Trump just pushed out the attorney general he ordered to expedite marijuana rescheduling and replaced her, for now, with former personal lawyer Todd Blanche. Industry sources say the Schedule III push is still moving, but for cannabis readers the bigger question remains the same: even if it happens, what exactly does rescheduling solve?
Pam Bondi is out, Todd Blanche is in, and the immediate question for cannabis is whether that changes the fate of marijuana rescheduling.
On Thursday, Trump announced that Bondi was out as attorney general and that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche would serve as acting AG, with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin reportedly under consideration for the permanent job. Bondi’s exit comes less than four months after Trump signed his December 18 executive order directing the attorney general to move marijuana to Schedule III “in the most expeditious manner possible.”
If you are looking for the quick answer, it seems to be: probably not much, at least not right away.
MJBizDaily reported Thursday that several sources close to the process do not expect Bondi’s firing to delay rescheduling, and one observer told the outlet that movement could still come within 30 to 60 days. Brian Vicente told MJBiz that Trump “has been clear in his directive” and that the administration appears to be taking steps to make the process legally and procedurally sound. The same report says Blanche is already familiar with the issue, with Jushi executive Trent Woloveck calling him “a big net positive” who has been involved in conversations around drafting the final rule.
So if the question is whether Bondi’s exit kills rescheduling, the answer right now looks like no.
But for High Times readers, that was never the only question.
The bigger one is whether Schedule III was ever the clean win some people wanted to pretend it was. High Times has already made this point repeatedly over the last few months: rescheduling may matter, but it does not legalize cannabis federally, it does not create interstate commerce for the products currently sold in state markets, and it does not automatically deliver criminal justice reform, expungements or some magical new era of freedom. It may help certain operators, especially on taxes, but it also opens the door to deeper federal control and raises the same old question of who gets folded into the new system and who gets left outside it.
That posture matters here because Blanche’s arrival does not really change the underlying contradiction. If anything, it sharpens it.
Blanche is not just another DOJ bureaucrat. He is Trump’s former personal lawyer, now elevated to one of the most important roles in the government, at least on an acting basis. So even if rescheduling keeps moving, the politics around it get even stranger. This is not some neutral, technocratic process floating above the chaos. It is still a Trump project, still tied to a White House that has sold cannabis reform as medicine rather than liberation, and still likely to face legal challenges the second a final rule drops. MJBiz noted that SAM, which already sued over the administration’s new hemp CBD reimbursement pilot, is expected to use similar tactics against rescheduling itself.
And that gets to the part too many headlines skip. The issue is not only whether Blanche speeds things up, slows them down or signs off on whatever is already in motion. The issue is what happens after that. Even if the administration finalizes Schedule III, the real-world benefits may not arrive quickly. MJBiz notes that legal challenges could still delay anything tangible, including hoped-for tax relief, and High Times has already cautioned that even the tax piece is not guaranteed to work as cleanly as some operators would like.
So yes, Bondi is gone. Yes, Blanche is in. And yes, the people close to the process are signaling continuity, not collapse.
But continuity is not clarity.
Trump’s December order still stands. DOJ still appears to be moving. The White House is also moving on related cannabinoid policy, including the new CMS hemp reimbursement pilot that launched this week and immediately triggered a lawsuit from prohibitionist groups. That broader pattern suggests the administration is still trying to show forward motion on cannabis and hemp, even while wrapping it all in tight medical language and heavy qualifiers.
That is why the most honest read is probably the simplest one: Bondi’s exit changes the cast, not the core uncertainty.
The people around the process just got reshuffled. The political weirdness increased. The skepticism should stay exactly where it was.
Because even if weed rescheduling is still on track, the real question has not changed at all: progress for whom, and on whose terms?
