Dem
47
GOP
53
Todd Blanche hasn't even been formally nominated as the next Attorney General of the United States, and yet the pushback has already begun.
In our item about the nomination yesterday, we pointed out some of the reasons to think the nomination might not get past the Senate, and concluded: "[W]atch to see if today, or sometime over the next few days, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) says something to reporters along the lines of 'Well, I just don't know if this nomination can get over the line.'"
Yesterday, the first thing that reporters asked Thune about, naturally, was Blanche's prospects of getting confirmed. And the Majority Leader replied: "This is an environment where nothing's a safe or sure bet these days." That's exactly what an opening bid looks like when a majority leader is trying to gently suggest that a nomination be withdrawn (or, in this case, not made in the first place). Thune will likely get a little less gentle over time (though he might do so behind closed doors).
And then there is Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), whose vote is doubly important because he is not only one of the swing votes in the Senate, he's also a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He also spoke to reporters yesterday, and told them:
I haven't made a decision yet, the key for Todd or anybody going through the Judiciary Committee is being pretty tight on January the 6th. They better not have said for one minute that the people that beat up police officers like these right down here were righteous people. You come even close to saying that. You don't have a prayer of my vote in Judiciary.
We must admit, we do not know what Tillis is playing at here. Todd Blanche has spoken sympathetically of the 1/6 insurrectionists many times, and has described those who were convicted of various crimes as "victims" of the "weaponization" of the federal government. He helped oversee the pardons that were granted to all of the insurrectionists. Then he almost singlehandedly created a slush fund that would have given (and may still give) insurrectionists money to make up for the "harm" that was done to them. If it is possible to be more friendly to the insurrectionists, we don't know how.
Tillis is presumably communicating one of two things, and we just don't know which it is. The first possibility is a Thune-like: "I'm warning you now, don't even bother with this nomination." The second is: "Todd, you better damn well lie, and lie convincingly, during your Judiciary Committee hearing, so I have cover to vote for you." If it is the latter, we're not sure Blanche can actually pull that off. If he delivers too fully on that, Trump will be angry. And if he delivers too little, Tillis will be angry.
Incidentally, we might as well pause here for a mini-civics lesson (and another one is coming in short order). The Judiciary Committee currently has 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats on it. As we noted yesterday, two of the senators who will lose their jobs in January thanks to Trump—Tillis and John Cornyn R-TX—are members of the Committee. If one of them breaks ranks, and everyone else on the Committee votes along party lines, then the nomination would fail, 11-11. If they both break ranks, and everyone else on the Committee votes along party lines, then the nomination would fail, 10-12.
The Committee's decision is not necessarily final, however. The nomination can still be brought to the Senate floor via a discharge petition, which requires the support of a simple majority (or 50 senators plus J.D. Vance). However, being the tradition-driven body that it is, the senators are far more likely to support a discharge petition in the case of a tie vote than they are in the case of a vote that failed outright. So, if either Tillis or Cornyn rejects the nomination in committee (i.e., tie vote), then it makes it harder for confirmation to happen. If they both reject the nomination in committee (i.e. outright fail), it makes it harder still.
The third piece of bad news, when it comes to Blanche's aspirations to be fascist in the Cabinet is that Sen.
John Fetterman (R-PA) has
already come out
and said he is a "no." Fetterman is the only Democrat who might plausibly cross the aisle, and so his "no" means that
there should be 47 solid votes against confirmation. So, if four Republicans join with the Democrats and
indepdendents, it's all over. A 50-50 vote will be broken in favor of Trump by Vance, but
there's nothing he can do about a 49-51 vote.
As we have noted many times, there are already four Republicans who are headed for the exits, and who have no particular interest in "I Enabled Donald Trump's Gross Corruption" being the final chapter of their political biographies. Those four are Cornyn, Tillis, Bill Cassidy (LA) and Mitch McConnell (KY). There are also the "sometimes mavericks," namely Lisa Murkowski (AK), John Curtis (UT) and Rand Paul (KY), even if each of them tends to be maverick for different reasons. And finally, there are the Republicans who are facing tough reelection battles and can't afford to give their Democratic opponents too much ammunition, most obviously Susan Collins (ME), Jon Husted (OH) and Dan Sullivan (AK).
That's at least nine plausible "nay" votes, and we could most certainly envision at least four coming out of that group. And really, we don't even have to envision, because the basic dynamic we anticipate played out yesterday. It wasn't linked to Blanche, but it WAS linked to something else Trump cares a lot about, namely his ballroom. Sen. Jeff Merkeley (D-OR) offered up an amendment to the Republicans' reconciliation bill that would have forbidden Trump to build the ballroom without approval from Congress. The amendment failed to get the necessary 60 votes, but six Republicans joined the Democrats in voting for it: Collins, Husted, Murkowski, Sullivan, Tillis and Jerry Moran (R-KS). Who knows what Moran was doing there—probably just garden-variety budget hawkishness—but the other five are all on our list of potential rebels.
And how about a second example, also from yesterday? As part of the Senate's vote-a-rama, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) put forward an amendment that would have forbidden Bill Pulte from serving even as interim DNI. The amendment failed, but three Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for it: Cassidy, Collins and Murkowski. In addition, McConnell put out a statement on eX-Twitter in which he named no names, but nonetheless made clear that Pulte would not get his vote to be permanent DNI. That's four votes right there, and once again, all four are in our "Gang of Nine." Trump isn't much of a reader, but even he can read those particular tea leaves. So, he said yesterday that he will not nominate Pulte to be the permanent DNI, and that the job will be only temporary.
One other bit of bad news for Blanche before we get to the second mini-civics lesson we promised. The House Oversight Committee released a transcript of the testimony that former AG Pam Bondi gave to the Committee shortly before she was broomed by Trump. In it, Bondi says that Blanche was "in charge of the process and the entire release of the Epstein files." It is quite a coincidence that her testimony just happened to be released yesterday, of all days, don't you think? In any case, any senator who is not happy with the current state of the so-called "entire release" of the Epstein files now has that to think about, too. That is a list that includes not only Murkowski, Collins and Paul, but also Josh Hawley (R-MO).
So, yeah, Blanche might want to hold off for now on shopping for new office furniture.
And finally, in yesterday's item, we ended with this: "Note, incidentally, that the Senate has only about 30 workdays left before the midterms, so the strategy of 'run out the clock, rather than defy Trump openly' is on the table." Some readers wrote in and wondered if we had our math right on that. Others were appalled to learn that Congress is out of session so very much.
This seems as good a time as any to explain how things work in Washington, particularly in an election year. Today, of course, is June 5. If you doubt that, see the top-left-hand side of this webpage. The election is on November 3, so we're talking 152 days, total.
Congress always takes a week off for the Fourth of July. They don't work weekends, except on an emergency basis. They take a summer break for pretty much the entire month of August, and a chunk of September, a tradition that began (and continues) because D.C. weather is pretty unbearable at that time of year. They usually don't work much in October or early November, because that is left open for those members who need to spend their time on the campaign trail. Oh, and of course they take federal holidays, like Juneteenth, off.
Due to all of these off days, here are how many days of work the Senate has scheduled—and it's the Senate that matters here, since they handle confirmations—for each month, between today and Election Day:
That adds up to 49, which is more than 30, of course. However, while Mondays are often "officially" scheduled, they are customarily not actual workdays, most of the time. That is because members might not get back to town in time for Monday sessions (unless it's an emergency), and because they have to have some time to do non-Senate-floor business. So, here are the totals if we exclude Mondays:
Now we're down to 40. The senators also tend to take half-days on Fridays, so that members who need to get out of town have time to do so. That doesn't always happen, but it often does. There are 9 Fridays in there, so maybe knock off another 4 working days, and we're down to 36. Then note that we included today, just to be accurate, but it's not like the Senate is actually working on the Blanche nomination, so we're down to something like 35 days of work available to deal with his nomination on the Senate floor, if it ever gets that far. And that, in a nutshell, is the breakdown of our ballpark estimation. (Z)