President Trump nominated acting Attorney General Todd Blanche last month to lead the Justice Department permanently. After more than a year as deputy attorney general, Blanche has shown that he is not merely capable of doing the job. He is the man the department needs now.
I had the privilege of serving alongside Blanche. He is smart, principled, and fearless. His record proves it.
Blanche left a lucrative private practice to serve the country. He does not need this job. The country needs him in it.
The Trump administration’s approach to law enforcement and immigration has already delivered historic results. Violent crime has reached record lows, cartel activity has declined, and property crime has fallen dramatically.
Blanche has also led the effort to reverse the Justice Department’s politicization under President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland. Their tenure included imprisoning grandmothers who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, arresting pro-life protesters, spying on eight Republican senators, surveilling Catholics who attended the traditional Latin Mass, and deploying the National Security Division against concerned parents at school board meetings.
That two-tiered justice system helped drive Americans to the polls for Trump. Ending the abuses is not enough. The department must also repair the damage by dismissing corrupt prosecutors, enforcing the law equally against powerful left-wing actors, and restoring people wronged by the government. Blanche has shown the courage to do exactly that.
Some Senate Republicans objected to the Justice Department’s now-abandoned plan to compensate victims of Biden-era abuses. Yet as the late Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) noted, the United States has a long tradition of compensating victims of government injustice.
Justice requires more than ending misconduct. Government must also make victims whole when it can. That is what giving them their due means.
National Review summarized its objection this way: “No matter whose name is on the DOJ letterhead, the president is running the Justice Department.”
That criticism ignores Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Morrison v. Olson, which he described as one of his favorites. Scalia argued that the Constitution vests all executive power in the president — “this does not mean some of the executive power, but all of the executive power” — and trusts voters to choose a president who will exercise it for the common good. A Justice Department fully independent of the president would answer neither to the nation’s elected chief executive nor to the voters who chose him.
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National Review also argues that Blanche cannot stand up to Trump because he once served as Trump’s personal lawyer. The opposite is more plausible. Who is better positioned to deliver hard news: someone who put his career on the line to defend the president, or someone the president barely knows?
Presidents have often chosen attorneys general with whom they shared close professional ties. Ronald Reagan selected his personal attorney, William French Smith, and later Ed Meese, his former California chief of staff and legal affairs secretary. George W. Bush chose Alberto Gonzales, who had served as his general counsel in Texas.
National Review’s deeper objection seems to have less to do with Blanche and everything to do with Trump. But refusing to confront weaponized government allows wrongdoers to escape accountability and invites the next administration to repeat the abuse.
The left has no hesitation about using power to advance its goals. Some conservatives still treat passivity as principle even after voters put them in office to govern. Trump’s rise was a rejection of that bloodless approach to politics.
Blanche built an impressive prosecutorial record in one of the nation’s most prestigious U.S. attorney’s offices. He left a lucrative private practice to serve the country. He does not need this job. The country needs him in it.
Todd Blanche has met the moment and exceeded conservative expectations. The case against him reflects the old conservative preference for “yelling stop” rather than exercising legitimate power. Senate Republicans should reject that reflex and confirm him as attorney general.
California has a habit of importing some of the worst tech-regulation ideas from overseas. After lawmakers enacted a censorial statute cribbed from the U.K. in 2022 — and watched it run headlong into an injunction — the Golden State now appears eager to borrow from Australia, which in December barred children from major social media platforms.
Earlier this month, California lawmakers introduced a bill to impose “a minimum age requirement to open or maintain a social media account.” Governor Gavin Newsom (D), who usually avoids weighing in on pending bills, publicly endorsed the idea.
Will America keep light-touch rules that protect consumers without strangling innovation — or import Europe’s heavy-handed, fear-driven approach?
However well intentioned, the Australian model collapses on prudential grounds. In the United States, it also invites a swift constitutional challenge — and likely a swift defeat in court.
Most proposals that force platforms to distinguish between adults and minors require age verification. That means users must hand over sensitive personal information — usually government ID documents or biometric data — as the price of entry to the platforms where everyday digital life happens. Once companies collect, process, and store that data, it becomes a tempting target. Hackers do not need ideology, only opportunity.
The roster of victims reads like Don Giovanni’s catalogue. The list includes corporations such as Target, Equifax, Marriott, Capital One, MGM Resorts, and T-Mobile. Platforms from Facebook to X.com to the “Tea” app were also hit. So were third-party verification services. Even in France, where regulators tried to build a privacy-protective system, a third-party age verifier exposed sensitive user data. In the digital age, breaches and leaks are simply a fact of life.
Legislation promoted as “child protection” thus runs into a basic contradiction: it can expose children to new forms of harm. As the R Street Institute and Experian have reported, 25% of minors will become victims of identity fraud or theft before they turn 18. Age-verification mandates would widen the attack surface and increase the odds that minors’ information gets stolen, misused, or sold — and that families spend years cleaning up the wreckage.
Some advocates now treat constitutional objections to “child-safety” bills as impolite. Courts don’t share that squeamishness. In recent years, judges have enjoined multiple constitutionally defective state laws, leaving behind little more than wasted taxpayer dollars and public frustration, while state attorneys general mount doomed defenses.
Newsom’s favored approach also clashes with a Supreme Court precedent California already lost: Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association. In that 2011 case, the court struck down a California law that restricted minors’ access to violent video games. Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion applied strict scrutiny — a demanding standard — and rejected the state’s argument that the law simply “helped” parents.
Scalia’s point applies with even greater force here. A sweeping ban on minors’ access to social media would function less as parental support and more as state substitution. The state would not merely empower parents; it would decide what parents should want, then impose that judgment across the board.
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In American law, parents generally hold the duty — and the right — to decide what media their children consume. That principle does not stop at the edge of the internet.
The broader fight over technology policy often turns on a single question: Will America stick with light-touch, sensible regulation that protects consumers without strangling innovation — or will it import the heavy-handed, fear-driven regulatory posture popular abroad, especially in Europe?
The American technology sector grew and thrived in the internet era. Many foreign regimes, more focused on expansive “safety” mandates than innovation, privacy, or consumer benefit, have not.
Lawmakers should borrow good ideas wherever they find them. But California keeps shopping in the wrong aisle. If Sacramento wants to protect kids, it should start with tools that don’t require building a mass ID-check system for the entire public — and that don’t hand criminals a richer trove of data to steal.
It’s wise to learn from other countries. It’s foolish to copy their worst mistakes.
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