Fight Over ‘Anti-Weaponization’ Fund Threatens Blanche’s AG Nomination

Sen. John Cornyn speaking to reporters this week (Reuters)
By Yuval Rosenberg

Good evening. President Trump hosted meetings today with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before attending the funeral of Sen. Lindsey Graham at the Washington National Cathedral. Trump eulogized Graham as "a giant of the United States Senate and a true American original." The Senate is voting this evening to confirm Jay Clayton as director of national intelligence and advance the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026.

Here's what else is happening.

Two GOP Senators Threaten to Derail Blanche's Nomination Over 'Anti-Weaponization' Fund

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's nomination to serve as the nation's top law enforcement officer on a permanent basis is in limbo, as two Republican senators continue to demand that the Justice Department formally kill a proposed $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" fund and address other concerns about a controversial settlement of President Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.

Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina are threatening to derail Blanche's nomination unless they receive the assurances they have sought. Cornyn told reporters Tuesday that a Senate Judiciary Committee vote set for Thursday could be postponed and that he had not yet received a response from the Justice Department regarding his demand that the "anti-weaponization" fund be formally halted.

"They've been kind of radio silent for the last 24 hours," Cornyn told reporters. "I think my staff is talking to them, but we're not - they know what they need to do. They just don't want to do it."

Cornyn said he hoped a postponement would not be necessary.

"If there's not enough votes to confirm him, then Sen. [Chuck] Grassley might decide to postpone it. But I don't think that's the No. 1 goal right now," Cornyn said, referring to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

With no Democrats expected to back him, Blanche needs the support of both GOP holdouts for his nomination to advance. He has repeatedly insisted in testimony to lawmakers that the "anti-weaponization" fund is dead and the Justice Department won't move forward with it, but he has refused to put that commitment in writing. Trump has also publicly defended the deal, raising the possibility that he might look to resurrect it.

The nearly $1.8 billion fund, meant to compensate people who claim they were improperly targeted by the federal government, was announced in May as part of a highly unusual settlement by the Trump-led Justice Department of a lawsuit the president brought against the IRS over an earlier leak of his tax records. A former IRS contractor was sentenced to five years in prison for that 2019-2020 leak.

The announcement of the "anti-weaponization" fund drew immediate pushback, as lawmakers and government watchdog groups warned that it would amount to a slush fund of taxpayer money that the administration could direct to Trump allies, including people who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The settlement of Trump's IRS lawsuit also included an agreement that shielded Trump, his family and his businesses from tax audits. That portion of the agreement was weakened or essentially voided earlier this month by a federal judge, who ruled that the suit was an improper attempt to manipulate the legal system.

At a confirmation hearing earlier this month, Cornyn pointed to the text of the settlement agreement, which says that it "may be modified only with the written agreement of the Parties."

"We just need for the documents to conform to what his testimony was at the hearing where he said the weaponization fund is dead, he said the immunity from future audits does not extend to people beyond the parties to the lawsuit, and he said it wasn't intended to release further actions by other agencies other than the IRS," Cornyn told reporters, according to The Hill.

Number of the Day: $600 Million

The State Department will reportedly disburse $600 million appropriated by Congress to Gavi, a global vaccine alliance, after the funding was held up by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who accused the group of neglecting vaccine safety concerns.

"It is welcome news that following our recent outreach, the State Department has committed to contributing the full $600 million for GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance," Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins said in a statement to Politico.

Collins reportedly praised the organization for playing "a critical role in averting the spread of preventable diseases globally and stopping outbreaks before they reach U.S. borders."

Gavi says that it has helped vaccinate more than1.2 billion children in the world's poorest countries, preventing more than 20.6 million potential deaths, since it was created in 2000. It denies using unsafe vaccines, but recently agreed to phase out shots containing thimerosal, a preservative Kennedy has targeted with claims of unproven links to autism.

The congressional funding was appropriated for fiscal years 2025 and 2026.

Quote of the Day

"This is one of those cases where it's really hard to overstate how dire the consequences could be."

  • North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson, as quoted by Politico discussing a lawsuit he and other Democratic state officials have brought challenging a Trump administration rule imposing work requirements on Medicaid starting in January.

The administration last month issued an interim final rule guiding implementation of those work requirements, including who would be exempted for being "medically frail." The Democratic legal challenge argues that the administration rule is too restrictive. Politico's Alice Miranda Ollstein and Robert King note that even a cancer diagnosis would not be enough to claim an exemption from the requirement to work, volunteer or go to school for 80 hours a month unless beneficiaries submit proof that they are physically unable to work.

"You're going to have 50 states doing 50 different things, and we're all going to have to create a whole new bureaucracy," Jackson told Politico. "You are talking about a lot more paperwork, more evaluations, more doctor visits, and a lot more work for doctors themselves."

Republicans instituted the new work requirements as part of their One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year as a way to combat waste, fraud and abuse in the Medicaid program and cut costs to offset the tax cuts they were enacting.

Read more about the work requirements and the legal fight surrounding them at Politico.

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