Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday for a confirmation hearing to consider his official nomination to a post he has held since April.
President Donald Trump fired Blanche’s predecessor, Pam Bondi, in April and appointed Blanche in the interim. Simultaneously, Blanche has maintained his position as deputy attorney general since March 2025. As a top official in the primary law enforcement and legal arm of the executive branch, Blanche has overseen the Department of Justice (DOJ) in its criminal and civil investigations and has supervised the day-to-day operations of the department’s 93 U.S. attorneys and key agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
In the second Trump administration, this work includes scaling back efforts to root racial and gender discrimination out of public institutions in favor of promoting so-called Christian values. DOJ has gone after hospitals that support gender-affirming care, restricted eligibility for funding to address violence against women and supported criminal prosecutions for unauthorized immigration, which has historically been a civil offense.
Blanche is the former personal attorney to the president, and has come under fire from critics since he was tapped as the second-most powerful DOJ official. Prior to the president’s return to office, Blanche represented Trump in two federal criminal cases concerning the retention of classified government records and obstruction of the 2020 presidential election. He also represented Trump in a New York criminal case involving 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump was convicted of all 34 counts.
These same critics argue that Blanche’s personal ties to Trump inhibit his ability to serve independently in the Justice Department and reflect a broader pattern of Trump appointing loyalists to prominent government positions.
As chief executive, the president does wield influence over the DOJ, and has the power to remove an attorney general from his cabinet. But part of the attorney general’s role is to equally apply the law in the agency’s decisionmaking on investigations and prosecutions, even if it conflicts with a president’s political interests.
Throughout Blanche’s time as a top justice official, he has defended Trump’s direct involvement with DOJ decisionmaking and assisted with reinterpreting civil rights enforcement through a lens that emphasizes claims of widespread anti-Christian discrimination.
Blanche will be the third person nominated to this pivotal role since Trump won the 2024 election. Former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration amid public scrutiny regarding allegations of illicit drug use and sexual misconduct. Bondi, the former attorney general in Florida and a longtime Trump ally, served in the role from February 2025 until she was fired in April 2026 after facing widespread criticism concerning the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files — documents and images capturing the personal relationships and business dealings of the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
LGBTQ+ rights
The DOJ has shifted its focus away from investigating civil rights violations against historically marginalized racial and gender groups. Instead, the department has moved to investigate and penalize so-called diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, related initiatives. The department has also prioritized religious freedom claims, particularly those that promote purported Christian values.
In May 2025, as deputy attorney general, Blanche signed a memo encouraging DOJ attorneys to use the False Claims Act to penalize individuals, companies or institutions that accept federal funding by fraudulent means. In the Trump administration’s view, this includes recipients that promote antisemitism, allow trans women into women’s bathrooms or allow trans athletes to compete in gender categories that align with their identities.
This March, Blanche also reportedly sent a letter to New York Attorney General Letitia James to stop her office from taking legal action against a hospital that ended its trans youth health program. After Trump fired Bondi in April, Blanche became acting attorney general and continued the administration’s mission to limit gender-affirming care for transgender youth. At least three hospitals have received grand jury subpoenas for years of data on adolescent patients who receive care to manage gender dysphoria.
In April, DOJ published a report from its Taskforce to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, chaired by Blanche, based on an executive order signed by Trump. The 197-page report accuses the President Joe Biden’s administration of anti-Christian bias, including trying to “mandate the adoption of its views on sexual orientation and gender ideology, with limited religious exceptions.” The Biden administration’s defense of sexual orientation and gender identity in education, employment and other areas are referenced throughout the report.
The Epstein Files
If confirmed, Blanche will be responsible for DOJ’s response to the Epstein files and oversee any investigations, criminal charges or the release of certain documents.
Between December 2025 and March 2026, the department released hundreds of thousands of documents, photos and video tied to Epstein. In January 2026, the then-deputy attorney general announced that the administration had complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which became law in November 2025, and required the department to publish records and communications related to the prosecution of Epstein. Blanche later said the department had completed its review of the files, which he said lacked sufficient evidence to bring any more criminal charges.
Independent journalist, legal analyst and attorney Katie Phang sued Blanche in April for “brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.” The department, according to the complaint, failed to comply “by ignoring the Act’s deadlines, by failing to redact sensitive information, by redacting information it should have disclosed, by failing to explain its redactions, and by redacting, retracting, or withholding entirely materials about Donald Trump and others.”
A federal judge in June ordered DOJ to release unredacted versions of some of the files, or to explain the reason it can’t. In response, Blanche’s office requested a hold on the order while the department considers appealing the court’s ruling.
The Epstein files have been a pain point for the Trump administration among both Democratic and Republican voters. The president’s decision to fire Bondi came after mounting scrutiny over the DOJ’s handling of the files. In a meeting with the House oversight committee in June, Bondi told lawmakers that the department made a “good-faith effort,” to comply with the transparency act, adding “I did not lead every aspect of this effort nor conduct that document review myself. I delegated that oversight over this process to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.”
Violence against women
Since Trump took office last year, with Blanche as deputy attorney general, the DOJ has set new conditions restricting eligibility for grant funding through the department’s Office on Violence Against Women, OVW. These include restricting researchers’ ability to use language tied to race, gender or sexual orientation in their grant proposals. Grant recipients have also experienced delays receiving money approved by Congress.
The Office on Violence Against Women, established in 1995 by the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), has been a primary source of funding for community organizations aimed at providing services for victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking.
In March, four lawmakers sent a letter asking Blanche, as the deputy attorney general, to provide an update on the status of the delayed grant funding from OVW.
After Blanche became acting attorney general, lawmakers questioned him about funding to VAWA programs during a May hearing with the Senate Appropriations subcommittee. Senator Susan Collins of Maine asked about the administration’s proposal to reduce OVW funding by about 25 percent.
“These are extraordinarily important programs,” Blanche said in response, adding, “We have to make choices and the president’s budget has to make choices on where to spend that money.” He did not commit to requesting more funding.
Immigration
One of Blanche’s first directives after being sworn in as deputy attorney general last year was Operation Take Back America, part of the administration’s historic expansion of immigration enforcement. The memo, signed by Blanche, outlined several key priorities: prosecuting border-related offenses like unauthorized entry into the country or human smuggling and trafficking; as well as dismantling transnational criminal organizations and illicit drug networks.
As part of that work, Blanche allowed U.S. attorney’s offices near the borders to hire more prosecutors for immigration, trafficking and drug-related cases despite a federal hiring freeze.
After the immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis led to the killing of resident Renee Good, Blanche said there was no basis for a civil rights investigation into Good’s killing. When ICE agents fatally shot nurse Alex Pretti two weeks later, the DOJ opened an investigation.
In April 2025, Blanche dismissed federal immigration lawyer Erez Reuveni after he told a federal judge that the government had wrongly deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who had a court order permitting him to stay in the country.
Reproductive health
As acting attorney general, Blanche released an 882-page report in April titled: “The Biden Administration’s Weaponization of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act,” or FACE Act.
The act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, criminalizes the use of force, threats, physical obstruction or property damage against reproductive health providers or individuals seeking their services.
This year’s DOJ report accuses the Biden administration of working with pro-abortion groups to track and pursue severe criminal charges for anti-abortion activists charged in connection with forcing entry into abortion clinics in four states. Trump pardoned 23 people, who the administration has described as “peaceful, pro-life” protestors. The DOJ report characterized the Biden administration support for abortion rights, including the FACE Act prosecutions as “blatant anti-Christian bias.”
Blanche is also facing pressure from anti-abortion groups to settle a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that seeks to block mail delivery of the abortion medication mifepristone.
