[ad_1]
(CNN) – President-elect Joe Biden’s administration is taking shape after his transition team announced a series of cabinet appointments and major White House staff shifts on Monday.
As President Donald Trump’s attempt to reverse the election fails, Biden and his team are moving forward and starting to give Americans a better idea of how he intends to govern.
Here’s what we know after Biden’s first wave of appointments and hires.
Biden offers experience instead of big names
No Democratic governor is drafting flight plans for Washington and the Democratic senators, whether they like it or not, and their allies are stuck in their current positions for now.
With the first round of nominations, it is clear that Biden is choosing people who are unquestionably experts in their fields rather than big names in democratic politics.
Partly it is a practical matter.
Democrats did not vote well on election day and there is little appetite within the party to risk seizing power, even in blue states or districts, in any powerful office. The special elections that followed the departure of some Republican lawmakers for the Trump administration have turned into costly proxy political wars that have inflamed partisan passions – something Biden, in an effort to restore some sort of normalcy, wishes to avoid.
Very little on-the-job training will be needed for senior officials at the Biden White House. The same goes for its people in charge of managing huge bureaucracies like the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.
Biden’s candidates for the head of the State Department, Antony Blinken, and the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, are not household names, but both have extensive experience in the agencies they will be tasked with leading.
Diversity is a priority
The first woman to oversee the Treasury Department. The first Latin American and immigrant to head the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The first woman to lead the intelligence community.
Announcements and reports of these upcoming nominations came within hours on Monday when Biden announced that Cuban-born Mayorkas would head DHS and Avril Haines was Biden’s choice as the next National Intelligence Director. . Janet Yellen is ready to break the mold for the second time. The first woman to chair the Federal Reserve, if confirmed, will have the same distinction as Secretary of the Treasury.
During the campaign, Biden promised that his administration would be “like America”. That process has begun and is evident in the composition of your transition team.
Nearly half are black people, and there are more women than men in their ranks, according to data provided to CNN.
LEE: Joe Biden elects first woman to lead the intelligence community and first Latin American to lead internal security
Nationals are a fundamental rejection of Trumpism
Bringing former Secretary of State John Kerry as his special presidential envoy for the environment – and giving that position a seat on the National Security Council – is a stark departure from a Trump who denies climate change and who defined warming. global as a hoax and pulled the US out of the Paris climate deal.
Simply hiring qualified people for your jobs is in itself a rejection of the Trump model, which has installed donors, right-wing ideologues and inexperienced allies in positions of power. This, in some cases, with the express purpose of undermining the institutions they were meant to lead.
While Trump once tried to name Heather Nauert, a former Fox News host who spent a couple of years serving as a State Department spokesperson as his UN ambassador, Biden on Monday chose Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a respected veteran diplomat. who most recently served as undersecretary of the African Affairs Office.
Biden is trying to stay at the center … of the Democratic Party
Biden joked about the announcement of his choice as head of the Treasury Department last week with an unusually conscientious promise.
“He is someone who will be accepted by all elements of the Democratic Party,” he said, “from progressive to moderate coalitions.”
The president-elect, from the end of the primary to the general election campaign, has tried to end the ideological divide of the Democratic Party by publicly and privately offering progressives a seat at the table. Biden continued on this path during the transition.
However, he has carved out important roles for his trusted group of moderate helpers and lifelong counselors. That faithful inner circle will be in the center of the Oval Office.
Some of his selections have been more popular on the left than others, but so far he has stayed away from the more divisive names. Jake Sullivan, named his national security advisor on Monday, is not leftist. But his work over the past four years to engage progressive ideas, coupled with his involvement in an introspection project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has won over some potential skeptics.
LEE: Who could fill the top positions in the Biden administration?
It is moving fast
In something of a continuation of the campaign, Biden’s team is robbing Trump of oxygen by sticking to their script and making their own headlines.
For now, this means constantly launching selections for top management positions.
It has been less than two weeks since Ron Klain was named White House Chief of Staff. Since then, much of the West Wing’s top personnel have been announced and, with Monday’s flurry, Biden’s foreign policy and national security positions are filling up.
The speed of the process, which began before the election, sent a clear message to Americans and those watching from abroad: a new government is coming and ready from day one.
Source link
