Who will be Trump's next Attorney General?

Todd Blanche has the strongest possible setup for this kind of event: he is already serving as acting attorney general, he is one of Trump’s closest legal loyalists, and there is no comparably credible rival with the same combination of trust and proximity. In practice, incumbency in the acting role matters a lot, because it gives the administration an easy default outcome even if formal confirmation gets messy.

The main reason not to assign him an even higher probability is the Senate blockade. If Cornyn, Tillis, and other Republican holdouts keep resisting, Trump could decide that the simplest political move is to withdraw Blanche temporarily, delay the fight, or ultimately pivot to a more confirmable nominee. That said, the current alternatives are weak: Lee Zeldin has no obvious advantage for the Justice Department, Ron DeSantis would be a major lateral political choice, and Yaakov Roth is far less prominent.

Against the current market, I land a little below the quoted 92% for Blanche, mostly because the confirmation dispute creates genuine procedural risk over a long horizon. Still, the market is directionally right that Blanche is overwhelmingly likeliest; I just think the uncertainty around Senate procedure and Trump’s willingness to reshuffle nominations makes this closer to the high 80s than the low 90s.