The US Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general on August 8, 2026. The vote was so close that a single senator switching sides would have changed the result. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana cast the deciding vote. Every Democratic senator voted no.

The attorney general is the head of the Justice Department, the federal agency that prosecutes crimes and enforces national laws. The Senate must vote to approve whoever the president picks for this role.

The nomination nearly fell apart over a Justice Department deal that would have created a $1.8 billion fund called the "anti-weaponization fund." The name suggested it was meant to stop the department from being used as a political weapon. But the deal also would have given the president, his sons, and his business tax immunity — meaning they would not have to pay certain taxes. Several Republican senators whose votes Blanche needed were unhappy.

Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said on X that she would vote against the nomination. She called the fund a "slush fund" — a term for money spent with little oversight or clear rules — and said it was "only off the table because the nomination was pending." Susan Collins of Maine joined Murkowski in opposing Blanche. That left Republican leaders scrambling to keep enough votes.

John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina pressured Blanche to put in writing that the fund was not moving forward and to clarify the tax deal, according to The Guardian. Reuters reported on August 3 that Blanche pulled the plug on the fund. That won Cornyn and Tillis's support and let the nomination pass the Senate Judiciary Committee, a smaller group of senators who review nominees before the full Senate votes. But Murkowski then announced her opposition, Reuters reported on August 5, putting the nomination back in danger.

Cassidy, the senator who cast the deciding vote, said he saw it as a choice between two bad options. He said the alternative would be another acting attorney general who might not run the department well under President Trump. In other words, Cassidy voted yes not because he liked Blanche, but because he thought the alternative was worse.

The problems around Blanche went beyond the fund. While serving as deputy attorney general and then acting attorney general, the Justice Department charged former FBI director James Comey with crimes twice. It also charged New York attorney general Letitia James and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The department also tried to bring criminal charges against two Democratic senators — Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mark Kelly of Arizona. Critics said the department was being used to go after the president's political enemies. That accusation was hard to square with a fund supposedly created to stop exactly that kind of misuse.

Blanche also faced criticism over how the Justice Department handled files related to Jeffrey Epstein. When documents were released, the names of victims were not blacked out, which drew strong criticism. Blanche initially refused to meet with Epstein victims during his confirmation hearing. He later changed his mind and agreed to do so.

Blanche's own background made the nomination politically charged from the start. He left a high-paying job at a major law firm in 2023 to represent Donald Trump in criminal cases. That put him at the center of Trump's legal defense and eventually on a path to running the very department that had prosecuted his client. The Senate confirmed him as deputy attorney general — the number two role at the Justice Department — on March 5, 2025.

The broader context here is about how much independence the Justice Department should have from the president. The department under Blanche has aggressively investigated people who previously took legal action against the president. Trying to charge sitting senators with crimes, indicting a former FBI director twice, and prosecuting a state attorney general who sued Trump's business all raise the same question: is the department acting independently, or is it following the president's direction? These questions are not new in American politics. But under Blanche, they have come up more often and with sharper focus.

For Senate Republicans, the vote became a test of how much leverage individual senators could gain. Cornyn and Tillis got written promises. Murkowski and Collins decided those promises were not enough. Cassidy decided that a flawed but confirmed attorney general was better than an acting one who faced no Senate oversight. Every Democrat decided none of it was acceptable — especially since the department had tried to charge two of their own colleagues with crimes.

Blanche now takes over as attorney general with barely enough Senate support. His own party's senators forced promises from him under threat of voting no. His department's credibility has taken hits from the Epstein file rollout and the fund he had to scrap. The cases his department is pursuing — against Comey, Letitia James, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the attempted cases against Slotkin and Kelly — will shape his time in office as much as anything else. Whether those cases move forward, stall, or grow is what Democratic senators and the two Republicans who voted no will be watching most closely.