Blanche DOJ nomination stalled as Senate Republicans tie votes to scrapping nearly $1.8 billion ‘weaponization’ fund, outlet reports

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination to run the Justice Department has been held up in the Senate, with a handful of Republican senators saying they will not vote for him unless a nearly $1.8 billion “weaponization” fund is permanently scrapped, the New York Post reported on July 30, 2026.

The report tied the nomination’s delay to the status of a funding structure created after President Donald Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service, describing the resulting pool of money as a so-called “weaponization” fund. According to the outlet, the holdouts are making the fund’s cancellation a condition for supporting Blanche’s confirmation.

The Justice Department is the lead federal law enforcement agency, and the nomination process determines who will have day-to-day control of prosecutorial and enforcement priorities while the Senate weighs advice-and-consent requirements. Blanche, described by the outlet as the acting attorney general, would become the Senate-confirmed attorney general if confirmed.

The outlet characterized the impasse as a balance-of-power dispute in which a small number of senators are seeking assurance that the fund will not persist in some form. Under that framing, the practical effect is that the confirmation timeline for Blanche is being driven by negotiations over a budgetary and legal issue, rather than the nomination alone.

The New York Post did not, in the information provided here, cite a Senate roll call vote count or a specific procedural step such as a committee action, cloture filing, or confirmation date. Apex has not found a Department of Justice or Senate primary document in the supplied materials confirming the details of the nomination’s status or the fund’s legal disposition, so those elements should be treated as reported until official records are reviewed.

The next steps, based on how such nominations typically proceed, would be for the Senate to move Blanche’s nomination forward through whichever remaining committee and floor processes apply, and for the fund question to be resolved through the appropriate legal, budgetary, or statutory channels. Absent confirmation from an official record in the supplied materials, the exact mechanism for “permanent scrapping” and the date of any resolution remain unclear.