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CHAPEL HILL
NC
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2017
VOLUME 96 - NUMBER 2
TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913 PRICE: 50 CENTS
Sessions’ record a source of
different depictions of senator
By Bill Barrow, Kim
Chandler and Eric
Tucker
CAMDEN, Ala. (AP) - Sena
tors at next week’s confirmation
hearing will confront competing
versions of Jeff Sessions, the Al
abama senator who is President-
elect Donald Trump’s pick for
attorney general.
His supporters will frame the
70-year-old Republican, who
grew up in the segregated South
before a career as a local GOP
leader, prosecutor and elected
official, as an unyielding but
fair-minded conservative. Oppo
nents looking at the same record
will cast it as evidence Sessions
should not wield power on sen
sitive matters including immi
gration, civil rights and national
security.
Sessions, who would be a pro
found change from the Obama
administration’s Justice Depart
ment, will almost certainly draw
support from Republicans con
trolling the Senate and its Judi
ciary Committee. But the pro
ceedings nonetheless could be a
rocky opening to Sessions’ ten
ure and foreshadow how Demo
crats and like-minded advocacy
groups will combat the incoming
Trump administration.
“There are some gaping holes
and some grave questions ...
about his commitment to fair and
even enforcement of the law,”
said Kristen Clarke of the Law
yers’ Committee for Civil Rights
Under Law.
Similar concerns cost Ses
sions a federal judgeship in 1986,
when he confronted and denied
allegations that he’d made rac
ist comments as a U.S. attorney
under President Ronald Reagan.
The Judiciary Committee denied
him the post, and civil rights ad
vocates have since raised objec
tions to his positions on voting
rights, hate crime prosecutions
and immigration.
Yet in Wilcox County, Ala
bama, where Sessions was a
leading student in the all-white
public high school class of 1965,
and in Mobile, Alabama, where
he became a local Republican
Party leader and federal prosecu
tor, Sessions’ longtime friends
speak fondly of a polite Eagle
Scout and devoutly religious
man they contend is unfairly
caricatured.
“The man I know is an up
right individual,” said Mobile
Mayor Sandy Stimpson, who
met Sessions before either held
elected office. “He is eminently
qualified to uphold the laws
and Constitution of the United
States.”
Greg Griffin, a black Ala
bama judge who worked as a
state attorney when Sessions was
Alabama attorney general, said
Sessions “always treated me with respect” and called him “one of the
best bosses I ever had.”
Sessions arrives at his second confirmation hearing Jan. 9 as one
of Trump’s most prominent early supporters and a fierce critic of
Obama administration policies.
He opposed the Senate’s 2013 immigration overhaul as too per
missive and has advocated broad presidential powers to curtail illegal
immigration, connecting lax border security to the terrorism threat.
He has opposed efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facil
ity, has questioned whether terrorism suspects captured overseas de
serve protections of the civilian justice system and as attorney general
may endorse more aggressive scrutiny of Muslims.
His record on civil rights has stirred particular concern from ad
vocacy groups.
He opposed expanding the federal hate crime definition to include
violence based on sexual identity or gender orientation. He called
the Voting Rights Act “intrusive” legislation long before the Supreme
Court gutted a key provision of it in 2013 and has repeatedly sounded
alarms about the frequency of voter fraud, which current Justice De
partment leaders consider virtually nonexistent.
Hank Sanders, a Democratic state senator in Alabama, points to
cases Sessions pursued as a prosecutor against civil rights activists in
the 1980s. “They called them voter fraud cases,” said Sanders, who
won acquittals for the defendants. “I called them voter persecution
cases.”
Yet Sessions voted to confirm Obama’s first attorney general, Eric
Holder, the first black man to lead the Justice Department. He also
worked with Democratic colleagues on efforts to combat prison rape
and to reduce federal sentencing disparities between crack cocaine
and powder cocaine offenses, saying the gap unfairly targeted the
“African-American community simply because that is where crack
is most often used.”
2 House Democrats boycott
inauguration over Trump comments
By Matthew Daly
WASHINGTON (AP) - Two House Democrats are planning to
boycott President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration to protest in
sulting comments Trump made during the campaign about women,
minorities and other groups.
Reps. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Luis Gutierrez of Il
linois said they are skipping the Jan. 20 ceremony at the Capitol as a
matter of conscience.
“I could not look at my wife, my daughters or my grandson in the
eye if I sat there and attended as if everything that candidate Donald
Trump had said about women, Latinos, African-Americans, Muslims
... is OK or erased from my memory,” Gutierrez said in a statement
Jan. 5.
Clark said she respects the presidency and supports the peaceful
transfer of power but that families in her district “are fearful that
the anti-woman, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and divisive promises
that drove the Trump campaign will become the policies affecting the
health and safety of every American.”
Clark and Gutierrez both said they had hoped that Trump would
use the transition period to unify the country but believe that has not
happened.
“After discussions with hundreds of my constituents, I do not feel
that I can contribute to the normalization of the president-elect’s divi
sive rhetoric by participating in the inauguration,” Clark said.
Gutierrez said he will attend the Women’s March on Washington
on Jan. 21 to protest Trump’s election.
African-American woman sworn
in to Congress, makes history
WASHINGTON (AP) - Lisa Blunt Rochester is now the first Afri
can-American and woman to represent Delaware in Congress.
Rochester was sworn in Jan. 2 on the floor of the U.S. House of
Representatives as the state’s lone congresswoman. Rochester was
elected to the seat being vacated by Delaware’s Gov.-elect John Car
ney.
She hosted a reception Jan. 2 with fellow elected officials and sup
porters at the Library of Congress.
Media outlets report that Rochester told supporters that the signifi
cance of her election isn’t lost on her. She reflected on a document
that shows the “X” her great-great-great-grandfather, a former slave,
signed to vote in Georgia during the Reconstruction Era, saying it
represents “where we’ve come from.”
In this March 29,1967, file photo, heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, cen
ter left, and Dr. Martin Luther King speak to reporters. Ali died in 2016 and was
announced to the world in a statement released by his family Friday, June 3,2016
He was 74. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. will be remembered Jan. 14 on his nationa
holiday.See events on page 3. (AP Photo/File)
Congressional Black Caucus to
be more aggressive under Trump
By Jesse J. Holland
WASHINGTON (AP) - For almost eight years, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus ex
isted in the shadow of the first black president. They praised President Barack Obama’s achievement;
while at the same time pushing him to do more for their constituents who overwhelmingly supported hi;
history-making campaign and administration.
But with Obama set to leave the White House on Jan. 20, black lawmakers in the House and Senate
are recalculating and reassessing their place in Washington. And realizing they’re regaining the limeligh
as the most visible and powerful African-American politicians in the nation’s capital.
President-elect Donald Trump will face a larger and more aggressive caucus, which will advocate fo:
positions with “a bit more force,” said Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., a longtime member. “Without Presiden
Obama being in office, there will be more forceful articulation vis a vis administration policy.”
To the outgoing caucus chairman, Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., “The consequences are too enor
mous for us to be indecisive.”
There are more black lawmakers in Congress than ever: 49 African-American men and women wen
sworn in Jan. 2, including Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., just the second black female senator. Also serv
ing on Capitol Hill are the first Indian-American senator, 38 Hispanic lawmakers, including Democra
Catherine Cortez Masto ofNevada, the first Latina senator, and 15 Asian-Americans.
The caucus never had a perfect relationship with Obama, and several powerful members initially
backed Hillary Clinton during Obama’s first run for president in 2008.
Black lawmakers did help turn out the largest number of African-American voters in modern histon
for Obama’s two presidential campaigns; African-Americans voted at a higher rate than non-Hispani
whites in 2012, 66.2 percent versus 64.1 percent. But those lawmakers felt disappointed when Obama dir
not focus as much as they would have liked on issues their minority constituents valued: criminal justice
and policing, minority representation on the Supreme Court and other high offices, bringing jobs ant
industry to rural and inner city areas.
“We didn’t make President Obama step to us all the time. We have to make leaders do their work
they’re not going to do it because they are essentially well intentioned. They have to be pushed,” sair
Julianne Malveaux, economist and author of “Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy.”
Caucus members said they walked a delicate line, wanting to get behind the first black president bu
also promoting their own priorities, which didn’t always seem to be on White House’s front burner.
“There are times in which you’d like to go further than where the administration appears to be going
but at the same time you also want to appear and be as supportive as you can possibly be,” Davis said.
Republicans now control Congress and the White House, and black lawmakers, most of whom arc
Democrats, are left to figure out how to oppose and work with the new administration and the majority
party on Capitol Hill.
“We find ourselves facing a very difficult political and legislative environment unlike any we have
ever seen before,” said Butterfield, as the caucus met at the Warner Theatre for a ceremonial swearing-ir
event this past Jan. 2.
Obama’s departure will refocus attention on the caucus, said Fredrick Harris, a Columbia University po
litical science professor and director of its Center on African-American Politics and Society. With Trumj
as president, “The CBC will be even more vocal than they were during the Obama era when their voice;
were muted by the Obama White House and their surrogates who pushed back on criticism that the presi
dent was not paying enough attention to racial issues,” Harris said.
Lawmaker removes Capitol Hill art with pig in police uniform
By Kevin Freking
WASHINGTON (AP) _ A Republican lawmaker removed a high school student’s painting from a
Capitol Hill display Jan. 6 because it shows a pig in a police uniform aiming a gun at African-American
protesters. The image was inspired by the shooting and protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
Rep. Duncan Hunter of California unscrewed the painting from a hallway display that includes hun
dreds of works of art arid returned it to the office of Democratic Rep. William Lacy Clay, who sponsored
the work and represents a St. Louis congressional, district.
Joe Kasper, a spokesman for Hunter, said “there’s nothing appropriate” about the painting. He said
the artwork was the subject of discussion when GOP lawmakers gathered for a morning caucus meeting.
When Hunter left the meeting, he walked to the display and took it off the wall.
“He made sure he returned it safe and sound, all in one piece,” Kasper said.
Hunter did not speak with Clay about the portrait, and Kasper said it was Clay’s prerogative to return
the painting to the display. A spokesman for Clay says the congressman was unavailable for comment.
The painting showed a police officer taking aim at protesters with signs saying “history” and “stop
kill.” The police officer has an elongated face with tusks, much like a razorback pig. The background
includes the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and a young black man looking out from prison bars. One of the
figures also appears to show a protester as a wolf.
Clay’s website gives the following description of the artwork: “The painting portrays a colorful land
scape of symbolic characters representing social injustice, the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri, and
the lingering elements of inequality in modern American society.”
In August 2014, a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in
Ferguson, setting off weeks of protests.
Clay’s office said Cardinal Ritter College Prep High School senior David Pulphus won the lawmaker’s
16th Annual Congressional Art Competition, and “his visually stunning acrylic painting on canvas en
titled, 'Untitled (hash)l’ will be displayed at the U.S. Capitol Complex.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office did not return a call seeking comment on whether he condoned
Hunter’s actions.
Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Hunter “will
soon realize that he’s fallen down more than one rabbit hole.”
The reference was to Hunter’s recent admission that his campaign had paid the $600 tab incurred for
flying his children’s pet rabbit with the family. Hunter said the charge to the campaign was a mistake
and that he had reimbursed the campaign as part of more than $60,000 in questionable charges he had
discovered.
Kasper said the congressman has received an outpouring of support from law enforcement organiza
tions and individual officers.
“I am ecstatic with congressman Hunter ’s actions,” said Andy Maybo, president of the Fraternal Order
of Police chapter in the District of Columbia. “As we all know, this painting should never have made it
to the walls of Congress.”
A tunnel leading to the Capitol is filled with paintings and other artwork done by students who enter
them in the annual Congressional Art Competition. The nationwide competition began in 1982 and stu
dents around the country submit entries to their representative’s office. Panels of district artists select the
winner from each district, and the winning works are displayed for one year.