Alabama Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, whose name is so antebellum that it sounds like a Civil War re-enactment, is poised to be confirmed as U.S. attorney general. He’ll do so with an assist from a shadowy organization called the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), which is targeting Democrats in red states to pressure them into confirming Sessions’ nomination.

And, sadly, this strategy will probably work.

JCN is a conservative advocacy group with ties to the Koch brothers’ vast network of wealth. It has spent millions of dollars over the years to install Republicans in state courts and attorneys general offices around the country, according to a lengthy exposé written in 2015 by Viveca Novak and Peter Stone for the Daily Beast.

JCN was founded in 2005 to drum up support for George W. Bush’s U.S. Supreme Court nominees—current Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. In 2005 and early 2006, the group spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on radio and online ads and grassroots efforts in order to shape opinions about the two Supreme Court nominees, according to the Daily Beast. Back then the Judicial Crisis Network was called the Judicial Confirmation Network. At some point during the Obama administration, however, the group was thrown into crisis—I’ll leave you to speculate as to the reason why—and changed its name.

Since then, JCN has doled out millions of dollars in elections all over the country. In 2014, for example, JCN sent a million-dollar check to the Republican Attorneys General Association, which helped the GOP win the seats necessary to control the majority of state attorneys general offices. Most recently, the group launched a “Let the People Decide” campaign, which was a “seven figure television, radio and digital advertising campaign” to strip Barack Obama of his constitutional right to appoint a Supreme Court nominee. Ultimately, the JCN spent $7 million, and Merrick Garland was never confirmed.

More recently, the JCN has pledged to spend $10 million to ensure that Trump’s Supreme Court nominees sail through the nomination process:

JCN will engage a comprehensive campaign of paid advertising, earned media, research, grassroots activity, and a coalition enterprise, all adding up to the most robust operation in the history of confirmation battles. JCN and its allies will focus on states where Senate Democrats are vulnerable in 2018, particularly those where Trump won by large margins.

Essentially, JCN has endeavored to bloat the court system with conservatives for the benefit of corporations, lobbyists, and business interests, often to the detriment of people’s civil rights. Its general strategy these days seems to be leaning on Senate Democrats to imply that if they don’t vote the group’s way, their positions will be in jeopardy next election season. Some of its multimedia efforts also explicitly urge conservative viewers to call their senators directly.

And now it has set its sights on Jeff Sessions. In doing so, it is trying to ensure that a career racist becomes the nation’s top lawyer by revamping his image as a civil rights champion. The very notion is ludicrous.

According to Politico, the JCN is behind a pro-Sessions digital ad campaign totaling more than a half million dollars, the purpose of which is to strong-arm red state Democrats into voting for Jeff Sessions. They are focusing on Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Heidi Heitkamp ofNorth Dakota.

The first ad began running the Friday before the first day of Sessions’ confirmation hearing two weeks ago. It’s a 30-second bit featuring two swell white Southern guys talking about how swell Sessions is. (There’s not a Black person to be found in this particular ad.)

After the confirmation hearings, which saw Sessions practically drooling on himself as he nervously tried to distance himself from his racist past—“I abhor the Klan and what it represents and its hateful ideology!”—another ad with ties to JCN began to run in key states and in the Washington, D.C., area.

This ad, titled “Champion,” portrays Sessions as a champion for justice and a strong supporter of civil rights. Images of him standing with Rep. John Lewis (D-GA)—who testified against Sessions during his confirmation hearing—and President Obama flutter across the screen, in an apparent effort to send the message that Sessions totally knows and works with some Black people. (Unlike the ad featuring a couple of swell white guys, this ad was not paid for directly by JCN. A pro-Trump organization called 45committee paid for it, but the ad contains a link to a pro-Sessions website run by JCN, so the JCN clearly has its fingers in this particular pie.)

Despite these staunch efforts to revamp Jeff Sessions’ image as a civil rights champion who loves Black people, his background suggests the opposite. In 1985, Sessions prosecuted civil rights activists for trying to register Black voters; he has also opposed the Voting Rights Act. After he was tapped by Ronald Reagan in 1986 to serve as judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled him during his confirmation hearing on a history of calling the NAACP un-American; calling the American Civil Liberties Union “Communist-inspired” because it forced civil rights “down the throats of people;” and suggesting that a young white civil rights lawyer might be “a disgrace to his race.” The committee denied him the appointment.

As for Sessions’ so-called strong record on civil rights? Pffft. The attorneys who worked with Sessions when he was a federal prosecutor in Alabama have said that that he is exaggerating his role in civil rights cases, such as the prosecution of KKK members who lynched a Black teenager and 20 or 30 desegregation suits Sessions claims to have filed but which no one can seem to find.

Time and again throughout his career, Sessions has had an opportunity to stand up for civil rights and he hasn’t. That his supporters are trying to rebrand him as some Thurgood Marshall-style civil rights hero is offensive and laughable.

But also laughable is any idea that Senate Democrats are going to put up a real fight in opposing him.

Given the way some Senate Democrats have been behaving as of late—voting to confirm the grossly unqualified Ben Carson and Nikki Haley, or the grossly pro-torture Mike Pompeo—McCaskill, Donnelly, and Heitkamp might have happily confirmed Sessions even without the tacit threat of being unseated in 2018. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if a whole squad of Senate Democrats vote for Jeff Sessions and release some nonsense statement about how they are confident that Jeff Sessions isn’t racist because they asked him and he said he wasn’t.

“Hey, Jeff? You racist or not, bro?”

“Nah, son.”

“Cool, cool, cool.”

Senate Democrats have not shown that they have the stomach to resist Trump, his nominees, and his agenda. I don’t expect them to start doing so when it comes time to confirm Jeff Sessions.

So say goodbye to voting rights and say goodbye to protection for abortion clinics under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. Say hello to the militarization of cities like Chicago. This is what we can expect from a Sessions Department of Justice.

And, no matter how JCN tries to spin it, it’s not going to be pretty.