Democrats dig in over rebuke of Warren
WASHINGTON — Democratic senators fighting to derail Jeff Sessions’ nomination as attorney general repeatedly challenged Republicans Wednesday by reading aloud from a critical letter from Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, a day after the Republicans silenced Sen. Elizabeth Warren for doing the same.
Warren was ordered to sit down Tuesday night, throwing the Senate into turmoil as it headed for Wednesday night’s vote on the Alabama senator. She was silenced for reading the letter that Coretta Scott King wrote three decades ago criticizing Sessions’ record on race.
Other Democratic senators read from the letter Tuesday night after she was told to sit down, and more did so Wednesday morning.
Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat whose name has been prominent in speculation about the 2020 presidential race, was given a rare Senate rebuke for impugning a fellow senator and she was barred from saying anything more on the Senate floor about Sessions.
The late-night dust-up quickly spawned the hashtag #LetLizSpeak that was trending on Twitter early Wednesday.
The Senate has been working around the clock since Monday as Democrats challenge President Donald Trump’s nominees, although the party lacks the votes to derail the picks.
Senators reading from the letter Wednesday included Tom Udall of New Mexico, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Sanders said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who ordered Warren to sit and be silent, should apologize to her.
Without directly referencing the letter, McConnell said of Sessions: “It’s been tough to watch all this good man has been put through in recent weeks.”
On the other side, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Wednesday that McConnell’s action had been uncalled for, and he saw a possible link to Trump’s words and actions.
“I sincerely hope this anti-free speech attitude is not travelling down Pennsylvania Avenue to our great chamber,” he said.
In the 1986 letter, Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow said Sessions’ actions as a federal prosecutor were “reprehensible” and he used his office “in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters.” At the time, Sessions was being considered for a federal judgeship.
Democrats are portraying him as a threat to civil rights, voting rights and immigration. Republicans have defended Trump’s choice as a man of integrity who will be an independent voice in the new administration.
Warren produced the threedecade-old letter in which Mrs. 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.”
“Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge,” Mrs. King wrote. Mrs. King died in 2006. Quoting King technically put Warren in violation of a Senate rule for “impugning the motives” of a fellow senator, though senators have said far worse. The letter was written 10 years before Sessions was elected.
The Senate voted 49-43 along party lines to sustain the decision to rebuke Warren.
Democrats seized on the flap to charge that Republicans were muzzling Warren.