President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general sent a clear signal through Washington on Wednesday that Trump intends for his Justice Department to take a sharp-elbowed, hyper-partisan approach to law and order — one that is both unquestioningly loyal to Trump and openly antagonistic toward his political opponents, legal and political experts said.

That, after all, has long been the approach of Gaetz, a hard-right member of the House since 2016 who is deeply unpopular among his Democratic and Republican colleagues, but has won praise from Trump by being unflinchingly defensive of the former and future president and openly derisive of the various state and federal criminal cases against him.

“If anything shows Trump will make no effort at unity or conciliation, it is this pick,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that Gaetz had submitted his resignation from Congress “effectively immediately,” in the hope that Florida officials can fill his House seat with another Republican by early January and the party’s thin majority in the chamber won’t be diminished as the next Trump administration gets underway.

Others noted that Gaetz’s departure from Congress also draws to a close an ongoing House ethics investigation against him.

Trump’s pick for the nation’s highest-ranking law enforcement official has been closely watched, given the stakes. Trump won the election despite being a convicted felon with multiple criminal cases pending against him, and after having promised to use the Justice Department to turn the tables and go after his political foes.

Gaetz, 42, has echoed Trump’s claims that the FBI and others within the Justice Department have been politically co-opted and weaponized in recent years to go after Republicans — including Gaetz himself, who was the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation that ended with no charges last year.

The probe involved allegations that Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid her to travel with him. The separate investigation by the House Ethics Committee, which will now be closed out, was considering whether Gaetz “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use” or “sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct,” among other things, the committee said in June.

Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing.

In announcing his selection, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that Gaetz had distinguished himself in the House in part by calling for reforms in the Justice Department, and as attorney general would “root out the systemic corruption” and return the department “to its true mission of fighting Crime, and upholding our Democracy and Constitution.”

“Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System,” Trump wrote. “Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department.”

Gaetz called Trump’s nomination “an honor.” He also wrote on X that if ending the “weaponized” Justice Department “means ABOLISHING every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF, I’m ready to get going!”

Gaetz has been on the far-right fringe of the Republican Party in Congress, one among a cohort of MAGA enthusiasts who have caused problems for the broader caucus on more than one occasion — including when they helped orchestrate the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.

Then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) speaks to reporters hours after he was ousted as House speaker in 2023.

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, another member of the MAGA cohort, hailed Gaetz as an “incredible choice” and a “total repudiation of four years of tyranny by a government entity run amok” under President Biden.

Others in Congress expressed shock — and dismay — at the news of Gaetz’s nomination. Many, from both sides of the political aisle, suggested Gaetz lacked the moral foundation needed to hold the position, and could face an uphill battle to winning confirmation in the Senate.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff, a chief Trump antagonist for years who was just elected to the Senate from California and will be sworn in next month, said Gaetz’s nomination “must be rejected” by his colleagues — especially given a recent decision by the Supreme Court that found that presidents enjoy sweeping criminal immunity for actions taken in their official capacity.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) during a hearing at the Capitol in 2022.

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

“First the Supreme Court granted a president immunity for weaponizing the Justice Department. Now Donald Trump wants to appoint Matt Gaetz as AG?” Schiff wrote on X. “Confirming him would mean affirming the worst potential abuses of DOJ.”

Several of Gaetz’s fellow Republicans also raised concerns, according to a host of reporting online Wednesday.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said Gaetz was not a “serious nomination” and that she looked forward to considering “somebody that is serious.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she was “shocked” by Gaetz’s nomination — which she saw as a reminder of why the Senate’s role in confirming presidential nominations for important cabinet positions is “so important.”

John Bolton, who served in every GOP administration since Ronald Reagan’s and was Trump’s national security advisor in 2018 and 2019, called Trump’s pick of Gaetz “the worst nomination for a Cabinet position in American history,” and one Republicans should oppose.

“This is something that falls well outside the scope of deference that should be given to a president in nominating members of the senior team,” Bolton said on “Meet the Press Now.” “Gaetz is not only totally incompetent for this job, he doesn’t have the character. He is a person of moral turpitude.”

How Gaetz’s nomination will be taken up by the Senate is unclear, but it will be an early test for newly elected Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota, another mainstream Republican. Trump in recent days has suggested that the Senate should give him unilateral power to appoint all of his nominees through recess appointments, which do not need Senate approval.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Rep. Michael Guest. (R-Miss.), left, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) shown in June.

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

Trump’s pick for attorney general is widely viewed as one of his most important decisions.

Trump has spent much of the last eight years under criminal investigation by the Justice Department and other law enforcement agencies. He is a convicted felon awaiting sentencing in a New York case, and facing additional criminal charges in two federal cases and in Georgia.

Experts say he is eager to install a loyalist as attorney general who will not only fight to end any of those prosecutions that are still active by the time he takes office, but who will protect him against any new prosecutions moving forward and use the criminal justice system to go after Trump’s enemies, including political opponents and the prosecutors who charged him with crimes or pursued civil cases against him or his businesses.

Trump spoke extensively about such retribution on the campaign trail.

Mark Paoletta, a conservative attorney serving on Trump’s transition team, said Monday on X that Trump’s agenda included “stopping the lawfare and persecution of political opponents,” but also “holding accountable those who weaponized their government authority to abuse Americans.”

Trump has repeatedly expressed regret about not appointing people more loyal to him as attorney general during his first term, which was defined in part by the Justice Department’s investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

Trump had two attorneys general during his first term. The first was Jeff Sessions, an Alabama senator who served on Trump’s 2016 transition team.

Trump became infuriated with Sessions after he recused himself from overseeing the Russia probe, and his top deputy, Rod Rosenstein, appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to oversee the investigation with independence.

Mueller’s investigation found a slate of communications between Trump campaign officials and Russian agents, but not enough to justify criminal charges against Trump. Still, the probe mired the first half of Trump’s presidency in scandal. Trump ultimately fired Sessions.

Trump also soured on his next attorney general, Bill Barr, who backed Trump through the conclusion of the Mueller probe but broke with him over his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Barr has said that when he told Trump that there was no evidence of election fraud, Trump became furious with him. Barr stepped down in December 2020, just before President Biden was inaugurated.

Barr later said Trump “never really had a good idea of, you know, the role of the Department of Justice [and] to some extent, you know, the president’s role.” Trump has blasted Barr as “gutless” and a “coward.”

Then-Atty. Gen. Bill Barr speaks to then-President Trump as Trump vetoes a bill in 2019.

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

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While not etched in law, political tradition in this country since Watergate has been for the Justice Department to operate independently of the White House. Trump did not follow those guidelines.

In addition to pressuring the agency to pursue certain investigations and not others, and ridiculing his Justice Department leaders and Mueller, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey amid the Russia investigation. FBI directors usually serve a fixed 10-year term, and Comey’s dismissal was the first firing of one since 1993.

Trump and some other legal minds in his orbit have suggested Trump should go after those prosecutors who have targeted him and his companies — including Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has pursued criminal cases against Trump for his incitement of the Jan. 6 insurrection and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort; and Letitia “Tish” James, the New York attorney general who won a massive fraud judgment against Trump for inflating his net worth to win preferable insurance and loan terms.

James recently held a news conference alongside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in which they said they were ready to fight Trump’s agenda and abuses of power.

Trump has also suggested exacting retribution against several California officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, who recently held a press conference similar to Hochul’s; Schiff, who helped lead the resistance to Trump during his first term, including during both of Trump’s impeachments; and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has long been one of Trump’s most effective critics.

On Wednesday, experts said Gaetz, if confirmed, would be a ready partner in such efforts.

Chemerinsky, of Berkeley Law, said Trump “could not have picked anyone more far right or more a loyalist than Matt Gaetz,” and that there “is every reason to fear that he will be even less independent than Jeff Sessions or William Barr.”

Gaetz is married to Ginger Luckey Gaetz, the sister of major Trump donor Palmer Luckey of Newport Beach. Luckey, a Long Beach native, sold his virtual reality company to Facebook for $3 billion at the age of 21. He hosted major fundraisers for the president elect in the 2024 and 2020 elections.

Gaetz attended a Trump rally in the Coachella Valley earlier this year.

Times staff writer Noah Bierman, in Washington, contributed to this report.

While President-elect Donald Trump has yet to announce who will be at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), he has indicated several steps he would take to slash “gender-affirming” care for minors across the country.

In a video posted to Truth Social in February 2023, Trump said his plan “to stop the chemical, physical and emotional mutilation of our youth” would involve issuing an executive order directing all federal agencies to halt any programs that support or promote sex changes at any age.

“I will then ask Congress to permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars from being used to promote or pay for these procedures and pass a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states,” Trump said in the video.

TRUMP TO PICK FLORIDA’S RUBIO TO SERVE AS SECRETARY OF STATE

Trump announced plans to ban any hospital or healthcare provider involved in gender-transition treatments for minors from participating in Medicaid and Medicare. He also pledged to support legal actions allowing affected individuals to sue doctors who performed these procedures on minors.

“The Department of Justice will investigate Big Pharma and the big hospital networks to determine whether they have deliberately covered up horrific long-term side effects of sex transitions in order to get rich at the expense of vulnerable patients,” Trump added.

Trump honed in on transgender issues during the last leg of his campaign with a successful ad that focused on men in women’s sports and Vice President Kamala Harris’ track record of ushering in sex change procedures for incarcerated people in California.

HOUSE LEADERS MOVE QUICKLY TO CONSOLIDATE POWER IN SHOW OF CONFIDENCE FOR REPUBLICAN MAJORITY

A transgender flag unfurled on a pole. Texas SB 14 would ban gender-affirming treatments and therapies for transgender youth if signed by Gov. Greg Abbott. (Getty Images)

“Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” the narrator of Trump’s campaign ad said. Experts say the TV spot had a substantial influence on swing voters.

Over the last four years, the Biden-Harris administration used federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, to expand access to surgical procedures for minors. Under Biden, HHS created a regulation that interpreted “sex discrimination” within the Affordable Care Act to include gender identity and sexual orientation.

The expanded definition under Title IX meant that any medical provider not offering sex change procedures for any age was at risk of losing federal funding under the Biden-Harris regulation. The rule was blocked by the Supreme Court in August. 

GOP REP. MIKE WALTZ TAPPED TO BE TRUMP’S NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER

President Biden, right, meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

In June, health officials in the Biden administration urged the international transgender health nonprofit, World Professional Association for Transgender Health, to omit the age limit in its guidelines for transgender surgical procedures for adolescents – and succeeded – according to unsealed court documents.

More than 25 states in the U.S. have enacted bans and restrictions on surgical procedures and hormonal prescriptions for transgender youth. Roughly 24 states still permit gender transition surgeries and drugs for children.

In recent days, Trump has been announcing his administration’s appointments much quicker than he did during his first term. HHS candidates Fox News Digital has learned include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Eric Hargan, former HUD Secretary Ben Carson, Seema Verma, Paul Mango, Joseph Ladapo, Roger Severino, Brian Blase and Joe Grogan.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Trump-Vance transition team for comment.

Supporters of Measure G declared victory this week, eking out a win with roughly 51% support. While the Los Angeles County charter changes didn’t get as much attention as other high-profile measures on the ballot, make no mistake: This wonky governance reform package may be the most transformative decision county voters have made in decades.

By 2026, the county will for the first time have an ethics commission to regulate conflicts of interest and lobbying and investigate misconduct by elected officials and county employees. This is long overdue for a government with a $45-billion budget and 100,000 employees. A recent investigation triggered by the federal corruption case against former Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas found significant problems in the county’s contracting process, prompting investigators to recommend a new ethics and compliance officer and other measures to prevent conflicts of interest.

In addition, in 2028, voters will elect an executive to lead the county government. The position — in effect a county mayor — is also long overdue. For more than a century, L.A. County has been governed by a five-member Board of Supervisors, which was fine when the region had more cows than people. But today the county has a population and geographic footprint larger than those of many states. Imagine trying to run New Jersey with a five-member legislature and no governor.

An independently elected chief executive who can manage departments and make decisions will be clearly accountable to the public. That should motivate progress on long-standing needs such as closing the dangerously decrepit Men’s Central Jail and diverting qualified inmates to rehabilitation facilities; addressing problems in the child welfare system; and providing adequate substance abuse and mental health treatment.

And in 2032, nine members will be elected to the Board of Supervisors, which should allow for more representation of the county’s geography, politics and ethnic diversity. Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s 5th District currently stretches from Los Feliz to Lancaster, for example; it’s an impossible job to understand and act on behalf of communities with such divergent needs.

With a county executive in place, the supervisors’ jobs will change too. The board will primarily be responsible for delivering services to the unincorporated portions of the county, legislating and holding the executive accountable.

This should ensure a better, more transparent government. Countless failures and inefficiencies have never come to light because the county lacked even the most basic checks and balances that are essential to democracy.

This will be a monumental shift for L.A. County that good-government advocates — including The Times’ editorial board — have long been pushing for. Four times since 1962, voters have rejected ballot measures to expand the board of supervisors or add an elected county official. The state Legislature considered bills to make similar changes in 2015 and 2017, but neither got enough support.

Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Janice Hahn deserve credit for co-authoring Measure G. They recognized that with a popular L.A. city governance reform package already on the November ballot, this year presented a rare opportunity to overcome voters’ historic skepticism about expanding county leadership.

While Measure G clears the way for the government overhaul, many of the details still need to be worked out. A governance reform task force will be appointed in the coming weeks to make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors on how to implement the governance and ethics reforms. This will be crucial in laying the groundwork for success — and ensuring that the special interests that opposed Measure G, including county employee unions, don’t try to weaken or stall the ambitious plans.

County voters finally embraced change. They deserve a government that can deliver on its promises.