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With just a week left before the Senate leaves for its August recess, the Trump Administration is increasing pressure on lawmakers to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general.

The White House said in a press release on Friday that Blanche “should be confirmed by the U.S. Senate without delay.” The White House included statements from law enforcement organizations, state attorneys general, former Justice Department officials, and other groups that it said were “united in demanding [Blanche’s] expeditious confirmation.”

That same day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged the upper chamber to confirm Blanche before leaving Washington, D.C., to go on recess at the end of next week.

“Todd Blanche has been an invaluable partner in advancing President Trump’s agenda and as a result of his leadership at the Department of Justice, Americans are safer today,” Rubio said in a post on X. “The Senate should not leave for recess without confirming him as Attorney General.”

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins also on Friday called on lawmakers to confirm Blanche.

“President Trump chose the right leader for @TheJusticeDept,” Rollins said in a post on X. “It’s time for the Senate to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General.”

The confirmation of Blanche, who has been serving as acting attorney general for the Department of Justice (DOJ) since Pam Bondi was ousted from the role in April, was upended this week after the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote that would have advanced his nomination. 

Two senators in the President’s own party have threatened to pull their support of Blanche, saying that they want confirmation from the DOJ that the proposed $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which was part of a settlement agreement for Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the I.R.S. over the leak of his tax returns, has been eliminated.

Trump and Blanche have said that the fund, which would have provided compensation to people who claim that they were unfairly targeted by the government, is “dead.” But Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas who was one of the two holdout votes, said this week that he has not received written confirmation of that.

Read More: What to Know About the DOJ’s $1.8B ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ That Could Compensate Trump Allies Investigated Under Biden

“This is about making sure that even if you’re the President of the United States, you don’t get favorable terms from the government in a settlement of a lawsuit that ordinary citizens would not get,” Cornyn said on Thursday. Cornyn lost his re-election run in his state’s Republican primary in May, to the President-backed challenger, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The Trump Administration’s renewed pressure on the Senate to push through Blanche’s confirmation comes a day after the President indicated he might pull the nomination.

“I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday, referring to the two Republican holdouts.

During his Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday, Trump said of Cornyn threatening to pull his support of Blanche: “I don’t really blame him, to be honest with you.”

“I endorsed his opponent,” Trump said. “The man that lost, the man that I didn’t endorse, has become very angry, and that’s ok.”

“I mean, I understand that,” he continued. “I probably would do the same thing.”

Every week brings more twists and turns to the war in Iran and the crisis that has kept the Strait of Hormuz, a key lane for fuel shipments, mostly closed. As the crisis has continued, electrification and non-fossil fuel power has received more and more attention. In the long run, electric vehicles can displace the oil that is refined into fuel for the internal combustion engine. And renewables can displace natural gas in the power sector. Largely missing from the public discussion is the opportunity to catalyze a broader shift to alternative fuels across sectors that can’t be electrified easily. 

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz hasn’t just stopped the flow of natural gas and crude oil but has also simultaneously made it more difficult to get refined products—everything from jet fuel to cooking fuel—to market. In theory, both the rapid price increases and the present volatility should provide a strong incentive to invest in alternative fuels. The reality is more complicated. The same forces that make the case for alternative fuels also make it hard to invest right now.

There’s perhaps no better example to illustrate the challenge than jet fuel. Hundreds of thousands of barrels of jet fuel left the Strait of Hormuz every day before the crisis. In some places, including Europe, that supply had been central to keeping planes in the air. More than 40% of the continent’s jet fuel imports originated from the Persian Gulf last year, according to data from S&P Global. 

Alternatives are already on the market. Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), an umbrella term for a wide range of fuel sources including everything from recycled cooking fuel to plant-based fuels, is blended with jet fuel in many parts of the world, bringing down carbon emissions from flying. But in recent years SAF has been anywhere from 3 to 5 times more expensive than conventional jet fuel. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has closed some of that gap leaving SAF prices closer to 1.5 to 2 times as expensive.

But, with higher fuel prices eating into airline profits, companies are now poorly positioned to take advantage of the moment. To facilitate SAF production, airlines typically agree to long-term agreements to purchase the fuel. With high levels of geopolitical uncertainty, this is not the moment for executives to commit to a price premium without a regulatory mandate. SAF may sound nice, but it remains unaffordable. 

The refiners who make SAF, on the other hand, are enjoying record profit margins. But they, too, see too much uncertainty as prices fluctuate wildly. On earnings calls this summer they say they are more focused on improving operations and executing existing plans than investing in new projects. 

At a national level, the thinking should be different. SAF is more expensive, but a government can now clearly see the differential as an energy security premium as well as a sustainability advantage. It’s well worth paying to protect the country’s economy in the event of a Hormuz-like situation. 

The industry already sees this opportunity. Last year, a SAF executive corrected me when I used the word “sustainable.” It’s “synthetic aviation fuel.” Better optics, he said. 

Even still, response from governments around the world has thus far been uneven. This moment has strengthened policymakers’ resolve in the European Union, where an airline SAF mandate has faced pushback from industry since it was signed into law in 2023. In the U.S., the SAF debate remains at a standstill. Last year, a tax incentive for SAF survived the gutting of the Inflation Reduction Act albeit at a reduced rate. Tax incentives may help move the market, but they’re not enough; governments can help coordinate the necessary infrastructure.  

Even amid the uncertainty, the clever businesses—whether that’s airlines, refiners, fuel transport companies, or commodity traders—will be the ones that figure out how to deploy alternative fuels while mitigating risk. 

SAF, of course, is just one example. Fuels represent nearly 80% of final energy consumption, and not everything can be electrified. “We have not had anything like the success in producing affordable, scalable, low-carbon fuels to displace oil,” says Ernie Moniz, a former U.S. Secretary of Energy who now runs the Energy Futures Initiative. “We need a lot of innovation on the fuel side.”

After decades of success innovating and deploying clean power alternatives, more work needs to be done on molecules. Today’s volatility is making the business case.  

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