Trump's cabinet picks are so awful that it can be hard to keep up. But remember Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III? He's the Alabama senator who may become the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in America. Well, it's been more than a week since he sat for his confirmation hearing, and opposition to Jeff Sessions as our attorney general is getting lost in the shuffle.
If you need a quick refresher: Sessions is a noted racist who basically doesn't believe in any federal civil rights enforcement. As we wrote last week, he’s “anti-black, anti-women, and anti-truth.” He’s against Roe v. Wade. He’s left the door open for prosecuting journalists. He's against the Voting Rights Act because it's "intrusive" and he doesn't believe in consent decrees between the Department of Justice and local police departments. He apparently doesn't believe that there's such a thing as prosecutorial misconduct. He wants an even more brutal criminal justice system, and he wants to further our expensive and inhumane mass incarceration epidemic.
He's so bad that Coretta Scott King herself wrote a letter to Congress urging them to block his nomination.
Tell your senator to vote AGAINST Jeff Sessions for Attorney General
From her letter:
Civil rights leaders, including my husband and Albert Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and unfettered access to the ballot box. 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. This simply cannot be allowed to happen. Mr. Sessions' conduct as U.S. Attorney, from his politically-motivated voting fraud prosecutions to his indifference toward criminal violations of civil rights laws, indicates that he lacks the temperament, fairness and judgment to be a federal judge…
[His actions] raise serious questions about his commitment to the protection of the voting rights of all American citizens[.]
The irony of Mr. Sessions' nomination is that, if confirmed, he will be given life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods.
Don’t forget — Martin Luther King himself couldn’t vote in 1960 due to politically motivated and racist voter restrictions.
Here’s an excerpt from the much longer interview where King says he won’t be able to vote in the election:
Coretta Scott King’s efforts were successful— Jeff Sessions was blocked by Congress in 1986. It’s been 30 years since he failed to become a federal judge, but time hasn't changed him, and he's as bad now as he was then. The idea of him running the entire Justice Department is an abomination.
Jeff Sessions must be stopped. Call your senator today, and try every single office until you get through. Then call five friends to make sure they call their senators. Do what you can to stop him from becoming the next attorney general.
Tell your senator to vote AGAINST Jeff Sessions for attorney general