As losses mount, Trump nominates Todd Blanche for Attorney General

June 4, 2026

Please note that, as explained below, my wife and I will be traveling for the next 10 days. Although our travel may affect the time of the newsletter’s publication, my plan is to continue publishing a newsletter each day. If the newsletter is delayed in arrival, there is no cause for alarm. I will publish as soon as our travel permits.

In a sign that Trump no longer cares about Republican prospects for the midterms or 2028, the president will nominate Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to serve as US Attorney General. We last saw Todd Blanche attempting to engineer the theft of $1.8 billion from the US Treasury for the benefit of January 6 convicted insurrectionists, cop beaters, and child molesters. A few days before that, Blanche was firmly planted under the bus driven by former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who blamed Blanche for the continued cover-up of the Epstein files and the massive failures to protect victim information.

In nominating Blanche, Trump is signaling to a beleaguered Republican Party and angry American electorate that he is formally terminating any pretense of concern about the midterms. Indeed, he said as much last week, saying “I don’t care about the midterms.”

Nominating the radioactive Todd Blanche is like punctuating his lack of concern with a confetti cannon. Trump really could not care less about the midterms if he tried.

It is doubtful whether Blanche will be confirmed by the Senate. As explained below, the question of the thug fund was teased back to life by Trump one day after Blanche swore before Congress that the administration would not proceed with the fund.

On Wednesday, Trump declared that the thug fund was “a beautiful thing.” See NBC News, Trump says he’s not sure if ‘anti-weaponization’ fund is dead: ‘I’d have to ask the lawyers’.

As a legal matter, the fund’s existence was mandated by the terms of a settlement that Trump entered into with himself. So far as anyone knows, that agreement has not been terminated or repudiated. So long as the fund continues in any form—even as a zombie agreement capable of clawing its way back from the grave—Blanche will not be confirmed.

Moreover, Blanche’s unprecedented taxpayer immunity granted to Trump in the same settlement that created the fund was also a corrupt act that should be the subject of a criminal investigation.

If Blanche refuses to walk away from the taxpayer immunity agreement, it is difficult to see how Republican Senators like Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Lisa Murkowski, John Cornyn, and Bill Cassidy will vote for an Attorney General nominee who entered into a corrupt immunity agreement with the president at the same time the president was considering elevating Todd Blanche to Attorney General.

A first-year law student faced with such a hypothetical on a criminal law final exam would recognize the obvious conflict of interest and potential quid pro quo bribe implicit in those facts.

Blanche should not be confirmed, but it is difficult for a jellyfish to grow a spine. Whether Senate Republicans will confirm a nominee who just attempted to raid the Treasury for $1.8 billion and offer a quid pro quo for a promotion should not be a close question. Sadly, it will be.

Still, Blanche’s nomination is additional baggage for Republican candidates who are already carrying the botched Epstein file production, the Billion Dollar Ballroom, the Trump Arch, the Mar-a-Lago Reflecting Pool, the Iran War, gasoline and grocery prices, tariffs, DOGE chaos, RFK Jr. measles outbreaks, and more.

Piling on Todd Blanche’s nomination is the political equivalent of Melania Trump’s iconic jacket emblazoned with the saying, “I really don’t care. Do U?”

Okay, that was an awfully long wind-up to get to my thesis for today’s edition of the newsletter: Trump is reeling from a string of defeats and Todd Blanche is the functional equivalent of Trump flipping the bird to Republicans and the American electorate. As they say, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter paper.”

Before reviewing those defeats, let’s talk about why they matter. Part of Trump’s success is creating the misimpression that he is unstoppable. Success (or perceived success) begets success. But Trump is a big-time loser who is running out of the vast quantities of greasepaint and klieg lights necessary to distract attention from his failures. People don’t like a loser. Trump is a loser.

On Wednesday, four House Republicans joined with Democrats to pass a War Powers Resolution that requires Trump to wind down the war against Iran in 60 days. Last month, four Senate Republicans joined Democrats in a 50-47 vote to discharge a similar resolution from committee, thereby advancing the matter toward a floor vote (no final Senate vote has been held). But because such a resolution must be signed by the president to become law, the only effect of the resolutions is to put Congress on record as opposing Trump’s unlawful war against Iran.

The second War Powers rebuke to Trump comes as Trump has effectively given up on settlement negotiations. See New York Times, Trump Tells Aides He Won’t Resume All-Out War With Iran Unless U.S. Troops Are Killed, (Gift article accessible to all.)

President Trump has told aides privately that he would consider ending the ceasefire with Iran if Tehran kills American troops, U.S. officials said, insisting that the weekslong pause in airstrikes remains intact despite a steady stream of violent skirmishes.

The president’s reluctance to reignite the war suggests he might be willing to withstand smaller flare-ups for weeks—or even months—to avoid a broader conflict in the Middle East.

Instead, Trump is willing to allow the situation in the Middle East to remain in the posture of a “hot cease-fire” in which hostilities never really terminate but do not escalate to full-scale attacks. That unfortunate situation will keep the Strait of Hormuz closed for the duration, posing a long-term threat to the health of the US economy and the financial security of all Americans.

As Trump’s effort to end his war of choice against Iran is going nowhere fast, Congress is trimming back a number of Trump’s misguided efforts. See NYTimes, Senate Revives Immigration Bill, Weighing Ban on Compensation Fund. (Gift article, accessible to all.)

As explained by the Times, the reconciliation bill will omit Trump’s funding request for the Billion Dollar Ballroom. Moreover, nervous Republican Senators may join Democrats to ban the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund because they do not trust Todd Blanche’s assurances that the Department of Justice will not move forward with it.

Concluding Thoughts.

Last week I noted that Trump’s net favorability rating had dropped two points in a week, as measured by the combined The Economist / YouGov poll. This week, Trump’s net favorability rating dropped 1.1 points. See The Economist, Donald Trump’s approval rating | The president’s net approval rating is -25, down 1.1 points since last week.

A three-point drop in two weeks is steep. According to The Economist, the precipitous drop is driven by the disastrous war against Iran and its effects on the US economy. As noted above, Trump is resigned to allowing the war to drag on in an indeterminate “hot ceasefire” that will keep the Strait of Hormuz closed to commercial tankers.

In other words, the factors that are driving Trump’s steep decline in favorability ratings will persist—likely into the midterms and beyond. We cannot count on Republicans to defeat themselves, but neither should we grant Trump superpowers he does not have.

Correction: He does have one superpower: He has a stranglehold over cowardly Republican officeholders who are more afraid of Trump than they are of voters. But that superpower will drive Republicans to defeat in November as Trump’s personal unfavorability ratings stick to Republicans like a cheap suit on a muggy day in D.C.

We have reason to be confident. We should be energized and focused. And we should be unsparing in our criticism of Trump’s damage to the economy, the war on Iran, the cover-up of the Epstein files, corruption, tariffs, and callousness to the financial plight of millions of Americans. In other words, if ever there was a time for Democrats to take the offensive in a midterm, this is the once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a blue wave of transformative force.

A note about my travel schedule: For the next ten days, my wife and I will be in Scotland to celebrate her 70^th birthday. We will be traveling by planes, trains, and automobiles, which is where I will be writing the newsletter on some days. The newsletter will be shorter and may not always include audio, but my intention is to stay in touch every day. Daily contact with readers is an essential part of the newsletter’s mission. I appreciate your understanding over the next ten days as I work around our travel schedule.

Pro-democracy protest photos

Send to rbhubbell@gmail.com. Include city and state.

It was another glorious afternoon on the Western Avenue/I 90 overpass bridge!  We all NEED to attend this protest each week to counteract the constant attacks on our democracy.   Our presence here is expected and loudly appreciated by the streams of commuters

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Today’s message from the Raleigh Bridge Brigade in Raleigh, NC - mixing sports and our disdain for Trump!!!!

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From Hingham MA. Between 70 and 150 protesters every Wednesday morning for well over one year!

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Good, morning, Here’s our latest message to LA commuters driving into LA on the 210 freeway.  Lots of honking and waving!

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Chandler, AZ - Tuesday morning Bridge Brigade. Mark Lamb is a maga running for the house in AZ CD5. We are doing our part to try and flip this district.

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When some Indivisible Mid Maine members nick-named our weekly protest the Church of Perpetual Resistance, another noted “That’s apt, CPR!”, so a third made the illustration, and now many of us are wearing it.

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About 30 of our regulars are at the Bangor federal building, where Susan Collins’ office is housed. We’re there every Tuesday—have been since January 2025. Lots of honks of support yesterday!

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