The United States Senate voted 52 – 47 to confirm Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as the next Attorney General of the United States. The vote was mostly along party lines, with only Joe Manchin of West Virginia crossing the aisle to vote in favor.
The vote comes after contentious confirmation hearings and floor debate over the Sessions, who has a long history of racial controversy attached to his record.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) was silenced yesterday when she attempted to read a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King, outlining her opposition to Sessions — who was a nominee for the federal bench at the time — on the grounds that he actively worked to suppress the vote of Black people in Alabama.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked a rule against Senators criticizing each other during debate to end Warren’s speech, but later allowed several other Senators — all men — read from the letter.
Also on Wednesday, Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate’s only Black Republican, read many tweets directed at him in response to his endorsement of Sessions, calling him “Uncle Tom” and “house Negro.”
The Senate confirmed another controversial nominee yesterday as Vice President Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote to confirm Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary. The pace of presidential appointees has been slow in the first few weeks of the Trump administration, with several cabinet posts and a Supreme Court seat still open.
