Blanche and the DOJ, Michigan Primaries, Spokane Wildfires

Blanch won the support of Republican holdouts after meeting their demands. What else concerns lawmakers about the record of the president's former personal lawyer?

Now, your Martinez, that is Steve Inskip, and this is a first from NPR News.

Five states hold primaries today. In Michigan, voters have some issues. People are pissed, gases expensive, grocery's are expensive, health care's insane. Democrats decide between two Senate candidates how different are their choices. And a man has arrested on arson charges in connection to one of the wildfires ripping through Spokane, Washington, more than 60,000 people have evacuated.

"I have a lot of memories. The extrusion stuff in my family. They can't get back."

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Listen via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Todd Blanch addressed demands from the senators relating to a fund that could be paid to the president's political supporters and also to a tax immunity deal.

“NPR Justice correspondent Ryan Lucas joins us now with more.”

So Ryan, for much of the past week, it wasn't really clear whether Blanch's nomination would get through or actually survive. So now the Senate Judiciary Committee is about to vote on it what changed. All right, well what happened is Blanch and the Justice Department managed to provide the sort of written guarantees that addressed the demands of senators John Corne and Tom Tillis.

Now, Corne and Tillis are both Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Their support is critical for Blanch's nomination to advance.

And they wanted written confirmation that a controversial $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund is dead and also written limits to a tax immunity deal for Trump's family. And businesses late Sunday, Blanch released two documents that report to address those. One says it formally rescinds the order that created the anti-weaponization fund, meaning the fund is dead.

The other reports to clarify the scope of the tax immunity deal, including that it only applies retroactively and only to Trump, two of his sons and the Trump organization. That said, legal experts say neither document that Blanch released is actually legally binding and they don't provide the sort of iron-clad guarantees that they report to.

But they are enough for Corne and Tillis who yesterday thanked Blanch for the assurances and said they would now support his nomination. Yeah, now typically Republicans rubber stamp the president's nominees.

“But why was this issue one that really got these two senators to hold up Blanch's nomination?”

Look, this anti-weaponization fund was deeply unpopular with Republican senators from the very beginning.

Remember, this would be $1.8 billion of taxpayer money that the DOJ said could be

sold out to an essence, anyone that includes writers who attacked the capital on January 6th and beat up cops. The tax immunity deal was also problematic for some Republicans. As Corne and himself put it last week, that deal would provide Trump with benefits that no other American taxpayer could get.

To be clear, those benefits still very much remain in place. It's also worth pointing out that there is a long list of other issues at the Justice Department that legal experts, Department veterans think should make Congress question Blanch's leadership as well as his fitness to be attorney general. Okay, such as.

Well, at some point to his handling of the Epstein files, you can also look at the Department's politicization under Blanch or the targeting of Trump's perceived enemies. But more broadly, there's also the unraveling of what's known as the presumption of regularity. This idea that courts assume that DOJ officials are acting properly, acting in good faith, that they're making accurate, factual representations in court.

Under this administration, federal judges, we have seen them repeatedly express concerns about the Justice Department not complying with court orders. Judges have questioned the representations that the DOJ has made in court. We have also seen high profile cases and revel in spectacular fashion, just in the past few days, for example.

The U.S. Attorney's Office here in DC moved to dismiss its felony vandalism case against a former lipid canoeist for damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

but instead was just the result of a botched installation job. So it dramatic climb down.

“And as I said, really a long list of issues that raise concerns for many folks about Blanch.”

And yet these issues haven't really been much of a speed bump at all in his nomination process. That's MPR's Ryan Lucas, Ryan Thanks. Thank you. Five states hold primary elections today.

The marquee race will be in Michigan where Democrats see holding an open Senate seat as essential

to reclaim the chamber. First, Democrats decide where to place their bet. In a primary they choose between two candidates to take on Republican Mike Rogers. MPR's congressional reporter Sam Greenlass joins us from Patoski, Michigan, Assam, what's it been like on the campaign trail?

A, I've talked with maybe 50 voters in the last two weeks from the Detroit River to Lake Michigan at a UAW picnic, local Democratic clubs, community events, and it is hard to overstate how tense this race has become. And a big reason for that is because it has turned into this proxy for so many of the debates royaling the party right now.

You know, establishment versus insurgent for their left versus more moderate.

“So speaking of that, where are the two candidates sit on those lines?”

There is Congresswoman Hayley Steven, she flipped a suburban house district in 2018, and has focused on her crossover appeal and support for Michigan manufacturing. She's got support from Michigan heavyweights like Governor Gretchen Whitmer. You know, I'm just being maga four times in my congressional races, and I'm passing laws, and I'm doing damn good work.

We don't need wish lists, we need action now. Steven's opponent is former public health official Abdul al-Sayed. He's backed by the left-biggest stars like Senator Bernie Sanders, and is running on Medicare for all and eliminating corporate money from politics. He has criticized millions of dollars from the pro israel lobby,

APAC flooding the race against him. Problem to often with the Democratic Party is that we have an instinct to say the right thing, but we're bought off by the people who are on the side of doing the wrong thing. And so we're constantly hedging and pulling punches. And so this race will test whether a candidate on the left, like I'll say,

it can prevail in a battleground state. Sam, you mentioned all of these tensions. How would you describe the common theme in this race? The prevailing feeling I am hearing is frustration, even anger. This is Alyssa DiBolt, chair of the McComb County Democrats.

People are pissed, gases expensive, groceries are expensive, health cares insane.

She says the voters hungry for change now are not always motivated by leftist

politics. It's more demand for candidates who will buck the system not do the same old same old. Okay, so how is that kind of filtering it to how voters are thinking about their choice? Yeah, so I met so many voters truly struggling with their vote.

“On a lake Michigan Beach, Elizabeth Schaffer told me holding the seat is what matters.”

Who has the best chance of beating the Republican? That's going to be my biggest priority. But up the beach, Madison Miles decided she just didn't want to think that way anymore. And I just want to vote for who I think will be the best representative for me and my beliefs. Now, peasants and politicians will try to make inferences from what happens in Michigan.

One Democrat I talked to Joel Rutherford said none of this will matter in 2028. If Democrats win both chambers this fall and fail to deliver. All right, now what else will you be watching today? I'm also keeping tabs on primaries in Michigan's governor's race and several competitive house seats. It is also primary day in Kansas, Missouri, Washington, and Virginia.

One race I'm watching is in the St. Louis area where former Congresswoman Cory Bush is challenging representative Wesley Bell from the left, another test of how much an anti-establishment mood is powering this political moment. That's MPR congressional reporter Sam Greenglass in Michigan in St. Thanks. You're welcome. We go next to Spokane, Washington where authorities have a man in custody on arts and charges in connection with the old trails fire. It's one of three

out-of-control wildfires at a burned hundreds of homes. We've got MPR's Kirk Sigler on the line from Spokane. Kirk, I tell us more about this arrest. Well, the sheriff's office says it's arrested to suspect a 37-year-old Spokane man. He's a convicted felon. It's part of their investigation into the origins of the old trails fires, the most destructive wildfire of the three burning here and in and around the city right now. The suspect's name is Aaron Farron

Nachy. He was arrested. We're told without incident being charged with first degree arson.

And this is a significant development. I mean, combined, these three fires have displaced tens of thousands of people since last weekend, which is just extraordinary for a city of the size.

into a red cross shelter. Right. There have been dozens of people sleeping inside on

“costs. There's just a lot of need. They're looking to expand the shelter. And it's also not”

just residents having to flee these neighborhoods. We're talking about the evacuation of businesses, the entire VA hospital campus. You know, I've been watching people coming in here on buses, from nursing homes, elder care facilities. I met Charlie Patrick who's 54 and disabled. And she's struggling with the dense smoke here in Spokane. It's brutal. And just listen to she chokes back tears. A saying she doesn't know if she has an apartment to even go home to.

I hope it's okay. I hope it's okay. I hope it's okay. I hope it's okay. I have a lot of memories pictures and stuff in my family. They can't get back. Wow. Any idea when people might be allowed back in? Well, some have just to check on things. It could be days, though, maybe weeks. It just depends on what these fires do. It's a very tenuous situation. One minute, the winds will pick back up. The shift direction and start threatening neighborhoods again. You know,

these are the major urban wildfires. We've come to dread and know all too well. It's not the level of destruction just yet. Like we saw in Los Angeles last year. But it's a big worry here in Spokane. You've got fires that started out in the wildlands outside the city. When brings them into these neighborhoods and the structures themselves, the houses just create the fuel for the fires to spread. A long time locals like Deborah Keren are shocked, you know, until this last weekend,

the idea of evacuating from a wildfire in the city hadn't really been on her mind. Obviously,

we've had wildfire seasons a lot. And I never because we live so inward in the city. I never

ever imagined us having to be a level three evacuation. Yeah, and she sounds exactly like someone who has lived in Altadina or in Palacades. I might have thought in the last couple of years.

“Like given given the western drought, I mean, is this on the radar of city officials?”

Well, here, fire officials have been warning about this and worried about this very thing happening for years. I mean, I remember being up here a decade or so ago, doing a story about them planning about this very situation happening. And like a lot of American cities, even here in the Pacific Northwest, Spokane's been built out into what's known as the Wildland Urban Interface. You've got these dense stands upon to respond for us next to gas stations,

the Mall, the Costco. And they're just towering their presence in so many neighborhoods. And right now, with climate change and coming off the winter that we just had, the extremely dry and warm, these forests and brush are just dry and flammable. It's only being made worse by climate change. And everyone across the region is worried right now. And it's only early August. That is MPR's Kirk Sigler in Spokane, Washington, Kirk Thanks. You're welcome.

“And that's up first for Tuesday, August 4th of March. And I'm Steve Inscape.”

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