Adam Schiff calls for Senate to ‘vigorously oppose’ Trump’s effort to make Todd Blanche his permanent attorney general – live

As New York basketball fans try to make sense of the news that reporters who cover the Knicks will not have access to the team’s locker room before game 3 of the NBA finals on Monday, there is speculation that Donald Trump could be planning to engage in some, well, locker room talk with the players when he arrives at Madison Square Garden.

Outside the world’s most famous arena, a huge swath of midtown Manhattan went into lockdown on Monday evening, to ensure the president’s safety in the city that knows him best, and voted resoundingly against him all three times he ran for president, most recently handing his opponent Kamala Harris a 68%-30% landslide victory in 2024.

One fan who reportedly managed to get into the arena before the game, Spike Lee, is wearing a version of a Knicks jersey that could be seen as anti-Trump: it reads “Pope Leo 14” and was autographed by the American pope Trump has clashed with.

Independent senator Bernie Sanders announced he was working on legislation that would create a sovereign wealth fund that would take stakes in AI companies to manage the technology’s expected disruptions to the economy and day-to-day life.

“Seems to me that, given the fact that it is the people who whose work is the foundation, whose labor is the foundation of AI, they should have some say in the future of AI,” Sanders said at an event hosted by the National Press Club in Washington DC Monday.

The bill, which Sanders said he would release in the coming weeks, would give the proposed fund a 50% stake in major AI companies and half the seats on their boards. “What it will give us is the ability to stop decisions that are simply geared to make more and more profit for the owners of the industry,” Sanders said, comparing the proposal to sovereign wealth funds in Norway and Alaska that manage proceeds from those regions’ oil production.

In March, Sanders introduced a federal moratorium on new datacenter construction, with New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introducing the House version. Sanders argued the construction halt was necessary to slow down the growth of the AI industry so that proper regulations could first be applied.

“There are very few people who doubt that AI is the most transformational technology in the history of the world. It makes the industrial revolution seem very, very modest,” Sanders said.

Speaking of his datacenter moratorium, the senator said: “Let’s get our act together. Let’s know where we are going, what the impact is going to be on working people, on ordinary Americans, before we proceed.”

Senator Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, said in a social media post on Monday that she would vote for Graham Platner if she lived in Maine, where he is running for the US Senate, despite allegations of misconduct from one former romantic partner.

“Graham Platner is gonna win because he has connected with Mainers on what they really care about: How this country can work for them, not just the wealthy. He’ll win because he’s not part of the Washington establishment”, Smith wrote. “If I voted in Maine he’d have my support, no question.”

Smith was first appointed to the Senate in 2017 to replace Al Franken, who resigned at the height of the #MeToo movement after allegations of unwanted touching or kissing from several women.

(In the interest of full disclosure, your current live blogger worked briefly for Franken’s radio show in 2004.)

Speaking to Robert Costa, the CBS News correspondent, at the National Press Club in Washington on Monday, senator Bernie Sanders said that Americans of all parties “are disgusted” with Donald Trump’s “illegal and unconstitutional war in Iran”.

“People are tired of the arrogance, the narcissism. I mean, you know, we get used to this stuff, but the idea that you have a president wants to name every bloody thing after himself is weird”, the runner-up for the Democratic nomination for the presidency in both 2016 and 2020 continued.

Trump’s Meet the Press interview over the weekend, Sanders added: “Again, we say, ‘Oh well, that’s just Trump’. But that is a mentally unstable person… who has strong paranoid tendencies.

“I mean, NBC is against him, ABC is against him, CBS is against him”, Sanders went on, mocking Trump’s intemperate complaint that he gets “bad press” before he stormed ou of the interview after being pressed to present evidence for his baseless claim that US elections are “rigged”.

“That is, to say the least a dangerous situation for somebody like that to be in the White House”, Sanders said.

Asked about supporters who want to see him run for the presidency again in 2028, Bernie Sanders, who would turn 87 before the election that year, joked that that is “because they want youthful vigor in the White House!”

Ventriloquizing his supporters, he continued: “’We’re tired of these 30 and 40 year old people; what we really need are 80 year olds running the country!”

“I suspect that’s not going to happen”, he added. “I know I look like I am 30. I am not.”

In an interview at the National Press Club in Washington DC on Monday, Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, was asked if he still supports Graham Platner, who is running for the Democratic nomination for the US Senate, despite allegations of misconduct by a former romantic partner.

“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure Graham Platner is the next senator from the state of Maine,” Sanders said.

Lyndsey Fifield, a Republican operative Platner dated between 2013 and 2105, told the New York Times that he was physically abusive to her on two occasions and that he knew then that a tattoo on his chest he got while serving in the military was a Nazi symbol. Platner denied ever being physically abusive or knowing that the tattoo was used by the Nazi SS until recently, when he had it covered up.

After the event was disrupted by protesters calling on Sanders to vote against all US aid to Israel, Sanders was pressed on those allegations.

Sanders, who was an early and ardent backer of Platner, said his Republican opponents are not worried about Platner’s treatment of women. “What they are worried about is that he is is going to be a strong voice against oligarchy.”

He then noted that Platner had served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in the US military and suffered from PTSD as a result, when he got home. “He saw some horrible things and participated in some very horrible things one wishes human beings did not have to go through,” Sanders said. He added that Platner got help, through the VA, and is now married and has “gotten his life together.”

“Sp, to my mind, I don’t know what is true or not true. He denies it, she says something else. But what I do know is that there are people in the United States Senate right now who are not saints,” he added.

“There are people who have voted for tax breaks for billionaires, and threw 15 million people off of their health care that they had which resulted in tens of thousand of Americans dying,” he continued. “There are people who voted for the war in Iraq, which was based on a lie; there are people who voted to support the president in this terrible war in Iran right now.”

“To my mind right now we need allies in the United States Senate who have the guts to take on the big money that is dominating this country, who have the guts to say that every American is entitled to health care as a human right”, Sanders added.

“People who have the guts, and in his case, from a very personal experience, that we don’t go into wars unless we know what we are fighting for and unless those wars are based on truth not lies”, the senator concluded. “I’m supporting Graham Platner.”

Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and former federal prosecutor who serves on the Senate judiciary committee, has released a statement opposing the confirmation of Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, to the job on a permanent basis.

Schiff says that Blanche has continued to act as Trump’s personal lawyer, noting in particular: his support for the indictment of James Comey, the former FBI director and Trump critic, for posting an Instagram photo of seashells on a beach arranged to read: “86 47”; his decree that Trump and his family should be exempt from prosecution or audits by the IRS; his approval of a $1.776bn fund to reward Trump supporters who claim that they were prosecuted on political grounds.

Here is Schiff’s statement in full:

“At every turn, Todd Blanche has been unable to put aside his role as Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyer and represent the American people instead.

“He has allowed the President to abuse the Department of Justice to go after his political enemies with absurd seashells cases, engaged in the most blatant self-dealing by representing both Trump and his government in an IRS scam, and blessed a corrupt slush fund for cop beaters.

“This is hardly the stuff of Attorney Generals.

“The Senate must vigorously oppose his confirmation.”

Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the US Senate judiciary committee that has to confirm a new attorney general, said in a statement on Monday that Donald Trump has officially nominated his former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, now the acting attorney general. In a statement, Grassley also called Blanche, a “well-qualified” nominee.

Here is Grassley’s full statement:

Today, the Senate received President Trump’s nomination of Todd Blanche to be United States Attorney General. Maintaining the Department of Justice’s ability to protect Americans from crime and hold criminals accountable is essential for the safety of American families. I’ve worked well with Acting Attorney General Blanche for more than a year and appreciate his commitment to transparency and support for law enforcement. Blanche is well-qualified and has shown his dedication to restoring law and order across our country. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s work to process Blanche’s nomination is underway.”

As expected, Donald Trump has nominated Todd Blanche to serve permanently as attorney general, lining up his former personal lawyer to be the country’s ⁠top ⁠law ⁠enforcement officer.

The US president suggested last week that Blanche, who was appointed on an acting basis in April after the president fired Pam Bondi, was set to receive the nod. “He’s a very talented guy,” Trump told a podcast.

Under Blanche – a staunch ally of Trump – the US Department of Justice has pursued a series of controversial actions, including the unveiling of criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director, representing an escalation of its investigation into former CIA director, John Brennan, and the removal of press releases about prosecutions of rioters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6.

Blanche also played a key role in the effort to create a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate Trump’s allies. On Tuesday, he abruptly announced the fund had been axed, amid widespread condemnation of the plan, but a provision granting Trump, his family and his businesses immunity from IRS audits would remain in place.

Blanche’s appointment will require confirmation in the US Senate, where even Republicans pushed back against the proposed fund.

Hours after Trump announced his intention to nominate Blanche permanently for the position, Senate majority leader John Thune said it was “hard to say” whether Blanche will have a difficult time getting the votes.

“I think obviously most of our members are pretty deferential to who the president wants in these key positions. He’s already serving in the role already, and clearly has experience in it,” Thune said. “But this is an environment where nothing is a safe or sure bet.”

Donald Trump has forcefully denied he ever promised not to draw the US into war, having spent years pledging to avoid doing just that.

The US president’s own biography on the White House website credits him with “putting a stop to endless wars” – raising questions about the US-Israel war on Iran, which he launched, with no end currently in sight.

NBC’s Kristen Welker pressed Trump in a Meet the Press interview that aired yesterday about his previous pledges to refrain from starting wars.

“Mr President, in your first term, you held to that promise, and it was so fundamental to who you were as a candidate, to a first-term president,” she said. “What changed? Because you insisted no new wars.”

“I didn’t guarantee no war,” Trump interjected. “Why would I have built the strongest military in the world? I built our military.”

His response sharply contradicts previous comments he has made over the years, including when accepting his victory in the 2024 US presidential election.

We want want security. We want to have things be good, safe. We want great education. We want a strong and powerful military. And ideally, we don’t have to use it. You know, we had no war – four years, we had no wars, except we defeated Isis. We defeated Isis in record time, but we had no wars.

They said: ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.

My colleague George Chidi has compiled all the president’s war quotes here: