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National Faith, Family, Community Leaders Call On Congressional Leaders To Reject Jeff Sessions

by Gabe Ortiz on

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A coalition of faith, family and community leaders gathered today to deliver a national petition calling on Congressional leaders to reject the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions and other divisive figures in President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet.

“Congressional leaders must reject President-elect Trump’s cabinet of bigotry and demand advisors who embody the values that make our nation great — liberty and justice for all,” said Rev. Jennifer Butler, CEO of Faith in Public Life and the petition’s primary author.

“I stand firmly with those who are cut out of Trump’s vision of our nation. Americans of every race, color, sexual orientation and religious background must be included and valued in this nation we call home.”

The press conference also featured Mr. Khizr Khan, the father of fallen US Army Captain Humayun Khan, as well as Karen Korematsu, daughter of civil rights icon Fred Korematsu. When he was just 23, Mr. Korematsu was arrested after refusing to report to a Japanese internment camp during WWII.

The press conference was held “just days before the 72nd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Korematsu decision, which ruled that removing 120,000 people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, from their homes and confining them in internment camps was constitutional.”

Donald Trump campaigned on banning Muslims from entering the US, on creating a “deportation force” to round up and kick out the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, and building a massive wall along the US/Mexico border.

Sessions, President-elect Trump’s pick for United States Attorney General, has long held some of the most anti-immigrant positions in the US Senate, and has long history of divisive and bigoted rhetoric.

“What I want to say to you this morning is that we were made for this moment,” said Rabbi Jason Kimelman-Block of Bend the Arc. “We must resist.”

“My faith teaches that the creator never puts his creation in jeopardy without also providing the solution,” said Mr. Khan during his remarks.