Tag Archives: jeff sessions

Invoking Immigrant-Induced Mayhem, Sessions Announces Crackdown on Sanctuary Cities

by ClaudeBickerstet Posted on March 27, 2017

Mother Jones

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions has set his sights on a new target: sanctuary cities and counties. In a guest appearance at Monday’s White House press briefing, Sessions announced that the Justice Department will begin cracking down on state and local governments that do not help the administration identify and deport undocumented immigrants. Painting a picture of violence perpetrated by “aliens,” Sessions announced that the department will punish sanctuary jurisdictions by withholding federal grants.

“Today, I’m urging states and local jurisdictions to comply with these federal laws,” he said. “The Department of Justice will require that jurisdictions seeking or applying for Department of Justice grants to certify compliance with US Code 1373 as a condition for receiving those awards.” Sessions’ announcement comes as several mayors have expressed an unwillingness to use local police forces to help detain and deport undocumented immigrants. According to Sessions, the Justice Department issues more than $4 billion in grants each year that would be subject to the new restrictions.

Sessions announcement is in keeping with an executive order President Donald Trump signed in January mandating the withholding of federal funds from sanctuary jurisdictions. Sessions added that the department would seek to “claw back” grants to localities that later appear to willfully violate the law. The statute Sessions referred to, 8 US Code 1373, prohibits government officials from restricting communications between a government agency and immigration enforcement about the immigration status of any individual. But the language in the statute is vague, and it’s unclear if the federal government can force local law enforcement to engage in immigration enforcement, a situation that will likely lead to court challenges to Trump’s executive order and Sessions’ new policy.

In his remarks, Sessions depicted undocumented immigrants as a violent scourge—raping, murdering, and sexually abusing children. “Countless Americans would be alive today and countless loved ones would not be grieving today if these policies of sanctuary cities were ended,” he said. That characterization is in line with the president’s critical language about immigrants, and last week, at Trump’s direction, Immigration and Customs Enforcement published its first weekly list of the crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in sanctuary cities. But the depiction is misleading, since immigrants are less likely than native-born citizens to commit crimes.

Sessions’ remarks also ignore the academic literature showing that sanctuary cities improve public safety by increasing trust and communication between immigrant communities and law enforcement. As three researches noted in a Los Angeles Times op-ed recently, “Sanctuary jurisdictions—39 cities and 364 counties across the country have policies that limit local law enforcement’s involvement in enforcing federal immigration laws—increase public safety.” They noted a study published last year by the University of Chicago Press in which a majority of 750 police chiefs and sheriffs across the country expressed opposition to using local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws. Other studies have also found lower crime rates in sanctuary jurisdictions.

One thing that is likely to hurt public safety, however, is withholding federal grants that help fund law enforcement.

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Invoking Immigrant-Induced Mayhem, Sessions Announces Crackdown on Sanctuary Cities

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Jeff Sessions Will Recuse Himself From Russia Probe

by KathleeKobayash Posted on March 2, 2017

Mother Jones

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions will recuse himself from any investigations into contact between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, Sessions announced at a press conference Thursday afternoon. Sarah Isgur Flores, Sessions’ spokeswoman, told Mother Jones that neither the attorney general nor any of his staff would take part in any internal discussions on whether or not an independent special prosecutor would be appointed to investigate the 2016 campaign. That decision would presumably be left to acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente.

The hastily called press conference came as lawmakers from both parties called for Sessions to recuse himself from any investigations into Russia’s role in the election. During Sessions’ confirmation hearing, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) asked him what he would do if reports that Trump campaign associates and Russian officials had been in contact during the campaign turned out to be true. Sessions responded by denying that he had any contact with the Russians: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I didn’t have—did not have communications with the Russians.” But on Wednesday, news broke that Sessions had twice met with the Russian ambassador.

As reporters waited for Sessions to begin his press conference at DOJ headquarters Thursday, televisions tuned to CNN replayed the exchange with Franken—followed by a segment with the chyron, “Calls grow for attorney general to resign.”

When he took the podium shortly after 4 pm ET, Sessions claimed that he was innocent of any wrongdoing and had not purposefully misled the Senate during his confirmation hearing. “My reply to the question of Sen. Franken was honest and correct as I understood it at the time,” he said.

Sessions said that he would be writing to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next day or two to explain his testimony. He added that his decision to remove himself from any investigations into the 2016 presidential campaign came following his review of ethics rules and input from his staff. “In the end, I have followed the right procedure, just as I promised the committee I would,” he said.

As for his September meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in his Senate office, Sessions said he didn’t recall many details, before naming terrorism and Ukraine as topics that came up. Sessions also said that he and Kislyak had discussed a visit Sessions paid to a Russian church in the 1991 and that Kislyak had told him he was not religious. “I thought he was pretty much in an old-style Soviet ambassador,” Sessions said.

When asked by reporters whether he and the ambassador had discussed the 2016 presidential campaign during their meeting, Sessions joked that “most of these ambassadors are pretty gossipy” but then switched into lawyer mode and said, “I don’t recall.”

This is a developing news story that will be updated.

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Jeff Sessions Will Recuse Himself From Russia Probe

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Republicans Tried to Suppress The Words of Coretta Scott King. Bad Idea.

by PatrickY96 Posted on February 8, 2017

Mother Jones

Sometimes a gag is the best megaphone.

Senate Republicans banded together Tuesday night to block Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) from reading a letter Coretta Scott King, the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, wrote to oppose a judicial appointment for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) more than 30 years ago. But the move ignited a firestorm of resistance from Democrats, ensuring widespread attention to the letter itself. Prohibited from reading the letter in the Senate, Warren first discussed the episode on MSNBC and then, shortly before midnight, read it on Facebook Live to an audience of more than 2 million people. The hashtag #LetLizSpeak, as well as #CorettaScottKing, was trending on Twitter.

The episode began when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suddenly interrupted Warren’s speech to a nearly empty chamber, objecting to her use of the letter King wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986 when Sessions, then a federal prosecutor in Alabama, was nominated to a federal judgeship. The Republican committee chair at the time, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, never entered it into the record, and it was published for the first time last month. When Warren read the sentence, “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens,” McConnell objected, citing a rule that prohibits senators from impugning each other.

“I am surprised that the words of Coretta Scott King are not suitable for debate in the United States Senate,” Warren responded. She appealed McConnell’s objection, forcing the body to vote on the matter. Republicans, who control the chamber, provided 49 votes to rule her out of order, and Warren was forbidden to speak for the rest of the debate. “She was warned,” McConnell explained. “She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” By the end of the night, an online retailer was already selling t-shirts and sweaters with McConnell’s remarks, as well as the hashtag #resist.

Watch Warren read the letter:

Democratic lawmakers rushed to support Warren, realizing that McConnell had handed them a golden opportunity—days into Black History Month, the GOP was trying to silence the words of Coretta Scott King. And Republicans appeared to have realized it too: When Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) decided to read the letter aloud hours later, he did so uninterrupted.

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Republicans Tried to Suppress The Words of Coretta Scott King. Bad Idea.

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