Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions is Trump’s pick for Attorney General. How has he voted in Congress?
Jeff Sessions, a four-term senator first elected in 1996, was the first senator to endorse President-elect Trump for president in February 2016. He served as an advisor to his campaign from then through Election Day and was one of Trump’s final five contenders to be named vice presidential running mate.
Now he is Trump’s pick to lead America’s law enforcement as Attorney General.
We looked at Session’s record on major issues he is likely to face as Attorney General.
Marijuana. Obama’s Justice Department has refrained from federally prosecuting the usage of recreational marijuana in states where it’s legal under state law, even as it remains illegal under federal law. Sessions is strongly opposed to legalization in any form, saying during a Senate hearing that “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” He appears likely to reverse the Obama Administration’s policy, once again resuming federal prosecutions for state-legal marijuana usage.
Immigration and citizenship. Sessions last year introduced S. 1842, the Protecting American Lives Act, which would crack down on so-called “sanctuary cities” which limit their cooperation with the federal government when asked to detain undocumented immigrants. He also supports revoking birthright citizenship, the longstanding U.S. policy of granting citizenship to anybody born on U.S. soil even if their parents aren’t citizens. And he floated the idea of revoking the H1-B visa, which allows foreigners to come work in the U.S. for American companies.
Same-sex marriage. Sessions cosponsored S. 435, the State Marriage Defense Act, which would let the states take precedence over federal law when it comes to the definition of marriage. So if a state wanted marriage to be “one man, one woman,” that would win out over the new federal definition including same-sex couples. (This defense of states’ rights is a notably different tactic from the strong federalism he advocates on sanctuary cities and marijuana law.)
Abortion. Sessions supports repeal of Roe v. Wade and cosponsored S. 1553, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would have significantly curtailed if not effectively eliminated abortion rights. He also supported S. 48, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, which would have done the same.
Digital privacy. Sessions voted against the USA Freedom Act, which ultimately passed and curtailed some of the excesses of the 2001 Patriot Act, setting limits on bulk data collection and storing consumer digital information with the tech companies rather than with the government. He also unsuccessfully pushed an amendment to the Email Privacy Act that would have created a loophole allowing law enforcement to obtain digital communications without a warrant.
Race and voting rights. Sessions praised the 2013 Supreme Court decision which largely struck down the Voting Rights Act, legislation that had been intended to protect the voting rights of African-Americans especially in the south. A Sessions-led Justice Department would probably grant states significantly greater leeway in enacting voter identification laws and other similar measures than the Obama-era Department has been.
In dug-up 1986 Senate testimony when Sessions was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to serve as U.S. Attorney for Alabama, former colleagues claimed that Sessions used the N-word to refer to African-Americans and that he exhibited a lackadaisical attitude about the Ku Klux Klan. Sessions denied the claims, but the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected his nomination regardless.
Is Sessions like Trump?
Trump breaks traditional spectrums of American political ideology, holding some extreme right-wing, some moderate, and even some left-leaning positions. Sessions has no such duality — he’s a reliable conservative through and through, with little appetite for compromise. He ranks in the bottom 15 percent among all senators for joining bipartisan bills and the bottom 20 percent among all senators in working with the House. He’s also cosponsored zero of the 19 bills related to promoting government transparency we identified in our 2015 session statistics.
In this Congress, Sessions served on the Senate’s Judiciary, Budget, Armed Services, and Environment committees. Like most Republicans currently serving on the Senate Environment Committee, Sessions is a climate change denier.
This is the second installment in a GovTrack Insider series analyzing the congressional tenures of Trump’s appointees for the Cabinet and other key administration positions. Read GovTrack Insider’s July article analyzing Vice President-Elect Mike Pence’s 12 years in Congress here.
This article was written by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin.
