Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche’s confirmation vote got pulled at the last minute because he doesn’t even have enough votes to make it out of the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear is calling on a CNN commentator who said he spoke to Mitch McConnell on the phone to put the senator on speakerphone to prove he’s okay. In Texas, Republican mega-donors are backing away from scandal-plagued Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign, even with Donald Trump’s endorsement. And in Houston, a key witness to a deadly ICE shooting has been released from federal custody after being locked up for weeks, and is still fighting to get his account of what really happened out in the open.
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Todd Blanche’s Confirmation Vote Called Off at the Last Minute
The Senate Judiciary Committee was supposed to vote today on whether to send Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general to the Senate floor. But it was just yanked by committee chairman Chuck Grassley, who said more work needs to be done “to secure sufficient support in committee.” Translation: Blanche doesn’t have the votes.
Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina are behind the holdup, with both demanding Blanche give them a written commitment that the Justice Department will kill a $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund for Trump’s political allies. They also want Trump’s IRS settlement revised to limit audit protections for Trump’s family.
Cornyn said his office sent the DOJ a document laying out exactly what they need in order to get his vote, saying: “We’re trying to make it easy for them. They won’t take the help.”
Blanche, by the way, is Trump’s former criminal defense attorney. During his confirmation hearing, when pressed on where his loyalties lie, he said, “I’m his lawyer,” before quickly pivoting to say, “I was his lawyer.” A vast number of groups like the New York City Bar Association and the ACLU have sounded the alarms over Blanche’s mishandling of the release of the Epstein files and his dismissive attitude toward Epstein’s victims. They’ve also called attention to Blanche’s willingness to use the full weight of the DOJ to go after Trump’s political opponents.
Omar Noureldin of Common Cause said Blanche had months to meet the demands from senators and the public, and failed, “proving he only serves President Trump.” Noureldin added that Blanche “should show humility and withdraw” his nomination immediately.
The fact that it’s Cornyn and Tillis holding this up more than Democrats is significant. Two Senate Republicans don’t think taxpayer money should be handed over to January 6 rioters and for the Trump family to get lifelong protection from the IRS. And Blanche’s DOJ won’t even commit to walking it back.
Fifty years ago, in the wreckage of Watergate, Attorney General Edward Levi wrote the first rules walling the Justice Department off from the White House, because he understood that a president’s personal lawyer and the people’s lawyer can’t be the same man. Blanche won’t put that principle on paper, and this week two Republicans finally made him admit it in public.
KY Governor Calls on CNN MAGA Pundit to Put McConnell on Speakerphone
Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, just issued a direct challenge to CNN contributor Scott Jennings, who has previously claimed to have spoken to Senator Mitch McConnell on the phone. He wants the longtime McConnell advisor to call the missing Kentucky senator and put him on speakerphone, live on the air, so Americans have confirmation that he’s capable of serving.
McConnell has now been absent from the Senate for more than 40 days after a medical emergency. On July 7, Jennings claimed he’d had a phone conversation with McConnell after the 84 year-old senator was hospitalized. Beshear is now upping the ante.
Beshear told CNN host Kaitlan Collins that if McConnell “supposedly had a 17-minute conversation with Scott Jennings, he can call in and have a three-minute conversation with you. He added that it’s incumbent on McConnell “to have enough respect for the people of Kentucky and the United States of America to do the bare minimum and be honest and transparent.”
Beshear previously issued an ultimatum to McConnell to either give a verbal update, preferably on video, on his whereabouts and his health, or resign from the Senate. The two-term Democratic governor observed that Jennings — McConnell’s one-time political director — works for CNN and could just call his old boss and put him on speakerphone during a live broadcast to “put all the speculation to rest.”
McConnell’s office was completely silent for nearly a month before issuing a a July 12 statement saying the senator was briefly rendered unconscious after a fall at his home, and later developed a mild case of pneumonia. This week, another update from the Office of the Attending Physician said he’s doing physical therapy after that fall, but added that McConnell is “not yet medically cleared to leave the rehab facility and return to the office.”
Beshear pointed out this isn’t the first time the octogenarian senator vanished from public view for an extended stretch, and said he’s missing important Senate business. As he put it, anyone gone from their job for six weeks would owe their boss an explanation if they still expected to have a job to come back to.
McConnell was hospitalized for a week in February with flu-like symptoms, and he’s fallen several times in recent years. Beshear is right: the public deserves a straight answer directly from the senator, not secondhand from a TV pundit.
Americans ratified the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913 for exactly this reason, so that senators would answer to the voters directly instead of to a small circle of insiders working things out among themselves behind a closed door. When a sitting senator’s condition is known only to his staff, his doctors, and a friendly pundit on cable television, we’ve quietly handed that circle its power back.
Republican Megadonors Bailing on Ken Paxton’s Campaign
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is the Republican nominee in this fall’s U.S. Senate race, is having trouble getting his own party’s biggest donors to open their wallets to help his campaign. The New York Times reports that major GOP donors who spent heavily during the contentious primary between him and John Cornyn are now sitting on their hands for the general election.
Paxton’s baggage has been heavily documented. He’s dealing with the fallout from an extramarital affair, a decade-long securities fraud prosecution that was finally dismissed last year under a pretrial agreement requiring community service and restitution and he’s now even been accused of voter fraud. His narrow victory against Cornyn in the May primary runoff hasn’t done much to change donor opinion. He’s also been caught on video with a woman he’s not married to, which hasn’t helped.
Now, Paxton is polling behind his Democratic opponent, state representative James Talarico, who could become the first Democrat to represent the Lone Star State in the U.S. Senate since 1993.
Two of the biggest Republican outside spending groups, the Senate Leadership Fund and MAGA Inc., have yet to put any real money behind Paxton, even with Trump’s endorsement. The Times reported that each group is waiting for the other to donate first. The Senate Leadership Fund is tied to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who notably endorsed his colleague Cornyn in the primary. MAGA Inc. is run by Trump advisers.
Oil executive Dan Eberhart, who is scrambling to raise money for Paxton, told the Times: “Somebody is going to have to spend big money. We’ll see who blinks.”
National Republican groups are currently prioritizing their spending on tight Senate races like Ohio and Kansas, rather than Texas. As of early July, Talarico has nine times as much cash on hand as Paxton in his main account. He’s already spent $12 million on campaign ads with the support of major Democratic donors in Chicago and Martha’s Vineyard.
Will Trump and the Republican Party’s donor network step in to rescue Paxton’s campaign? Right now, the answer looks like no.
When the Supreme Court decided Citizens United in 2010, we were promised that unlimited outside money would simply mean more speech in the marketplace of ideas. Here’s what it turned into instead, two billionaire-funded super PACs staring each other down over a nominee the voters already chose, negotiating between themselves whether that choice is worth paying for at all.
Key Witness to ICE Killing in Houston Released from Federal Custody
One of three witnesses to a fatal shooting by an ICE agent in Houston, Texas earlier this month has now been released from federal custody after several weeks. Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego was riding in Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s work van on July 7 when Salgado Araujo was shot and killed by federal agents in unmarked vehicles. Rojas Pliego has called the government’s account of what happened a “lie” in court filings.
A federal judge ordered Rojas Pliego’s release this week after previously blocking the government from deporting him. Rojas Pliego has lived in the U.S. for decades without legal status. His stepdaughter, Griselda Silva, said the family couldn’t afford the costly attorney’s fees to help him in the long ordeal of obtaining legal status.
Around the time Rojas Pliego walked out of federal detention, prosecutors were asking a court to stay his release, arguing the judge’s ruling conflicted with other immigration cases.
Wearing an ankle monitor, Rojas Pliego visited a curbside memorial for Salgado Araujo and described being followed by ICE agents that day. He told the Associated Press in Spanish: “We were on our way to work when they took Lorenzo Salgado’s life.” He remarked that, rather than rendering first aid, agents “handcuffed him and pushed him to the ground. That’s not right. I want justice for Lorenzo Salgado, my boss.”
The Department of Homeland Security claimed after the shooting that Salgado Araujo had “weaponized his vehicle” trying to run over an officer, and that the agent fired in self-defense. That’s almost identical to their justification for the killing of U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis in January. But Rojas Pliego and another passenger say in sworn statements that the agents were on either side of the van, not in front or behind it.
Salgado Araujo was 52, a father of three, and had lived in the U.S. for 35 years with no criminal record. His family said he was close to obtaining legal status. His death is one of at least ten at the hands of federal agents since Trump’s second term began, and it’s led to massive protests in Houston along with calls for an independent investigation.
At Salgado Araujo’s memorial, Rojas Pliego played a song on his phone, telling reporters he missed his boss. “I worked alongside him through thick and thin. My whole life,” he said. “Rest in peace. I couldn’t be present at your funeral, but you have me here now.”
Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871 because Reconstruction had taught it something painful, that the most dangerous lawbreaker in America is often the one carrying a badge and a government paycheck. A hundred and fifty-five years later, the only people alive who can contradict this administration’s version of events were sitting in federal detention, and two of them still are.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for watching, and thanks for supporting independent media.
Here are a few stories you may have missed:
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Senate Republicans Reject Trump’s $73 Billion Budget Request. Trump’s push to have a $73 billion funding package passed before the August recess has officially been rejected by the Republican-controlled Senate. The bill includes funds to continue Trump’s war with Iran, which prompted opposition from outgoing Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who has called for the Pentagon to be more transparent with Congress about the war and the administration’s exit strategy. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is in the middle of a tight reelection race, instead proposed the administration pursue a bipartisan continuing resolution — which would need 60 votes for passage — to fund the government rather than the divisive budget reconciliation process, which only requires 50 votes plus a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance.
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Kash Patel Loses Lawsuit Against Man Who Called Him ‘Googly-Eyed.’ FBI Director Kash Patel’s $10 million defamation lawsuit against a man who referred to him as a “googly-eyed Kremlin b—” and an “incompetent chud” was tossed out by a federal judge this week. U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon — a Barack Obama appointee — voided the previously issued $250,000 default judgment against activist Jim Stewartson, saying that there was no jurisdiction to award the judgment due to the fact that Stewartson is a California resident.
