John Cornyn has spent two decades as one of the most reliable Republican votes in the United States Senate. He voted with Donald Trump’s agenda nearly every time it came to the floor. He pinned a photo of himself standing with the president to the top of his social media page. He publicly endorsed Trump for a second term. Trump still shoved him out the door.
The four-term Texas senator lost by double digits to state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who Trump endorsed as “a true MAGA Warrior,” writing that Cornyn “was VERY disloyal to me.” Cornyn had been in the Senate since December 2002. None of it counted.
Now Cornyn is in his final months in Washington, and he has decided to use them. The vehicle is Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general, the confirmation battle consuming Capitol Hill this week.
Who Is Todd Blanche, and How Did He Get Here?
After Trump fired Pam Bondi as attorney general in April 2026, Blanche became her acting successor. Blanche had previously served as Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney before joining the administration. As acting attorney general, Blanche signed an order in May barring the IRS from examining Trump’s prior tax returns and blocking the agency from pursuing pending claims against Trump, his family, or his businesses, stemming from a settlement agreement in Trump v. Internal Revenue Service.
That settlement has become a central sticking point in his confirmation. The Justice Department established a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate those who allege they were wrongly targeted under the Biden administration. Trump and his co-plaintiffs dropped their IRS lawsuit, as well as other claims of damages connected to the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago and the Russian collusion investigation, in exchange for the creation of the fund.
The fund would also give January 6 rioters pardoned by Trump a path to seek taxpayer payouts for their claims of government overreach. For Cornyn and his North Carolina Republican colleague Thom Tillis, that is where the problem starts.
The IRS Deal That Stopped the Committee Cold
Cornyn and Tillis said they could not support Blanche due to lingering concerns over the Department of Justice’s settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS. A major provision of the settlement gives Trump and others effective immunity from audits and enforcement actions related to tax returns filed before the settlement was reached.
That clause struck both senators as a significant overreach, one that would place a sitting president and his family above routine tax enforcement indefinitely.
Before the committee vote was scheduled, Blanche had already made a verbal commitment on the anti-weaponization fund. Testifying at a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing in June, he had declared, “We are not moving forward with the fund, period.” He declined to put that commitment in writing. That refusal became the flashpoint. Cornyn didn’t want a verbal assurance. He wanted ink on paper.
Cornyn specifically demanded that the DOJ formally rescind the anti-weaponization fund in writing, and restrict the scope of the immunity agreement. The Justice Department’s response, as Cornyn described it to reporters, was essentially stonewalling. He said “the ball is in Blanche’s court.” “I haven’t seen a single piece of writing that is responsive to what I’ve requested,” Cornyn told reporters.
Canceled Meetings and a Delayed Vote
Cornyn canceled a planned meeting with Blanche on Wednesday morning, for the second time, saying the DOJ had not met his demands to clarify provisions of the settlement that shield Trump and others from IRS audits for tax returns filed before the settlement.
Both senators traded draft language with the Justice Department on Wednesday, but it wasn’t enough to secure their support. With hours to go before a scheduled committee vote, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley called off the proceeding.
Blanche’s nomination stalled as lawmakers scrapped a planned committee vote after key Republicans demanded more assurances about the settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS. The committee had been expected to vote Thursday on whether to advance Blanche’s nomination to the full chamber, but resistance from two Republican senators who could block his nomination threw his confirmation into doubt. A single Republican “no” vote would mean the nomination fails to advance. With Democrats unified against Blanche, every single Republican senator on the committee needed to vote for him for the nomination to move forward.
A spokesperson for the committee said in a statement Wednesday night that the vote would be postponed “as work continues to secure sufficient support.”
Tillis and the Epstein Question
The IRS settlement is not the only grievance at the table. Senator Tillis wanted Blanche to meet with victims of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before committing his support for the nomination.
Blanche’s handling of the Epstein files was in the spotlight during the confirmation proceedings, with survivors on Capitol Hill to speak with senators and their staff. That meeting did take place, but it did not go well. Two dozen survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s alleged abuse urged Cornyn and Tillis to vote against confirming Blanche as attorney general, saying in a letter that his meeting with survivors was “nothing more than a box-checking exercise arranged only after his confirmation was put at risk.” “Survivors received an hour of deflection, interruption and gaslighting,” the letter said.
Tillis had also been vocal in criticizing Blanche’s handling of the Epstein scandal more broadly, making clear the issue wasn’t going to be satisfied by a single meeting. For Tillis, the combination of the IRS deal and the Epstein files amounted to two serious institutional concerns about the man being asked to run the nation’s top law enforcement agency.
Trump’s Response: Threaten the Holdouts Out the Door
After Blanche’s confirmation hearing was postponed late Wednesday night, Trump took to Truth Social Thursday morning to target the two key holdouts on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He threatened to withdraw Blanche’s nomination until both are out of office next year.
“I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office,” Trump wrote, adding that Blanche “is a STAR” and pointing out that both senators’ “political careers have been ended by my action.”
Cornyn pushed back directly, suggesting he and Tillis were not the only senators with concerns. “POTUS is mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis,” Cornyn posted on X Thursday. It was the clearest indication yet that the discontent in the committee runs wider than just two outgoing senators with nothing to lose.
Pressed on Trump’s suggestion that he and Tillis were opposing Blanche as political revenge, Cornyn responded: “It’s maybe a convenient excuse, but it’s certainly not true,” adding, “I think if this were just between me and Todd Blanche, we would have worked this out. But apparently he’s getting some pushback from higher ups at the White House. I don’t know who, but this doesn’t need to be this hard.”
The Math That Makes This Possible
Republicans control 12 of 22 seats on the committee, meaning a defection from Cornyn would leave it deadlocked in a tie. Democrats are fully opposed, which means a single Republican defection ends it, at least in committee.
The committee vote is not completely make-or-break for Blanche. Without a favorable report, a confirmation vote on the floor could still go ahead, but it would require more procedural steps. Blanche can continue to serve as acting attorney general. Acting department officials can serve in the role for 210 days, according to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, however, that clock resets if a nomination is withdrawn.
Trump’s strategy of confirming Blanche in the next congressional term could face difficulties if Democrats were to regain control of the Senate in the midterm elections. Tillis said Trump is “perfectly entitled” to hold Blanche’s nomination until after he leaves the Senate in January but warned that the move could blow up in Trump’s face if Senate Republicans lose seats or their majority. “He’s perfectly entitled to do that; he just needs to game out what the numbers look like in the next Congress versus a willing group of people who wants to confirm him now,” Tillis said.
Blanche met Thursday afternoon with Cornyn and Tillis following Trump’s threat to pull his nomination, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. It marked the first meeting the group had all week following Cornyn’s multiple cancellations. It’s not clear where the negotiations stand after the gathering.
Whether that meeting produces a written guarantee that satisfies Cornyn, or whether the nomination slides into September or beyond, remains unresolved.
What Cornyn Actually Wants
Cornyn himself rejected the revenge narrative, calling it “maybe a convenient excuse, but it’s certainly not true.” His core demand is narrow and, on its face, defensible: a formal written commitment that the DOJ will not revive the anti-weaponization fund, and a narrowing of the immunity provisions that currently shield Trump and his family from IRS enforcement. A major provision of the settlement gives Trump and others effective immunity from audits and enforcement actions related to tax returns filed before the settlement was reached.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune encouraged the Trump administration to find a “resolution” with Cornyn and Tillis so the nomination can move forward.
Cornyn’s deeper concern, as he told reporters, is that the discontent isn’t limited to him and Tillis. “There are more than just two people who have reservations about the weaponization fund and about the scope of the settlement agreement,” he said.
The Last Stand of an Outgoing Senator
Cornyn ran for a fifth term but lost the Republican nomination to Attorney General Ken Paxton in a May runoff. As Trump’s endorsement post made clear, Cornyn irked the president in 2023 when he cast doubts on Trump’s electability. Trump put it plainly: “He was not supportive of me when times were tough.” Paxton, by contrast, was one of two elected officials to attend Trump’s presidential campaign launch in 2022.
That sequence explains the position Cornyn now occupies. He bent toward Trump for years, carefully calibrating his public positions, avoiding direct confrontation. It wasn’t enough, and he knows that now. Ahead of the primary runoff, Cornyn highlighted a photo of himself standing next to Trump as his pinned post on X and boosted posts about voting “yes on every major Trump law.”
Now Cornyn sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee with no election to protect, no donor relationships to preserve, no political future in Trump’s orbit to jeopardize. He has one thing left: a vote.
Cornyn and Tillis have effectively stalled Blanche’s nomination and could prevent his confirmation until September, if he gets confirmed at all. The White House is threatening, cajoling, and reportedly pushing back through Trump’s personal lawyers. Asked why he believed the DOJ wasn’t meeting his demands, Cornyn said he assumed Blanche was getting “some pushback from the president’s lawyers.”
The question now isn’t whether he has the leverage. It’s whether the White House will give him a reason to put it down.
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AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.