Sponsor(S): Judiciary Committee; Porter: Fill & Download for Free

Lmao!Holy SHIT!Do you know how many times we asked that in 2016 about Trump without mentioning Hillary or Obama? And conservatives STILL can't let either of them go!So we are clear, Joe Biden has been in public office for nearly 50 years. There is practically no one in government with anywhere near his legislative experience, and his 8 years in the executive administration give him significantly more executive experience than anyone else in government today.He has a degree in history and Political Science from the University of Delaware and a Juris Doctorate from Syracuse University.A city council member in the early 70's, he served as a Senator for the state of Delaware from 1973 to 2009.He was one of the youngest members ever elected to the Senate.During his time in the Senate he served as the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee , the Chair of the International Narcotics Control Council and the Chair of the Senate Judiciary CommitteeSince 1996, as far as these records go back: Bills Sponsored by Joseph R. Biden Jr. (-) He sponsored or co-sponsored 275 bills in the Senate, the vast majority of them with bipartisan support.He was the 4th most senior member of the Senate when he left to become Vice President under Obama.This is a man with unparalleled experience in how to get things done in government, in how things work legally, and in Foreign relations.But no. Seriously. Try to flip that criticism around from when we told you you couldn't make an argument for Trump without bringing up Obama or Hillary. See how that works for you.Spoiler alert.It doesn't.

The RAISE Act (S.354) is presently languishing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Bill co-sponsor David Perdue has promised that the bill will be heard in “regular order”, which means it will be months before it surfaces, if indeed it ever does, given the Committee’s present agenda. The bill is not currently on the Committee’s schedule, and the Committee has taken no action on it since it was assigned to the Committee in February 2017.While I could consult the current proposed text of the bill to find out for you how it would affect pending petition if it were to become law, note these things:The bill is not likely to be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee during this session of Congress. Judiciary is busy with far more pressing issues: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump Campaign colluded with Russia falls under the authority of the Judiciary Committee, and this issue and issues related to it are consuming the bulk of the Committee’s time. There have been a few hearings scheduled on its calendar to discuss immigration issues over the past few months, but virtually all of these have been either cancelled or postponed rather than held.Even if the bill is considered by the Judiciary Committee, and emerges from that committee with a “do pass” recommendation, it is unlikely that the form that emerges from the Committee will be the same as what Tom Cotton and David Perdue submitted in February.Even if a version of the bill emerges from the Committee with a do pass recommendation, it is still unlikely that the Senate will adopt it, as it unlikely that any bill that substantially alters the immigration policy of the United States will be able to get both support of 60 Senators (required to allow the bill to come to a vote under “regular order”, as promised by Senator Perdue) as well as the support of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.Even if, by some chance, the Senate passes some version of the RAISE Act, it would then have to survive the House of Representatives, which could amend it further.And even if the House and Senate both pass something, the President could still veto it.And finally, even if the law is adopted, provisions of it could be found to be unconstitutional by the courts, which could theoretically have an impact on petitions pending at the time it becomes effective. Or the courts could order that the law not be applied to pending petitions, even if the statute says otherwise, in order to preserve petitioner’s due process rights. (Not saying that will happen, only that it could. A lot of things are possible in constitutional law litigation.)Since the effect any legislation would have on pending petitions depends critically on the specific details of the legislation—the final form of which we obviously cannot know at this time—it is categorically impossible to answer this question, or even really give a meaningful prediction on it.However, it’s my best prediction that this Congress will not be successful in amending US immigration policy (this Congress being basically incapable of doing anything at all), and thus you are probably safe in assuming that the law used to adjudicate pending immigration petitions will not materially change between now and 2019, when the 116th Congress is gaveled into session and we start this game all over again with a (partially) new cast of players.

This subject is as important as it is sensitive, so I’ve taken pains to be thorough and nonpartisan while also doing my best at being definitive.As the early articles that I read on this subject (from both sides) were similarly thin, I decided to sound out and weigh the evidence for myself.My findings? As I’ll outline in careful detail, I believe Sessions is a deeply problematic choice that voters from both parties should actively denounce.I feel this transcends politics. You may disagree. My goal is simply to outline the case and let each reader decide that question for themselves.The BackstoryMost of the media’s concerns with Sessions are tied to a set of events back in the 80s, when he was serving as a US Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama.(A quick note for those unfamiliar: all federal criminal cases are initiated by one of 93 US Attorneys, each of whom is the Department of Justice’s top enforcement officer for their assigned district. The Attorney General — the role Sessions is now up for — is the equivalent of the CEO of that department as a whole.)Sessions was appointed to one of those 93 positions by Reagan in 1981. After five years or so, he was then put up for a promotion to a spot on the US District Court. This would have made him one of the judges that heard cases from their local US Attorney.Thing is, even the President can’t give out those jobs unilaterally. To preserve the balance of power within government, all they can do is make a nomination, which the Senate Judiciary Committee is then responsible to review.At the time, some 200 of Reagan’s prior judicial appointments had been confirmed without issue. Opposition to positions that low on the hierarchy was historically rare. But this time was different. Sessions became just the second nominee in 48 years to get rejected, by a vote of 10 to 8, which included two Republicans taking side against him.(Note: Much has been made of Arlen Specter saying decades later that he regretted his vote. Regardless of the sincerity of that remorse, it wouldn’t have mattered to the outcome. Ties are the same as rejections in committee voting procedures. Sessions would have needed two votes to flip.)Cause of RejectionHow did Sessions manage this particular feat?The single largest factor is that he’d chosen a year prior to issue an indictment against “the Marion Three” on charges of improperly altering 14 mail-in ballots collected from black rural voters.To understand why that was a controversial decision, a few points of context:One of the three, Albert Turner, was a highly-regarded civil rights leader. He’d been on the front lines at Selma 20 years earlier, and had personally led Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral procession. He was one of the first blacks to cast a ballot in Alabama, and had been heavily involved in minority voter drives ever since. (One of the other two was Turner’s wife, who had a similar reputation.)The 14 ballots in question were from a package of around 500. And they were for a Democratic primary, not a general election. Even if they were fraudulent (they weren’t, as the jury upheld unanimously), it was a decidedly petty case.The defendants were charged under provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which Sessions has long been on record against as “an intrusive piece of legislation”.Taken together, it was enough to lead to widespread accusations that the indictment was more about voter intimidation than true justice. The trial represented a non-trivial amount of public resources and tax dollars, all to try three people of sterling moral character for 14 votes that didn’t matter based on what amounted to unsubstantiated hearsay.The Deeper DarknessBad as the optics were, that case alone wasn’t enough to sink his nomination. But it did lead the Judiciary Committee to launch a formal investigation to see if he had a history of racially motivated behavior. And, well, he did.Four other Department of Justice employees ultimately gave testimony against Sessions, two of which are noteworthy (taken together, they’re responsible for 95% of the quotes flying around in the press right now).J. Gerald Hebert, a white prosecutor, claimed (reluctantly) under oath that Sessions referred to another white lawyer as “a disgrace to his race” for choosing to move forward with civil rights cases. He also testified that Sessions made other comments he deemed concerning — including negative references to the NAACP and ACLU. Rather than denying most of these accusations, Sessions contextualized them, saying he was “loose with his tongue” sometimes.Thomas Figures, a black Assistant Attorney who had worked directly under Sessions for about four years, claimed that his boss had referred to him as “boy” on multiple occasions and once lectured him about how he “spoke to white people”. He also independently repeated many of the same claims as Hebert.Taken as a whole, this was enough to kill Session’s 1986 court nomination.But is it enough to disqualify him to be Attorney General today, 30 years later?You Shall Know Them By Their FruitFirst, it’s worth reiterating that we can only judge people relative to their times. Abraham Lincoln routinely said things about blacks that would rightly be judged as horrific today. Yet he still signed the Emancipation Proclamation. When we talk about his political legacy, we’re speaking to the balance.That in mind, is what Sessions said forgivable? Did he go on in later days to pursue his own balance?I’m largely charitable when it comes to his general comments. Most white lawyers in the deep south of the 1980s would have vented private frustrations about groups they deemed too liberal. Without excusing this attitude, it’s a thin case for deciding his fitness today.Harder to swallow is his treatment of Thomas Figures. Even if Sessions never did call him “boy” (he denied it and there were no witnesses to testify either way), there’s a larger problem still in play. Figures was so incensed by Sessions’ decisions on race cases that he quit in 1985. That was a big job to walk away from, which implies considerable cause.Ultimately, however, what we need to answer is simple: has Sessions clearly become a different person since those events, or has he simply learned to stay just ahead of the worst part of the curve? In the absence of unimpeachable evidence in favor of the former, it’s hard to see how he should be considered for the second-most important position in the country vis-a-vis racial issues.The Case For HimWe’ll start by considering the favorable evidence, as outlined by his defenders on the right.Claim #1: He pursued the death penalty against a KKK member in 1981.His office did indeed push for the conviction of Henry Hays for the murder of Michael Donald. But, upon a closer look, one finds that Sessions was a marginal figure in that particular case. The conviction was almost solely due to the efforts of Figures, who personally filed an appeal with the AG to force the FBI to re-open their failed investigation.Claim #2: He voted in favor of Eric Holder becoming the first black Attorney General.This is true, and I think somewhat meaningful. Two members of the Judiciary Committee did vote against Holder. And when it reached the Senate floor, 21 out of 41 Republicans said “nay”. Sessions could have joined them, if with no obvious cause. He chose not to, which should be viewed to his credit.Claim #3: He voted for the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in 2006.While this is also true, he was joined by 100% of Senators from both sides of the aisle. In context, to do otherwise was politically unthinkable at the time.Claim #4: He co-sponsored the Fair Sentencing Act.In 1994, a US Sentencing Commission called for reform to how crack vs. powder cocaine possession was being penalized (at the time, the relative punishment ratio was 100-to-1 harsher for the former). Because crack was more common in primarily black communities, this has long been seen as a racially-motivated sentencing discrepancy.It took until 2009 for Congress to act on that recommendation. The House of Representatives put forward a bill that would have eliminated the gap entirely. The Senate rejected it. The only way that Sessions and Co. would give support was at a compromised sentencing ratio of 18:1, which eventually passed in 2010.You could argue that a drop that significant is still progress, but you could also argue that keeping it at 18:1 was to miss the point of the exercise.The Case Against HimI’m going to focus on a single example that I find symbolic of the whole.To preface, we need to recall some history about voting in the American South.From the days of Reconstruction through Jim Crow, black voters in said states faced special difficulties getting to the ballot box. Whether through overt acts of violence or “legal” disenfranchisement, the local white power structure threw up obstacle after obstacle to maintain their privileged position.Much of this changed with the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It set a universal standard of acceptable behavior and required historically problemed districts to request direct approval before making any changes to their local balloting procedures.In 2013, the Supreme Court, as part of Shelby County v. Holder, overturned part of the VRA, effectively throwing out those “pre-clearance measures”.Sessions was asked at the time how he felt about the court’s decision. His response:[These] states that had a real history of [racial discrimination]. But now if you go to Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, people aren't being denied the vote because of the color of their skin.Except they are. In droves.A Roadblock By Any Other NameSessions mentions a few states specifically, including his own and North Carolina.Well, guess what happened in those two states almost immediately after the Shelby ruling?Let’s start with the case of a 94 year-old civil rights pioneer in North Carolina.Beginning in January 2015, Eaton undertook a herculean effort to match her various documents and comply with the law. Over the course of a month, she made 11 trips to different state agencies—four trips to the DMV, four trips to two different Social Security offices, and three trips to different banks—totaling more than 200 miles and 20 hours.What was she trying to do? And to comply with which law?She was trying to vote. And she was being blocked from doing so by new state voter ID measures.When asked what the purpose of those laws are, legislators inevitably say the same thing: “we need to protect our democracy against voter fraud”.While that’s a commendable goal, that’s not what voter ID laws actually do. And we know that because in-person voter fraud is essentially a fictional problem. Study after study has confirmed this. There are a low two-digit number of confirmed cases over a decade in which well over a billion votes were cast.This makes sense. The chances of success are low, the upside is barely higher, and the punishment is severe. There’s just no logical reason to attempt it.So why do the laws exist?They’ve continually been found to be about one party disenfranchising blocks of citizens known to be more likely to vote against them. It happens surgically. Research firms are brought in to craft policy amendments that will affect just enough of the right people to give their own party an edge.And it so happens, in nearly every case we have on record, that the list of excluded people primarily consists of blacks and other minorities who disproportionately vote Democrat.(I need to stress again that I’m fiercely non-partisan. I have my conservative sympathies. But this isn’t a subjective topic. The evidence is overwhelmingly clear: these laws place significant obstacles in front of minority voters while providing no discernible civic benefit.)The Man Behind The CurtainJeff Sessions is presently a US Senator for Alabama.Want to guess which state was ranked last in the 2015 Health of State Democracies report, receiving an F for voter access?At last count, some 250,000 Alabama residents were ineligible to vote because of unnecessary voter ID laws. To become eligible, they required licenses from the DMV.Well, guess what suddenly happened to about 30 DMVs in black-majority counties?This is not about budget cutbacks or voter fraud. It’s about winning at all costs.Lets quote Sessions again:But now if you go to Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, people aren't being denied the vote because of the color of their skin.Except they are. And he knows that.VerdictEarlier this year, a ceremony was held to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Selma March. Sessions was one of the speakers (video link). The heart of his comments can be summed in one quote:I should have stepped forward more and been a leader and a more positive force in the great events that were occurring.That’s not an apology. That’s a vague acknowledgment, at best.Racism can be several things. It can be active hate, amplified by fear and shame, as was evident so often throughout US history (and has surfaced once again).But it can also be simple indifference. Some people don’t hate minorities. They just don’t register their concerns as equal in importance to their own interests.Sessions’ level of indifference concerning racial equality is exceptionally difficult to argue against. In addition to the voter ID laws, there are two other glaring marks against him:He recently objected to the Confederate battle flag being taken down from government buildings. (To clarify, we’re not talking about the historical flag of the Confederacy. This variation of the flag was popularized in late 40s specifically to signal sympathy and affiliation with white nationalist groups.)Sessions’ connections to organizations known almost exclusively for stances against Muslims and non-whites are widely documented. This includes his very public (and current) affiliation with FAIR, which has been listed as a hate group by SPLC for almost a decade.Now, consider the job he’s being appointed for and the context of the times:Next to POTUS, the Attorney General is the most important race-related job in the country.Racial tensions are currently high. Hate crimes are up. Minorities are on edge. Many feel (rightly or wrongly) that Trump is responsible for stoking those tensions.The Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice was on life support under Bush II. It took years for the Obama administration to give them teeth again, which they’ve since put to good effect with the police departments in NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, and Ferguson. (They also successfully fought some of the Voter ID measures in North Carolina.) That progress needs to continue.Trump believes, presumably knowing these things, that Sessions is the man for the job.I reject that idea. Firmly.Sessions may or not be a racist in his heart. Only he can say. But this is too important of a post and his record simply isn’t suitable for the job in question.Another Republican instead? Absolutely. But one with a record of sensitivity and commitment to racial justice.What Can Be DoneAgree with the above? Call your Senator. Tell them.List of phone numbers.(Don’t email them. Call them. It takes minutes.)This is especially important if they’re on the below list (GOP members of the Judiciary Committee who will vote on Sessions’ appointment):Chuck Grassley (Iowa)Orrin Hatch (Utah)Lindsey Graham (South Carolina)John Cornyn (Texas)Mike Lee (Utah)Ted Cruz (Texas)Jeff Flake (Arizona)David Vitter (Louisiana)David Perdue (Georgia)Thorn Tillis (North Carolina)Tell them that you will continue calling until:Sessions’ nomination is rejected.Sessions’ nomination is withdrawn and replaced with that of a more appropriate candidate.Sessions comes forward and makes several things clear, including but not limited to: guaranteeing uncut resources and full independence to the Civil Rights Department; publicly owning his past complicity in racist policies, coupled with a meaningful commitment to awareness and change.(In that last case, people could judge his sincerity for themselves. If they found it wanting, they could simply resume their phone calls.)Only two votes need to flip. A rejection would send a message to Trump that he needs to be mindful of the country as a whole, and of the gravity of his office. If his claims to care about those things are genuine, he can prove it.I don’t care which party you vote for. If you care about making the US a better and more united country, allowing Sessions to become Attorney General is a significant step backward.I’m happy to hear counter-narratives in the comments. But only those based on careful/reasonable arguments with links to credible sources.PS: Hat-tip to User-12553573656821395227 for calling me out re: the shutdown of DMVs in Alabama. There was an offset I missed in my research. They offered special Voter IDs via mobile registrar locations (some details here). Having thought on it for a day, I don’t think it changes my thinking much in the big picture — but it’s an important caveat worth noting.EDIT: Original answer written in November, 2016. Came in July, 2018 to improve the wording. A copy of the original was also posted to HuffPost at the time via my contributor account. As they no longer allow editing, and as I wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the locked version (or the supplied headline), I’ve now deleted it. You can view the original wording via Quora’s edit log.