Lisa Murkowski Said Friday She Will Oppose President Donald Trump's Attorney General

With Sen. Mitch McConnell out indefinitely, Blanche can afford only one more Republican defection. Blanche, now acting attorney general, won over holdouts John Cornyn and Thom Tillis by pledging in writing that Trump's $1.8bn anti-weaponization fund was dead and that a related tax-immunity deal applied only to past returns.

Both arose from a settlement of Trump's $10bn lawsuit against the IRS. Questions remain about whether the fund could be revived and why the president would receive a deal from his own administration that could save him millions. Separately, Tennessee primary voters picked Memphis-area lawmakers Brent Taylor and Justin Pearson to face off in a reconfigured US House seat central to Trump's plan to keep a slim Republican majority. Taylor, endorsed by Trump, won the GOP nomination in the 9th district; Pearson, expelled from the Tennessee House three years ago for gun-control protests, won the Democratic nod.