RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesWhite House faces GOP revolt in the Senate over Trump’s desired ‘slush fund’ for January 6 rioters and other targets of Biden DoJ
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A key Republican senator negotiating with the White House and the Department of Justice over making Todd Blanche the next U.S. attorney general said Thursday that his confirmation is very much in jeopardy.
Blanche’s nomination by President Donald Trump to take over his acting role on a permanent basis was supposed to go through its first Judiciary Committee vote on Thursday morning. Instead, that vote was called off as holdout Republicans refuse to vote “yes” on Blanche until the Department of Justice guarantees that it will not set up a once-planned $1.776 billion “weaponization fund,” which the Senate has derided as a MAGA “slush fund.”
Speaking on the cable news channel MS Now, Texas Sen. John Cornyn told reporter Ali Vitali that he was prepared to vote “no” on Blanche unless the White House and DOJ accept his terms. The administration and Blanche have stated that the fund is “dead.” But Cornyn and his colleagues are concerned that the text of a settlement with the president’s legal team still could require it to be set up, let alone the issue of simply not trusting them at their word.
They also oppose a provision giving Trump perpetual immunity from IRS audits of his finances prior to May 19, 2026.
"I am prepared to vote no, but I do think I owe it to my constituents and to Mr. Blanche to try to negotiate in good faith, and that's what we've been doing,” Cornyn told MS Now. He added that the president “could fix this in a minute.”
Trump responded in a Truth Social post. The president wrote on Thursday that he was considering pulling Blanche’s nomination altogether, and renominating him in 2027, after their departure from the Senate.
“John Cornyn, of Texas, and Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, both of whom I refused to Endorse, and whose political careers have been ended by my action, are refusing to vote for this Great Nominee, who will remain, in any event, as Acting. Remember, both Cornyn and Tillis voted for Merrick Garland, and others, too numerous to mention. I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office,” wrote Trump on Truth Social.
Blanche, a former personal lawyer to Trump, would take over the role from Pam Bondi, another former Trump lawyer whom he fired last spring. Cornyn delivered a counter proposal to DOJ Wednesday evening after the debate initially threatened to derail Blanche’s vote. Justice officials confirmed Wednesday evening that they remain in contact with Cornyn’s office.
The so-called “weaponization fund” was birthed from a settlement between Trump’s legal team and the IRS the Department of Justice engineered after Trump took office in 2025. In a press release, the DoJ claimed that the fund would be used to “provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare” allegedly committed by the agency.
But it was met with immediate revulsion in Congress, with moderate Republicans in both chambers joining with Democrats to condemn it and describe it as a “slush fund” designed to reward Trump’s allies with lucrative payouts. Controversy immediately erupted over whether the funds could be used to reward January 6 rioters who were successfully prosecuted by the Biden Justice Department, then pardoned by Trump after he took office.
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong – Take your pick,” former GOP leader said in May.
Funding for it was left out of the Republicans’ second reconciliation package last month, but Cornyn and his holdout colleagues have gone further by demanding it be written out of existence altogether.
Few on the Hill or in the White House view it as a coincidence that both of the Republicans threatening to vote “no” are members who’ve been politically burned by the president. In Cornyn’s case, he lost a runoff election for his own seat after Trump endorsed against him this cycle, while Sen. Thom Tillis’s dispute with Trump dates back to his opposition to the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” last year. Tillis announced that he wouldn’t run for re-election as it was clear he’d likely face a Trump-backed challenger.
Tillis unloaded on the “weaponization fund” to a gaggle of reporters on the Hill on Thursday, explaining that Trump was getting “bad advice”.
“It makes no sense to me. This is not popular. The president's not winning on this issue. 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,” Tillis said.
But Cornyn once again insisted on Thursday that his opposition to Blanche’s confirmation didn’t stem from personal animus, instead political disagreement.
Noting that a phone call with the president would help and that he hadn’t spoken with Trump at all about the stalemate, Cornyn told MS Now on Thursday that his voting record spoke for itself.
“You know, I've voted with him 99.3% of the time. That has nothing to do with it. This is about making sure that even if you're the president of the United States, you don't get favorable terms from the government in a settlement of a lawsuit that ordinary citizens would not get, like protections from audits by the IRS for the foreseeable future.”
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