Senate Confirms Jeff Sessions to Be Attorney General

The Senate on Wednesday night confirmed Jeff Sessions of Alabama as attorney general after a lengthy and polarizing debate, elevating one of President Trump’s closest allies to serve as the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer.

In a 52-47 vote, Sessions won unanimous support from Republicans, while every Democrat except for one, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, voted against his nomination. Over the course of 20 years in the Senate, Sessions made his name as perhaps the chamber’s foremost immigration hardliner; he favored not only a crackdown on illegal immigration but limits on legal pathways as well.

That stance endeared him to Trump, who had made the issue a centerpiece of his campaign. But along with the president’s early unilateral action on immigration, it made Sessions’s nomination for attorney general a nonstarter for most Democrats despite the traditional deference accorded to fellow senators up for Cabinet posts.

Throughout the debate, Democrats questioned how a man who appeared at Trump rallies in “Make America Great Again” hats and nodded along as crowds chanted for the imprisonment of Hillary Clinton could serve in a post that demands political independence.

Republicans, however, steadfastly defended Sessions as committed to the rule of law, citing his prior service as a federal prosecutor and then attorney general of Alabama. His confirmation as attorney general is the ultimate career comeback of sorts for Sessions, 30 years after the Senate rejected his nomination for a federal judgeship over allegations of racism.

It was Sessions’s record as a U.S. attorney in the 1980s that led to the most dramatic moment of the Senate debate this week, as Republicans formally rebuked Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts for reading from a critical letter sent by Coretta Scott King urging the Senate to reject his bid for a judgeship. A 115-year-old Senate rule forbids members of the chamber from impugning one another, although it has rarely been enforced before Tuesday night.

The party-line vote is the latest in a string of contentious confirmation tallies for members of the new president’s Cabinet. Republicans have remained mostly unified in the face of stiff opposition from Democrats, who have used parliamentary stalling tactics to drag out debate on Trump’s nominees to lead the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury. Vice President Mike Pence broke a tie to confirm Betsy DeVos as education secretary on Tuesday, clearing the way for a vote on Sessions. Up next is a debate on Representative Tom Price to serve as HHS secretary. A vote is expected Thursday.

Trump has begun his presidency with the most skeletal administration in nearly three decades. The Senate confirmed seven of President George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s nominees on their first day in office in 2001 and 2009, respectively. President Bill Clinton won approval of three nominees on January 20, 1993. The Trump transition got off to a slow start vetting its nominees after the election, and Democrats are demanding more scrutiny and debate for most of his picks.

Several of the wealthier nominees have had hearings delayed because of the lengthy security and ethics vetting process, and others are facing staunch opposition from Democrats and skepticism from a few key Republicans. The Senate hasn’t formally rejected a Cabinet pick since it voted down President George H.W. Bush’s nomination of John Tower for defense secretary in 1989. But no new president has gotten all of their nominees confirmed in the last 30 years; those that become enmeshed in controversy or partisan brinkmanship (it’s often both) usually withdraw before a vote.

The president has assembled a government-in-waiting that has plenty of money, plenty of military expertise, and plenty of time in politics—but not much experience in the sprawling federal departments they have been tapped to run. Trump has, thus far, chosen five wealthy business leaders, two generals, and four Republican politicians for his Cabinet. All but two are white, all but two are men, and just one—Elaine Chao—has run a federal agency before.