Of Donald Trump's most prominent allies in the presidential campaign, Jeff Sessions is the last one standing. Newt Gingrich is an outside adviser to Trump and occasional critic. Chris Christie works full-time as governor of New Jersey. Rudy Giuliani didn't get the position he wanted—secretary of state—and turned down several he didn't want.
Sessions, as Trump's choice for attorney general, has the job of draining the swamp at the Department of Justice and making DoJ great again. It's going to be a grueling job with many facets. The good news is that Sessions, a former U.S. attorney and Alabama attorney general before he was elected to the Senate in 1996, is familiar with all of them.
Rolling back the excesses of Justice under his predecessors Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch should start immediately. Extreme positions in cases in federal court will need to be changed. One example: defense of the "guidance" letters that propound a radical notion of transgender rights.
The "Ferguson effect" that has weakened law enforcement ever since the August 2014 rioting in the Missouri town should be confronted. President Obama and Holder exacerbated it by putting police officers under a constant threat of federal investigation and second-guessing of their conduct.
Selective enforcement of the law—actually nonenforcement—began early in the Obama administration when Justice declined to prosecute armed members of the New Black Panthers who had intimidated voters in Philadelphia in the 2008 presidential election. Since then, immigration rules, the Defense of Marriage Act, and the federal requirement to maintain the accuracy of voting rolls have gone unenforced.
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01.13.2025