About a month ago, just days into his tenure as the Senate-confirmed attorney general, Todd Blanche took some time to deliver a 19-minute prepared speech to the Justice Department’s workforce. It was (to the surprise of many) quite benign and apolitical.

Indeed, a casual observer watching those remarks probably would have thought he sounded like a normal attorney general in a normal administration.

“What I have seen over the past 30 years, working intimately with this department, is that this department succeeds when people of different backgrounds, different politics, different life experiences put the mission of the department first,” Blanche said. He added, “We will not engage in or stand for any sort of performative attacks that undermine the institutions that we are sworn to uphold.”

Nearly a month later, that same attorney general sent largely the opposite signal when he delivered a partisan speech at a partisan event.

“To evil men and women in this country, know this: President Trump will hold you accountable,” Blanche declared, celebrating the former client who nominated him to his powerful Cabinet post. He added, “If you choose violence, you will be held accountable.”

Putting aside Donald Trump’s many pardons for violent criminals, which prove the opposite of Blanche’s intended point, the text of the attorney general’s remarks were only part of a larger problem.

“His speech Wednesday is without modern precedent,” The Washington Sun noted ahead of Blanche’s remarks. “In 1964, then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy spoke at the Democratic National Convention, but to pay tribute to his late brother, former President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated the previous November.

“Attorneys general and other senior law-enforcement leaders generally don’t participate in overtly political events to avoid the appearance of using the immense weight of the Justice Department to tip the balance in an election, former DOJ officials said.”

Observers might have noticed that in the Dallas arena, Blanche was listed onscreen as a “former federal prosecutor.” This was a clumsy way of reinforcing the idea, espoused by the Justice Department, that the attorney general appeared at the Republicans’ midterm convention in his personal capacity.

But it’s not that simple. Around this time a decade ago, then-Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro gave an interview in which spoke about the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, saying, “Now, taking off my HUD hat for a second and just speaking individually, it is very clear that Hillary Clinton is the most experienced, thoughtful and prepared candidate for president that we have this year.”

That he said he was “speaking individually” didn’t matter: The Office of Special Counsel determined that Castro had run afoul of a federal ethics law known as the Hatch Act, which (as the administration well knows) prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activities.

In 2026, however, this White House — indifferent to ethical limits, norms and legal restrictions — increasingly sees Cabinet secretaries as little more than pieces on an electoral chess board to be moved around to the benefit of the Republican Party.

It’s why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made unprecedented partisan campaign appearances; it’s why Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. keeps making appearances with vulnerable GOP candidates; it’s why Blanche spoke at a political event in New York last month; and it’s why the attorney general graced the stage at his party’s midterm convention in Dallas.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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