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Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination stalls over Trump IRS lawsuit

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Todd Blanche’s nomination to become attorney-general stalled last night as lawmakers scrapped a planned committee vote.

Key Republicans, senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, had demanded further assurances about the settlement of president Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Cornyn and Tillis have demanded additional assurances in writing that the ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ is dead and have pressed for clarification on the scope of the tax immunity deal.

Cornyn has said he wants the administration to modify that piece of the settlement to make clear that it covers only existing audits and does not protect the president from examination of future tax filings.

Cornyn, who recently lost the Republican primary in Texas, accused the justice department earlier on Wednesday of “stonewalling” and said “the ball is in Blanche’s court.”

“We’re been trying to help them get to a conclusion here and they won’t let us. It’s befuddling to me,” Cornyn told reporters.

“Chairman [Chuck] Grassley works to set president Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure. Senators [John] Cornyn and [Thom] Tillis want written assurances from the Department of Justice regarding the Trump-IRS settlement,” a committee spokesperson said in a Wednesday statement.

“Tomorrow’s markup is postponed as work continues to secure sufficient support in committee to favorably report Attorney General-nominee Todd Blanche, who is highly qualified for the job.”

Read the full story here:

In other developments:

Barack Obama, the former president who installed basketball hoop on the White House tennis court, endorsed the US Senate campaign of Iowa Democrat Josh Turek, a state lawmaker who played wheelchair basketball in four Paralympic Games, winning two gold medals, in a new ad filmed as the two shot hoops.
The US Senate unanimously passed a resolution declaring its opposition to any presidential pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Maga congresswoman, announced on Wednesday that she was married on Tuesday in Las Vegas to another recent exile from Trump’s good graces, Brian Glenn, the self-described “Maga mouthpiece” who quit his job as White House correspondent for the far-right network Real America’s Voice after his fiancee was cast out by the president for supporting the release of the Epstein files and criticizing his bombing of Iran in 2025.
Lawyers for former FBI director James Comey have alleged that US Secret Service agents illegally surveilled him, Trump requested regular updates into the investigation, and law enforcement turned to ChatGPT and a known mafia killer as they scrambled to find justification for criminally charging Comey for posting a picture of seashells that spelled out “8647”.

Key events

Adam Gabbatt

Gas prices are up almost a dollar a gallon since the day Donald Trump took office; mortgage rates just hit their highest level in nearly a year, and over the weekend a prominent economist said the Iran war is costing the average US household more than $1,200.

Americans are struggling through a deepening affordability crisis caused largely by Trump’s ill-fated war against Iran. They are in need of a boost, something to lift the spirits. Perhaps the president could give a speech, letting the people know that we are all in this together.

Or, he could give a speech announcing that the White House has just ordered 250 brand new Cadillac Escalades, giant SUVs which have a suggested retail price of more than $90,000 each and cost significantly more to customize for secure uses.

“We ordered 250 Escalades. That’s how we look sharp in those cavalcades, you know,” Trump said during a rambling, hour-long address at a General Motors facility in Michigan.

“We look sharp in those Escalades. Our guys are very spoiled. They’re very spoiled. They like the Escalade. So do I.”

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva confirmed his government had denied ⁠visas to two US officials who planned to travel to the country, accusing them of seeking to ⁠interfere in October’s ⁠general election.

“This week we had to deny visas to two young folks they were sending to Brazil to ⁠meddle in Brazil’s elections,” Lula said at an event late on Wednesday.

Reuters reported last week, citing two ⁠Brazilian officials, that visa requests for the two officials in US president Donald Trump’s administration had been ‌rejected because they planned ‌to cast doubt on the integrity of Brazil’s electoral system.

A US ‌State Department spokesperson at the time rejected any suggestion of a “ploy” to undermine Brazil’s elections, calling the claims “baseless” and describing the visit as routine and consistent with the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor’s statutory mandate.

Most Americans say the war in Iran has not been worth fighting and president Donald Trump’s approval rating on Iran has fallen slightly since last month, according to a new AP-NORC poll.

The results are a stark repudiation of Trump’s approach to the conflict, which has dragged on far longer than he originally predicted.

About two-thirds of US adults say the war with Iran has not been worthwhile, according to the new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That includes the vast majority of Democrats and independents, as well as about 37% of Republicans.

The poll was conducted 23-27 July, as the US and Iran paused attacks following a nearly two-week escalation in the war.

During the escalation, the US targeted Iranian military and commercial sites while Iran attacked US military facilities in the Middle East, resulting in additional deaths of American service members.