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By Michael J. Hout By Michael J. Hout February 1 at 10:47 AM

Michael J. Hout, 22, is a junior majoring in history, English and political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. During the 2016 presidential campaign he participated in many Democratic activities as a leader in the College Democrats. But he recently quit the party. Here he explains his thinking.

By Michael J. Hout

Its generally accepted that many college campuses are bastions of liberal ideology. Theres a common perception perhaps even a correct one that this leads to a certain degree of indoctrination into the world of left-leaning politics. But my experience has been just the opposite.

As someone who has spent his life moving between Massachusetts and Georgia, Ive had exposure to Republican and Democratic politics in two states that could hardly be further apart in this regard. Coming to college in Massachusetts after being engaged in Georgia Democratic politics, I expected to be well within my comfort zone in and out of the classroom. That was not to be the case.

The more I studied and partook in various political efforts, the more conservative I felt compared to my classmates. The cold shoulder that I experienced from many progressive contemporaries, due to my more moderate leanings, fueled in me a desire to explore more conservative thought.

I came to the realization that between my own long-held convictions, already reasonably conservative, and the disturbing trends I was noticing among my peers and in the party at large namely their dramatic lurch to the left, and the increasing focus on identity politics over substance that I was not fighting for a party that welcomed my beliefs in its increasingly shrinking tent.

When I arrived at the decision to leave the Democratic Party, however, I was no longer on the correct side of campus culture. I went from being a high-ranking College Democrat to someone who must obviously be racist and misogynist and bigoted. For what other reason could I possibly have to entertain conservatism?

This decision perhaps the most difficult of my life to this early point was made over the course of a year or more of introspection, combing through perspectives of all sides in American political discourse. It was only as the sun set on the Obama presidency that I made the announcement I never anticipated that I would be leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent, and later, perhaps even a Republican. To some this may seem opportunistic, but I did not take this decision lightly.

My feeling of isolation originated not with the discovery of my conservative sympathies, but rather with my inherent, moderate ones. It was not enough to lead Democratic organizations, to sit on the National Council of the College Democrats of America, to help found new chapters at Amherst College and the entire state of New Hampshire, for that matter as the national chartering director of that organization.

No, what mattered was not loyalty to party, I found. What mattered was absolute devotion to the religion of dogmatic leftism. Many moderate Democrats just as easily could have been moderate Republicans. But these Democrats were rarely given the same opportunities or chances to succeed as their peers who were further to the left democratic socialists or social justice warriors. Now many of those same moderates are expressing to me a desire to leave the party as well.

Heres what I tell them: First, the Democratic Party needs moderates, so if you can stomach it, stick with the party and fight to move the conversation away from extremism and towards the center. America needs two sane options, so long as were in a two-party republic, with neither drifting so far away from the center that no compromise may ever be brokered.

Second, putting it plainly, you do not want to be a conservative on todays college campus. You will likely be ostracized to some extent, assuming your institution of higher learning is the norm. You will almost certainly lose friends, face bullying and need to develop thick skin. Ive experienced this, and I only came out as an Independent. Others Ive spoken to have horror stories worse than mine, attacked by fellow students, treated poorly by professors and administrators, accused publicly of racism, misogyny or unintelligence. And we have all received threats at one point or another. All things considered, perhaps I had it pretty good as a moderate Democrat. But my personal convictions prevented me from continuing to reside in the party that it has become, let alone the one that is to come.

This of course is a great irony. The so-called party of inclusivity, that values tolerance above all else, is extremely intolerant and wildly exclusive to ways of thinking that violate its delicate myopia. I contend that diversity of opinion both within and without parties is healthy and integral to our system. We must not only accept it, but demand it. Thus, we must be more accepting of conservative students, and the debate that they allow us to have, just as we must accept liberal students for the same reason. No one side should be able monopolize culture and community the way the left has been able to do on campuses. I ask my more progressive counterparts to be more accepting of students to their right, who likely have very legitimate reasons for feeling the way they do. Win with ideas, not intimidation. Be open to debate, and drop the baseless insults intended to stifle it.

At the end of the day, it was my view that not only was I more conservative than liberal in a contemporary sense (although I do identify as a classical liberal), but that I could do far more good towards repairing the Democratic Party from the outside than I could from within. Perhaps that will come in the form of aiding Republican campaigns. Perhaps that will come in the form of continuing to call out abuses in the Democratic Party and its affiliates through the media. I am not sure what the future has in store for me, but I know as long as my concern for this nation and those vying to run it persists, I will continue to speak out.

I will continue these discussions on a bipartisan blog I co-founded, with friends from a variety of backgrounds, called The American Moderate, as well as through a network of affiliated, bipartisan campus organizations we will be launching. Here, you will find a staunch commitment to free speech, diversity of opinion and a rational approach to politics and discourse. If you would like to join us, I encourage you to reach out. There is much work to do to begin to make our campuses more inclusive for all, conservatives included.

Read more:

At deep-blue Yale, students shocked to be facing Trump presidency

Yale professor: My students arent snowflakes, and they dont melt

On campus, Trump loses young Republicans but gains a flock

Continued here:
Coming out as conservative: Why a College Democrat left the party - Washington Post

The Senate Finance Committee was set to vote on the nominations of Rep. Tom Price to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and Steve Mnuchin for Treasury Secretary.

But minutes after the vote was scheduled to take place, Democrats on the panel convened an impromptu news conference to announce that they refused to participate in the proceeding, all as their Republican colleagues were waiting in a hearing room down the hallway.

Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, pointed to what he called "truly alarming news" that surfaced on Monday, referring to a Wall Street Journal Report that said Price had received a special discounted rate of stocks at an Australian pharmaceutical company called Innate Immunotherapeutics.

"This is contrary to congressional testimony he gave. Congressman insisted he didn't get special access to a special deal," Wyden said. "He misled the congress and he misled the American people."

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown said Price had "outright lied to our committee."

Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch had choice words for his colleagues across the aisle, calling their actions "abysmal" and "amazingly stupid."

"This is the most pathetic thing I've seen in my whole time in the United States Senate," Hatch said. "They ought to be embarrassed."

Hatch accused Democrats of acting out because they are unhappy with Trump: "What's the matter with the other party? They're that bitter about Donald Trump? The answer has to be yes."

The senator said he fully intends for the committee vote on the two nominees to take place, and that he would call for another mark-up at his convenience.

But the timing remains unclear. The Senate Finance Committee's rules state that at least one Democrat must be present in order for the panel to take a vote on nominees. That means Democrats can continue to refuse to show up to future committee votes, making it impossible for the panel to consider a nominee.

Asked how Republicans plan to proceed, a committee aide said GOP lawmakers need to explore "next steps."

CNN's Ted Barrett contributed to this report.

See the original post here:
Senate Democrats boycotting HHS, Treasury nominees - CNN

Days into Donald Trumps presidency, large numbers of liberals say they plan to step up their political activity, with Democratic women particularly motivated to take action, according to a new Washington Post poll.

The results suggest that the womens marches immediately after Trumps inauguration, which brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators into the nations streets to protest his agenda, could reflect something more than a momentary burst in activism.

The poll finds 40 percent of Democratic women say they will become more involved in political causes this year, compared with 25 percent of Americans more broadly and 27 percent of Democratic men. Nearly half of liberal Democrats also say they will become more politically active, as do 43 percent of Democrats under age 50. Interest in boosting activism is far lower 21 percent among independents and Republicans alike.

I have called my senators. I called my congressman. I am sending emails. I just donated $100 to the ACLU, said Iris Dubois, 49, an attorney and human relations manager in Atlanta, referring to the American Civil Liberties Union. She did not join her local womens march but has nevertheless become more politically engaged particularly in opposing Trumps cabinet picks.

[Read the full poll results]

For some, the activism has been more subtle. Brenda Tucker, 63, a school bus driver from Yorktown, Va., said she didnt march and hasnt written any letters. But she is speaking up more at church, where many of her fellow congregants back the president. I call them out on their Christianity, Tucker said, noting her dislike of Trump. Everybody should be doing something, like marching, on everything he does. Obviously, the majority of people did not want him.

The breadth of activist leanings from the left follows a deeply divisive election in which Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first female nominee of a major party to vie for the presidency. His treatment of women became an issue for his campaign, particularly after the release of a videotaped conversation in which he boasted about grabbing women's genitals.

Overall, female voters preferred Clinton by a 13-point margin, according to exit polls, with more than 7 in 10 of her female supporters saying a Trump presidency made them feel scared.

The new survey results echo what took place after President Barack Obama took office in 2009. Conservative voters, stunned and outraged by the election results, immediately began organizing to remake the Republican Party platform and block Obamas agenda under a loosely affiliated movement called the tea party.

The movement was effective, leading two years later to a sweep of state and congressional seats by conservative Republicans. But it remains to be seen whether the surge in liberal activism can coalesce into a similarly powerful force.

In the Post poll, majorities say they have heard a lot about the womens marches and that they support the demonstrations representing wider awareness and support than the tea party movement held at the height of its power in 2010.

(Zoeann Murphy,McKenna Ewen,Rhonda Colvin/The Washington Post)

Organizers of the womens marches are certainly trying to parlay the protests into something more sustained. Immediately after the Jan. 21 gatherings, they launched an effort dubbed 10 actions for the first 100 days, which included postcard-writing campaigns to members of Congress. Other liberal activists have launched major phone campaigns to protest Trumps agenda to lawmakers as well as to Trumps resorts and other businesses. A National Education Association campaign yielded more than 1 million emails to senators from people opposing Trumps education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos.

[More than 1 million email sent to senators, urging opposition to DeVos]

On Tuesday, march organizers Bob Bland and Tamika Mallory gathered with other activists near the Capitol to call for senators to reject Trumps nominee for the Department of Justice, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

The womens march on Washington aims to send a message to all levels of government and the current administration that we can stand together in solidarity and expect elected leaders to protect the rights of women, their families and their communities, organizers said in a statement.

But some women expressed skepticism that the marches could translate into political change.

I like what the women are protesting for, but I am not sure that protesting will really do anything, said Angelica Rodriguez, 22 a college student and in-home health aide in San Antonio, Texas. I dont think anyone in office is going to take the womens marches seriously or take their concerns seriously when it comes to passing the laws.

Rodriguez said she supported Clinton but did not vote. Now, she expects to feel the pain: She is worried she will lose access to free birth control, which she gets through the Affordable Care Act. Republicans, including Trump, have pledged to repeal the law.

Some voters see Trumps actions speaking louder than his words, and do not fear the effect on women.

Magdalene Rose, 66, a retiree from Phoenix who voted for Clinton, noted that Trump has daughters and appointed a woman, pollster Kellyanne Conway, as his White House counselor. While she has misgivings about the rest of his agenda, thats one of the few things Im not worried about, she said.

The survey was conducted Wednesday through Sunday among a random sample of 1,018 adults nationwide reached on cellular and landline phones and carries a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Asked about the recent womens marches, 60 percent say they support or lean toward supporting them while 29 percent oppose them or lean in opposition. One-third say they support the marches strongly, while 13 percent are strongly opposed.

The Post poll finds a sharp gap in plans for activism depending on views of the womens marches. Roughly one-third of those who support the marches say they plan to become more politically active, rising to 46 percent among those who support them strongly. By comparison, 13 percent of those who oppose the march plan to increase their political activity, including 18 percent who strongly oppose the demonstrations.

Americans are far more divided along partisan lines rather than gender lines toward the womens marches. Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats support the womens marches (87 percent), as do 58 percent of political independents. Republicans hold largely negative views of the marches, though they are not as unified as Democrats: 27 percent support the marches, while 59 percent are opposed.

Women and men are about equally positive toward the womens marches, 61 percent and 60 percent in support, respectively, though women are seven points more likely to express strong support. Within partisan camps, women and men report similar views of the demonstrations.

A 57 percent majority say they heard a lot about the womens march protests, suggesting the single day of demonstrations garnered as much attention as the tea party movement attained through months of organization and protests. Pew Research Center polls in 2010 found the percentage of registered voters who heard a lot about the movement rising from 31 percent in March to a peak of 54 percent in late October, just before congressional elections.

Emily Guskin contributed to this report.

See the article here:
United by post-inauguration marches, Democratic women plan to step up activism - Washington Post

If progressives were to become empiricists, they would look at the symptoms of the last election and come up with disinterested diagnoses, therapies, and prognoses.

Although their hard-left candidate won the popular vote, even that benchmark was somewhat deceiving given the outlier role of California and the overwhelming odds in their favor. The Republicans ran a candidate who caused a veritable civil war in their ranks and who was condemned by many of the flagship conservative media outlets. Trump essentially ran against a united Democratic party, the Republican establishment, the mainstream media (both liberal and conservative) and won.

He was outspent. He was out-organized. He was outpolled and demonized daily as much by Republicans as Democrats. Yet he not only destroyed three political dynasties (the Clintons, Bushes, and Obamas) but also has seemingly rendered the Obama election matrix nontransferable to anyone other than Obama himself.

Not that Hillary did not try to copy Obamas formula. She brought on Obama politicos to staff her campaign. She supported all the Obama initiatives, from Obamacare and record debt to a collapsed foreign policy. She spoke in a faux-inner city accent the same way Obama had to get out the African-American vote. She outdid Obamas clinger speech by her own twist of deplorables and irredeemables. She returned to her own hard-left phase of the 1990s. Yet she was trounced in the electoral college and saw the fabled blue wall crumble.

DIAGNOSIS

Any reasonable post-election autopsy for a party would identify certain inconvenient truths.

1) The African-American vote is vital to the Democratic party, but it is dubious to suppose that blacks will register, turn out, and vote in a bloc (as they did in 2008 and 2012) for a Democratic candidate other than Barack Obama. The very efforts to ensure that 95 percent of blacks will vote for other Democratic nominees might only polarize other groups in an increasingly multiracial and multiethnic America. Trump, of course, knows all this and will make the necessary adjustments.

2) Asians and Hispanics are less a monolithic voting bloc. Supposedly discredited melting-pot assimilation, integration, and intermarriage are still the norm and can temper tribal solidarities and peel away from Democrats a third of their assumed constituents in an electoral landscape where there is already only a thin margin of error, given that Democrats have written off the white working classes. In the case of Latinos, red states such as Texas and Arizona are unlikely to be flipped soon by Latino bloc voting, especially if Trump closes down the border and ends illegal immigration as a demographic electoral tool of the Democratic party. And Latino electoral-college strength is dissipated in states that are likely to be blue anyway (California, Nevada, New Mexico).

3) The race/class/gender agenda so favored by coastal elites and promulgated by media, Hollywood, and popular culture is an anathema to Middle America, especially its strange disconnect between affluence and the mandate for purportedly progressive equality. Moralistic lectures from wealthy people are not a way to win over the working classes. Rants by Hollywood celebrities and racialist sermons by would-be DNC chairs will not win over 51 percent of the voters in swing states. The twin agents of progressive dogma, the media and the university, are themselves under financial duress, must recalibrate, and have lost support from half the country.

4) Fairly or not, the entire environmental movement, as represented by Al Gores campaign against global warming, has become elitist and often hypocritical, and is evident in the lifestyles of wealthy utopians who have the capital and influence to navigate around the irritating results of their nostrums. Building Keystone is a better issue than the Paris Climate Change protocols. There is little support for Bay Area environmentalism among blue-collar building trades and unions largely because radical climate change is now a religion and skeptics are hounded as heretics.

5) For the foreseeable future, the blue wall of the Midwest seems more vulnerable than the red wall in the South. The small towns and cities in swing states are as electorally powerful as the large, blue cities.

6) What the media and Democrats see as Trumps outrageous extremism now looks, to more than half the country, like a tardy return to normalcy: employing the words radical Islamic terror, or asking cities to follow federal law rather than go full Confederate, or deporting illegal aliens who have committed crimes, or building a wall to stop easy illegal entry across the U.S. border, or putting a temporary hold on unvetted refugees from war-torn states in the Middle East. In the eyes of many Middle Americans, all these measures, even if sometimes hastily and sloppily embraced, are not acts of revolution; they are common-sense corrections of what were themselves extremist acts, or they are simply continuances of presidential executive-order power as enshrined by Obama and sanctified by the media.

TREATMENT

As a result, one might have thought that Democrats would look in 2017 to bread-and-butter economic issues and try to find candidates who are 21st-century updates of Hubert Humphrey or Harry Truman, or perhaps populist minority nominees or a younger version of Joe Biden. Or is it even worse? The Democratic party of 2017 is nothing like the party of 2008, when Hillary Clinton in the primaries ran as a guns-rights Annie Oakley, with a boilermaker in one hand and a bowling ball in the other, and Barack Obama kept assuring the nation that gay marriage was contrary to his religious principles.

Instead of seeing Barack Obama (both his successful two elections and his failed two terms) as the wave of the future, Democrats would be wise to reassess his electoral legacy as a unique phenomenon. In truth, Obamas legacy is twofold: He took the party hard left, and he downsized it to a minority party of the two coasts and big cities. And then he faded off into the sunset to a multimillionaire retirement of golf and homilies.

The progressive movement, the Democratic party and its cultural appendages in entertainment and the media seem to be doubling down on a failed electoral strategy. Instead, they all hope that either Donald Trump will crack and spontaneously implode after some new sort of Access Hollywood disclosure, or that their own unrelenting invective will eventually grind him down, as it did with Richard Nixon.

Consider a potpourri of left-wing reactions to Trump. Would-be Democratic National Committee chairwoman Sally Boynton Brown pontificated: Im a white woman. I dont get it....My job is to listen and be a voice and shut other white people down when they want to interrupt. Ashley Judd gave an incoherent rant at the Inauguration Day protest marches. In reading a bizarre poem, she variously compared Trump to Hitler, alleged that he had incestuous desires for his own daughter. and thenindulged in rank vulgarity

Another Hillary Clinton bedrock supporter, Madonna, told the assembled thousands, Im angry. Yes, Im outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.

Secret Service agent and loud Hillary Clinton supporterKerry OGrady wrote on her Facebook page that she would take jail time over a bullet or an endorsement for what I believe to be a disaster to this the country. Making her presidential preference clear, she ended her post with I am with Her.

BuzzFeeds rumor mongering about Trump did not meet National Enquirer standards. Time magazines Zeke Miller decided, on no evidence whatsoever, that Trump had suddenly removed the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. Miller reported the scoop as breaking news after all, it would confirm Trumps alleged racism before retracting the story.

None of these reactions will convince those in the swing states that they erred in voting for Donald Trump.

PROGNOSIS

In sum, the architects of Democratic-party reform are themselves the problem, not the solution. On key issues, they represent a minority opinion, one confined to the entertainment industry, academia, race/class/gender elite activists, and the wealthy scions of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street. In addition, minority activists themselves do not get out in the heartland and mistakenly believe that the demeanor, mindset, and, yes, guilt of white urban liberal elites in their midst characterize the white working and middle classes in general. And they mistakenly assume they themselves cannot be out-of-touch elites, given their ethnic and racial heritage, when in fact many most certainly are. DoEric Holder and ColinKaepernickknow more about poverty and hardship than a West Virginian miner or an out-of-work fabricator in southern Ohio? Does an affluent Van Jones visit depressed rural Michigan to lecture out-of-work plant workers and welders about their endemic white privilege?

The current Democratic reset plan certainly does not resemble the 1976 strategy of nominating a governor from the South in order to avoid another 1972 McGovern catastrophe; nor does it share the 1992 wisdom of nominating Bill Clinton to fend off a second Dukakis disaster.

For now, the Democratic-party strategists are doubling down on boutique environmentalism and race/gender victimhood, while hoping that Donald Trump implodes in scandal, war, or depression. They are clueless that their present rabid frenzy is doing as much political damage to their cause as is the object of their outrage.

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals.

Continue reading here:
The Democrat Patient - National Review

Senate Democrats renewed an assault on Donald Trumps pick for attorney general, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, questioning his independence after the president fired the acting attorney general for refusing to enforce his executive order on immigration.

Photographer: Pete Marovich/Bloomberg

Invoking procedural rules, Democrats succeeded in delaying Judiciary Committee action on the Sessions nomination until Wednesday after intense exchanges with Republicans at a hearing Tuesday. His loyalty to Trump was a top target during debate by the panel, which is expected to vote on party lines to recommend his confirmation by the full Senate.

It is very difficult to reconcile, for me, the independence and objectivity necessary to be attorney general with the partisanship Sessions has represented, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said. "Will he support and defend these broad and disruptive executive orders? Will he carry out and enforce the presidents actions that may very well violate the Constitution?"

"Its not difficult to assess that he will," Feinstein said.

Anger over the executive order emboldened Democrats to rebel on other Trump nominations Tuesday as well. They forced a delay of scheduled committee votes on the nominations of Steven Mnuchin to run the Treasury and Representative Tom Price to head Health and Human Services by staging a boycott.

Read about Trumps refugee ban and the legal landscape -- QuickTake Q&A

In opening the Judiciary Committee hearing, Chairman Chuck Grassley said Sessions understands the Justice Department better than any nominee in recent history and that hell fulfill the law fully, faithfully and independently, even when he disagrees with it.

The partisan anger fueled by Trumps decision to sign the executive orderbanning entry to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries and then fire acting Attorney General Sally Yates Monday night for denouncing it all but guarantees a titanic struggle over an even bigger job, Supreme Court justice, when Trump announces his pick Tuesday evening.

Photographer: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

While Senate Republicans probably will clear Sessions, a fellow senator, Democrats said they wanted more time to question him -- particularly about whether hed have the independence to stand up to Trump if he disagreed with the president. Democrats say thats what Yates did, and it cost her her job.

"Many people have doubts about whether Jeff Sessions can be that person, and the full Senate and the American people should at the very least know exactly how independent he plans to be before voting on him," the Senates top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, said in a statement Monday night.

The anger over Trumps handling of Yates could intensify Democratic opposition to other Trump nominees.Onlyfour have been confirmed so far, with more than a dozen nominations still awaiting votes.

Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to demand that Congress quickly approve his nominees. When will the Democrats give us our Attorney General and rest of Cabinet! They should be ashamed of themselves! No wonder D.C. doesnt work! Trump said.

Democrats have emphasized that the Trump aide who reportedly helped write the executive order banning some immigrant travel, Stephen Miller, was previously a longtime aide to Sessions.

Another complication is Trumps impending announcement of his choice to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. Trumps order, which Democrats say has raised questions about whether the judicial branch can serve as an effective check on executive power, is certain to complicate that confirmation battle as well.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hasnt said when he plans to bring the Sessions nomination to the floor. The Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Elaine Chao to be transportation secretary, and is expected to vote no later than Wednesday on the nomination of former Exxon Mobil chief Rex Tillerson to run the State Department.

If McConnell moves to bring up Sessions after Tillerson, Democrats could employ some delaying tactics. Sessions could still receive a vote this week, but that would probably require Senate Republicans to keep the chamber in session into the weekend.

Debate over Sessions on the Senate floor promises to be emotionally charged, with Democrats expressing outrage over Trumps immigration order and his decision to fire Yates, an Obama administration holdover, after she said Justice Department lawyers wouldnt defend in court the White House executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Democratic leaders staged a protest in front of the Supreme Court Monday night, and held the Senate floor well into the night to criticize Trumps order.

We will not let this evil order make us less American, Schumer told protesters. We will fight it with everything we have and we will win this fight.

To actually block Sessions, Democrats need to win over the votes of at least three Republicans.

Republican senators to watch include John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona, who have been particularly critical of the travel ban. McCain expressed his anger Monday over the order, saying it could block Iraqi pilots from coming to Arizona for training on F-16s so they can fly missions back home that protect U.S. soldiers helping to fight the Islamic State. A third Republican whos been critical of Trump, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, is on the Judiciary panel and said he supports Sessions.

While the entry ban dominated the debate over Sessions, Democrats questioned how the conservative senator from Alabama would act on issues from abortion to voting rights.

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Sessions provided written answers late Monday to questions from Judiciary Committee member Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. He said neither he nor any of his current staff had a role in formulating or drafting Trumps executive orders.

"During the campaign, President Trump sought my and my staffs input on a number of matters on which I have taken very public positions as a senator; however, it would be impossible for me to know the degree to which that input was relied upon in formulating or drafting the executive orders in question," Sessions said.

Sessionss answer isnt likely to satisfy to Democrats, who say the Yates firing only reinforces the need for an attorney general who is willing to stand up to potential abuses of power.

President Trump has commenced a course of conduct that is Nixonian in its design and execution and threatens the long-vaunted independence of the Justice Department," Representative John Conyers Jr., the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said Monday night in a statement. "If dedicated government officials deem his directives to be unlawful and unconstitutional, he will simply fire them as if government is a reality show."

See original here:
Democrats' Assault Stalls Sessions Vote After Trump Fires Yates - Bloomberg