WTF Just Happened Today

Monday, February 8, 2021

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1/ Jeff Sessions confirmed as Attorney General, capping a bitter and racially charged nomination battle. Sessions survived a near-party-line vote, 52 to 47, in the latest sign of the extreme partisanship at play as Trump strains to install his cabinet. No Republicans broke ranks in their support. (New York Times)

• How senators voted on Sessions. (New York Times)
• Why Jeff Sessions is so uniquely dangerous. Sessions will not prioritize citizens who have had their lives ruined by racial disparities in policing, or by the persistent use of excessive force by officers who are shielded from accountability. He won’t be an attorney general who will side with those consigned by petty judges to cycles of poverty and crime, or those circulating in and out of a new generation of debtors’ prisons. (Esquire)

2/ Republicans vote to rebuke Elizabeth Warren for impugning Sessions’s character. In an extraordinarily rare move, Mitch McConnell interrupted Warren’s speech in a near-empty chamber, as debate on Jeff Sessions’s nomination, saying she had breached Senate rules by reading past statements against Sessions. (Washington Post)

• Silencing Elizabeth Warren backfires on Senate GOP. Warren went straight from the Senate floor to a call-in appearance on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show. Adding fuel to the backlash, supporters noted the apparent hypocrisy that Warren’s male colleagues were able to read from the letter uninterrupted. (CNN)
• “Nevertheless, she persisted” becomes new battle cry after McConnell silences Elizabeth Warren. If the Republican senators had intended to minimize Warren’s message, the decision backfired — severely. (Washington Post)
• Jeff Merkley reads Coretta Scott King’s letter about Jeff Sessions on Senate floor. Uninterrupted. (The Oregonian)

3/ Appeals Court panel appears skeptical of Trump’s travel ban. The appeals court judges seemed taken aback by the assertiveness of the administration’s position, which in places came close to saying the court was without power to make judgments about Trump’s actions. (New York Times)

• Trump decries “disgraceful” opposition as appeals court weighs immigration order. Trump also repeated claims that politics plays a role in the challenges to the travel ban and questions about his authority to implement it. (Washington Post)
• Gorsuch calls Trump’s tweets about the judiciary “demoralizing” and “disheartening” to the independence of the courts. Gorsuch took exception to Trump calling a federal judge in Seattle a “so-called judge” after blocking the Preside...

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