On Wednesday night, the Senate confirmed Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as the next attorney general, on a 52-47 vote.
The only Democrat to support Sessions was Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The Republican governor of Alabama will now appoint a replacement for Sessions. The vote came after a contentious debate that lasted for weeks, culminating in Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) being silenced on Tuesday night after she read on the Senate floor from a 1986 letter written by Coretta Scott King, the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The letter accused Sessions, then a U.S. Attorney, of using his power to keep blacks from voting, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) objected, using an arcane Senate rule to say Warren had impugned another member of the Senate.
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