Abby McCloskey, Bloomberg Opinion, August 4, 2026

“It’s a crisis for American governance when even the most seasoned and respected politicians feel free to vote their conscience only when they are on their way out. But that’s what’s happening with Senator John Cornyn’s late stand against President Donald Trump.

Some say that Cornyn blocked Todd Blanche’s nomination to lead the Department of Justice out of spite for Trump’s endorsement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who defeated Cornyn in the state’s US Senate primary earlier this year. This much seems obvious.

But might it also be obvious that a $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund is a bad idea? The fund, which Blanche formally rescinded only yesterday, would have been administered by the DOJ. It would have provided tax immunity to the billionaire president and his family while potentially conscripting Americans into paying off the Jan. 6 rioters who threatened to execute the vice president and House speaker. (The new agreement still grants Trump unprecedented protection from the Internal Revenue Service.) That is precisely the kind of executive overreach that the Senate was designed to counter.”