The Senate confirmed Todd Blanche, President Trump's former personal defense lawyer, as attorney general, installing one of the president's closest legal allies atop the Justice Department, according to Monday's headlines.
Blanche, who represented Trump in his New York criminal trial before joining the administration, had been serving in the department's senior leadership. His elevation gives the president an attorney general whose professional relationship with him predates the administration itself — a dynamic Democrats repeatedly raised during the confirmation fight.
The confirmation landed the same day a federal court handed the White House a separate defeat, ruling that the president cannot build his planned White House ballroom without congressional approval. The decision reasserts Congress's authority over alterations to the executive mansion, a point of contention since the project was announced.
The rulings arrive amid an unsettled political backdrop: reporting on the midterm landscape describes unexpected primary winners complicating both parties' paths to control of the House and Senate this fall.
Immigration enforcement also stayed in the headlines, with reports that federal authorities detained parents and spouses of active-duty U.S. military personnel and that temporary protected status was terminated for nationals of South Sudan and Burma — moves likely to face immediate court challenges.