Transcript of Blanche Confirmation Hearing, US and Strait of Hormuz, ICE Vehicle Stops

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche faces a Senate confirmation hearing today.

Democrats accuse him of weaponizing the Justice Department for President Trump. A few Republicans have concerns about his track record. Does Blanche have the numbers?

I'm Tony Martinez. That's Leila Fadel, and this is Up First from NPR News. A deal between the U.S. and Iran was supposed to mean that the Strait of Hormuz is open for business. Now President Trump has ordered a blockade. He says the military will take control of the waterway, but is that possible without boots on the ground?

Around.

And ICE is putting a temporary pause on most traffic stops after agents shot and killed 2 people in a week. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche will be on Capitol Hill today for his confirmation hearing to lead the Justice Department on a permanent basis.

It is a high-stakes moment for Blanche, given that he has a narrow path to confirmation in the Senate, where Republicans have a razor-thin majority.

NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is covering this. Ryan, should be a spicy one today.

Yeah, I expect this to be a tense hearing today, and that's because in this second Trump administration, The Justice Department has been in turmoil. It has been at the center of a number of political firestorms, and Blanche himself has been in the thick of all of it. He is seen as a Trump loyalist. He previously served as Trump's personal attorney, and then when Trump returned to office, he named Blanche to be the number 2 official at the Justice Department. Blanche then became acting attorney general in April after Trump pushed out his first attorney general, Pam Bondi. Trump has liked what he's seen from Blanche in the past couple months. He nominated him for the job full-time, but Democrats, and it has to be said, a few Republicans, have concerns about Blanche's track record over the past 18 months at the department, and so I expect him to get tough questions about that today.

What do you think will be the focus of what the senators will try to grill him about?

Well, look, Democrats have a whole bunch of issues that they're gonna want to get into with Blanche. They say that he has destroyed the Justice Department's traditional independence from the White House. They say that he's made it subservient to the president, weaponized it to go after Trump's perceived political enemies. And there's a long list of Trump critics who have faced DOJ investigations or prosecutions, perhaps most notably former FBI Director James Comey, who has been indicted twice by this Justice Department. Democrats also have questions about Blanche's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, whether the Justice Department and Blanche specifically did anything to try to shield President Trump from embarrassment in those files. And then there's the, the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund that the department agreed to set up as part of a settlement with Trump to end his lawsuit against the IRS.

Yeah, and that's the, uh, anti-weaponization fund that the Justice Department says is not going forward.

That's right, the fund has been scrapped, yes, but the part of the settlement that shields Trump and his family from audits of past tax returns, that remains in place. And Democrats view that as Exhibit A of what they say is Blanche working in Trump's interest instead of the public interest. It's also worth noting here that a federal judge this week blasted both Trump and the Justice Department over the settlement. The judge said Trump's lawsuit was brought in bad faith in order to manipulate the judicial process and try to use the court to provide a degree of legitimacy to the eventual settlement.

You know, Ryan, I remember Republicans were opposed. There were some at least who were opposed to this anti-weaponization fund. Does that mean that Todd Blanch might be in trouble?

Well, look, you're right. There were Republicans who pushed back forcefully against the anti-weaponization fund, and that played a big part in Blanch's decision to declare the fund dead. One Republican senator who spoke out against that fund was North Carolina's Thom Tillis. He is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that Blanche is going to be appearing before today. It's unclear at this point which way Tillis will ultimately fall on Blanche's nomination. But what is clear is that Democrats are united in opposition, and that means that Blanche doesn't have a lot of room for error here. Remember, Republicans have a very slim majority in the Senate, even more so since Kentucky's Mitch McConnell remains out because of health issues. And so that means that only a couple of GOP defections could kill Blanche's nomination. So I'm going to be watching for how Blanche tries to thread that needle to keep every Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee and those in the full Senate as well onside with his appearance today.

All right. That's NPR's Ryan Lucas. Ryan, thanks.

Thank you.

Since the start of the conflict with Iran, President Trump has said a lot of things about the Strait of Hormuz.

He said the key waterway was in great shape after U.S. forces decimated Iran's navy. Later, he said the strait was not America's problem and other nations needed to sort it out. And more recently, that a preliminary peace deal meant the strait was open for business, but Iran has stymied the administration at every turn. Now a U.S. naval blockade is back in place, and Trump says he will take over the strait, though he backtracked on the administration charging a kind of transit fee.

We've got Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman here with us to sort it all out. Good morning, Tom.

Good morning.

Okay, so Trump says he wants to take over the strait. What would that mean, Tom, from a military perspective?

Well, full control for the U.S. would mean that you had to eliminate or severely reduce Iran's power to fire drones or missiles at commercial ships. Iran has hit at least 7 commercial ships in the past week, damaging some, and the U.S. says nearly a dozen crew members are killed, wounded, or missing. That has predictably led to ship transits slowing to around a dozen each day, down from 30 or 40 a day several weeks ago and well below the 130 before the war started. Now, the US in the last few days has hit Iranian drone bases, missile sites, radar, other military sites. But retired military officers and analysts I talk with say you'd have to increase those attacks by a factor of 3 or 4 times for weeks to maybe get that threat reduced to a level where commercial ships can start moving at decent levels. So will that happen? You know, we'll have to see. But recent US strikes really have not accomplished enough because Iran is not only attacking those commercial ships, but also US bases in Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain. Those countries have said their defenses have knocked out those Iranian missiles and no word on any damage from the US side.

You know, Laila, a guy I know on Capitol Hill said it's like two bucks locking horns.

Hmm.

Can the U.S. drastically reduce that Iranian drone and missile threat with more intensive bombing?

You know, it's hard to say. Iran has thousands of drones and missiles, as well as fast boats that can lay mines. Again, it may take weeks or longer for a stronger bombing campaign. And the big question, if I'm a shipowner or an insurer, do I feel comfortable moving through the strait? Is the threat reduced enough? Only they can answer that. Here's another thing. Laila. The US is now guiding ships through this southern path in the Strait of Hormuz, just off Oman, not escorting them, but basically in the area and saying, hey, here's a safer route. That's the route Iran is attacking, saying ships have to come through their approved route closer to their shoreline. Analysts tell me that the US will have to expand that Oman route for ships, and they may have to actually escort the commercial ships like we saw during the tank war in the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq War. That's very time-consuming and takes probably a lot more ships to serve as escorts.

Realistically, Tom, how much is feasible without boots on the ground?

You know, President Trump and others have raised that possibility. The Marines have studied this for decades, including seizing the main Iranian oil facility on Kharg Island. You know, it's doable, and you could take out the military facilities, seize the oil infrastructure as a bargaining chip, You might have casualties, though. Others say you don't have to put boots on the ground, but simply blockade it or bomb the military targets.

What about NATO getting involved in helping open the strait?

Well, France and Britain have talked about this, a multinational maritime mission to secure the strait. They will only do that, they say, when the conditions stabilize, and of course, they're not stable now.

That's NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Thank you, Tom.

You're welcome.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency says it's pausing most vehicle stops in its enforcement operations.

Those are the kind of stops that led to two killings in a week. Fathers in Texas and Maine were killed after ICE officers fired into their vehicles. ICE suspended the stops earlier this week, according to Maine Senator Angus King. This morning, President Trump seemed to contradict the new policy in a post on Truth Social, calling the stops, quote, one of ICE's most important and effective crime-fighting tools. It's not clear yet if or how that could affect policy going forward.

NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán joins us to talk about all this. Hi, Sergio.

Hey, Leila.

So tell us more about what this policy shift means.

Yeah, I mean, this could mark a significant change. The last two deaths stemmed from traffic stops. That includes the fatal shootings of Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine this week and that of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas last week. The Department of Homeland Security accused Durán Guerrero of being a public safety threat and Salgado Araujo of weaponizing his car to run over an ICE officer, neither of them was the intended immigration enforcement target. And no video evidence has been presented to back up DHS's claims. Yesterday, NPR confirmed that the agency will pause, at least for now, conducting traffic stops. DHS told NPR it will not discuss enforcement tactics. So we don't yet know all the details of this change, but the office of US Senator Angus King tell us, uh, this is happening.

Now, there have been a lot of big questions— as you kind of mention here— about whether deadly force should have been used in these cases and whether these men posed any danger. What's DHS's policy on the use of deadly force?

So DHS has accused Duran Guerrero in Maine of attempting to flee the scene. The agency's policy says deadly force cannot be used solely to prevent someone from fleeing unless the person poses a significant threat. Paul Hunker is a former chief counsel for ICE in Dallas.

The standards in principle are clear.

A person has to pose an imminent threat of harm to use deadly force.

Hunker says whether the person poses an imminent threat is always from the perspective of the officer.

Why were the agents in both Texas and Maine not wearing body cameras? I mean, that was the expectation after other killings.

That was, as you might remember, after the deadly shootings of US citizens Renee Goode and Alex Peretti in Minneapolis, DHS said it was going to quickly deploy body cameras to agents across the country. Well, But that hasn't happened. Only about half of the field officers have body cameras, according to DHS. The agency is blaming Democrats in Congress and the partial government shutdowns for this, but the agency is once again vowing to deploy body cameras for all agents in the next 60 days. Still, Leyla, advocates, politicians, and community members are calling for independent investigations into these shootings.

Sergio, the interesting thing that you mentioned is that the victims in Texas and Maine were not the intended targets of ICE when the officers attempted to pull them over. Is that a coincidence?

Not really. This is a result of a shift in approach by the Trump administration. Under previous presidents, collateral arrests were not happening as much. That is the arrest of people who were not the intended targets of the federal immigration agents. So, for example, agents would go to a home to arrest a specific person. If others around them were undocumented but not criminals, ICE officers typically ignored them. But because President Trump has an ambitious goal of arresting millions of immigrants, ICE agents have been feeling the pressure of arresting anyone who is undocumented and of pulling over anyone who might be suspected of being in the country illegally, and that could lead to killings like this.

That's NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán. Thank you, Sergio.

You're welcome.

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