WHAT CONGRESS CAN DO:

The early days of the Trump presidency have rushed a nationalist agenda long on the fringes of American life into action -- and Sessions, the quiet Alabaman who long cultivated those ideas as a Senate backbencher, has become a singular power in this new Washington.

Sessions's nomination as Trump's attorney general is scheduled to be considered Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, yet his influence in the administration extends far beyond the Justice Department. From immigration and health care to national security and trade, Sessions is the intellectual godfather of the president's policies. Sessions's reach extends throughout the White House, with his aides and allies accelerating the president's most dramatic moves, including the ban on refugees and migrants from seven mostly Muslim nations that has triggered fear around the globe.

The author of many of Trump's executive orders is senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, a Sessions confidant who was mentored by him and who spent the weekend overseeing the government's implementation of the refu­gee ban. The tactician turning Trump's agenda into law is deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn, Sessions's longtime chief of staff in the Senate. The mastermind behind Trump's incendiary brand of populism is chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who promoted Sessions for years as chairman of the Breitbart website.

 Sessions, left, and then-President-elect Donald Trump speak at a "USA Thank You Tour" rally in Sessions's home town of Mobile, Ala., on Dec. 17. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Then there is Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, who considers Sessions a savant and forged a bond with the senator while orchestrating Trump's trip last summer to Mexico City and during the darkest days of the campaign.

In a lengthy email, Bannon described Sessions as "the clearinghouse for policy and philosophy" in Trump's administration, saying he and the senator are joined at the center of Trump's "pro-America movement" and the global nationalist phenomenon.

"In America and Europe, working people are reasserting their right to control their own destinies," Bannon wrote. "Jeff Sessions has been at the forefront of this movement for years, developing populist nation-state policies that are supported by the vast and overwhelming majority of Americans, but are poorly understood by cosmopolitan elites in the media that live in a handful of our larger cities."

Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a Democratic appointee, says she's directed Justice Department attorneys not to defend President Donald Trump's executive order on refugees. [...]

Her directive will be in place until she leaves the department, which will happen once the Senate confirms Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump's pick for attorney general.

Tweet   @brothersjudd