Jeff Sessions confirmed as attorney general

Jeff Sessions.
(Image credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

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.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.