After 165 days of waiting, Loretta Lynch became the new attorney general last week. She is the first black woman to serve as attorney general and will be replacing Eric Holder. Lynch graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, has been a federal prosecutor and worked at several private law firms.  She was confirmed 56-43 with 10 Republicans voting for her according to the New York Times. A close call, but she made it.

So why did it take so long? The Senate was voting on a human trafficking bill. You would think that if it has anything to do with human trafficking that the answer on what to vote on would be easy, right? Well, in this bill, it says that the restitution funds that traffickers give to victims wouldn’t have been able to be used for their abortions, according to CNN. It has absolutely nothing to do with Lynch, but a senator said he would not propose a vote for Lynch until the bill was passed.

It seems that most of the Republicans were wary of voting her in because of her stance on immigration that mirrors Obama’s plan to let 5 million undocumented immigrants stay in the United States, according to the New York Times. Refinery29 listed some of the policies she stands by: 1. She’s actually against legalizing marijuana, unlike President Obama. 2. She’s not afraid to go after the law enforcement when it comes to police brutality; she has done it plenty of times before. I hope she won’t be remembered as the first black woman attorney general, but as a fearless leader whose decisions repair this country.

Photo courtesy of United States Department of Justice/Wikimedia Commons