Amid bitter partisan fighting and public outcry, the U.S. Senate will vote on the confirmation of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) for attorney general around 6:50pm EST Wednesday evening.
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Uproar over the GOP's muzzling of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) continued throughout the day, especially after four male senators were permitted to read a letter by Coretta Scott King on the Senate floor without incident or rebuke.
Indeed, one of those very senators, Democrat Jeff Merkley of Oregon, pointed to the seeming sexism in a tweet on Wednesday afternoon:
Meanwhile, though Warren was silenced in the chamber, she was vocal outside it, speaking to civil rights leaders and multiple news outlets to make her case against Sessions.
Asked by the Washington Post "what she would say on the Senate floor once she is permitted to speak again," Warren responded: "When he is attorney general, we must hold him accountable. That will be the first thing I want to say."
"If Sessions makes it through, this is not over," she told the Post's Greg Sargent. "The U.S. Senate has the constitutional responsibility to oversee the Department of Justice. That means we have to be out there on the front lines, every single day, watching what he does."
Despite the likelihood of Sessions' confirmation, civil and human rights groups delivered a last-ditch plea to senators on Tuesday afternoon in the form of a petition signed by one million people opposing the nomination.
"Senator Sessions has built his career on demonizing people of color, women, the LGBT community, people with disabilities, immigrants, and refugees, and we're standing here today because that type of record renders Senator Sessions entirely unfit to be the Attorney General," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, one of the groups organizing the petition drive.
Support for Warren--and for powerful women in general--continued under the hashtags #ShePersisted and #LetLizSpeak:
