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The US Senate has confirmed Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general despite fierce debate over his civil rights record and a push by Democrats to block him.

President Donald Trump’s choice was given the greenlight on Wednesday by a vote of 52-47.

Sessions had faced accusations of racism, and a Senate panel rejected him for a federal judgeship in 1986 amid concerns over allegedly racist comments he had made.

“This caricature of me from 1986 was not correct,” Sessions said after his confirmation hearing last month.

“I deeply understand the history of civil rights . . . and the horrendous impact that relentless and systemic discrimination and the denial of voting rights has had on our African-American brothers and sisters”.

On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a darling of the political left, was silenced in the Senate for reading a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev Martin Luther King Jr, that criticised Sessions for his civil rights record.

Democrats, civil rights and immigration groups have voiced alarm about Sessions’ record of controversial positions on race, immigration and criminal justice reform.

A known immigration hardliner, he will take over the Justice Department as its lawyers are defending Trump’s temporary entry ban on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries and all refugees, the most controversial executive order of the young administration.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals is due to rule this week on whether to overrule a district court judge in Seattle who suspended the ban last week.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, praised Sessions as honest and fair. “This is a well-qualified colleague with a deep reverence for the law. He believes strongly in the equal application of it to everyone,” he said.

Sessions, who is originally from Alabama, will serve as the 84th US attorney general. The 70-year-old was an early Trump supporter who became a pivotal figure in his campaign and transition team. He served as a prosecutor from 1981 to 1993, and won a seat in the Senate in 1996.

Senate Democrat Chris Murphy said he was “scared” about changes Sessions could bring.

“[His ] history of opposing civil rights, anti-gun violence measures and immigration reform makes him uniquely ill-fitted to serve [as attorney general],” Murphy said.

“I want a chief law enforcement official that will be a champion of the disenfranchised and dispossessed, not a defender of discrimination and nativism.”

Former vice presidential candidate Timothy Kaine, also a Senate Democrat, said Sessions’ record raised doubts.

“Any attorney general must be able to stand firm for the rule of law even against the powerful executive that nominated him or her,” Kaine said. “In this administration I believe that independence is even more necessary.”

Meanwhile, Trump on Wednesday lashed out at department store chain Nordstrom for dropping his daughter’s clothing line, again spotlighting the intermingling of the US presidency with Trump family businesses.

The public rebuke, which the White House later defended, called renewed attention to the potential tangle of business interests Trump brought with him on taking office last month.

In a tweet posted moments after he wrapped up an address to US law enforcement, Trump hit out at the high-end retailer for announcing last week it had decided to discontinue sales of Ivanka Trump’s fashion line due to poor sales.

“My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by Nordstrom,” Trump wrote. “She is a great person – always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”

Since his surprise victory in the November presidential election, Trump has used his Twitter feed to lambast individual companies — from General Motors to Boeing — be it for off-shoring jobs or allegedly overcharging the federal government for aircraft.

But the latest tweet was different in that it sought to defend part of Trump’s family business empire, which critics have said could be a source of profound conflicts of interest for the White House.

l British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, who was born in New York, has renounced his US citizenship, according to a United States Treasury Department document released on Wednesday.

Alexander Boris Johnson figured in the Treasury list of people who had given up their US citizenship in the last quarter of 2016.

The former mayor of London has held both British and US passports. Johnson had said in 2015 he intended to give up his dual nationality for patriotic reasons.

He said his US passport was “an accident of birth” and that he had to “find a way of sorting it out” with the then US ambassador Matthew Barzun.

“The reason I’m thinking I probably will want to make a change is that my commitment is, and always has been, to Britain,” he told the Sunday Times newspaper.

“They (the Americans) don’t make it easy for you,” Johnson added, hinting it could be a long and arduous process.

Britain’s foreign ministry said he renounced his US citizenship early in 2016, which then took some time to go through the system.

Johnson had previously settled a capital gains tax bill sent by the US after he sold his house in north London, calling the demand “absolutely outrageous”.

All US citizens have to pay tax to Washington, even if they live outside the country.

-Al Jazeera