Susan Collins will vote against Todd Blanche for Attorney General. This matters because Blanche needs 50 votes and Collins was supposed to be one of them. Trump picked his own criminal defense lawyer to run the Justice Department and now even the Republicans who confirm houseplants are getting cold feet.
Blanche already cleared the Judiciary Committee. He made it through the part where senators ask questions they don't care about and receive answers nobody believes. Now he faces the full Senate floor where Collins just torched his math.
Fifty votes. That's the threshold. Not fifty-one because the Vice President breaks ties, which means Blanche can lose exactly zero additional Republicans assuming every Democrat votes no. Collins just moved him from "probably confirmed" to "start refreshing Twitter."
The Attorney General nominee is the same guy who defended Trump in court. The same guy who argued the hush money case. The same guy who stood next to Trump while Trump called prosecutors fascists. And now that guy needs Senate confirmation to oversee those same prosecutors.
Retail traders are currently scanning this headline for tickers. They're wondering if this affects their Palantir calls. They're checking if there's a legal ETF they should short. They're typing "Todd Blanche stock price" into Google and getting confused when nothing appears.
Collins called this a principled stand. She released a statement about institutional integrity and the rule of law. She'll probably vote for the next nominee who's slightly better at pretending he won't weaponize the DOJ.
Blanche can still get confirmed if every other Republican holds and Harris never has to cast a tiebreaker. But Collins voting no gives cover to Romney's replacement and that one senator who pretends to read bills. The nomination isn't dead but it's currently bleeding out on the Senate floor while CNBC pretends this affects your portfolio.
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