Republicans face pressure to block Trump’s attorney general pick Blanche

Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing opened Wednesday in Hart Senate Office Building Room 216, where Republicans faced a direct choice on Donald Trump’s pick to become attorney general. The Senate Judiciary Committee set a second day for Thursday, underscoring how much attention has clustered around a nominee who is already serving as acting attorney general after Pam Bondi was fired in April 2026.

Trump nominated Blanche on June 3, 2026, and the Senate Judiciary Committee received the nomination, PN1078-119, on June 8. Blanche had already won Senate confirmation once before, when the chamber approved him as deputy attorney general on March 5, 2025, by a 52-46 vote. That earlier test now looms over a far more charged one: Blanche was Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer before joining the Justice Department, the same department that had prosecuted Trump in prior criminal cases.

That background has driven the controversy surrounding his promotion. Democrats on the Judiciary Committee said Blanche deserves heightened scrutiny because of what they describe as political retribution and the broader politicization of justice under the Trump administration. Public-interest critics, including Public Citizen, have also raised conflict-of-interest concerns tied to Blanche’s defense of Trump and his role in Justice Department decisions involving the Epstein files.

Several Republicans remained undecided ahead of the hearing, a sign that Blanche’s path is not guaranteed even in a Senate where Trump’s nominees often draw unified GOP backing. Other coverage described Blanche as working the phones in a charm offensive to win over hesitant Republicans, but the political question is more fundamental than a single vote tally. The committee is deciding whether a former Trump lawyer should be entrusted permanently with the nation’s top law-enforcement post after already running it in an acting capacity.

The stakes are large. The Justice Department says Blanche oversees more than 100,000 employees across Main Justice, the FBI, DEA, U.S. Marshals, ATF, the Bureau of Prisons and 93 U.S. Attorney’s Offices. A confirmation would cement a precedent that a president’s personal defense lawyer can rise to control the federal law-enforcement apparatus; a rejection would signal that Senate Republicans were willing, at least in this case, to put departmental independence ahead of party loyalty.