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Drop Site Daily: August 4, 2026

Republican Senator Thom Tillis doesn’t think highly of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, but he voted to confirm him anyway.Tillis, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, gave a long-winded defense of his support for Blanche on the Senate floor Tuesday, even as he admitted that this Justice Department seems particularly bad.“Everybody has this view that they are as pure as the driven snow and it’s the other side that has a problem. I think we both have a problem, folks. If you want to talk about weaponization, take a look at the Biden administration, take a look at the Obama administration,” Tillis said.“The bottom line is, nobody is clean here, and until we start recognizing this behavior as bad, we’re just going to one-up it. Maybe it’s a little bit more intense in this administration than the last one, and that a little bit more intense the prior administration, and so on and so forth, but folks, we’ve got to end this stuff. We do,” Tillis continued. “I’m gonna support Mr. Blanche’s nomination, but what I hope I see out of him is a bending of the curve of this absurdity.”Tillis: "Everybody has this view that they are as pure as the driven snow and it's the other side that has a problem. I think we both have a problem, folks. If you want to talk about weaponization, take a look at the Biden administration, take a look at the Obama administration,… pic.twitter.com/bnBhpjfsBg— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 4, 2026Tillis’s excuse doesn’t hold up very well. Tillis was one of two Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee withholding his vote to support Blanche over President Trump’s settlement with the IRS, which created a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and gave Trump and his family immunity from IRS audits.But over the weekend, Tillis, along with Republican Senator John Cornyn, changed his mind following a written statement from the Department of Justice in which Blanche purportedly agreed to end the Anti-Weaponization Fund. However, that memo still left open the preservation of the fund, as well as Trump’s immunity from IRS audits, as Democrats quickly pointed out.Tillis seems to know all of this, based on his statement Tuesday. But even though he’ll be out of the Senate next year, he’s putting politics over principle.

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The Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed Todd Blanche to run the Justice Department Tuesday, advancing Blanche’s nomination for attorney general to the Senate floor.Democrats on the committee dissented, arguing that Donald Trump’s blindly loyal former personal attorney should not have the keys to America’s top law enforcement agency.Senator Sheldon Whitehouse remarked that it was a “sad and embarrassing day for this committee,” right before Blanche’s nomination moved forward solely on a party-line vote. Whitehouse noted that Blanche was “probably the most discreditable person ever to seek the office of attorney general of the United States.”Outgoing Republican Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, who held up Blanche’s nomination until the acting attorney general vaguely assured them he would end Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund, ultimately cracked under the pressure and fell in line with their party earlier this week.Yet even Blanche’s former colleagues could see that he wasn’t right for the monumental role. Prior to the vote, hundreds of federal prosecutors urged the Senate to reject Blanche’s bid. In a joint memo, the cohort questioned whether the Justice Department would continue to exist as an entity that serves the American people—and whether the American people would continue to have faith in its abilities to serve them—if it remained under Blanche’s control.They cited Blanche’s willingness to fire career prosecutors and FBI agents to satisfy Trump’s political interests, his belief that Trump has a “right” and a “duty” to shape federal probes, his mishandling of the Epstein files and repeat refusals to meet with the sex trafficker’s victims, and the DOJ’s $1.8 billion slush fund as just a handful of examples that have so far tanked their faith in Blanche’s abilities to remain independent of the White House.This story has been updated.