Joe Biden signals a sharp change from Donald Trump with cabinet elections

US President-elect Joe Biden appointed Obama administration veterans to top US national security positions, signaling a radical shift from the Trump administration’s “America First” policies that they disparaged. international alliances and favored deregulation and tax cuts.

The selections include former Secretary of State John Kerry to take the lead in the fight against climate change. Biden is also expected to choose Janet Yellen, who was nominated by former US President Barack Obama to head the Federal Reserve, as the first woman to become Secretary of the Treasury.

Biden’s emerging cabinet marks a return to a more traditional approach to governing, relying on veteran lawmakers with extensive experience and strong relationships in Washington and global capitals. And with a roster that includes several women and people of color, some of whom are breaking historical barriers in their posts, Biden is delivering on his campaign promise to lead a team that reflects America’s diversity.

The incoming president will nominate former adviser Antony Blinken as secretary of state, attorney Alejandro Mayorkas as secretary of Homeland Security and Linda Thomas-Greenfield as ambassador to the United Nations. Avril Haines, a former deputy director of the CIA, will be named director of national intelligence, the first woman to hold that position.

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Thomas-Greenfield is black and Mayorkas is Cuban-American.

They are “seasoned, crisis-tested leaders who are ready to go to work from day one,” the transition said in a statement.

These officials will immediately begin working to rebuild our institutions, renew and reinvent American leadership to keep Americans safe at home and abroad, and address the challenges that define our time, from infectious diseases to terrorism, nuclear proliferation, threats. cybernetics and weather. change.”

In the coming weeks, Biden could also name Michele Flournoy as the first woman to lead the Department of Defense. Pete Buttigieg, a former Indiana mayor and former presidential candidate, has also been mentioned as a candidate for various Cabinet agencies.

Trump said Monday he was leading his team to cooperate in the transition, but vowed to keep fighting. His comment came after the General Services Administration determined that Biden was the apparent winner of the election, clearing the way for the start of the transition from the Trump administration and allowing Biden to coordinate with federal agencies on the plans. to take office on January 20.

Nominations were generally greeted quietly on Capitol Hill, where the Senate’s balance of power hinges on two runoff races to be decided in January.

The best known of the group is Kerry, who made climate change one of his top priorities while serving as Obama’s secretary of state, during which he also negotiated the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord. Trump withdrew from both agreements, which he said represented a failure of US diplomacy in a direct attack on Kerry, whom he called the worst secretary of state in US history.

“The United States will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent threat to national security that it is,” Kerry said. “I am proud to partner with the president-elect, our allies and the young leaders of the climate movement to address this crisis as the president’s climate envoy.”

Biden will appoint Jake Sullivan as national security adviser. At 43, he will be one of the youngest national security advisers in history.

Blinken, 58, served as undersecretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration and has close ties to Biden. If confirmed as secretary of state, he would be a leading force in the incoming administration’s attempt to reshape America’s relationship with the rest of the world after four years in which Trump questioned long-standing alliances.

Blinken recently participated in a national security briefing with Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and last week we spoke publicly on important foreign policy issues in Egypt and Ethiopia.

You will inherit a deeply demoralized and depleted professional workforce at the State Department. Trump’s two secretaries of state, Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, offered weak resistance to the administration’s attempts to gut the agency, which were only thwarted by congressional intervention.

Although the department escaped proposed massive cuts of more than 30 percent to its budget for three years in a row, it has seen a significant number of deviations from its upper and mid-level ranks, from which many diplomats have chosen to either withdraw or leaving the foreign service with limited prospects for advancement under an administration they believed did not value their expertise.

Blinken served on the National Security Council during the administration of US President Bill Clinton before becoming a staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chairman of the panel. In the early years of the Obama administration, Blinken returned to the National Security Council and was a national security adviser to then-Vice President Biden before moving to the State Department to serve as Kerry’s deputy.

A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Law School, Blinken has aligned himself with numerous former senior national security officials who have called for a major reinvestment in American diplomacy and a renewed emphasis on global engagement.

“Democracy is in retreat around the world, and unfortunately it is in retreat at home as well because the president takes a two-four on his institutions, his values ​​and his people every day,” Blinken told The Associated Press in September. “Our friends know that Joe Biden knows who they are. Our adversaries too. That difference would be felt from day one. “

The stakes for a smooth transition are especially high this year because Biden will take office amid the worst pandemic in more than a century, likely requiring a full government response to contain him.

“If confirmed, this is a mission that I will take on with all my heart,” said Blinken, who would take over the nation’s oldest cabinet agency and would be fourth in line for the presidency.

Thomas-Greenfield, a career diplomat for more than 30 years who served as ambassador to Liberia, director general of the foreign service and undersecretary of state for African affairs before being ousted early in Trump’s presidency, paid tribute to her mother to the accept the nomination. .

“My mother taught me to lead with the power of kindness and compassion to make the world a better place,” he said in a tweet. “I have carried that lesson with me throughout my Foreign Service career and, if confirmed, I will do the same as Ambassador to the United Nations.”

Sullivan, who at 43 will be one of the youngest national security advisers in history, was a top adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before becoming a national security adviser to then-Vice President Biden. He said the president-elect had “taught me what it takes to safeguard our national security at the highest levels of our government.”

“Now, he has asked me to serve as his national security adviser,” Sullivan said. “In service, I will do everything in my power to keep our country safe.”

Mayorkas said he was honored by the nomination. “When I was very young, the United States provided my family and me with a place of refuge,” he said. “Now, I have been nominated to be the Secretary of DHS and oversee the protection of all Americans and those fleeing persecution in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones.”