Sky York Journal
Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton Are on the Hill
Two figures who will play decisive roles in the future of the Trump retribution and election-meddling agenda will be on Capitol Hill for their Senate confirmation hearings today.
Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche will be before the Judiciary Committee for hearings Wednesday and Thursday. And Jay Clayton — Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence and the current U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York — will be before the Intelligence Committee.
Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, has since January 2025 played a central role in a DOJ that has become a tool of the president in a way not seen in recent American history. The Trump II Department has been defined by its attempts to target the president’s perceived enemies, which were reinvigorated around the time Blanche was seeking Trump’s nomination: that period saw the indictment of former FBI director James Comey over his sea shells picture, and the settlement creating a slush fund that could be used to pay the president’s allies. A federal judge, in an extraordinary decision, this week found that case to be a manipulation of the judicial process, with Trump’s own government on both ends of the suit.
New examples of DOJ politicization continued to emerge in the days before the hearing: the DOJ sent subpoenas to law firms about the deals the White House struck with them last year, sent subpoenas to the New York Times about its reporting on Trump’s Qatari-donated Air Force One, and threatened to prosecute state election officials.
Blanche’s confirmation is likely, but not assured. The committee has some Republican skeptics: Two senators who owe the end of their careers to Trump, Thom Tillis (R-NC) and John Cornyn (R-TX), have said they want answers from Blanche on the slush fund. Tillis has also said he will press Blanche to condemn January 6.
It’s unclear, of course, whether these senators would truly withhold their vote — and endure Trump and his supporters’ wrath — regardless of what Blanche says.
There’s less suspense around Clayton’s nomination for intelligence chief. After the Bill Pulte experience — he’s currently overseeing a review of thousands of documents to substantiate Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election — senators seem to feel eager to get someone passingly normal in the role. That relief may be ill-founded: Clayton has done his own part to display his loyalty to Trump in recent weeks, signing off on the subpoenas to the New York Times and expressing frustration with California’s slow but very normal ballot counting process. Given the way in which both Tulsi Gabbard and Pulte have weaponized the DNI role, turning it dramatically from the purpose Congress intended for it, senators should have some tough questions for Clayton — even if his ultimate confirmation is in little doubt.
This Month’s Iran War Is Totally Different From The Iran War We Did Earlier This Year, White House Insists
The much-discussed 60-day clock under the War Powers Resolution has become something of a punchline, one that the Trump administration re-upped this week.
- Under the law, if the executive branch begins hostilities, it starts a 60-day clock. By the 60-day point, the president has to either obtain authorization from Congress or end the operation.
- The Iran War has seen the White House try to skirt this law through semantics, first insisting there was no war and later insisting the ceasefire halted the war, despite the fact that troops remained in the region and that, every few days, the ceasefire collapsed into fighting.
- Now that the ceasefire has thoroughly and resoundingly ended, Trump this week sent a notification to Congress that the U.S. was again at war with Iran. To be clear: a new war. A new clock. Or so they seem to claim.
- Some news outlets went the White House framing on this, writing that the administration gets another 60-day clock for military action. That is, shall we say, a generous framing of the issue.
- Another perspective came from a go-to scholar on this stuff for TPM, Brian Finucune. “The point of these reports is to support the fiction that somehow these strikes are distinct hostilities governed by a different clock under the WPR,” he wrote.
- At stake here, of course, is whether Congress retains its constitutional authority to declare war — a division of power that has rarely been observed in practice.
Tabs
- MS Now confirms Trump’s big speech tomorrow will delve heavily into election conspiracy theories based on his administration’s new review of documents. It notes that the material is being gathered by Pulte and right-wing journalist John Solomon.
- Even other Republican senators are embracing conspiracy theories about their colleagues Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, write Kate Riga and Nicole LaFond for TPM.
Woman of the Hour
It’s Sen. Susan Collins (R-NE), trumpeting as her doing a reported administration decision to halt most ICE traffic stops after a 26-year-old father was killed by federal agents in her state — a tragedy inevitably interpreted through the lens of the midterms.
Are We At War?
Still at war.
