Current Events

Two Senate Republicans stall Blanche's attorney general nomination

Cornyn and Tillis are withholding votes until the Justice Department guarantees a $1.776 billion IRS settlement stays closed, and Trump says he may pull the nomination until both leave office in January.

4 min read2026-07-31

Justice

Senate Judiciary postpones the vote on Blanche's nomination for attorney general¹

The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed Thursday's vote to advance Todd Blanche's nomination for attorney general, the panel's only scheduled business that day, after Republicans John Cornyn and Thom Tillis withheld their votes.¹ The senators are demanding written confirmation that the Justice Department's $1.776 billion settlement of Trump's lawsuit against the IRS will not be revived, along with a companion provision shielding Trump and his family from audits of their past tax returns.²³ A federal judge ruled this month that the settlement was brought "for an improper purpose" and referred Trump's own lawyer for discipline.² In a Truth Social post reported by NPR and other outlets, Trump said he has "no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd's name" if the senators "do not do the right thing."³ He said he would renominate Blanche once Cornyn, who lost his primary, and Tillis, who is retiring, leave office in January.³

Terrorism

Federal jury convicts Rushdie's attacker on terrorism charges⁴

Twenty-eight-year-old Hadi Matar faces up to life in prison after a federal jury convicted him Wednesday of three terrorism offenses for the 2022 stabbing of author Salman Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, on top of the 25-year state sentence he is already serving.⁴ Prosecutors said Matar spent more than a year studying a 1989 fatwa from Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for Rushdie's death, exchanged messages about it with contacts in Iran, Australia and Canada, and traveled to the attack under a false identity built from the names of two Hizballah leaders.⁴ The jury deliberated only a couple of hours, NPR reported; Matar is scheduled to be sentenced November 3 by U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara in Buffalo.⁵

Economy

Q2 GDP growth slows to 1.5%, below forecasts⁶

The U.S. economy grew at a 1.5% annual rate in the second quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday, down from 2.1% in the first quarter and short of the 2.1% pace economists polled by LSEG had forecast.⁶⁷ Economists cautioned the miss overstates any slowdown. Oxford Economics' Michael Pearce said the drag came mostly from rising imports and falling inventories that "won't be sustained for long."⁷ BEA's own breakdown showed spending and investment by private domestic buyers, stripped of those swings, actually accelerated to 3.9% from 1.7% the prior quarter.⁶ Price growth ran the other way: the price index for gross domestic purchases jumped to 5.7% from 3.6%, even as core inflation excluding food and energy cooled to 3.4% from 4.4%.⁶

Foreign Policy

U.S. and Saudi strikes on Iraqi militias widen the Iran conflict⁸

The open exchange of fire between U.S. and Iranian forces now reaches into two new countries. U.S. and Saudi forces struck what CENTCOM called Iran-backed "terrorist logistics and weapons sites" across eastern Iraq on Tuesday, days after intercepting more than 30 IRGC-directed drone attacks in 72 hours.⁸ Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces, the militia network CENTCOM targeted, said 20 of its fighters were killed and 32 wounded, a figure neither CENTCOM nor Saudi Arabia has confirmed, and Iraq's government called the strikes "a flagrant violation of sovereignty."⁹ Separately that week, an unclaimed drone strike hit two vessels at Egypt's Port of Damietta, damaging a U.S.-owned floating LNG terminal in the first attack on Egyptian soil since the war began, even as Brent crude moved only slightly on the news.¹⁰⁹

Senate Judiciary postpones the vote on Blanche's nomination for attorney general1

Federal jury convicts Rushdie's attacker on terrorism charges4

Q2 GDP growth slows to 1.5%, below forecasts6

U.S. and Saudi strikes on Iraqi militias widen the Iran conflict8

Sources

Senate Judiciary postpones the vote on Blanche's nomination for attorney general¹

Federal jury convicts Rushdie's attacker on terrorism charges⁴

Q2 GDP growth slows to 1.5%, below forecasts⁶

U.S. and Saudi strikes on Iraqi militias widen the Iran conflict⁸