John Cornyn lost his Senate primary to Ken Paxton after Trump endorsed Paxton. He is not coming back to the next Congress. Thom Tillis decided not to seek reelection. He is not coming back either. And on Wednesday, both men used the final months of their tenure to accomplish something the entire Democratic caucus couldn’t: they denied Trump’s attorney general nominee a committee vote.Not over a policy dispute. Not over a constitutional principle. Over the wording of a document that Thom Tillis himself described as “just a drafting exercise.”
Read that again. Tillis admitted the sides agree on the substance. Tillis admitted everyone shares the same objective. And Tillis still helped pull the committee vote for Todd Blanche — the acting Attorney General who is already running the Justice Department, delivering real results on violent crime, border enforcement, and energy policy — because the precise language in a settlement document wasn’t to his satisfaction.
The settlement in question resolved Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS after contractor Charles Littlejohn stole the president’s confidential tax records and handed them to journalists. Littlejohn went to prison. The IRS, which failed to protect taxpayer confidentiality, signed a settlement that included audit protections for Trump and his affiliated entities for prior years. Cornyn wants clarifying language that future filings aren’t similarly protected. The Justice Department says that’s already the case. Cornyn says prove it in writing. The written language arrived Wednesday evening. The committee vote was still canceled.
Trump put it plainly and correctly: “Maybe John Cornyn is upset with me because I didn’t endorse him.” Cornyn denied it. He can say whatever he wants. The behavior speaks for itself. A senator who lost a primary to a Trump-endorsed opponent is now using his final months in office to block Trump’s Cabinet nominee over “drafting” disputes while calling Trump’s observation a “convenient excuse.”
There’s a word for what Cornyn and Tillis are doing. Several words, actually. Pettiness. Obstruction. Using the last gasp of institutional power to settle personal scores or extract concessions from an administration they’re no longer accountable to. Republican voters in Texas and North Carolina didn’t send them to Washington so they could spend their lame-duck months doing Chuck Schumer’s work for him.
Grassley should put the Blanche confirmation back on the calendar immediately. If Cornyn and Tillis want to vote no, they can do it in public and explain their reasoning to the Republican voters who will be watching. A “drafting exercise” is not a reason to leave the Justice Department without a confirmed attorney general heading into the final stretch before the midterms.
The entire Democratic caucus voted against Blanche at his confirmation hearing. They couldn’t stop him. Two departing Republicans decided to finish the job.
That’s what the last days of a lame-duck senator’s career look like when he sucuumbs to his Trump Derangement Syndrome and stops serving the voters who sent him there.