SEE YA! — TOP REPUBLICAN SENATOR GETS BRUTAL NEWS AFTER BACKSTABBING TRUMP
Murkowski Broke With Trump on Todd Blanche—Then Another Republican Gave Him the Vote He Needed
Lisa Murkowski gave Donald Trump another reason to be frustrated with her Friday morning.
The Alaska Republican announced that she would vote against confirming Todd Blanche as attorney general, joining Maine Sen. Susan Collins and leaving one of Trump’s most consequential nominees with almost no room for error.
For several hours, Blanche’s confirmation looked genuinely uncertain.
Then Bill Cassidy made his decision.
The Louisiana Republican, who had been one of the last major holdouts, announced that he would support Blanche. Barring another unexpected Republican defection, that appears to give the acting attorney general the votes he needs.
The sequence captured both sides of Murkowski’s role in Trump-era Washington.
She remains willing to break with her party on high-profile nominations. But with Republicans holding a 53–47 Senate majority, a Murkowski defection is not necessarily enough to stop the administration unless other Republicans follow her.
This time, they did not.
Murkowski’s statement was notable because she did not portray Blanche as personally unqualified.
She said she had held several constructive meetings with him, called him “decent and capable” and credited him with making decisions as acting attorney general that benefited Alaska and the country.
Then she explained why she still could not vote for him.
Her objection was institutional.
“The politicization—even weaponization—of the Department did not start with this administration but has accelerated during it,” Murkowski wrote.
She cited the Justice Department’s handling of files connected to Jeffrey Epstein, a tax settlement that created unusually broad protections for Trump, members of his family and their businesses, and a proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that could have compensated people who claimed they had been unfairly targeted by the federal government.
That fund became one of the biggest obstacles to Blanche’s confirmation.
It emerged from a settlement resolving Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the disclosure of his tax records. The agreement envisioned nearly $1.8 billion that could be used to compensate people who said they had been victims of politically motivated prosecutions or investigations.
Critics immediately asked who might qualify.
During congressional testimony, Blanche initially would not rule out payments to people convicted of assaulting police officers during the January 6 Capitol attack.
That answer alarmed Democrats, but it also caused problems inside the Republican conference.
Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina threatened to withhold their support unless the Justice Department formally abandoned the fund and clarified a separate provision involving tax protections for Trump and his family.
Blanche eventually gave them written assurances.
The department said the fund would not move forward. The tax agreement was narrowed to make clear that it applied to past tax matters rather than insulating Trump from future scrutiny.
Cornyn and Tillis then backed the nomination, allowing it to clear the Senate Judiciary Committee 12–10 along party lines.
Murkowski was not persuaded.
She argued Friday that the fund disappeared only because Blanche needed Senate votes and lawmakers still had leverage over him.
Once the confirmation was complete, she wrote, that leverage would disappear.
“The country needs an Attorney General who will check the worst impulses of this administration,” she said.
That is a much sharper criticism than a routine disagreement over qualifications.
Blanche is not an ordinary Justice Department nominee.
Before joining the administration, he served as Trump’s personal defense lawyer in several of the criminal cases against him. He became deputy attorney general in 2025 and took over as acting attorney general in April after Trump dismissed Pam Bondi.
That history has followed him throughout the confirmation process.
Republicans supporting Blanche argue that he is an experienced prosecutor and defense attorney who already understands the department he is being asked to lead. The White House has described him as exceptionally qualified, and Republican Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has defended his record.
Critics see the relationship with Trump as the central problem.
An attorney general is a member of the president’s cabinet, but the Justice Department has historically tried to maintain some distance between presidential political interests and individual criminal cases.
The question hanging over Blanche has therefore been less about whether he understands the law than whether he is prepared to tell Trump no.
Murkowski says she is not convinced.
Collins reached a similar conclusion.
For a brief period Friday morning, their opposition made Cassidy one of the most important senators in Washington.
With Mitch McConnell still away from the Senate while recovering from a serious health episode, Republicans could not simply assume that every one of their 53 seats would be available.
If Collins and Murkowski voted no and Cassidy joined them, Blanche’s nomination could have stalled or failed depending on attendance.
Cassidy ended that uncertainty when he announced his support.
His endorsement was hardly enthusiastic.
He acknowledged concerns about Blanche and suggested that the nominee had made mistakes, but concluded that rejecting him might simply produce another Trump nominee who senators liked even less.
That calculation is familiar in presidential nomination fights.
Senators are rarely choosing between a nominee and an ideal alternative. They are choosing between the nominee in front of them and whoever the president is likely to send next.
For Blanche, Cassidy’s decision appears to have solved the immediate math problem.
For Murkowski, the vote creates a different political question.
Her critics in Alaska and nationally have spent years portraying her as a Republican who is more comfortable opposing Trump than representing conservative voters.
There is evidence that her standing at home has weakened.
A March 2026 Alaska Survey Research poll of 1,415 respondents found that 31.3 percent approved of Murkowski’s job performance while 51.7 percent disapproved.
Those are bad numbers for an incumbent senator.
But they require some context.
The same survey found President Trump at 38.1 percent approval and 53.1 percent disapproval in Alaska. Sen. Dan Sullivan, another Republican, stood at 36.3 percent approval and 47.1 percent disapproval.
In other words, Murkowski was unpopular in that survey, but Alaska voters were not particularly happy with several major political figures.
Her decline also cannot be explained simply by saying she moved too far from conservatives.
An Alaska Survey Research poll in July 2025 showed her favorability plunging after she voted for Trump’s large reconciliation package.
Much of that decline came from moderates and progressives who had previously helped form her unusual electoral coalition.
Murkowski has long occupied a strange position in Alaska politics.
She is a Republican who has sometimes relied on voters who do not normally support Republicans.
In 2010, she famously lost the Republican primary and still won reelection through a write-in campaign.
In 2022, she survived another serious conservative challenge from Kelly Tshibaka under Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, benefiting from support beyond the traditional Republican base.
That history makes predictions about her future unusually difficult.
She is not up for reelection until 2028 and has not committed to running again.
A 31 percent job approval rating would normally be an alarming starting point for any incumbent. But Murkowski has survived politically dangerous situations before, partly because Alaska voters have sometimes rewarded her independence from national party leaders.
The Blanche vote could cut both ways.
Trump loyalists are unlikely to forgive another high-profile rejection of one of the president’s nominees.
Moderates and independents may see the decision as evidence that Murkowski is willing to challenge her own party over the independence of federal law enforcement.
That has been her political brand for years.
The bigger question is whether enough Alaskans still want it.
The vote on Blanche will not answer that.
Neither will one statewide poll taken more than two years before Murkowski’s next possible election.
What Friday did show is that she has not changed her approach simply because her numbers are weak.
She had an obvious political reason to fall in line.
She did not.
But there is another lesson in how quickly the Blanche fight changed after her announcement.
For all the attention Murkowski receives when she breaks with Trump, her power depends on whether other Republicans are willing to stand beside her.
Collins did.
Cassidy did not.
And once Cassidy announced his support, the drama moved away from Alaska and back to the Senate floor.
Murkowski may have delivered one of the strongest Republican criticisms yet of Blanche and Trump’s Justice Department.
She may also have given her conservative opponents another line of attack for 2028.
But unless another Republican changes course, her vote is likely to register as a protest rather than a veto.
That may be the most revealing part of the episode.
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Murkowski is still willing to break with Trump.
The harder question is whether there are enough Republicans left willing to break with him at the same time.
