claim would be all but certain to fall apart in a court of law. But as the existing track record shows, the goal is to get the Justice Department to “settle” these claims by writing checks to people who otherwise wouldn’t see a dime. Clients would get money, but so would the lawyers — especially those who, like McCloskey, would get a cut of check after check. 

At this point, it’s unclear if Blanche would be able to personally benefit from various schemes to pay off Trump’s political allies with government money. He could return to private practice and start taking on those kinds of clients after leaving the Justice Department. By then, though, it’s possible a Democrat will be in the White House again, and will have either shut down the fund or started blocking payments for phony claims made by right-wing operatives. But, as someone who was on a similar gravy train not that long ago, Blanche knows full well how rich his fellow right-wing lawyers could get from this. 

And it’s not just private practice lawyers, either. Groups like the Thomas More Society, Alliance Defending Freedom and other far-right legal nonprofits need funding for their legal crusades, as seen by the lawsuit that overturned Roe v. Wade, or the ongoing cases meant to curtail voting rights or LGBTQ+ equality. Taking on right-wing clients with baseless claims of victimization could be an easy way to get money, which could then be used to fund cases attacking reproductive rights or religious freedom. 

That Cornyn and Tillis are taking this stand is surprising. The pair have a long history of supporting the right-wing legal organizations that could find themselves flush with slush money. As Tillis’s comments about the midterm campaigns show, it may not be anything deeper than a sense that this is politically toxic. Trump’s consideration of withdrawing Blanche’s nomination would be nothing more than a pause until after the midterm elections, when he is banking on new Republican senators to replace Cornyn and Tillis — and put his payola scheme back into action.

It may not even come to that. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was assuring reporters that Blanche’s nomination would be back as soon as next week, after “a resolution on the issues that Senators Cornyn and Tillis raised.” Thune’s comments suggest that as long as Trump does a slightly better job at deflecting attention from the fund, the two senators can claim victory and give Blanche their support. 

Or perhaps this will really be the moment that Republicans, two of them at least, stand up to Trump for real, instead of just doing so as quickly-dispatched political theater. If so, it’s a hopeful sign that Republicans can read a poll and see his corruption is starting to wear thin, especially for a public struggling to make ends meet while the president enriches himself and his cronies. 

The post The real reason Todd Blanche won’t drop Trump’s slush fund appeared first on Salon.com.

Good morning. It was great to meet all of you who came out to our event in New York last night with Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket.

Trump Tries to Raise the Stakes on SAVE Again

President Donald Trump made a show yesterday afternoon of preparing to throw Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to the wolves out of frustration that the SAVE Act is not yet on track to pass in any form. The latest push is to jam parts of the bill through using budget reconciliation, which requires 51 instead of 60 votes, though Trump also continues to agitate for Thune to nuke the filibuster and pass the full voter suppression package.

Asked whether Thune is the right person to lead the Senate, Trump said, “We will find out, and I will let you know.”

“All right. Well, that’s nice of him, I guess,” Thune told Punchbowl. “I don’t know — what do you say on that? That’s a decision that’s made by my colleagues.”

Throughout Trump’s SAVE Act pressure campaign on his Senate allies, he has repeatedly made demands that misunderstand the reality of how the Senate functions, and how bills become law. He has seemed amenable to passing what everyone has taken to calling the “SAVE Act” through budget reconciliation, even though a SAVE Act done through reconciliation, while bad, would likely be without the nationwide voter-ID and proof-of-citizenship mandates that are core to what the SAVE Act is. It is unclear whether Trump realizes this. He has refused to sign a popular housing bill, though without his signature it simply became law after 10 days; in doing so, the president achieved nothing on the SAVE Act while robbing himself of an opportunity to claim a victory on “affordability.” His demands for the SAVE Act to be attached to various funding bills dramatically complicated his allies’ attempts to fund ICE over Democratic opposition in the spring, and look sure to complicate government funding fights this fall.

When we see legislators take bills hostage, an increasingly common phenomenon since the Obama era that has often led to government shutdowns, the more effective efforts involve lawmakers carefully finding legislation where they have maximal leverage. Trump hasn’t done this — perhaps he doesn’t have the attention to detail to do so — and is as a result unable to truly achieve anything beyond making life considerably more frustrating for his fellow elected Republicans.

That’s the case this week, too. Thune is, of course, right that, in the end, Trump does not select the majority leader, though he may wish he did. Other senators do. Trump can’t oust Thune. But he can elevate him as a target at which his activist base should direct their hate.

Trump’s Blanche Nomination Gets Stuck

John Cornyn (R-TX) has caused a vote to advance Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general, scheduled for today, to be postponed.

• Yesterday, Cornyn said he was canceling a meeting with Blanche, explaining that he wanted to see a written modification to the settlement between Trump and the IRS that would have created the “anti-weaponization” slush fund.
• The DOJ told us it sent a “written proposal to Senator Cornyn’s staff.” Cornyn told reporters, “I haven’t seen a single piece of writing that is responsive to what I’ve requested.”
• The vote could move forward whenever Cornyn gives the green light, though at this point that might not happen with enough time to confirm him before the Senate takes a month-long recess, beginning at the end of next week.
• The episode is more significant as a (perhaps short-lived) display of GOP Senate resistance to Trump than as an actual check on the DOJ: Even if Blanche isn’t confirmed, he can remain in the role as acting attorney general. And whatever the fate of the slush fund, settlements for right-wing activists continue, with the DOJ agreeing this week to pay more than a million dollars to an anti-abortion activist who was convicted in 2024 of conspiring to prevent access to a clinic, the New York Times reports.

Tabs

• Republicans may not end up following Trump’s endorsement and picking Darline Graham Nordone to fill her brother’s seat, the Washington Post writes. The Downballot gives a rundown of the many, many other candidates in the race, including some figures we’ve covered quite a bit over the years.
• Kash Patel has lost a defamation suit against an internet poster who called him a “googly-eyed Kremlin bitch” and a “chud,” the New Republic reports. U.S. District Court Judge for the district of Nevada Andrew P. Gordon found he did not have jurisdiction.

Man of the Hour

It’s Alex Jones, the onetime stalwart ally of President Trump who has now turned to demanding his impeachment over the Iran war to attract attention (which, admittedly, he is succeeding in doing). I used a gas station bathroom off I-95 the other day where someone had written “Alex Jones is right” on the soap dispenser — so make of that what you will.

Are We at War?

You bet.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation is stalled.

A meeting that was scheduled to take place between Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Blanche was cancelled abruptly Wednesday morning — just a day before the Senate Judiciary Committee was scheduled to vote to move Blanche’s nomination for Attorney General out of committee. 

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told reporters on Tuesday that there’s a chance the confirmation vote to move Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination out of committee may be postponed — or it may not.

Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise!

Three prominent 2020 election deniers won GOP primary elections in Arizona for secretary of state, governor and attorney general. It’s concerning news for the future of election administration in such a crucial state.

Arizona GOP state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who is a known election denier, won the Republican primary for secretary of state this week. Kolodin is a member of the right-wing Arizona Freedom Caucus and in 2023 was sanctioned by the State Bar of Arizona for his participation in the so-called “Kraken” lawsuits, challenging the results of the 2020 election. 

The fact that an election denier could be in charge of running elections in a state that has been ground zero for election conspiracy theories since 2020, is, of course, a harrowing prospect. 

Kolodin will face off against Democratic incumbent Secretary of State Adrian Fontes in November. 

Staunch MAGA ally Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) won the GOP nomination for Arizona governor this week too, and will now face off against Democratic incumbent Gov. Katie Hobbs in November. 

Biggs, who is the former chair of the Freedom Caucus, has a rich election denial history. He has consistently supported and repeated Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and was subpoenaed by the House January 6 select committee in May of 2022 as part of its investigation into the events leading up to the attack and efforts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. 

On January 6, 2021, Biggs objected to the counting of electoral votes in Arizona, as well as five other Biden-won states that were all subject to election misinformation in the aftermath of 2020. 

“I object to counting the votes of Arizona electors because the federal courts went around the legislatively constructed mechanism for choosing Arizona’s presidential electors allowing tens of thousands of voters to unlawfully cast votes,” Biggs wrote in a 2021 press release.

Hobbs had this to say about Biggs in a post on X this week: “Andy Biggs has spent his career selling out Arizona families for billionaires, special interests, and even convicted sex offenders.The more Arizonans learn about Biggs, the more they’ll realize he’s one big problem they can’t afford.”

Lastly, Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen secured the GOP nomination for attorney general this week. Earlier this month, Petersen complied with a federal grand jury subpoena — part of the administration’s ongoing investigation into non-existent fraud in the 2020 election. Petersen handed over documents to the FBI related to a 2021 scam of an election audit in Maricopa County that found no traces of election fraud.

As always, there is lots more to catch up on. Let’s dig in. 

Trump Admin Escalates Threats of Criminal Charges Against Election Administrators

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin continues to threaten state election officials with criminal persecution over non-citizen voting, in yet another attempt by the Trump administration to exert control over elections and elevate Trump’s conspiracy theories about non-citizens voting en masse for Democrats, a repeatedly debunked myth. 

Earlier this month, the DOJ sent election officials in all 50 states letters threatening criminal prosecution if non-citizens are found on voter rolls.

On Friday, during a press conference, Mullin doubled down on these threats, demanding that states run their voter rolls through a federal database — or risk losing federal election-related funding and/or face possible criminal persecution. 

“We’re saying that the machines had to be secure, and that your voter registration list needs to be scrubbed,” Mullin said on Friday. 

“We need to make sure that individuals that are legally able to vote are voting,” he continued. “If you’re illegal and attempted to vote, or you tried to vote illegally for someone else, we will find you and we will charge you.”

Mullin is insisting that states participate in the Federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, a database typically used for verifying the citizenship and immigration status of individuals applying for certain governmental benefits. It’s been co-opted by the Trump administration to purge alleged non-citizens from voter rolls. There is evidence, however, that this tool has been incorrectly flagging eligible citizens to be booted from the voter rolls. 

“If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time,” Mullin said.

This comes as the use of the database for the Trump administration’s aims has been challenged in court. The use of the SAVE system to purge voters from the rolls was blocked by a federal judge last month.

A Remarkable 16 Losses for the DOJ’s Campaign to Seize State Voter Data 

The DOJ has officially earned its 16th loss (with an impressive zero wins) in the administration’s ongoing and failing campaign to seize sensitive voter roll data from the states. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Kari Dooley, a Trump-appointee, dismissed the DOJ’s case against Connecticut, ruling that the state’s voter data is not something the federal government is entitled to. 

For many long (and embarrassing) months, the DOJ has been desperately trying to force at least 44 states and Washington, D.C. to give the department access to unredacted voter roll data, which includes private information like Social Security numbers and drivers license numbers, to the federal government.

The DOJ has been relying on provisions in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA) to argue that the federal government is entitled to this type of personal identifying information. 

So far, not a single judge has agreed. 

“…the Court concludes that the Connecticut SVRL is not a record that falls within the scope of Title III, and is therefore not subject to the preservation and production requirements contemplated therein,” Dooley wrote in her order on Friday.

“This lawsuit was an illegal attempt to disenfranchise Connecticut voters and today, the court shut it down,” Connecticut’s Democratic Attorney General William Tong said in a statement on Friday. “The Constitution is clear: the President does not control our elections and has no right to manipulate Connecticut voter rolls. Connecticut follows federal law and takes its obligations under federal law very seriously. We will not be bullied into handing over sensitive voter information just because Trump demands it.”

In Other Election News

New York Times: How the G.O.P. Turned Olive Garden Into a Voter ID Talking Point

ABC News: State officials preparing if the federal government tries interfering with how they run elections

Democracy Docket: Georgia Secretary of State’s office responds to Trump DOJ threats, defends voting policies

Republicans Can’t Afford to Lose Votes

The White House is being forced to court a Republican senator who President Trump has labeled a “loser” and another whose political career Trump ended to advance acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s AG nomination to the Senate floor.