Is Todd Blanche Still Acting Attorney General?
No. Todd Blanche is not the acting attorney general anymore — he is the permanent one. Blanche ran the Justice Department in an acting capacity from April 2 to August 10, 2026. The Senate confirmed him by 50 votes to 49 on August 8, and on August 10, 2026, he was sworn in as the 88th Attorney General of the United States. The Justice Department's own official biography lists him today, without any "acting" in front of the title, as the 88th Attorney General.
The plain reality is a date. Before August 10, every order Blanche signed carried the authority of a temporary holder waiting on the Senate. After August 10, the same signature carries the full authority of a confirmed attorney general — the acting period is a closed chapter of his tenure, not his current status.
What keeps the question alive is how long the temporary chapter lasted, and how loudly it was labelled while it ran. President Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on April 2, 2026 — reportedly over her handling of the Epstein files — and elevated her deputy, Blanche, the same day. Blanche then ran the department for more than four months as its acting head while his nomination was fought over, and he defended the label testily at a Senate hearing in 2026: "I'm the acting attorney general, OK? The fact that I used to be President Trump's lawyer is just a fact, but I'm the acting attorney general."
"I'm the acting attorney general, OK? The fact that I used to be President Trump's lawyer is just a fact, but I'm the acting attorney general."
The common-sense principle is the one the Constitution builds in: "acting" means holding a job until the Senate decides who holds it. Once the Senate has voted and the oath has been taken, there is nothing temporary left to act — the title and the job are the same thing.
The consequence is that everything Blanche does now is done with permanent authority and permanent accountability. This week, on November 12, he announced that the department has charged close to 300 people with illegal voting and is running hundreds of ongoing voter fraud investigations — work we covered on the blog in his announcement of the investigations. Those cases will be prosecuted, defended and judged under a confirmed attorney general, not a caretaker. And the margin that made him permanent was the narrowest there is: one vote. If one senator had voted the other way, would the department he runs today be his at all?
The details fill in the road he took. Blanche, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, became President Trump's personal lawyer in 2023 and led his defence in the New York hush money trial. Trump named him deputy attorney general after the 2024 election; the Senate confirmed him 52–46 in March 2025 and he was sworn in as the 40th deputy attorney general on March 6, 2025. After Bondi's firing he served as acting attorney general, Trump formally nominated him on June 8, 2026, and the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the nomination 12–10 on August 4. The full Senate vote was delayed while senators demanded that a proposed $1.8 billion fund for people who say they were mistreated by the government be taken off the table; the fund was rescinded in August, and Blanche was confirmed on August 8 by 50–49, with every Democrat and Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski against him. Former Trump lawyer Emil Bove, now a federal appeals judge, administered the oath at the White House on August 10.
President Trump, who picked him first as a lawyer, then as a deputy, then as the acting head and finally as the permanent one, has set the standard he says Blanche will meet — that Todd Blanche will "go down as the best Attorney General" the country has ever had.