WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Sen. Jeff Sessions to be attorney general in President Donald Trump's administration, despite Democratic opposition to the Alabama Republican over his record on civil rights and immigration.
The 52-47, nearly party-line vote capped weeks of divisive battles over Sessions, who was one of the Senate's most conservative lawmakers and an early supporter of Trump's. After the vote was announced, Sessions' Republican colleagues applauded the outcome while barely a handful of Democrats joined in.
Trump gained another Cabinet member in a bruising confirmation process for Sessions and other Cabinet nominees, as Democrats have used the process to amplify their concerns about the president's agenda even as they have fallen short of derailing any nominees.
Democrats laced into Sessions, casting him as too cozy with Trump and too harsh on immigrants. They said he wouldn't do enough to protect voting rights for minority-group members, protections for gays and the legal right of women to obtain abortions. They also said they fear that illegal aliens won't receive due process with Sessions as the top law enforcement officer.
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"Any attorney general must be able to stand firm for the rule of law even against the powerful executive that nominated him or her. In this administration, I believe that independence is even more necessary," said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. "[Sessions'] record raises doubts about whether he can be a champion for those who need this office most, and it also raises doubts about whether he can curb unlawful overreach" by Trump.
Republicans say Sessions has demonstrated over a long career in public service -- including two decades in the Senate -- that he possesses integrity, honesty and a commitment to justice.
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"He's honest. He's fair. He's been a friend to many of us, on both sides of the aisle," Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said. "It's been tough to watch all this good man has been put through in recent weeks. This is a well-qualified colleague with a deep reverence for the law. He believes strongly in the equal application of it to everyone."
Sessions won unanimous backing from Senate Republicans, including Arkansas' John Boozman and Tom Cotton, but picked up the support of just one Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Tim Scott, R-S.C., the Senate's only black Republican, offered a personal defense of Sessions, whom he said had "earned my support." Scott read social-media messages he had received that argued he had let black people down with his support for Sessions. "I left out all the ones that used the 'n-word,'" Scott said in a floor speech as several of his Republican colleagues watched.
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley is expected to name a replacement for Sessions as early as today. Bentley has named six finalists for the Senate appointment, including state Attorney General Luther Strange and U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, both Republicans.
Delay tactics
Wednesday's vote came as tension rise over delaying tactics by minority Democrats, moves that have left fewer of Trump's picks in place than President Barack Obama had at the same time eight years ago. Democrats no longer have filibuster power over Cabinet picks, however, after changing Senate rules when they controlled the chamber in 2013.
While Democrats couldn't block Sessions' confirmation, many looked at the vote as a demonstration of their willingness to fight Republicans and publicly scrutinize Trump's team.
"We didn't go into this hoping just to tell a story. We wanted to beat one or two of these nominees," said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. "And it doesn't look like we're going to do that. But there's value in telling the story."
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said the intense focus that Democrats put on Sessions will make the public "much more likely to watch to see if he's independent of the president or just a shill for the president."
As the 84th attorney general, Sessions brings a conservative viewpoint to the Justice Department and its 113,000 employees. A former prosecutor, he promises a focus aligned with Trump in pushing a "law and order" agenda that includes tougher enforcement of laws on immigration, drugs and gun trafficking.
Civil-rights activists, however, worry that he will reverse steps taken by the Obama administration in the past eight years to bring more accountability to police departments, state and local governments, and employers. Activists point to his history of votes against various civil-rights measures, as well as accusations of racial insensitivity.
Sessions' nomination to a federal judgeship was rejected three decades ago by the Senate Judiciary Committee after it was alleged that as a federal prosecutor he had called a black attorney "boy" and had said organizations like the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union were un-American.
At his hearing last month, Sessions said he had never harbored racial animus, saying he had been falsely caricatured.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who leads the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed confidence that Sessions would be a "fair and evenhanded" attorney general and would make good on his pledges to enforce even those laws he voted against in the Senate.
"There should be no question," Grassley said, "that he is more than qualified to be the nation's top law enforcement officer."
Warren rebuked
In the debate over Sessions' confirmation, Sen. Elizabeth Warren was given a rare rebuke Tuesday evening for quoting Coretta Scott King, widow of the late civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., in her 1986 criticism of Sessions.
Coretta Scott King wrote that Sessions, as an acting federal prosecutor in Alabama, used his power to "chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens."
McConnell held that Warren had run afoul of rules about impugning a fellow senator.
"The senator has impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama," McConnell said Tuesday night before setting up roll-call votes on the matter. Republicans agreed, voting 49-43 along strict party lines that the Massachusetts Democrat had run afoul of Senate Rule 19 by reading the anti-Sessions statement from King.
The move sparked a backlash, with accusations of sexism and selective use of an obscure Senate rule bouncing around social media for much of Wednesday.
Ahead of the final vote, Democratic senators arrived one after another in the chamber Wednesday to criticize McConnell, particularly for his statement late Tuesday that Warren "was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted."
"I think Leader McConnell owes Sen. Warren an apology," Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said in a floor speech Wednesday. He and Democrats said they were particularly chagrined that a Senate rule could be invoked to prevent a member from criticizing someone who is up for confirmation before the body.
Several Democrats took to the Senate floor Wednesday to reread a portion of King's letter in solidarity with Warren.
"Still banned from floor, but spoke w/ civil rights leaders this AM to say: Coretta Scott King will not be silenced," Warren said in a Twitter post Wednesday morning.
Republicans criticized Warren's actions. In an interview on Fox News, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, accused his Democratic colleague of advancing false claims about Sessions and sought to remind Americans that Southern Democrats were "the party of the Ku Klux Klan" and spearheaded segregation laws decades ago.
"The Democrats are angry and they're out of their minds. ... They're just foaming at the mouth, practically," Cruz said.
Cruz once called McConnell a liar on the Senate floor, and he was not rebuked.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., argued that Republicans were being hypocritical. They had no qualms about silencing Warren, he argued, even as they have declined to rebuke Trump for lobbing insults at his critics.
"My Republican colleagues can hardly summon a note of disapproval for an administration that insults a federal judge, tells the news media to shut up, offhandedly threatens a legislator's career and seems to invent new dimensions of falsehood each and every day," Schumer said. "I hope that this anti-free-speech attitude is not traveling down Pennsylvania Avenue to our great chamber."
Next votes up
Sessions became Trump's sixth Cabinet-level nominee to win confirmation. Sessions in February 2016 was the first senator to endorse Trump, and his conservative, populist views have shaped many of the administration's early policies, including on immigration.
This week has featured round-the-clock Senate sessions as GOP leaders are grinding through a thicket of Cabinet picks who have drawn criticism from Democrats.
The vote on Sessions came a day after Senate Republicans approved Betsy DeVos, a Republican donor, as education secretary with the help of a tiebreaking vote by Vice President Mike Pence.
Next up for the Senate is Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., Trump's pick for health secretary. A final vote is expected this week. A confirmation vote also is expected on Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Department secretary.
Democrats have solidly opposed Price, a staunch advocate of repealing Obama's health care overhaul and reshaping and scaling back the Medicare and Medicaid programs that provide health care to older and low-income people.
But they've mostly accused Price, a wealthy former orthopedic surgeon, of having conflicts of interest by acquiring stocks in health care companies and pushing legislation that could help those enterprises.
They've especially targeted his acquisition of shares in Innate Immunotherapeutics, an Australian biotech company that's said Price got a special insider's deal. Price, who has said he learned of the opportunity from a fellow lawmaker, Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., had testified to Congress that the shares were available to all investors.
"If I were a prosecutor, I'd say this case has real potential," Schumer said Wednesday.
Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Taylor, Alan Fram and Kimberly Chandler of The Associated Press; by Sean Sullivan, Kelsey Snell, Paul Kane, Ed O'Keefe and David Weigel of The Washington Post; and by Eric Lichtblau and Matt Flegenheimer of The New York Times.
A Section on 02/09/2017