The Senate confirmed Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to be President Trump’s attorney general on Wednesday night, over sustained but ultimately futile Democratic complaints that Sessions worked against minority interests when he was a U.S. attorney for Alabama, and that he’s too close to Trump to enforce the law independently from the White House.

Democrats changed the rules in 2013 so that only a simple majority is needed to approve a president’s Cabinet nominees. Under those rules, the Senate easily confirmed Sessions in a party-line 52-47 vote, and was helped by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who had said he would support Sessions’ nomination.