Susan Collins has seen enough. The Maine Republican announced Tuesday she will vote against Todd Blanche's confirmation as attorney general, citing a Justice Department she says has become 'increasingly political.' She didn't say it had become a personal law firm for the president, but she didn't have to.
One Vote Down, One to Go
As Axios reports, Collins' announcement alone won't kill Blanche's nomination. But the math just got a lot tighter. With Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell still absent from the chamber, Republicans can afford to lose exactly two GOP votes before Blanche's path to confirmation collapses, assuming every Democrat holds the line and votes no.
That means every undecided Republican senator is now, suddenly, a very important person. The kind of person who starts getting phone calls from people they didn't expect to hear from. The kind of person whose weekend plans abruptly clear up.
Blanche has been serving in an acting capacity while his nomination awaits a Senate vote. So the man is already running the Justice Department while senators are still deciding whether he should be allowed to. Which is a perfectly normal way to run the nation's top law enforcement agency, sure.
What Collins Actually Said
Collins framed her opposition carefully, the way Collins always does. She is not calling Blanche a crook. She is not calling him incompetent. According to Axios, her statement acknowledged that she believes he is 'a capable lawyer.' This is the diplomatic equivalent of a job reference that says someone was 'punctual.'
The problem, in Collins' telling, is the institution itself. 'The Department of Justice has become increasingly political,' she said. She then went on to note that Blanche has not done enough, in her view, to push back against that drift. The exact quote from Blanche that completed her statement was cut off in the available reporting, but the shape of the critique is clear enough.
This is the Susan Collins special: identify the rot, name it carefully, vote against the nominee, and then watch the thing pass anyway and express concern from the sidelines. We have seen this movie before. Multiple times. It has the same ending.
Who Is Todd Blanche, Exactly
For anyone who missed the last few years of American legal chaos, Todd Blanche was Donald Trump's personal criminal defense attorney during his federal prosecutions. He represented the former and now current president through the classified documents case and the federal election interference case, both of which were ultimately dropped after Trump won the 2024 election and installed loyalists to handle the cleanup.
Now that same lawyer is in charge of the entire Justice Department. He went from defending one man against federal prosecutors to running the office that employs those prosecutors. If you are having trouble seeing the conflict of interest there, try squinting. Or don't, because it doesn't help.
The nomination has drawn consistent Democratic opposition precisely because of that background. Putting your personal defense attorney in charge of federal law enforcement is the kind of move that, in any other era, would have produced weeks of bipartisan outrage. In this one, it produced a confirmation hearing and a scheduling fight.
The McConnell Factor
Mitch McConnell's continued absence from the Senate is doing a lot of work in this story. The Kentucky Republican has been a ghost in the chamber, and his absence tightens the margins on any vote that requires near-total Republican unity.
With McConnell out, the effective threshold shifts. Republicans can only absorb two defections before the nomination is in genuine danger. Collins is one. Whoever comes next becomes the story. Senators who have been quietly uncomfortable about Blanche now have cover if they want to use it, and a target on their backs from the White House if they don't.
The Trump operation has not historically been subtle about how it handles Republican senators who stray. The calls will be coming. The pressure will be real. Whether anyone else has the stomach to follow Collins is the only question that matters right now.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe this is a routine confirmation process for a qualified nominee. Todd Blanche personally defended Donald Trump against federal criminal charges, the charges were dropped because Trump won the presidency, and now Blanche runs the federal building that brought those charges. That is not a resume. That is a loyalty test that someone passed.
Collins calling the DOJ 'increasingly political' is like calling the Pacific 'increasingly wet.' The department didn't drift toward politics. It was steered there, deliberately, by people who understood exactly what they were doing. Blanche's nomination is not a symptom of that problem. It is the destination.
If one more Republican senator finds their spine before this vote, we might have an actual fight on our hands. History suggests that is a lot to ask. But Collins has made the next domino visible. Someone has to decide whether to knock it over, or whether they'd prefer to get the call from Mar-a-Lago first and work backward from there.
Comments