Amid deep partisan rancor, a sharply divided Senate barrels toward Sessions vote

A sharply divided U.S. Senate barreled toward a final vote on President Trump’s nominee for attorney general Wednesday, capping an ugly partisan fight and revealing how deep the discord has grown between Republicans and Democrats at the dawn of Trump’s presidency.

Following an unusually tense conflict on the Senate floor Tuesday night, the chamber is scheduled to vote Wednesday evening on the fate of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., whose record on civil and voting rights as a federal prosecutor and state attorney general have long been criticized. Sessions is expected to win confirmation narrowly and largely along party lines – and primarily on the strength of his relationships with fellow Republican senators.

But the expected victory for Trump comes after a bruising confirmation process for Sessions and other Cabinet nominees, which Democrats have used to amplify their concerns about the president’s agenda even as they have fallen short, so far, of derailing any nominees.

These proxy battles have generated friction in the traditionally cordial upper chamber, which flared up Tuesday evening when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rebuked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., accusing her breaking a Senate rule against imputing a fellow senator’s character and blocking her from speaking for the remainder of the Sessions debate.

In doing so, McConnell asserted his control over a chamber that is increasingly at risk of veering from normal protocol. But he also sparked a dramatic backlash, with accusations of sexism and selective use of an obscure Senate rule bouncing around social media for much of Wednesday.

Democratic senators arrived one after another in the chamber Wednesday to criticize McConnell, particularly for this statement late Tuesday: "She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted." Outside of the Senate, liberals gleefully thanked McConnell for elevating Warren, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest stars, and handing her a slogan for a potential 2020 presidential bid.

Read the letter Coretta Scott King wrote opposing Sessions’ 1986 federal nomination Wesley Lowery

Coretta Scott King, the widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., urged Congress in a letter to block the 1986 nomination of Jeff Sessions for federal judge, saying that allowing him to join the federal bench would “irreparably damage the work of my husband.”

The letter, previously unavailable…

(Wesley Lowery)

"I think Leader McConnell owes Sen. Warren an apology," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in a Senate floor speech Wednesday. He and other Democrats were particularly chagrined that a Senate rule could be invoked to prevent a member from criticizing someone who is up for confirmation before the body.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., tweeted this late Tuesday: "Rules against criticizing other Senators cannot apply when you are DEBATING THE NOMINATION OF A SENATOR!"

The flare-up began as Warren attempted to read a statement by Coretta Scott King, the late widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., in opposition to Sessions’ 1986 nomination for a slot as a federal district court judge. The letter accused Sessions of using his role at the time as a U.S. Attorney to undermine voting rights.

"Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters," King wrote.

The complicated life of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III Del Quentin Wilber

Jeff Sessions’ uneasy history with race can be traced back to the long, winding roads that cut through the pine forests and farmland in this deep corner of the Deep South.

As a boy, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III began each day before dawn, boarding a segregated bus to his all-white school….

Jeff Sessions’ uneasy history with race can be traced back to the long, winding roads that cut through the pine forests and farmland in this deep corner of the Deep South.

As a boy, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III began each day before dawn, boarding a segregated bus to his all-white school….

(Del Quentin Wilber)

Several Democrats took to the Senate floor Wednesday to re-read a portion of that statement in solidarity with Warren.

"Still banned from floor, but spoke w/ civil rights leaders this AM to say: Coretta Scott King will not be silenced," Warren told her more than 1.8 million followers on Twitter Wednesday morning.

Republicans were not happy with Warren’s actions. In an interview on Fox News, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, accused his Democratic colleague of advancing false claims about Sessions and sought to remind Americans that southern Democrats were "the party of the Ku Klux Klan" and spearheaded segregation laws decades ago.

"The Democrats are angry and they’re out of their minds. … They’re just foaming at the mouth practically," Cruz said.

Cruz once called McConnell a liar on the Senate floor, and he was not rebuked.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., argued that Republicans were being hypocritical. They had no qualms about silencing Warren, he argued, even as they have declined to rebuke Trump for aggressively lobbing insults at his critics.

"My Republican colleagues can hardly summon a note of disapproval for an administration that insults a federal judge, tells the news media to shut up, offhandedly threatens a legislator’s career and seems to invent new dimensions of falsehood each and every day," Schumer said. "I hope that this anti-free speech attitude is not traveling down Pennsylvania Ave. to our great chamber."

McConnell appeared keen on trying to move past the discord, focusing his remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday on how the chamber had "come together" to approve several of Trump’s Cabinet picks. He singled out Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as an example even though her confirmation required a rare vote from Vice President Mike Pence to break a tie Tuesday after two Republicans decided she was unqualified for the job.

"We came together yesterday to confirm Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education so she can get to work improving our schools and putting students first," McConnell said.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, was more direct with his attempt to force the Senate back on track. He described the past week of partisan fighting as a "race to the bottom in terms of decorum" and rhetoric and he chastised Democrats for their public demonstrations.

"I hope that maybe we’ve all been chastened, I hope that maybe we all have learned something," Cornyn said.

Only one Democrat, centrist Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has come out in support of Sessions. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., another moderate, released a statement Wednesday morning saying that she will not support Sessions, underscoring the hardening Democratic resistance.

Democrats signaled early on that the deference normally afforded to senators nominated to the Cabinet was unlikely to be extended to Sessions. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., testified against him during a confirmation hearing – marking the first time a fellow senator had done so.

Democrats’ concerns about Sessions’s record on civil rights and voting rights coincide with broader concerns about Trump on the same front. They have expressed alarm about Trump’s ban on refugees and foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries, currently tied up in court, and about his unsubstantiated assertions of massive voter fraud in the election.

Sessions would become Trump’s sixth Cabinet-level nominee to win conformation, putting him well behind the pace of then-President Barack Obama in 2009.

For McConnell, a devoted follower of Senate tradition, Tuesday night served as an opportunity to project a restoration of some structure to a chamber that has experienced some very chaotic moments lately and is at risk of further disorder.

Democrats have used procedural tactics – including boycotting committee votes – to stall Trump’s nominees, whom they have labeled a controversial lot. Meanwhile, Trump has urged McConnell to dramatically change Senate rules and "go nuclear" if Democrats don’t back down from their resistance against his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch. The so-called "nuclear option" would entail allowing Gorsuch to be confirmed with a simple majority rather than requiring a 60-vote majority that can be blocked with a filibuster.

McConnell is widely believed to want to avoid eliminating the filibuster, a Senate rule that demands bipartisanship and can serve to strengthen big policy initiatives – and that many view as a bedrock of the upper chamber’s civility. His effort to silence Warren Tuesday night was seen in some corners as similarly protecting the integrity of the Senate.

"The senator has impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama," McConnell said Tuesday night, before setting up a series of roll-call votes on the matter. Republicans agreed, voting 49 to 43, along strict party lines, that Warren had run afoul of Rule 19 by reading anti-Sessions statements from King and the late liberal senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The rule states that senators may not "directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator."

As a result, Warren was ordered to sit down and forbidden from speaking as the debate on Sessions continued through Tuesday and Wednesday.

Even as she was unable to speak from the floor, Warren used social media and other avenues to express her concerns with Sessions. She did an interview on MSNBC Tuesday night and read King’s letter on Facebook Live, grabbing widespread national attention.

After the Sessions nomination vote, Republicans are expected to move forward swiftly on Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, another figure Democrats have aggressively criticized.

The Washington Post’s Paul Kane, Ed O’Keefe and David Weigel contributed to this report.

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