Trump reveals plan to keep Todd Blanche — even if lame duck GOP senators refuse to confirm nomination

Here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud: if Senate Republicans can't confirm Todd Blanche, a guy who is already doing the job, what exactly is confirmation for anymore? Trump's threat to just keep him as acting AG isn't some constitutional stunt. It's a pretty obvious response to a Senate that increasingly treats its advice-and-consent role as a place to go die rather than a place to do work.

Lame duck sessions have become this weird graveyard where nominations go to be quietly buried by senators who don't want to cast a vote before they lose their jobs anyway. That's not oversight. That's avoidance. If Republicans have a real objection to Blanche, they should air it, debate it, and vote him up or down. Instead the pattern lately has been to let the clock run out and let someone else deal with it in January.

Trump governing around a Senate that won't do its basic function isn't ideal, we'd rather see nominees confirmed the normal way. But there's something almost fitting about a president who ran on cutting through Washington's self-inflicted paralysis doing exactly that here. If the Senate wants to stop this from becoming the norm, the fix is simple: actually vote.