President-elect Donald Trump picked Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to be his Attorney General. Sessions is a right-wing extremist who believes that the separation of church and state is unconstitutional.
In 1996, Americans United For The Separation Of Church And State started a project to educate religious groups on the rules against political involvement. They told churches:
“Churches and other organizations that hold a non-profit status under IRS Code 501(c)(3) may not engage in partisan politicking.”
If churches violate this law, then they could lose their non-profit status.
Back in 1999, Sessions co-signed a letter to then-Attorney General Janet Reno urging her to investigate the liberal advocacy group Americans United for supposedly intimidating voters.
In that letter, Sessions said that Americans United tried to:
“…Disenfranchise religious voters by intimidating people of faith into not participating in the political process.”
The Senators said that Americans United tried to disparage the voters of the Christian Coalition. This is the same Christian Coalition that lost its non-profit status because they were getting too involved with electioneering for Republicans.
Americans United and other groups were accused of “targeting” religious voters and discouraging them from engaging in politics, which is not true. Religious people can get involved, but churches and religious organizations can’t get into politics.
Sessions also once called the NAACP and the ACLU “communist” organizations.
Sessions and Trump make an epic rights-stealing pair. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump said that he wants to “open up” the libel laws. He said:
We’re going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”
Trump also once said that protesters should have their citizenship taken away if they burn the American flag.
Sessions is a horrible choice for Attorney General.
Featured image via YouTube screenshots.
