GOP Sheep to the Midterm Slaughter
Todd Blanche’s confirmation will be bad for the country—and a gift to Senate Democrats.
How much of an eyesore will Donald Trump’s coveted Triumphal Arch be? A National Park Service assessment found that the planned 250-foot arch will intrude on the views from “dozens of historic sites around the capital,” per new reporting from the Washington Post. But look on the bright side: Think of all the flexibility you’ll have finding a good seat to watch them knock it down later. Happy Monday.
Start your week off right: Come irradiate your brain with MAGA Mondays! Will Sommer and Andrew Egger are live on Substack and YouTube at 10 a.m. EDT.
Of Lemons and Lemonade
by William Kristol
I’ve never had much interest in Dale Carnegie, the relentlessly upbeat and optimistic American self-help guru. I’ve ignored advice during my time in Washington that I could benefit from studying his 1936 bestseller, How to Win Friends and Influence People. I’ve resisted the counsel of some friends, concerned for my well-being in the age of Trump, to take a look at his 1948 treatise, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.
I’m too old to change my ways. No Dale Carnegie for me.
But perhaps some Democratic politicians could benefit from a dose of Dale? They are, after all, in the business of trying to win friends and influence people.
They might take a glance at the famous passage from How to Stop Worrying on lemons and lemonade. Carnegie warns against the attitude of the person who, finding life has handed him a lemon, gives up and says: “I’m beaten. It is fate. I haven’t got a chance.” Then, Carnegie writes, “He proceeds to rail against the world and indulge in an orgy of self pity.”
By contrast, Carnegie explains—using a phrase he helped popularize—when a wise man is handed a lemon, he asks, “How can I turn this lemon into a lemonade?”
Late last night, the American people were handed a lemon: A capitulation by Republican senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina that makes confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general likely. Blanche provided them a fig leaf, a written order formally rescinding the proposed $1.8 billion fund for alleged victims of political prosecutions and a statement allegedly limiting the provision of the agreement that shields Trump, his sons, and their businesses from tax claims.
These assurances will presumably be enough for Blanche to make it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday on a straight party-line vote. He’s then likely—though not certain—to get the 50 votes he’ll need to be confirmed by the whole Senate, probably at the end of the week.
So this lemon will be added to a whole bushel of other lemons in Trump’s cabinet. Todd Blanche will join Jay Clayton, Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, and Markwayne Mullin as confirmed leaders of the key national security agencies of Trump’s executive branch. Having loyal and determined apparatchiks like them in positions of real power for the next two and a half years is not a good thing.
On the other hand: There is lemonade to be made here. Trump’s polls have been sinking. Republicans are almost certain to lose the House this fall, and the Senate majority is up for grabs. Democratic control of both houses would help check Trump’s authoritarian schemes. And the fact that the entire Senate Republican conference will have to cast a high-visibility vote to confirm Todd Blanche can help in turning the Senate Democratic.
Assuming Mitch McConnell remains absent, Republicans can only afford two defections in the Senate. They may lose Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. So incumbent GOP senators in tossup or somewhat contested races, like Jon Husted in Ohio, Dan Sullivan in Alaska, Ashley Moody in Florida, Roger Marshall in Kansas, and Pete Ricketts in Nebraska will have to vote to confirm Blanche. And Republican candidates in open seats like Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, Iowa, and Montana will presumably have to express support for Blanche.
It’s possible there will be a revolt among a few GOP senators against this man who sought to shovel taxpayer money to the January 6th assailants, who has initiated and presided over blatantly political prosecutions, and who was at the very center of the Jeffrey Epstein coverup. On this last front, Epstein survivor Dani Bensky put it bluntly last week: “You can’t say that you want to make sure that sex offenders and sex traffickers are behind bars and then vote for him. Every vote for Blanche is really a vote against survivors.”
If there is a revolt and Blanche loses, it will be an embarrassment for Trump. But if Blanche is confirmed, it could do more damage to Republicans. It will be visible proof, if proof were still needed, that if Republicans are left in control of the Senate, there will be no check on Trump’s coverups and corruption and lawlessness.
So Democrats need to make this next week as visible and painful for the GOP as possible. They should drag out matters on the Senate floor to keep the issue of Blanche front and center as long as possible, and then hammer his confirmation during the recess as a key example of the truth that a Republican Senate will never stand up to Trump.
I see only one obstacle to this exercise in lemonade-making. Needless to say, it’s been created by the Democrats themselves. Yesterday, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and Appropriations Committee vice chair Patty Murray announced their support for a continuing resolution to fund the government through December 11. They envision cooperating with Republicans to bring it to the floor and pass it this week.
Leave aside that, in my judgment, it’s a bad agreement on substance—with no restrictions on Trump’s war, on lawlessness at the Justice Department, or on the behavior of ICE agents.
But it’s also politically foolish. Funding for the government doesn’t run out for two more months. There’s plenty of time to deal with this question in September. Why allow Republican senators to go home for recess taking credit for a bipartisan budget deal? Why give them what they will tout as an example of successful bipartisan governance under Republican leadership?
This shouldn’t be complicated: First, Democratic senators should kill the deal on the continuing resolution. Then they need to use the Blanche confirmation to highlight the truth that a Republican Senate will simply be a rubber stamp for Trump over the next two years. Todd Blanche may well get confirmed. But if they don’t get in their own way, Democrats can turn that sour lemon into sweet, tart lemonade.
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JD’s Roman Holiday
by Joshua Tait
Those of us who spend a lot of time observing right-wingers have been predicting an outbreak of internecine conflict. And lo, behold an outbreak of intra-Nicene conflict.
Certain sectors of the right are this close to dusting off images of mitre-headed bishop crocodiles ambling ashore to turn America into a Catholic theocracy. This isn’t a reaction to the first American pope; it’s a fight about the ideological makeup of right-wing elites and, as is often the case, Vice President JD Vance’s place among them. (It’s not even the only proxy fight about Vance among right-wing intellectuals right now.)
Vance has a long-running game of footsie with post-liberalism and the theocratic Catholicism of “integralist” intellectuals like Adrian Vermeule, who may not have a large electoral coalition but have openly strategized about installing conservative Catholic elites in the government and administrative state. The aim is something like a government of, by, and for Catholic converts, and Vance is their blue-eyed boy.
As with so many right-wing dustups, this one involves an anonymous X account, “CappyAmerica,” which declared itself “Never Vance. Never the Post-liberal Papal Integralist Socialist thin-skinned jerk Vance.” (The account has about 1,300 followers.) The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles detected a “neo-Know-Nothing contempt for Catholics” in the anti-Vance tweet, comparing it to coded antisemitism. (This is news to me, a parishioner at my local church, as it would be to Cardinal Christophe Pierre, former apostolic nuncio to the United States, who issued a correction to key post-liberals by name.) Knowles in turn was mocked by non-integralist Catholic conservatives, who are able to easily distinguish their politics from aspiring theocrats. Thomas D. Howes, coauthor of Why Post-Liberalism Failed, commented: “Lol, no.” The Blaze’s Auron MacIntyre, a self-described “great respecter of the [anti-Catholic] Know-Nothing tradition” also rejected the comparison to antisemitism. Anti-Catholic authoritarians generally seem to see the post-liberals and integralists as rivals in their preferred authoritarian future.
Erick Erickson, who describes himself as a “Christian broadcaster” and “Conservative truth-teller,” didn’t really even seem to know what was going on, bless him.
But Knowles did have some allies. National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty and the activist Christopher Rufo, in a parallel social media spat, both weighed in to defend a sanitized version of the post-liberal position, which turned into a days-long debate over the meaning of “the Common Good.” Post-liberals and their defenders maintain that fostering the Common Good ought to be the authentic end of politics; critics recognize it’s an ideological Trojan horse for post-liberals’ coercive project.
These are mere skirmishes in a larger war dividing the religious right: the role of Holy Mother Church. While Catholicism may be struggling in the provinces, conversion and Mass attendance are political and social markers among young conservatives in Washington. In a report last week on the Heritage Foundation, New York Times contributing writer Elisabeth Zerofsky highlighted complaints about Heritage head honcho Kevin Roberts’s efforts to enforce strict Catholic social teachings at the think tank and, by extension, the conservative movement. Is this the direction of American conservatism? And, by God, is it electorally viable?
Perhaps it doesn’t matter so long as Catholics make up the vanguard of right-wing politics. As Nate Weisberg points out in New York magazine, Catholics constitute “more than a third of the members of Trump’s second-term Cabinet, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, CIA director John Ratcliffe, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon.” Not to mention non-cabinet figures, including “press secretary Karoline Leavitt and border czar Tom Homan.” That’s not to say these figures buy into—or are even aware of—post-liberal integralist dreams, though some in Vance’s and Rubio’s orbit do, and there are at least some young White House staffers who consciously think of themselves in this way.
Part of the zest here, as the original tweeter makes clear, is about positioning for 2028. The Heritage Foundation, Zerofsky reports, “is investing heavily in its relationship” with Vance, the foremost political figurehead of hard-right weirdness who has made his adult conversion to Catholicism a key part of his story. There is a long tradition of conservatives crossing the Tiber, but the way Vance has engaged with authoritarianish social conservatives, both here and abroad, suggests a genuine affinity for post-liberal politics.
In the immediate fight, it’s pretty clear that conservatives who want Rubio (or someone else entirely) to lead the party post-Trump have fallen one way, while those lining up behind Vance have fallen the other.
As for us, we’re Never Vance too—though for strictly non-sectarian reasons.
AROUND THE BULWARK
How Iran Blew Up Trump’s Gulf AI Deals… ALASDAIR PHILLIPS-ROBINS and SAM WINTER-LEVY on the administration’s bizarre decisions involving chips and the UAE.
A Blistering Critique of the Roberts Court, From Hawaii’s Supreme Court… In an extraordinary opinion, the state justices accuse the SCOTUS majority of undermining democracy, writes KIM WEHLE.
Trump’s Polls Are Collapsing. Is a Blue Tsunami Coming? RON BROWNSTEIN joins BILL KRISTOL for The Bulwark on Sunday.
Happy Declaration-Signing Day… Nobody signed America’s birth certificate on July 4, 1776, explains DAVID HEAD: John Hancock didn’t put down his John Hancock until August 2.
Quick Hits
TRUTH API GOES LIVE: One act of outrageous corruption ends; another arrives. Donald Trump may have formally renounced his plans for the “anti-weaponization fund” for taxpayer-funded payouts to J6ers and other allies, but he’s thought up another way to rob the public instead. This time, however, the money is flowing straight into his own pocket.
Over the weekend, Trump Media, the president’s company that runs Truth Social, launched its new Truth API feature, which promises faster access to Trump’s social media posts to companies that fork over a reported $100,000 a month. The company is explicitly billing this as a way for financial firms to get an edge in trading over their competitors by being the first to see the president’s “most market-moving Truths.”
From top to bottom, the whole concept is so corrupt you almost struggle to get your head around it. Donald Trump, in his official role as president, chooses to communicate about his official acts not through official channels but on a private platform he himself owns. Now, he is using that platform to sell premium access to knowledge about the workings of the U.S. government. This is pure rent-seeking; there’s no value-creating service here, just Trump finding a way to charge for something—knowledge of the working of the government—that should already belong freely to Americans by right.
And it’s true: Trump’s posts do send markets careening around, and traders do run the risk of being left in the dust if they’re slower than their competitors to react to Trump’s posts. As a result, many companies will doubtless be willing to pony up. They may even be eager to, seeing this as one more protection-racket payment—like donating to Trump’s super PACs or ballroom fund—to help them stay personally on the president’s good side.
This money isn’t coming out of the U.S. Treasury. But it’s not coming out of the pockets of hedge funders either. Trump is just skimming off the top of the entire financial system—which is to say, the U.S. economy at large. “Truth API” is public robbery no less than if Trump had created a new tax for Americans to pay him personally.
DOJ ADMITS OBVIOUS ON REFLECTING POOL: Hey, remember when Donald Trump resurfaced the Reflecting Pool, the new surface started falling apart instantly, and the government started thuggishly arresting people it pretended had “vandalized” the pool to try to save itself from embarrassment? They were always obviously lying, but now, per the Hill, their story is falling apart faster than a new American Flag Blue pool liner:
The Department of Justice (DOJ) moved Friday to drop its criminal prosecution of a former Olympian charged with destroying the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, saying the damage was instead the result of a “rushed and botched installation.”
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office blamed the contractor for overspraying and delamination.
In a new court filing, the office indicated it no longer stands behind its case against David Hearn, a three-time Olympic canoeist who pleaded not guilty to felony destruction of property earlier this month.
Remarkably, the Justice Department’s filing blames the Interior Department for initially covering up the fact that the pool had already begun to peel. “Given all of this newly discovered information,” prosecutors wrote, “it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Hilariously and insanely, the parts of the government that aren’t currently speaking on penalty of perjury in court are still trying to keep up the vandalism story. After the DOJ threw Interior under the bus, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum took to X to insist they were mistaken: “The evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool. . . . We won’t back down to deranged people who want to destroy, deface, or degrade our monuments.” You want to testify to that effect, Doug?
OHIOANS PUSH BACK ON ICE: As the Trump administration begins to ramp up immigration enforcement in Ohio, hundreds of Ohioans turned out this weekend to protest ICE activities in the Buckeye state. In Akron, roughly 200 protesters posted up Sunday outside of Akron-Canton Airport to protest ICE flights from the airport.
In Cincinnati, outside of the Blue Ash ICE facility, nearly 550 people, including a number of clergy, came out to protest. Carl Ruby, who has been frequently cited in these pages, was there, accompanying a member of his congregation who was called in by ICE for an appointment. Ruby prayed outside the entrance where his congregant entered. “I want the ICE agents to look out and see me praying,” Ruby told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
An attendee / reader tells The Bulwark that the protest was well organized, with protesters careful not to give law enforcement a pretext to crack down: “We could only stand on the grass. We couldn’t even touch the cement because we didn’t want the police to shut us down.” They weren’t shut down, and they hope to be there next weekend too.
Ruby got his wish. The attendee reports: “All these ICE people kept coming to the door and looking out and peering out the windows.”
—Jim Swift
Cheap Shots
It is hard to believe the defeatist attitude of Chuck Schumer and Patty Murphy. I can't help but see this as a risk-averse, feckless abdication of their duty. Is it too much to ask of these leaders to get to work, as the rest of us do, for an October 1 deadline for budgets?
If they can't stand the heat, they should get out of the kitchen. As it is now, the cooking of the books by the corrupt crony capitalists of the executive branch will continue to burn up what is left of the power of the co-equal branches of government to sustain the republic.
When life gives you lemons, squirt them in your enemies eyes.