Trump Tells Two Republican Senators: Confirm Blanche, or I Push the $1.8 Billion Payout Fund Through Congress

President Trump issued an ultimatum on Saturday to two Republican senators blocking his attorney general nominee: confirm Todd Blanche, or watch him try to write a $1.8 billion payout fund into federal law.

"If Senators Cornyn and Tillis... aren't going to approve Todd Blanche," Trump said, then he will keep Blanche as acting attorney general and "push hard" to get the fund passed by Congress. The message was aimed squarely at Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, the two Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee whose objections have stalled the nomination.

The fund at the center of the fight is the nearly $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" pool announced in May, created to pay people who say they were politically persecuted by the federal government. It emerged as part of a settlement resolving Trump's lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department. Cornyn and Tillis have said they will not vote for Blanche without written guarantees that the taxpayer-funded program is finished — a condition Trump's statement flatly reverses.

Tillis responded on X within hours, calling the reversal unfortunate and saying that Blanche, "who I consider qualified for the job, will not be confirmed because of this reversal." It was an unusually blunt public prediction of failure from a member of the president's own party about the president's own nominee, and it framed the objection as being about the money rather than the man.

Blanche, Trump's former personal defense lawyer, has been serving as acting attorney general while his nomination stalled. His confirmation hearings in July were combative, dominated by questions about the handling of the Epstein files and the January 6 pardons, and he apologized during that stretch for redaction errors in released Epstein records. The Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator Chuck Grassley, scrapped a scheduled vote on July 31 and has now set one for Tuesday at 9 a.m.

Skye Perryman, chief executive of the legal group Democracy Forward, has been among the fund's sharpest critics, arguing it converts a legal settlement into a standing appropriation for political allies. Trump's Saturday statement effectively made the fund the price of the nomination — a gambit that, by Tillis's own account, has produced the opposite of the intended effect.

The arithmetic is unforgiving. Republicans control the committee by a narrow margin, and losing two members on a party-line vote is enough to keep Blanche from reaching the floor. If Tuesday's vote fails, Blanche can continue running the Justice Department in an acting capacity, which is what Trump said he intends — and which removes most of the pressure to resolve the standoff at all.