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Well, after months of dithering, the Senate finally seemed to get serious about preparing for the end of Fiscal Year 2026 this week. Tuesday saw some advancement of Monday’s progress – both on the continuing resolution and the Todd Blanche affair – but the deal is far from done. Lawmakers in the Judiciary Committee advanced Blanche to the full floor by a strictly party-line 12-10 vote earlier in the day. Then, after hours of debate, the Senate concurred by voice vote just after midnight that they were finally in agreement that they should hammer out the details of the continuing resolution to keep the government funded through December 11. So, two votes down, two more (at least) to go.
Todd Blanche – Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire
Thanks to the deal Blanche worked out Sunday with Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), he got his recommendation to the floor this week. Tuesday afternoon, the Judiciary Committee voted 12-10 to advance the nomination.
His chances of a full-fledged success, however, actually look a little worse. Just as they were in the smaller committee vote, all Democrats are united against Blanche’s confirmation. As well, Susan Collins (R-ME) said on Tuesday, after the deal that got him cleared out of committee, that she was going to vote against his confirmation. With Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) still out for medical reasons, that leaves Blanche all out of Republican votes to spare. Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) are the only two who have yet to declare one way or the other, and it’s entirely possible he could lose them both. Cassidy, especially, seems a risk, as he’s a lame-duck lawmaker who has demonstrated a willingness to vote against the GOP majority.
If both of them vote yes when the time comes, Blanche will squeak by 50-49. If either votes no, it’s a 49-50 defeat for the would-be attorney general. If a Democrat breaks ranks to make a 50-50 tie, Vice President JD Vance can cast the deciding vote – but the most likely Democrat to vote with Republicans, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, has explicitly said he’s a no on Blanche.
The Continuing Crawl Toward Resolution
On Monday, a massively bipartisan Senate voted 89-4 to invoke cloture on the idea of hollowing out another House resolution to rebuild into a continuing resolution. By Senate rules, however, that meant 30 hours of debate before the next vote could come – and that’s not even the vote on the final CR. Despite the almost unanimous support for the idea, lawmakers refused to yield back their time and allow an earlier vote, so, at about 12:30 am Wednesday morning, they agreed by voice vote that, yes, they should hollow out HR 6500 and build a federal spending extension into it.
Note: That isn’t a vote on the CR itself, just a vote that they should actually make one and that it should do a few certain things. Now they actually have to craft the full text of it, hold yet another cloture vote (requiring a majority of 60, of course), then have their debates and, quite likely, dozens of amendment attempts, before they can finally hold a final vote on the actual language itself.
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Will they manage to make something at least 60 senators can support? That remains to be seen. Then, of course, the House has to reconcile it before the end of September, and they’ll only have about two weeks to do so.
From Senate Slog to Supernova?
It’s slow going in the Senate, that’s for sure. But with these procedural hurdles now cleared, a final vote on both the Blanche AG confirmation and the continuing resolution seems likely to come to a head on Thursday or Friday. Think of it like a senatorial supernova – a bunch of tiny movements in the general direction each day culminating in a big bang to ring in the weekend and August recess.
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