Sen. Elizabeth Warren was forced to stop reading a letter written in 1986 by Coretta Scott King, Dr. Martin Luther King’s widow. Republican senators took the unusual measure of voting to compel Warren’s silence because reading the letter was deemed to be an act that demeaned a fellow senator. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said Warren’s letter reading “has impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama, as warned by the chair.” That colleague was Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s nominee for Attorney General.
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The letter described King’s opinion that Sessions used “the awesome power of his office to chill the pre-exercise of the vote by black citizens.” In the letter King said she wrote to “express my sincere opposition of Jefferson B. Sessions as a federal district court judge for the Southern District of Alabama.” Sessions’ Attorney General appointment has been controversial partly due to accusations that his record demonstrates instances of racial bias. Warren later read the King letter on Facebook, where interested Republicans could watch it. Below is Warren on Facebook. And the initial battle on video.
