Senate GOP silences Warren over criticism of Sessions

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, speaks to members of the media after participating in television interviews in the Russell Senate Office building rotunda in Washington, D.C., US, on Feb 8, 2017. [Photo/VCG]

Warren, whose name has been prominent in speculation about the 2020 presidential race, was given a rare Senate rebuke Tuesday night for impugning a fellow senator and she was barred from saying anything more on the Senate floor about Sessions, R-Ala.

The late-night dust-up quickly spawned the hashtag #LetLizSpeak that was trending on Twitter early Wednesday.

The Senate has been working around the clock since Monday as Democrats challenge President Donald Trump's nominees, although the party lacks the votes to derail the picks. Despite the rebuke of Warren, D-Mass., other Senate Democrats quoted from the King letter in speeches, among them Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio on Wednesday morning.

In the 1986 letter , Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow said Sessions' actions as a federal prosecutor were "reprehensible" and that he used his office "in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters."Democrats are portraying Sessions as a threat to civil rights, voting rights and immigration. Republicans have defended Trump's choice to be the top law enforcement officer as a man of integrity who will be an independent voice in the new administration.

A vote on Sessions was expected Wednesday evening.

The incident underscored that the partisan divide in the Senate has devolved into nearly unchecked rancor, with majority Republicans muscling through Cabinet nominees in committee by changing the rules. Democrats are under intense pressure from their liberal base to challenge the entire Trump agenda, especially his nominees.

Warren produced a three-decade-old letter in which Mrs. King wrote that Sessions, as an acting federal prosecutor in Alabama, used his power to "chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.""Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge," Mrs. King wrote.