Senate Winds Down Toward Recess as Blanche Attorney General Vote Collapses; House Already Home
Senate Republicans were forced to shelve Todd Blanche's attorney general nomination in the Judiciary Committee after two GOP senators withheld support, while the chamber cleared little else before a quiet end to the week. The House has been in its August recess since July 24.
The last two days on Capitol Hill were dominated by the Senate, as the House of Representatives is already gone. The House is out until August 31st, ostensibly for a "district work period" and campaigning, while the Senate remained in town. The Senate itself had a slow finish to the week; official records show no floor activity for July 31, and the chamber's next scheduled vote is Monday, Aug. 3, at 5:30 p.m.
The biggest development was a setback for the White House. Todd Blanche's nomination to become attorney general stalled as lawmakers scrapped a planned committee vote after key Republicans demanded more assurances about the settlement of President Donald Trump's lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. According to the AP and CNN, the holdouts were Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, both on the Judiciary Committee. Blanche, as acting attorney general, oversaw that settlement, which created a now-canceled $1.8 billion fund that could have compensated allies of Trump, and which barred the IRS from audits or enforcement actions related to tax returns filed by the president, his family or business entities before the settlement was reached in May. A committee spokesperson said the vote would be postponed "as work continues to secure sufficient support." Roll Call reported the markup was pushed to an unspecified later date, leaving the nomination in doubt heading into recess.
Earlier in the week, the Senate went on record on a high-profile issue. The Senate unanimously passed a resolution declaring that Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker who aided Jeffrey Epstein's abuse of underage girls, should never receive a presidential pardon. The measure, S.Res. 608, was brought by Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev. Democrats wanted to put every Republican senator on record as opposed to a potential pardon; by failing to object to the resolution, Republicans agreed that the president "should not grant a pardon, commutation, or any other form of executive clemency to Ghislaine Maxwell." As Axios and The Hill noted, such resolutions are symbolic and carry no legal force. Blanche has said he will not recommend a pardon for Maxwell, but Trump has not ruled it out, and Maxwell's lawyer has said she will continue seeking clemency.
The Senate also processed nominations and legislation. Members invoked cloture on S.Res. 817, authorizing en bloc consideration of a batch of executive nominees, on a 50-45 yea-nay vote, Record Vote Number 214. On foreign policy, the chamber continued work on a major sanctions package. The Senate, in a rare bipartisan vote, advanced a bill that would impose harsher sanctions on Russia and buyers of Russian oil and gas and extend existing sanctions on Iran; the bill is named for its co-author, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. The Senate voted 86-12 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 5334, the legislative vehicle for the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026. That was a procedural cloture vote, not final passage; the bill still needs a full Senate vote and then must clear the House before reaching the president's desk.
The backdrop for all of this is the calendar. Congress faces its yearly deadline of September 30 to pass all 12 appropriations bills before a government shutdown begins, and there have been no Senate markups of any of the bills this cycle. With both chambers scheduled to be largely absent through August and October ahead of the midterms, the window for legislative work is narrow.
Highlights: - Senate Judiciary Committee postponed its vote to advance acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, with GOP Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis balking over a $1.8 billion Justice Department settlement fund. - The Senate unanimously passed S.Res. 608 (Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev.), a nonbinding measure opposing any presidential pardon or clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell. - The Senate invoked cloture on a package of nominations by a 50-45 party-line vote (Record Vote 214) and continued advancing the Graham Russia sanctions bill, H.R. 5334.