As Senator Jeff Sessions’ nomination moves closer to a Senate vote, vote counters are predicting that he will likely be confirmed. But the prospect of installing Jeff Sessions as the highest law enforcement officer in America is a frightening prospect for anyone who cares about civil rights.
According to Lynn Tramonte, Deputy Director of America’s Voice Education Fund: “Anyone – Democrat or Republican – who votes for Sessions will own everything he ends up doing if he’s confirmed to be Attorney General.”
Here are just a few of the many reasons to oppose Sessions’ confirmation.
You Can’t Be Anti-Trump Executive Orders and Pro-Jeff Sessions as Attorney General: Democrats have been united in speaking out against the Trump immigration and refugee/Muslim ban executive orders. As a result, they should also be unanimously opposed to Jeff Sessions becoming Attorney General, given that the Washington Post recently and accurately labeled Jeff Sessions the “intellectual godfather” behind Trump’s executive orders and that the AG will play a massive role in shaping ongoing battles over the current executive orders as well as the direction and implementation of future executive orders.
If You Care About DREAMers, You Cannot Vote for Jeff Sessions: Given that the future of the popular DACA program benefiting DREAMers is yet to be decided and is the subject of fierce debate within the Trump administration–and Sessions is an avowed opponent–anyone who cares about DACA should recognize that putting Jeff Sessions at the AG’s office is dangerous.
Sessions as AG Would Give New Power to Anti-Immigrant and White Nationalist-Allied Thinking: Sessions is the favorite Senator for followers of white nationalists on Twitter, per a new analysis, and the Senator and his orbit have deep ties and relationships to the network of John Tanton-founded anti-immigration organizations in addition to avowed white nationalists. Stephen Miller, the former Sessions staffer who wrote the immigration and refugee and Muslim ban executive orders, is someone for whom white nationalist Richard Spencer served as a “mentor” while the two overlapped at Duke University. As Spencer said of his relationship with Miller, “I spent a lot of time with him at Duke… I hope I expanded his thinking.” As David Brooks recently characterized: “[T]he Trump administration is not a Republican administration; it is an ethnic nationalist administration.” Putting Sessions in the AG office would only further this Administration’s connections to the extreme right.
He would bring his anti-immigrant ideology into the Attorney General’s office, with devastating consequences for all: As immigration attorney David Leopold recently wrote on Medium: “As the nation’s top lawyer, head of the immigration court, and civil rights officer, Jeff Sessions would have access to multiple tools to harm immigrants and undermine due process.” Read David Leopold: Five Chilling Ways Senator Jeff Sessions Could Attack Immigrants
