Todd Blanche Cleared the Judiciary Committee 12-10. Susan Collins Says She Will Vote No on the Floor.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-10 along party lines Tuesday to send Todd Blanche's nomination for attorney general to the full Senate, clearing the last committee hurdle for President Trump's former personal lawyer to take permanent control of the Justice Department. Blanche has been running the department as acting attorney general, and the vote followed weeks of negotiation with two Republicans who had threatened to sink him.

The holdouts were Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and their objection was specific: a $1.8 billion fund Blanche had created to compensate people who claim they were targets of government "weaponization." Cornyn and Tillis also objected to a sweeping arrangement granting the president immunity from tax audits. Late Sunday, after those weeks of talks, Blanche issued a new order rescinding his original directive establishing the fund and narrowing the immunity provision so that it covers only audits of previous years' returns, and applies only to Trump, his two oldest sons and the Trump Organization.

The order does not touch the underlying settlement Trump reached with the IRS in May to resolve a civil suit over the leak of his tax returns by a former government contractor. And the president has not dropped the idea. Trump publicly threatened on Saturday to revive the payout fund if Cornyn and Tillis voted against Blanche.

Both senators said Monday they were "pleased" with the formal order, and that the department's acknowledgment of the limits on the tax immunity deal resolved concerns shared by several Republican colleagues. "We want to express our gratitude to Mr. Blanche and his staff for working with us on this," they said in a joint statement. At the hearing, Cornyn defended the terms he had extracted. "Given this agreement with Mr. Blanche, I expect the department to live up to this in future litigation," he said, adding that his vote "goes beyond this document. We need a stabilizing force at the Department of Justice and Mr. Blanche deserves the opportunity to provide that." The department, Cornyn said, "does not need a temporary, unconfirmed nominee as our nation's top law enforcement officer."

Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa thanked the two for pressing the point. "It's just common sense, what Tillis and Cornyn are asking out of the executive branch of government," he said.

The floor math is now the whole story. Confirmation takes a simple majority, and assuming every Democrat votes no, Republicans can lose no more than three of their own. One has already defected: Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said Monday she will vote against Blanche, citing the $1.8 billion fund and other steps she argued have left the Justice Department "increasingly political." If Sen. Mitch McConnell remains absent, the margin tightens further — Blanche could lose only two more Republicans before Vice President JD Vance would have to break a tie. A floor vote is expected within days, as the Senate races toward its August recess.