After the US Elections – Some glass ceilings are pierced in Washington – News

The era of alternative realities in Washington is over. President Donald Trump gives in and is willing to start the handover, as he reported to the official in charge of the General Services Administration via Twitter. This opened the so-called “transition” with a formal letter to “President-elect” Joe Biden, after the state electoral committee swinging from Michigan to Georgia certified Joe Biden’s victory.

Pennsylvania will follow, and with that Trump has exhausted the legal means to prevent his election.

Biden relies on a diverse and experienced staff

Meanwhile, the new Biden government is forming rapidly. A conspicuous number of women stand out with former Fed central bank president Janet Yellen as the likely future finance minister, African-American Linda-Thomas-Greenfield as UN ambassador and Avril Haines as head of national intelligence.

Some glass ceilings are pierced – even by the future minister of internal security: Alejandro Mayorkas is the first immigrant and Latin American to replace the department responsible for immigration.

Diversity and experience are the leitmotifs of Joe Biden’s candidacies, which have yet to be approved by the Senate. They are politically well-calibrated, down-to-earth people with long credentials who often join the Obama administration seamlessly. In particular, foreign and security policy assignments go to established “liberal internationalists”, as the Wall Street Journal comments.

Future Secretary of State Anthony Blinken represents US power politics in multilateral interaction, as was common before the Trump administration.

No progressive appointments yet

So far, Biden’s cabinet has lacked politically strong left-wing Democrats – they can console themselves with the fact that Biden appears to take the fight against climate change seriously. He names his personal friend and former foreign minister, John Kerry, “climate czar”. He will coordinate the Biden government’s climate policy efforts at home and abroad.

Isabelle Jacobi

US correspondent, SRF

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After studying in the United States and in Bern, Jacobi worked for Radio SRF from 1999 to 2005. He then worked as a freelance journalist in New York. In 2008 she returned to SRF as a producer of Echo der Zeit and in 2012 she became editor-in-chief. Jacobi has been a US correspondent in Washington since summer 2017.