Senate Democrats were aghast when Donald Trump, then the president-elect, named one of his staunchest campaign supporters to lead the Justice Department a few weeks after his surprise election victory. They viewed Sessions as a virulently anti-immigrant legislator with a racist past, and as a Trump loyalist who would do the president’s bidding as attorney general while blocking criminal-justice reform and taking a buzz saw to civil and voting rights. All but one Democrat—Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia—voted against Sessions’s confirmation. And Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts fought so strenuously to defeat him that Senate Republicans used an obscure parliamentary rule to silence her.
As attorney general, Sessions has confirmed many of Democrats’ worst fears when it comes to policy, and in the early months of the Trump administration, a number of them called on him to resign over one controversy or another. But after the president’s latest round of attacks on his attorney general, and new comments from Republicans suggesting that he might be fired, Democrats now find themselves in the uncomfortable position of wanting Sessions to stay for one simple reason: He’s one of the only people standing between Trump and an abrupt end to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion and obstruction of justice. [...]
Senate Republicans have generally tried to protect their former colleague , warning Trump that it would be all but impossible to confirm a successor if Sessions was fired. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley even said at one point in 2017 that he would have no time to hold confirmation hearings on a replacement. But in recent days, that wall of support appears to have weakened a bit.[...]
Jeffries acknowledged that the calculus might change if Democrats win at least the House majority in November, giving them more power to protect Mueller on their own and making Sessions expendable. Winning the Senate would mean they could block confirmation of a new attorney general without help from Republicans.
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