The new Attorney General will be Jeff Sessions.

The NYT reports.

Mr. Sessions was also under consideration for secretary of defense, creating debate within the Trump transition team over which job he should fill.

Mr. Sessions, a former prosecutor elected to the Senate in 1996, serves on the Judiciary Committee and has opposed immigration reform as well as bipartisan proposals to cut mandatory minimum prison sentences....

While serving as a United States prosecutor in Alabama, Mr. Sessions was nominated in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan for a federal judgeship. But his nomination was rejected by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee because of racially charged comments and actions. At that time, he was one of two judicial nominees whose selections were halted by the panel in nearly 50 years.

What were the "racially charged comments and actions" from decades ago and is it something that reflects on Trump now?

In testimony before the committee, former colleagues said that Mr. Sessions had referred to the N.A.A.C.P., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and other civil rights groups as “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.” An African-American federal prosecutor then, Thomas H. Figures, said Mr. Sessions had referred to him as “boy” and testified that Mr. Sessions said the Ku Klux Klan was fine “until I found out they smoked pot.” Mr. Sessions dismissed that remark as a joke.

"That remark" refers to the KKK, presumably, and not to calling Thomas H. Figures "boy." Here's an article in The Guardian from 2009 (and thus disconnected from current efforts to heighten everything racial that has to do with Trump):

Sessions's first national exposure was, surely, mortifying for the would-be federal judge. It was 1986, and the then-39-year-old US attorney for the Southern District of Alabama was a Reagan nominee to the federal bench. Sessions had good reason to believe he'd be rubber-stamped through to a judgeship – some 200 of the Gipper's judges had already been heavily sprinkled throughout the federal judicial system. But Sessions stopped up the works. The young lawyer became only the second man in 50 years to be rejected by the Senate judiciary committee....

The tip of the problem was a 1984 case that came to be known as the "Marion 3" – Sessions's prosecution of three civil rights workers over what he perceived as voting fraud.... All three were quickly acquitted...

[S]everal other worrisome notes about the nominee came to light....

Senate Democrats tracked down a career justice department employee named J Gerald Hebert, who testified, albeit reluctantly, that in a conversation between the two men Sessions had labelled the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) "un-American" and "communist-inspired". Hebert said Sessions had claimed these groups "forced civil rights down the throats of people."

In his confirmation hearings, Sessions sealed his own fate by saying such groups could be construed as "un-American" when "they involve themselves in promoting un-American positions" in foreign policy. Hebert testified that the young lawyer tended to "pop off" on such topics regularly, noting that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases.

If that weren't enough, a black former assistant US attorney, Thomas Figures, testified that Sessions had called him "boy", and that he had joked about the Ku Klux Klan in ways that implied he wasn't particularly appalled by their appalling tactics. UPI reported during the hearings on Figures's testimony.

''Mr Sessions ... stated that he believed the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Operation PUSH and the National Council of Churches were all un-American organisations teaching anti-American values,'' Figures testified. ''The statement clearly was not intended as a joke.'' Figures also said he was present when Sessions said he believed the Ku Klux Klan was OK until he learned its members smoked marijuana – a statement Sessions has said was clearly made in jest. ''I certainly took it as a serious statement,'' Figures said.

Sessions fought the charges. As I wrote in 2002: "[He] denied the accusations but … admitted to frequently joking in an off-colour sort of way. In his defence, he said he was not a racist, pointing out that his children went to integrated schools and that he had shared a hotel room with a black attorney several times."

He did, however, also admit that he had called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a "piece of intrusive legislation", a phrase he stood behind even in his confirmation hearings. To this day, he argues that Section five – a protective measure that concerns a handful of (mostly southern) states with appalling race histories – of the Voting Rights Act should be struck down.

The article is from 2009, as noted. The Supreme Court did, in fact, find that statutory provision unconstitutional in 2013, so Sessions's idea was not off the norm. Back to The Guardian:

Sessions's spot on the federal bench was gone. But his political career was hardly derailed. The Alabaman went on to become the state's attorney general (where he was again accused of pursuing voter fraud at the expense of the black community.

He won his Senate seat anyway, in 1996, and came to the Senate with the kind of rabid conservatism that today makes people feel the Republican party is out of touch with the country. The ACLU gives him an "anti-civil rights" sticker. The Human Rights Campaign dubs him an unambiguous "anti-gay rights" legislator with a 0% record on gay issues. And the NAACP labels him firmly "anti-affirmative action"....

Sessions lost his judicial nomination by a 10-8 vote, with the Democrats led by none other than a fire-breathing senator Joe Biden....

So... we're going to have to talk about race. Trump gave his opponents a opportunity to talk about race, and you know they're going to take it... bigly. Steel yourself.

Trump has a way of saying or doing just enough to trigger his opponents to go big on race. Here, Trump isn't saying anything racial at all, but he's made a move — in this long-term chess game with the press — that enables them to make it about race, and, of course, he must know that they will do it. Therefore, I infer that he wants them to do it. You might think he just believes Sessions is the best person for the job and Trump wants the best person regardless of the criticisms he expects to be hurled. I think it's a level beyond that. He sees an advantage in tangling the mainstream press up in the issue it loves far too much.