Secretary of Homeland Security - Alejandro Mayorkas - nominated 11/23/20 - confirmed 1/19/21 56-43
Republican yea votes: Capito, Collins, Murkowski, Portman, Romney, Sullivan
CIA Director - William Burns - nominated 1/11/21
Attorney General - Merrick Garland - nominated 1/7/21
Secretary of Commerce - Gina Raimondo - nominated 1/7/21 - confirmation hearing 1/26/21
U.S. Trade Representative - Katherine Tai - nominated 12/29/20
Education Secretary - Miguel Cardona - nominated 12/22/20
Secretary of Energy - Jennifer Granholm nominated 12/17/20 - confirmation hearing 1/27/21
Secretary of Health and Human Services - Xavier Becerra - nominated 12/6/20
Secretary of Interior - Deb Haaland - nominated 12/19/20
Secretary of Agriculture - Tom Vilsack - nominated 12/10/20 - confirmation hearing 2/2/21
Secretary of Veterans Affairs - Denis McDonough - nominated 12/10/20 - confirmation hearing 1/27/21
Ambassador to the United Nations - Linda Thomas-Greenfield - nominated 11/23 - confirmation hearing 1/27/21
Watta team - raring to go & they’ll hit the ground running
according to NBC, early tasks, “undoing key Trump initiatives, & unveiling immigration plan”
Biden undoing some of what Trump did, Trump undid some of what Obama did. The Executive Order is standard operating procedure now. So whatever. It does somewhat undercut the unity message when the President unilaterally rescinds Trump policy. But then again, Trump unilaterally enacted some of it. Such is Washington's current state. I just hope that the orders don't go so far, what, I've heard maybe 15 or 17 EOs today. The Republicans are going to seize on that. We'll just have to see what becomes of the policy debates.
As for the cabinet, I feel like if the Republicans are blamed for not being diverse enough, the Democrats go out of their way to be diverse. They might see that as a badge of honor I suppose. Not listed here is the deputy HHS Secretary who just happens to be transgender. It's ok, I just get a feeling sometimes that Democrats form their lists of nominees and purposefully elevate or select the minority individual either for personal affirmation of doing the right thing in having "first this" and "first that"...or they are overtly appealing and appeasing to certain individuals in the base.
For all the diversity this cabinet does have, one thing it is lacking is military experience. If I am not mistaken Secretary of Defense General Lloyd Austin is the only former military nominee in the upper cabinet and the entire cabinet has just two total veterans. Not that veterans should be shown special favor in areas where they do not have expertise, but for positions that would benefit from having prior military experience I would like to see that.
One area I am interested in comparing is how fast the Cabinet gets hearings, voted on and approved. I tracked the original Trump Cabinet on the old site:
There is nothing wrong with having diversity in your cabinet, as long as they are qualified to do the job. Trump proved that you can be white and still not qualified for a cabinet position (hello Betsy DeVose). I'm not going to pretend that I know everybody Biden picked, but the only pick I don't particularly like is Tom Vilsack. Certainly, there is a lot of experience among his picks.
Not Cabinet, but in other administration personnel news:
Jeffrey Zients Covid-19 response coordinator and Christopher Wray staying as FBI Director
