The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to advance Todd Blanche’s nomination to be Donald Trump’s next attorney general on Tuesday, despite protests from Democrats.

Blanche’s nomination, previously held up over concerns from Republican senators over the terms of a settlement the Department of Justice negotiated between the IRS and Donald Trump, is now expected to pass the full Senate by a narrow margin. Whether that will occur before the Senate leaves for the August recess at the end of the week remains up in the air.

Currently serving as acting attorney general, Blanche previously served as Donald Trump’s personal attorney and was a top deputy to the previous head of the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, whose career ended over disatisfaction of her handling of the Epstein files.

Two Republican senators, Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, threatened to vote against Blanche unless he agreed to sign an agreement affirming that the Justice Department would rescind an order establishing a $1.776 billion fund aimed at rewarding persons who were the victims of supposed “weaponization” of federal prosecution by the Biden Justice Department and other administrations. Cornyn had also objected to the scope of a settlement with the IRS that would prevent the president, his family and his companies from being audited.

Blanche appeared to win them both late Sunday evening after weeks of delays and threats to pull Blanche’s nomination from the president. On X, he posted a signed order, dated August 2, that read: “The Attorney General’s May 18, 2026 Order establishing the Anti-Weaponization Fund (‘Fund’) is rescinded and shall have nor force or effect.”

Cornyn and Tillis both confirmed that they’d vote for Blanche in the wake of the agreement. But Democrats and some political analysts are still highly skeptical that the agreement is ironclad and would prevent the administration from setting up the fund through another order — if not solely for the reason that Donald Trump repeatedly expressed his support for the fund and desire to see it set up through legislation over the weekend.

Republican support for the “weaponization” fund is thin in the Senate, and many senators are openly opposed to what they see as a corrupt enterprise aimed at rewarding allies and supporters of the president, including January 6 rioters. Many have derided it as a “slush fund”, and the caucus previously confronted Blanche at a contentious meeting over the fund.

But Trump remains highly supportive of it, and wrote on Truth Social over the weekend that his supporters deserved payouts for their supposed unfair treatment by the Biden White House.

“They are suffering still, many ruined, and I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them,” he said in one post. “I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!”

The president also threatened over the weekend to pull back Blanche’s nomination and make a formal push for the fund in Congress, putting Republicans in an awkward place attempting to respond to the president’s new open support for what their own members were calling a “slush fund” aimed at rewarding violent criminals. The two sides reached a deal soon afterwards.

Blanche also worked to shore up his support among evangelical Christian leaders during his confirmation process, according to new reporting from Politico. On a recording of a phone call last week with anti-abortion activists, Blanche vowed to use the DoJ to crack down on blue states using shield laws to allow mail-order abortion drugs to cross state lines. He also vowed to achieve “victory” over abortion rights activists.

“We don’t have complete victory yet, but we will have victory, and victory will be soon, and and and it will be permanent,” Blanche told the Christian groups on the call, according to Politco.

At a meeting of the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning, members debated the confirmation of Blanche one last time before taking votes. Tillis, in his remarks, seemed to admit that the DoJ — which has already been under Blanche’s leadership for months — was more weaponized now than at any point in history, including during the Biden administration. He urged Blanche to “end this stuff” as he cleared the way for the acting AG to take over the role on a permanent basis.

“Maybe it's a little bit more intense in this administration than the last one,” Tillis said of weaponizing the DoJ, which under Trump has been used to file cases against James Comey and Letitia James and other prominent political opponents of the president in cases that have all so far been unsuccessful in actually achieving results while succeeding in tying his enemies up in court.

Democratic senators eviscerated their Republican opponents for taking Trump and his allies at their word.

“We've got these two new pieces of paper. One signed only by Blanche, one not signed by anybody. Neither of which has any legal effect whatsoever. They are decorative,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. “Can you trust Todd Blanche? I do not."

“There is enough weasel room in these documents to drive a truck through.”

Cory Booker was even more animated.

“This is ridiculous! We got nothing! No guarantees whatsoever that this slush fund can’t go forward.” shouted Booker. “Dear God, folks.”

“We are in dangerous waters, folks. We are in dangerous waters,” the New Jersey Democrat continued. “We are turning the ideals of justice in this committee into a mockery by letting the least qualified person, a person proven to do Donald Trump's will over the law. He is about Trump and not truth. He is about corruption and not the Constitution. He is about being Donald Trump's lawyer and not the people's lawyer. This is so deeply wrong. We will rue the day that we let this man have this much power under such a corrupt president.”

Lawmakers in the Senate are likely hinging their hopes of the issue being put to rest on the notion that Trump and his allies will not be able to fund their plans to reward their allies without Congress passing money for it, something which is highly unlikely. But the Trump administration has shown a willingness to seek creative and oftentimes legally questionable funding avenues for pet projects before, and the president’s own support for the matter has only been made clearer over the course of the Blanche nomination fight.

His nomination could still fail due to Republican defections in a full Senate vote, but no Republicans have definitively said that they’ll oppose the vote on final passage.