Live updates: Blanche nomination advances in Senate Judiciary vote

A week ago this vote didn't happen. Cornyn and Tillis, both Republicans, both from states that don't exactly reward disloyalty to the party, looked at Todd Blanche's file and said no, not yet. That's not nothing. Committees don't cancel votes over paperwork snags. Something in Blanche's record or his answers gave two GOP senators enough pause that they were willing to blow up the schedule and take the heat for it.

So the fact that it came back a week later and passed on a straight party-line vote deserves a little scrutiny rather than a shrug. Either the concerns got resolved, in which case fine, tell us what changed. Or the concerns didn't really get resolved and the pressure to fall in line did the work instead. Cornyn and Tillis reportedly got something out of this, some assurance or arrangement, and voters are entitled to know what that was before this goes to the floor.

We're not reflexively against Blanche. Acting AGs get confirmed to permanent jobs all the time, and a lot of that resistance in Washington is theater. But when your own side balks first, then falls in line a week later with no public explanation, that's the part of the story that matters more than the vote count. A party-line outcome tells you who won the argument. It doesn't tell you whether the argument was actually settled.