*About 10 members of the Congressional Black Caucus just stepped into the Senate chamber to protest the confirmation of President Trump’s attorney general nominee, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), and express outrage against the silencing of Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
“Sen. Sessions may be one of the most incompatible nominees to the Department of Justice that we’ve seen in decades – that department is a department of the vulnerable,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said after exiting the Senate floor.
“It is a department that deals with the issues of civil rights mostly, it deals with the issue of voting rights, and the empowerment of women,” Lee continued. “It deals with the issues of protecting those on the question of marriage equality, gender discrimination, and no record has been more potent against all of those issues.”
US Rep SJL’ assembles march to say NO to Jeff Sessions pic.twitter.com/oxWrjVI7Eq
— Sheila Jackson Lee (@JacksonLeeTX18) February 8, 2017
Lee joined fellow CBC members William Lacy Clay Jr. (Mo.), Hank Johnson (Ga.), John Conyers (Mich.) and others in leading the demonstration, which included reading the letter from Coretta Scott King that got Sen. Warren (D-Mass.) banned from the Senate floor late Tuesday.
US Rep SJL reads the letter that Senator Elizabeth Warren wasn’t permitted to after marching in opposition to Jeff Sessions #ShePersisted pic.twitter.com/Gcxe6DZkAD
— Sheila Jackson Lee (@JacksonLeeTX18) February 8, 2017
Jackson Lee said the group is “outraged” by GOP Senators voting to bar Sen. Warren from speaking out after she began reading the letter from Dr. Martin Luther King’s widow protesting Sen. Sessions’ failed 1986 confirmation hearing for a federal judgeship.
“I think last night and the treatment of Sen. Warren spoke loudly to the crux of our concern,” said Lee. “Will there be any free speech and freedom in the Department of Justice, a place where you are to uphold the Constitution, if Elizabeth Warren cannot read from our beloved Coretta Scott King’s letter?”
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