In this image from Senate Television, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks on the floor of the U.S. Senate in Washington, Feb. 6, 2017, about the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be Education Secretary. The Senate will be in session around the clock this week as Republicans aim to confirm more of President Donald Trump's Cabinet picks over Democratic opposition. (Senate TV via AP)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate headed for a vote to confirm Sen. Jeff Sessions as attorney general Wednesday evening, a day after Republicans threw the chamber into turmoil by silencing Democrat Elizabeth Warren for reading aloud a letter from Coretta Scott King from three decades ago challenging his 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, an Alabama Republican.
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."
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 to be the top law enforcement officer as a man of integrity who will be an independent voice in the new administration.
The incident Tuesday night underscored that the partisan divide in the Senate has devolved into nearly unchecked rancor, with majority Republicans muscling through Cabinet nominees in committee by changing the rules. Democrats are under intense pressure from their liberal base to challenge the entire Trump agenda, especially his nominees.
Warren produced the three-decade-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.
McConnell, R-Ky., invoked Senate Rule 19, which says "a senator in debate, who, in the opinion of the presiding officer, refers offensively to any state of the union, or who impugns the motives or integrity of any senator, or reflects on other senators, may be called to order under Rule XIX."
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, sparking liberals to take to Twitter to post the King letter in its entirety.
McConnell's words to Warren turned into a rallying cry for the left.
"Senator Warren was giving a lengthy speech," McConnell said. "She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted."
Warren had argued: "I'm reading a letter from Coretta Scott King to the Judiciary Committee from 1986 that was admitted into the record. I'm simply reading what she wrote about what the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be a federal court judge meant and what it would mean in history for her."
Warren was originally warned after reading from a statement by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., that labeled Sessions a disgrace.
Democrats pointed out that McConnell didn't object when Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called him a liar in a 2015 dustup.
By ANDREW TAYLOR - Feb. 8, 2017 11:03 AM EST
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Online: Coretta Scott King letter: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3456928-Coretta-Scott-King-Lette...
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