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

The era of alternate realities in Washington is over. President Donald Trump gives in and is willing to initiate the transfer, as he pointed out to the head of the General Services Administration through Twitter. This opened the so-called “transition” with a formal letter to “president-elect” Joe Biden, after the election committee in the transition state from Michigan to Georgia certified Joe Biden’s victory.

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

Biden has a diverse and experienced staff

Meanwhile, the new Biden government is rapidly forming. Remarkably high numbers of women stand out with former Central Bank Fed chair Janet Yellen as likely future finance minister, African-American Linda-Thomas-Greenfield as UN ambassador and Avril Haines as head of the secret services national.

Some glass ceilings are perforated – also by the future Minister of Homeland Security: Alejandro Mayorkas is the first Latin American immigrant in the position of head of immigration.

Diversity and experience are the leitmotifs of Joe Biden’s nominations, which have yet to be approved by the Senate. They are politically well-calibrated, factual people with long credentials who often join the Obama administration without issue. Foreign policy and security posts in particular go to seasoned “liberal internationalists,” as the Wall Street Journal comments.

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

No progressive dating yet

So far, Biden’s cabinet has lacked politically incisive figures from the left wing of the Democrats; They can take solace in the fact that Biden seems to be serious about fighting climate change. He names his personal friend and former foreign minister, John Kerry, “Climate Czar.” He will coordinate the Biden administration’s climate policy efforts, at home and abroad.

Isabelle jacobi

US Correspondent, SRF

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After studying in the United States and 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 for Echo der Zeit and in 2012 she became editor-in-chief. Jacobi has been a US correspondent in Washington since the summer of 2017.