The Justice Department has been lavishing nine-figure policy wins on Alaska — and openly touting what a “huge” time it’s been for the state — as attorney general nominee Todd Blanche is scrambling to lock down support for his confirmation from its senior senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski.
A July 7 settlementover the federal government’s unfinished work on the port of Alaska resulted in a $180 million payout to Anchorage — an announcementBlanche, who is currently the acting attorney general, made personally during a two-day visit. The Justice Department shared news around the same time it had dropped Biden-era lawsuits related to Alaska’s energy production.
Then on Tuesday, the administration inked a $400 million settlementwith a group that administers health care programs for American Indians and Alaska natives.
“The wins keep coming for the American people in Alaska,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward declared last week, after announcing yet another win for the state: a $6.1 million award to tribal governments to combat violent crime.
Those developments all coincide with Blanche’s effort to court Republican senators to vote for his nomination as he deals with blowback over the botched release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, which he oversaw as deputy attorney general, followed by the launch of a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” — which he has since said is dead.
President Donald Trump formally nominated Blanche for the top job at the Justice Department on June 8, and Blanche has been meeting with senators ever since. Those meetings have included at least two with Murkowski — one in June and one earlier this week.
Right before Blanche’s confirmation hearing last week, Murkowski said she was hopeful for “specific follow-ups” from the nominee. She noted that she had some concerns about Blanche serving previously as Trump’s personal attorney and that she was interested to hear how Blanche’s visit to Alaska went.
“So I’ve got some follow-ons that I want to visit with him about. He was able to get out to one of our smaller, isolated … villages where there’s very limited public safety. [I] want to gain his impressions,” Murkowski told reporters at the time.
She acknowledged Tuesday that she was continuing to have conversations with Blanche. But the moderate lawmaker and frequent Trump critic did not tip her hand about how she might vote — a warning sign for GOP leaders who currently can’t afford more than two defections on their side of the aisle, assuming all Democrats vote “no.”
In the Senate Judiciary Committee, just a single GOP vote against Blanche would stop him from advancing to the floor if every Democrat on the panel opposes him. And right now there are two Republican senators — John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tills of North Carolina — who have not committed to voting ‘yes.”
Blanche has already shown a willingness to jump through hoops to shore up support for his confirmation. Shortly after Tillis said he wouldn’t vote for Blanche until he met with Epstein’s victims face-to-face, the acting attorney general followed through.
He has also been working draft legislative language declaring the “anti-weaponization fund” officially dead in a bid to satisfy Tillis as well as Cornyn, who both said they need this guarantee in writing.
While Justice Department officials have been eager to tout the big Alaska policy breakthroughs, they haven’t explicitly disclosed any connection to wooing Murkowski’s vote. They also note that their work on Alaskan priorities has stretched back well before Blanche’s nomination, that senior DOJ officials frequently travel to offices around the country and that the Alaska trip had been scheduled earlier and then rebooked for July.
“The Department has been litigating these cases for years,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement. “Unlike under the Biden administration, this Department will always choose results over costly and inefficient litigation. The Acting Attorney General enjoyed his trip to Alaska earlier this month where he learned about the unique challenges facing those communities.”
In a statement Wednesday, Murkowski’s spokesperson, Joe Plesha, said that if Blanche is reported out of the Judiciary Committee, the senator “will evaluate [him] in the same way she evaluates every nominee: by reviewing his hearing and determining whether he has the appropriate qualifications, experience, temperament, and independence necessary for this important role.”
Murkowski is one of the few genuine swing votes in the Senate with a history of leveraging her vote across presidencies to win big time policy concessions and victories for her constituents.
In 2023, she was instrumental in pushing the Biden administration to move forward with a massive ConocoPhillips enterprise in Alaska estimated to produce 180,000 barrels of oil a day and generate billions in new revenue to the state. Murkowski attributed the administration’s concession to her yearslong strategy of breaking with her party to vote for key Biden nominees and legislative priorities.
As recently as last year, she was persuaded to vote for the GOP’s massive tax and spending megabill and its deep cuts to social safety net programs in part because the final package mandated new lease sales for drilling across the state and extra funding for Alaska’s rural hospitals.
And when she was helping hold up an appropriations bill in committee in a dispute over the location of FBI headquarters, one Republican senator — granted anonymity to speak candidly — joked they had considered offering an amendment to move the agency’s main building to Alaska to see if that got her to cooperate.
Plesha, in his statement, said Murkowski “appreciates Mr. Blanche’s recent trip to Alaska and his willingness to take up her request to travel beyond the road system to understand the public safety challenges that rural communities face. She also welcomes recent settlements with the Department of Justice to resolve longstanding federal deficiencies, come into compliance with Supreme Court precedent, and improve Alaskans’ quality of life.”
“These actions would all be appropriate no matter who is Attorney General,” Plesha added.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
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