The former Trump defense lawyer and Florida attorney general issues a raft of new orders, undoing a broad array of Biden administration policies

The first attorney general, Edmund Randolph, was President George Washington’s confidant and close political ally. Between then and now, presidents have, from time to time, appointed friends and supporters to be attorneys general. They even chose campaign managers or their party’s national chairperson to be attorney general of the United States.

The Senate has confirmed Pam Bondi as U.S. attorney general. Her confirmation puts a longtime ally of Donald Trump at the helm of a Justice Department that has already been rattled by the firings of career employees seen as disloyal to the Republican president.

A top Justice Department official on Wednesday told FBI agents they would not be fired if they worked on January 6 investigations because they were ordered to do so and accused FBI leaders of insubordination for initially opposing demands for agents' names.

Staffers and employees working for the Department of Government Efficiency, headed by billionaire Elon Musk, have been temporarily barred from accessing data in the Treasury Department's payment system by the Department of Justice.