Republican senators voted on Tuesday to formally silence a Democratic colleague for impugning a peer, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, by condemning his nomination for attorney general while reading a letter from Coretta Scott King.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, had been holding forth on the Senate floor on the eve of Mr. Sessions’s expected confirmation vote, reciting a 1986 letter from Mrs. King that criticized Mr. Sessions’s record on civil rights.
The New York Times
“Impugning a peer” who was not a “peer” when Coretta Scott King wrote a moving letter to the Senate asking them not to confirm Jeff Sessions as a federal district judge. Sen. Warren was “silenced” tonight by a southern Senator for reading a letter from Coretta Scott King objecting to the confirmation of a racist as a federal district judge. Think about that.
Women did.
They decided to read the letter themselves. And publish their readings on Twitter. Because we will not be silenced. (Thank you, Debra Messing!)
Read the full text of the letter here.