• Senate confirmation fight over Todd Blanche
• The disputed $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund
• Limits placed on the IRS settlement’s tax protections
• Concerns raised by Senate Republicans
• The path toward a committee vote and final approval
Todd Blanche picked up serious momentum on Sunday after pulling back a controversial $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund and tightening the language around tax protections tied to a separate IRS settlement. That move landed right where Senate Republicans wanted it, and it gave Blanche a cleaner shot at moving his nomination forward.
The issue had been hanging over his confirmation for days, with Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina refusing to let the process sail through without something in writing. Their message was simple: if the administration wanted Blanche, it needed to shut the door on any version of the fund that could be revived later. Once the formal changes came through, the pressure started to shift.
The committee vote had already been pushed back once because of those concerns. Republicans on the panel need to stay united to have any chance of overcoming Democrats, who are still firmly opposed to Blanche’s confirmation. That made the written commitment more than a paperwork issue, since one loose end could have blown up the whole timeline.
Blanche’s order took direct aim at the fund and also clarified the scope of the tax protections in the May settlement. The key point was that any protections would apply only retroactively, not to future tax filings, which stripped away one of the biggest objections from Republican senators. It was a narrow fix, but in Washington, narrow fixes can carry a lot of weight.
The fund itself had never actually started operating, according to the Justice Department. No one was appointed to run it, no money moved, no claims process was built, and no payments went out, which made the whole thing look even more like a political flashpoint than a functioning program. Still, the optics were bad enough to keep lawmakers uneasy.
Concerns also swirled around the possibility that the money could be revived later, especially with Trump still publicly backing the idea. Some lawmakers worried the fund could open the door to payments for people tied to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which only made the dispute more toxic. That kind of fear tends to harden Republican resistance fast.
Cornyn’s office said an agreement had been reached with the Justice Department, and that the new order would permanently kill the fund while making clear the settlement’s scope was limited to the plaintiffs, including the president, and the IRS. That was the kind of language senators wanted to see before giving Blanche any more runway. Tillis had not said publicly whether the deal fully settled his concerns by Sunday night.
Even so, the mood around the nomination looked different once the order was in place. Tillis had warned earlier that Trump seemed intent on bringing the payout plan back in some other form, whether through another fund or a fight in Congress. He also said Blanche was qualified, which left the door open for a late-breaking deal instead of a full collapse.
Blanche has been serving as acting attorney general since April, and Republicans now want his nomination advanced before the week runs out. The Senate calendar is tight, the vote math is unforgiving, and every written promise matters when the margin is this thin. With the fund officially gone and the settlement narrowed, the remaining pressure shifts to the senators who still have to decide whether the fix is enough.
