Senators Who Built the Machine Now Balk at What It Made

Cornyn and Tillis, architects of the partisan confirmation era they inherited, are expressing reservations about a nominee their own party's procedural legacy made possible.

Senators John Cornyn and Tillis are stalling on the confirmation of Emil Bauer Blanche, declining to move swiftly on a nominee from their own party's administration.
Both senators previously supported accelerated or party-line confirmation processes during prior administrations, helping normalize the very procedures now delivering this nominee.
The Party notes, with characteristic regret, that the leopards consuming this particular face were fed by the senators whose faces are now being consumed.
No revisions to the platform are anticipated; the Party remains committed to the eating of faces on a strictly non-partisan basis.
The confirmation remains in procedural limbo as of Saturday, July 25, 2026.

The Leopards Eating People's Faces Party regrets to confirm that Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) are experiencing a routine consequence of the platform they have long supported.

As reported Friday, both senators have declined to move expeditiously on the confirmation of Emil Bauer Blanche, the nominee now awaiting their assent. The Party wishes to note, with the warmth and composure our constituents have come to expect, that this is a perfectly orderly outcome.

Senators Cornyn and Tillis were among the architects and beneficiaries of the partisan confirmation architecture that obtained in prior congresses — an architecture that, among its many documented outputs, tends to produce nominees who arrive with the full expectation of party support and the full weight of precedent behind them. The senators built the runway. The aircraft is now on approach. We understand they find this surprising.

The Party does not find it surprising. The platform has always been the eating of faces. It does not specify which faces. It does not reserve the right to pause for faces that have been particularly helpful to leopard-feeding operations in the past. The leopards, we are pleased to report, are performing exactly as described in all of our publicly available materials.

The Party extends its customary sympathies to the senators' faces and reminds all interested parties that the confirmation process they are now navigating was assembled, in no small part, by the same hands now hesitating over the lever.

We regret the inconvenience. We do not regret the leopards. They are doing their jobs.