Oregon’s U.S. Attorney Natalie K. Wight on Tuesday was told to step down from the job, a long-anticipated move since Donald Trump became president for a second term.

Her first assistant, William Narus, 48, will serve as acting U.S. attorney until the administration nominates Wight’s replacement.

It’s common for new presidents to replace U.S. attorneys. Trump also announced on Tuesday that he instructed the Justice Department to terminate all remaining Biden-era U.S. attorneys, asserting that the department had been “politicized like never before.”

“We must ‘clean house’ IMMEDIATELY, and restore confidence. America’s Golden Age must have a fair Justice System — THAT BEGINS TODAY,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon said Wight was informed of her termination “in a communication from the White House” and that the White House “thanked her for her service to the United States.”

Wight was nominated by President Joe Biden on June 6, 2022, and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Sept. 9, 2022.

Wight, 50, a 1992 graduate of Portland’s Cleveland High School, has been working in the District of Oregon since 2012 and with the U.S. Department of Justice since 2003. She became the first Black person and second Asian American to lead Oregon’s U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“I want to thank our Oregon communities and our exceptional public servants for helping to keep Oregon a safe and beautiful place to live,” she said in a statement. “I am excited to watch the office’s continued success working with federal, state, county, local, and tribal agencies serving the people of Oregon. I am immensely proud to have worked side by side with such dedicated Oregonians.”

Among the names said to be under consideration for the top federal prosecutor’s job in the state are:

• Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Edmonds, who has served in the office for 23 years after 12 years at the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office and is a former U.S. Marine Corps captain.

• Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Bradford, who spent just over 13 years in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Portland and most recently spent two and a half years as an adviser to Southeast Asia on international computer hacking and intellectual property. For the last six months, he has been based in the Washington, D.C., office as a trial lawyer in the department’s national security cyber section.

• Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Kerin, who has served in the office for nearly 23 years after working nearly five and a half years as a deputy district attorney for the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office.

During Kerin’s time at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he had an extramarital relationship for more than a year with his boss, U.S. Attorney Amanda Marshall, while his then-wife worked as a prosecutor in the same office. Marshall resigned while under investigation and was found to have violated laws and regulations against sexual harassment, the inspector general’s office found. Kerin spent a year and a half in Romania for the Justice Department, advising prosecutors and police there on cybercrime and intellectual property crimes.

• Will Lathrop, who ran unsuccessfully for state attorney general against Dan Rayfield. He served just over seven years as a Marion County deputy district attorney and nearly two years as a Yamhill County prosecutor. He later worked for the nonprofit human rights organization International Justice Mission for about eight years, with two of those years spent in Uganda.

The move marks the fourth change in Oregon’s U.S. attorney’s seat, including interim appointments, since February 2021 when Biden asked Billy J. Williams to step down from the job. Williams’ first assistant, Scott Asphaug, was named acting U.S. attorney until Wight was appointed.

Wight has kept a low public profile in the job but is well-respected in the office as a leader focused on supporting her assistants, according to federal prosecutors in the office.

She said she was most proud of her outreach to schools, educating students on the dangers of fentanyl, warning of online exploitation and supporting student leaders.

“I am proud of the Office’s dedication to protecting Oregon’s youth, supporting law enforcement and maintaining strong agency partnerships,” she said in a statement.

This year, the district hosted its third Junior Justice Summit where students from local high schools collaborated with civic leaders and law enforcement officials on ways to help keep young people safe, her office said.

In October, she made her most public remarks when she pressed the Multnomah County chair and other county officials to explain how they would avoid what she called “an emergency” as the county’s two jails neared capacity, especially given the possibility of protests and ensuing arrests during what was anticipated to be a volatile election season.

Her remarks, along with pressure from the sheriff and the county’s chief criminal judge, led to the county setting aside additional funding for the county jail.

As the U.S. attorney, Wight served as the 9th Circuit’s representative on the U.S. Attorney General’s advisory committee, as a liaison for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and on national subcommittees for controlled substances, violent crime, child exploitation and Native American issues.

Outside of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Wight, an Oregon native, has coached the Cleveland Mock Trial team for more than 10 years at her alma mater.

Narus became a federal prosecutor after clerking for a federal trial judge and a federal appellate judge. He also was a resident legal adviser in the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.