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WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) – President-elect Joe Biden on Monday named former Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen as his candidate for Secretary of the Treasury and appointed three women to other top economic positions, setting the stage for a White House. more diverse.
While Biden’s transition to the presidency on Jan.20 appeared to be moving forward, he himself was limping after fracturing his foot while playing with his dog on Saturday and will wear a protective boot for several weeks, his doctors said.
The incoming administration has been hampered for weeks by Republican President Donald Trump, who has refused to give in to Biden, a Democrat. Trump has said, without providing evidence, that the Nov. 3 vote was fraudulent, claims that state and federal election officials have dismissed.
Biden named the main members of an economic team that will have to combat the devastating blows to workers and companies from the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 266,000 people in the United States in nine months.
Unlike Trump, who largely elected white men to key positions, Biden’s early appointments were shaping up to be vastly diverse, including an all-female senior communications team that unveiled Sunday night. He appointed campaign spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield as White House communications director and veteran Democratic spokeswoman Jen Psaki as press secretary.
“This team resembles the United States and has serious purpose, the highest degree of competition, and unwavering faith in America’s promise,” Biden said in a statement. “They will be ready the first day to go to work for all Americans.”
Biden was expected to formally introduce the new members of the economic team on Tuesday, the transition team said.
Yellen, 74, chaired the US central bank from 2014 to 2018 and served as chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers.
On Twitter, after Biden announced his nomination, Yellen highlighted the challenges America faces. “To recover, we must restore the American dream, a society in which each person can develop their potential and dream even more for their children. As Secretary of the Treasury, I will work every day to rebuild that dream for everyone.”
PROGRESSIVE SELECTIONS
Biden also said he would nominate Wally Adeyemo as Yellen’s understudy. Adeyemo had been a deputy national security adviser during Barack Obama’s presidency and later served as president of the Obama Foundation, which oversees the planning of the former Democratic president’s library.
And Biden said he would nominate Neera Tanden to head the Office of Management and Budget. Tanden helped the Obama administration create the Affordable Care Act, the sweeping health care reform popularly known as Obamacare that was one of the former president’s central achievements and whose demolition became a central goal for the republicans.
Tanden, executive director of the progressive think tank Center for American Progress, would be the first woman of color to lead the OMB if confirmed by the Senate.
Biden elected Cecelia Rouse, dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, to chair the Council of Economic Advisers. He was a member of Obama’s council from 2009 to 2011.
Heather Boushey, an economist focused on economic inequality and president, CEO and co-founder of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, will serve on the council.
Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were also to receive their first classified daily presidential briefing on Monday, which the Trump administration had previously refused to provide. The report is the first step toward transferring responsibility for more sensitive intelligence to a new administration.
Trump, for his part, kept his fraud claims unfounded in an interview with Fox News on Sunday and with tweets on Sunday night that the social media service marked as disputed. Trump, who on Thursday said he would leave the White House if Biden were formally declared the winner by the Electoral College on Dec. 14, appeared to back away from his combative legal stance and told Fox he saw no way to present his case. the United States Supreme Court.
Separately on Monday, Georgia electoral authorities said they have opened investigations into third-party groups trying to register new voters ahead of the January special election that will determine control of the US Senate.
(Report by Jarrett Renshaw in Wilmington, Delaware, additional report by Brad Heath, Trevor Hunnicutt, Simon Lewis, Patricia Zengerle, and Andrea Shalal; written by Patricia Zengerle and Grant McCool; edited by Scott Malone, Chizu Nomiyama, and Jonathan Oatis)
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