Donald Trump is putting together a national-security team full of hardliners

Sessions, best known for his anti-immigration views, has served as attorney general of Alabama and as a US attorney.

Sessions, like Mike Flynn, is not a conciliatory pick or one that will win Trump plaudits from his critics on either side of the aisle. Sessions, who is best known for his hardline immigration views, has questioned whether terrorist suspects should benefit from the rights available in United States courts. And he urged people in one speech a year ago to differentiate terrorists from regular Muslims, saying “there are many Muslims of good will”.

He is highly respected as a decorated military intelligence officer who helped combat insurgent networks.

In a foreshadowing of the endorsement that would come later, Sessions joined Trump on stage in his hometown Mobile, donning a “Make America Great” baseball cap. “I’m really impressed with your plan”. Trump’s assumption that he could get anyone through the Senate may prove to be accurate, but had he done more consulting he might have found that Sessions is like a red flag in front of a bull.

That year, President Ronald Reagan picked him to be a district judge, but he was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee because of alleged racist remarks. A recent poll released by pro-legalization group Marijuana Reform revealed 60 percent of Americans want legal marijuana.

Pennsylvania Sen. Daylin Leach, a Democrat who was a vocal advocate for marijuana legalization, said he thinks marijuana businesses’ interest in Pennsylvania won’t diminish unless Sessions takes steps to attack legalized marijuana. “Or are we once again creating a facade?”

“Jeff Sessions has been in the U.S. senate for 20 years”. He has also been protective of the attorney general’s right to refuse a legally unsound directive from the president.

The question on many industry group’s minds Friday is whether Trump will serve as a check on Sessions’ staunch opposition to marijuana use. The American Civil Liberties Union which does not formally endorse nominees nevertheless made its views clear: “Sen”. Sessions, he said, had called him “boy” and, after overhearing him chastise a secretary, warned him to “be careful what you say to white folks”.

NBC said Thursday that Trump was considering Romney as secretary of state, which would put a figure with more orthodox Republican views at the helm of U.S. foreign policy, though still entirely answerable to the Trump White House under the American presidential system.

As attorney general, he’d have the power to depart significantly from the priorities of his Democratic-nominated predecessors.

But charges of racial insensitivity derailed the nomination.

And another witness said Sessions told him he was fine with the Ku Klux Klan, except for their use of drugs.

“It’s inconceivable to me that a person of this attitude is qualified to be a USA attorney, let alone a United States federal judge”, Kennedy said.

“Jeff Sessions should scare every regulator, government official, cannabis industry operator, patient and consumer across the country”, said John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and expert on marijuana policy.

“I am not a racist”.

At this same hearing, Sessions expressed his concern that the loosening of marijuana laws has reversed the “progress” made on the reduction of drug abuse in America. “I have done my job with integrity, equality and fairness for all”.

Accusations of racism once kept Sessions from a federal judgeship. In his confirmation hearings, Sessions sealed his own fate by saying such groups could be construed as “un-American” when “they involve themselves in promoting un-American positions” in foreign policy. “He alone knows who the contestants are, and who will be the victor”, Schiff said on “State of the Union”.

“I don’t think the nomination alone will do that, but I do think people will be watching his first moves very closely”, he said.

But expect a fight.

“Miller also pointed to Sessions’ vote to confirm President Barack Obama’s nomination in 2009 of the first African-American attorney general, Eric Holder”. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to serve as United States Attorney General, signaling that he is serious about returning the Justice Department to its core of mission of “ensuring fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans”.