Trump Nominee Jeff Sessions Named New US Attorney General

Sessions’ record of controversial positions on race, immigration and criminal justice reform have sparked alarm. (Photo: AP)

A bitterly divided US Senate confirmed Republican Senator Jeff Sessions on Wednesday as the next attorney general of the United States after strong pushback from Democrats concerned about his record on civil rights.

Sessions, 70, who has served two decades in the Senate from Alabama, was confirmed by a 52-47 vote largely along party lines after Democrats raised public opposition to his confirmation.

In a rare move for a senator recently confirmed to a Cabinet position, Sessions took to the floor of the chamber after the vote and called for members of Congress to have some "latitude" in their relationships with members of the other party.

I want to thank those who after it all found sufficient confidence to confirm me as the next attorney general. Denigrating people who disagree with us, I think, is not a healthy trend for our body.

On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a darling of the political left, was silenced in the Senate for reading a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, that criticized Sessions for his civil rights record.

Democrats, civil rights and immigration groups have voiced alarm about Sessions’ record of controversial positions on race, immigration and criminal justice reform.

With Sessions as attorney general, eight of President Donald Trump's 22 Cabinet nominees have been confirmed.

Trump Justice Department

Sessions, a known immigration hardliner, will take the lead of the Justice Department as its lawyers are defending Trump's temporary entry ban on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries and all refugees, the most controversial executive order of the young administration.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals is due to rule this week on whether to overrule a district court judge in Seattle who suspended the ban last week.

Civil rights groups worry that the Justice Department’s civil rights division will not be aggressive in prosecuting abuses under Sessions.

They cite his failure to win Senate confirmation to become a federal judge in 1986 because of allegations he made racist remarks, including testimony that he had called an African-American prosecutor "boy," an allegation Sessions denied.

Sessions said at his hearing in 1986 that groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union could be considered “un-American.” 

He also acknowledged he had called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a "piece of intrusive legislation."

Sessions has pushed to curb immigration into the United States, including by those who enter legally on work permits. He has also voted against many measures to reduce sentences for prisoners.