Two Republican Senators Ready to Blow Up Blanche’s A.G. Nomination

It appears that two outgoing Republican senators are prepared to tank the nomination of Todd Blanche for attorney general.

Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, who hold Blanche’s future in their hands, are particularly concerned with the status of President Trump’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” a controversial move to provide financial assistance to anyone who feels they’ve been attacked for supporting the president. Cornyn noted in Blanche’s most recent confirmation hearing that even though Blanche claimed the fund was dead, there was no written agreement to actually kill it.

Now, he’s demanding it in writing.

“What I want is the written document to say the same thing he did in his sworn testimony in front of the Judiciary Committee, and, as you recall, what he said is the weaponization fund is dead. He said the audit immunity basically doesn’t extend to parties beyond the lawsuit, and it doesn’t also extend to future actions by federal agencies other than the IRS,” Cornyn said on Monday. “That’s what we’re trying to get them to agree to, which is again what his sworn testimony was. So I don’t know why they’re—I don’t know why they’re so reluctant to do that when he’s already sworn to it.”

Tillis, too, said he wants changes to the settlement agreement with the IRS, which created the $1.776 billion slush fund and gave the Trump family immunity from future IRS audits.

Tillis previously threatened to block Blanche’s nomination unless he met with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. Blanche did so earlier this month, but survivors said the meeting was “demoralizing,” as Blanche continued to avoid answering their questions.

“It just felt like more political posturing and using survivors the way that we’ve been used as political pawns,” Epstein survivor and anti-human trafficking educator Elizabeth Stein said at the time.

Cornyn and Tillis’s “no” votes would effectively kill Blanche’s nomination, as he needs the support of all 11 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to move forward. As of right now, it looks like he won’t get it. The Senate Judiciary is planning to vote to advance fBlanche’s nomination on Thursday.

The Department of Justice’s own witness is undermining its case against David Hearn, the former Olympic canoeist charged with vandalizing and damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

According to court documents, a grand jury witness for the government said that the pool was damaged before Hearn even approached it. NBC News reports that this witness was the only person who testified about damage to the pool.

Hearn, who has pleaded not guilty, maintains that “the condition of the Reflecting Pool was the same after I stepped away from the water as it was before I got there,” and that he only touched a part of the pool’s detached coating. President Trump claims that vandals used a knife or blade to cause a “gash” in the pool’s lining, but has no evidence to back up his claim.

Hearn has been charged with destruction of property, a felony, and accused of causing $1,000 worth of damage to the pool. His lawyers question the evidence behind that claim, noting that the alleged cost is the necessary threshold to charge him with a felony. At least three other people have been charged with misdemeanors related to incidents at the pool.

Hearn’s lawyers said that the government’s main witness testimony “established that the pool had substantial preexisting damage requiring repair before any alleged conduct by Mr. Hearn.”

“The government’s only witness on that element testified that the property was already deteriorated, that the identified repairs would have been needed even without Mr. Hearn’s alleged conduct, and that he could not quantify any loss caused by that conduct,” they continued. “Consequently, the grand jury’s indictment of Mr. Hearn is hard to explain. Mr. Hearn needs to learn whether the grand jury was properly instructed that the charge required him to have caused over $1,000 in damages, when the testimony failed to establish that he caused any damage at all. So does this Court.”

It would seem like the government’s case may soon fall apart, just like the pool lining, which was likely damaged by President Trump in the first place.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune just dumped cold water all over President Donald Trump’s latest demands to pass his SAVE America Act.

“If somebody can show me how we get an outcome, how we get a result, how we get an answer to this, I’m all for it,” Thune told reporters Monday afternoon. “But if we are going to be sitting here in endless quorum calls, I don’t know if that’s in anybody’s best interest.”

Earlier Monday, Trump had directed Thune to keep the Senate in session in order to pass a “full and deep throated” SAVE America Act (whatever that means). But the majority leader has maintained that the president’s signature voter suppression bill just doesn’t have the support it needs. 

“We could stay here til Christmas, Democrats aren’t voting for this. I’m just telling you,” Thune said. “And Republicans are not getting rid of the legislative filibuster.”

Thune told reporters that the White House had already sat down with 20 Republican lawmakers to discuss scrapping the filibuster—and 15 of them said no. “So, I mean this is not an open question. It’s just a fact, and the facts don’t change,” he said. 

“Now, if [Trump] can change the facts and start moving some of those senators who are no’s into yeses, then we have a different conversation,” Thune added. 

This is the second time Thune has snapped back over Trump’s ham-fisted pressure. Last week, after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump’s patience with Thune was “running out,” the senator retorted, “Well maybe she or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes, right?”

Thune is currently attempting to pass his third budget reconciliation bill that would contain $10 billion for election-related reforms, but even Republicans remain divided on the president’s sweeping bill.  

President Trump’s speech at a rally in Michigan Monday afternoon was interrupted by a persistent heckler. 

Someone kept yelling “pedophile protector” while Trump was extolling the benefits of his tariffs on foreign automakers. Others in the crowd eventually tried to drown him out, and when the protester stopped, the crowd cheered before breaking into a “USA” chant.

“He’s a Communist!” Trump said, laughing and pointing into the crowd. “Thank you. He’s a Communist! We’re running against Communists now, this is crazy.”

Trump then went into a tangent against Communists, saying, “You see what they want to do? They want to take your houses, they want to do things that nobody’s ever even thought of before. They want to take your money, they want to raise your tax up to 80 percent.” 

“And I said this morning, I see this morning, they also want to fire the police. They don’t want police and they don’t want prisons anymore. I think that’s a great idea. Does everybody like that idea?” Trump asked sarcastically. 

In January, a worker in a Ford Motor Company factory in Dearborn, Michigan, yelled “pedophile protector” at Trump as he was touring the facility, prompting the president to mouth an expletive and give the worker the middle finger. Last month, a protester repeatedly shouted “pedophile” at Trump and gave him two middle fingers while he toured a Mack truck factory in Macungie, Pennsylvania.  

It’s highly doubtful that all the hecklers were Communists, and considering how unpopular Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files has been with his supporters, they could have even been disgruntled MAGA devotees. Trump is only going to hear more protesters and hecklers calling him a pedophile for the rest of his life. 

Donald Trump’s administration only has one person working in its office of pandemic preparedness, and—you guessed it—she’s a vaccine skeptic.

The Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy had been empty since last summer, after all the Biden-era employees left and its head resigned. Now the office charged with coordinating cross-agency responses to pandemic risks has only one employee: Sara Brenner, a vaccine skeptic and self-described “MAHA mom.”

“That is a start, but it is not nearly enough,” a former White House official told NOTUS Monday. “You can’t run an Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy as an army of one.”

Brenner joined the Food and Drug Administration in 2019 as a midlevel scientist and was promoted to deputy commissioner after Trump’s inauguration in 2025—where she fully embraced Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ridiculous Make America Healthy Again movement. Brenner was appointed to the OPPR in July amid mounting concerns about global disease outbreaks.

Brenner has a history of publicly airing her concerns about vaccines, The New York Times reported. Speaking at a Make America Healthy Again event last year, she said she chose not to receive the Covid-19 vaccine when she was pregnant during the pandemic because she was concerned about the vaccine’s “biodistribution patterns.”

In May 2025, she co-wrote a memo saying there was no “no clear evidence” that the benefits of Covid vaccines for children under 18 outweighed the risk of harm, overlooking the hundreds of studies that suggested the exact opposite. In March 2025, she intervened in the FDA’s review of the Novavax’s Covid vaccine.

Another health official, Rachel Idowu, was appointed to the National Security Council as its director of bioresponse. Together with Brenner, she will manage the country’s response to pandemic threats.

One health official who spoke to NOTUS praised Idowu’s work, saying she was “truly the right person to have in that office. She can do the work of two or three.” Still, they said Idowu and Brenner would have to be “very selective in terms of what they prioritize.”

Byron Cohen, a former adviser to OPPR, told NOTUS that Idowu and Brenner were two “very experienced, capable people,” but there was still a “tremendous amount of work to be done.”

“Those two individuals only have so much time in the day, and they deserve a full staff to help them carry out their mission,” Cohen told NOTUS.

Clearly, the Trump administration is not prioritizing pandemic preparedness even as the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is shaping up to be the worst on record.