Biden's Cabinet picks

Biden’s team takes shape

President-elect Joe Biden has begun naming members of his Cabinet and White House with a pledge to build an administration that reflects the nation’s diversity. The Cabinet positions require Senate approval, while the White House administrative staff are appointed directly by the President-elect.

Direct appointments

Chief of Staff
Ron Klain
Senior advisor
Steve Ricchetti
Senior advisor
Mike Donilon
Deputy Chief of staff
Jen O’Malley Dillon
White House Counsel
Dana Remus
Press Secretary
Jen Psaki
Nat. Sec. advisor
Jake Sullivan
Envoy for Climate
John Kerry
DPC Director
Susan Rice
CDC Director
Rochelle Walensky
NEC Director
Brian Deese
Coronavirus Coordinator
Jeff Zients

Cabinet picks requiring Senate confirmation

State
Antony Blinken
Confirmed
Treasury
Janet Yellen
Confirmed
Defense
Lloyd Austin
Confirmed
Atty. General
Merrick Garland
Confirmed
Interior
Deb Haaland
Confirmed
Agriculture
Tom Vilsack
Confirmed
Commerce
Gina Raimondo
Confirmed
Labor
Marty Walsh
Confirmed
Health
Xavier Becerra
Confirmed
Housing
Marcia Fudge
Confirmed
Transportation
Pete Buttigieg
Confirmed
Energy
Jennifer Granholm
Confirmed
Education
Miguel Cardona
Confirmed
Veterans
Denis McDonough
Confirmed
Homeland Security
Alejandro Mayorkas
Confirmed
U.N.
Linda Thomas- Greenfield
Confirmed
E.P.A.
Michael S. Regan
Confirmed
Small Business
Isabel Guzman
Confirmed
O.M.B.
Neera Tanden
Withdrawn
D.N.I.
Avril Haines
Confirmed
U.S. Trade Rep.
Katherine Tai
Confirmed
C.E.A.
Cecilia Rouse
Confirmed
O.S.T.P.
Eric Lander
Nominated

Diversity in Biden’s Cabinet

Biden’s Cabinet would be notably diverse compared to previous administrations, and nearly half of candidates he has named are women.

Half are nonwhite.

The new Cabinet would include more members under age 55 than the outgoing administation, but it trails the Bush and Obama administrations.

Note: For previous administrations, initial Cabinets are shown.

Appointments

Antony Blinken
Secretary of State
Blinken is a longtime Biden confidant who served as No. 2 at the State Department and as deputy national security adviser in President Barack Obama’s administration. He has long touted the view that the United States needs to take an active leadership role in the world, engaging with allies, or see that role filled by countries like China with contrary interests.

Janet Yellen
Treasury Secretary
The former Fed chair deepened the central bank’s focus on workers and inequality and has remained active in policy debates at the Brookings Institution think tank after Republican President Donald Trump replaced her as head of the central bank in 2018.

Lloyd Austin
Defense Secretary
Austin, who oversaw U.S. forces in the Middle East under President Barack Obama, would be the first Black U.S. secretary of defense if the Senate confirms him. He retired in 2016 and would need a waiver from Congress to take the post, as he has been out of the military less than the required seven years.

Merrick Garland
Attorney General
A federal appeals court judge since 1997, Garland was nominated by Obama for the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to consider the nomination in a presidential election year.

Deb Haaland
Interior Secretary
Haaland, a Democratic congresswoman from New Mexico since 2019, would be the first Native American Cabinet secretary and the first to oversee the department, whose jurisdiction includes tribal lands.

Tom Vilsack
Agriculture Secretary
Vilsack, who led the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) under Obama, was Iowa's governor from 1999 until 2007. He was an early supporter of Biden and an adviser on rural issues during his campaign. Vilsack's return to the USDA is likely to be applauded by Midwestern states that produce the bulk of commodity crops like corn, soybeans and wheat, and prefer him to someone from another region of the country.

Gina Raimondo
Commerce Secretary
The Democratic governor of Rhode Island and a lawyer with a background in venture capital, Raimondo has launched successful workforce training programs in her state.

Marty Walsh
Labor Secretary
Walsh, elected mayor of Boston in 2013, has backed both a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave. He has said he wants to expand union membership.

Xavier Becerra
Heath and Human Services Secretary
The California attorney general was previously a 12-term congressman who played a key role in passing the Affordable Care Act in Congress. As attorney general, he has led a coalition of 20 states defending the program better known as Obamacare, including in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court last month.

Marcia Fudge
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Fudge has served in the House of Representatives since 2008. Prior to being elected to Congress, she was mayor of Warrensville Heights, a suburb of Cleveland. If confirmed, Fudge would be the second Black woman to lead HUD, which focuses on federal policy surrounding housing.

Pete Buttigieg
Transportation Secretary
Buttigieg is the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and was one of Biden's rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Jennifer Granholm
Energy Secretary
Granholm served as the first female governor of Michigan, from 2003 to 2011. In 2009, when Biden was vice president under Obama, she worked with his office on the bailout of auto manufacturers during the Great Recession.

Miguel Cardona
Education Secretary
Cardona, currently the education commissioner for the state of Connecticut and a former teacher, would be another Latino addition to Biden’s top team, after advocacy groups urged the former vice president to appoint Hispanic Americans to senior roles.

Denis McDonough
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
McDonough was the White House chief of staff during Obama's second term. He spent the early part of his career an aide to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, before advising Obama's 2008 presidential campaign on foreign policy and then serving as deputy national security adviser.

Alejandro Mayorkas
Homeland Security Secretary
A Cuba-born lawyer will be the first Latino and first immigrant to head the department if confirmed as secretary of homeland security. As head of Citizenship and Immigration Services under Obama, Mayorkas led implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for so-called Dreamers, who were brought to the United States illegally as children. DACA drew Republican criticism and could lead to Republican opposition against Mayorkas in the Senate.

Linda Thomas- Greenfield
U.N. Ambassador
Greenfield will take on a job Biden plans to restore to a Cabinet level. She served as Obama’s top diplomat on Africa from 2013 to 2017, leading U.S. policy in sub-Saharan Africa during the West African Ebola outbreak.

Michael S. Regan
E.P.A. Administrator
Regan, North Carolina's top environmental regulator, worked at the EPA during the Clinton and Bush administrations. If confirmed, Regan would be the first Black man to run the EPA.

Isabel Guzman
Small Business Administration
Replaces Jovita Carranza

Neera Tanden
Director of the Office of Management and Budget
Tanden will be the first woman of color and the first South Asian American to hold this position if confirmed by the Senate. Previously she was an adviser to former President Barack Obama, as director of the White House budget office.

Avril Haines
Director of National Intelligence
If confirmed, Haines will become the first woman to serve as Director of National Intelligence. She was the deputy national security advisor under Obama, and previously was the first woman to serve as CIA deputy director. She held several posts at Columbia University after leaving the Obama administration in 2017.

Katherine Tai
U.S. Trade Representative
Replaces Robert Lighthizer
The House Ways and Means Committee lawyer played a key role in negotiating stronger labor provisions with the Trump administration in the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade deal. Tai, who will lead trade talks with China, previously worked at the office she will now run, heading China trade enforcement from 2011 to 2014.

Cecilia Rouse
Chair of the Council of Economic advisors
Replaces Tyler Goodspeed (Acting)
Rouse is a labor economist at Princeton University whose research has focused on the economics of education and tackling wealth inequality. She previously served as a member of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.

Eric Lander
Office of Science and Technology Policy
Replaces Kelvin Droegemeier
Lander, a Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who helped lead the Human Genome Project, will serve in the role of presidential science adviser.

Ron Klain
White House Chief of Staff
Replaces Mark Meadows
A longtime Biden advisor with experience in responding to the Ebola pandemic, Klain was picked for the chief of staff role that sets the president’s agenda.

Steve Ricchetti
Senior advisor to the president
Replaces Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Ivanka Trump
Longtime close advisors who crafted Biden’s winning strategy in the presidential race will join the West Wing as senior advisors.

Mike Donilon
Senior advisor to the president
Replaces Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Ivanka Trump
Longtime close advisors who crafted Biden’s winning strategy in the presidential race will join the West Wing as senior advisors.

Jen O’Malley Dillon
White House Deputy Chief of Staff
Brought in early this year as Biden’s campaign manager, she is the first woman to lead a winning Democratic presidential bid, and will be named a deputy chief of staff.

Dana Remus
White House Counsel
Replaces Pat Cipollone
Dana Remus serves as counsel to President-elect Biden, and served as General Counsel of the Biden-Harris Campaign. During the Obama-Biden administration, Ms. Remus was the Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel for Ethics.

Jen Psaki
Press Secretary
Replaces Kayleigh McEnany
Psaki previously worked as an Obama White House Communications Director and State Department spokeswoman.

Jake Sullivan
National Security advisor
Replaces Robert C. O'Brien
Sullivan was Biden’s national security adviser when he served as vice president to President Barack Obama, and he also served as deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

John Kerry
Special Presidential Envoy for Climate
Former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Kerry will act as “climate czar” in the Biden Administration. Kerry helped negotiate the Paris climate deal that Biden wants to re-join.

Susan Rice
White House Domestic Policy Council Director
Replaces Brooke Rollins (acting)
The experienced national security official has served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and as an assistant secretary of state, and was national security advisor during Obama's second term.

Rochelle Walensky
CDC Director
Replaces Robert Redfield
Walensky, currently the chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, will take a prominent role in the Biden administration's fight against the coronavirus.

Brian Deese
National Economic Council Director
Replaces Larry Kudlow
The Obama administration veteran helped lead efforts to bail out the automotive industry during the 2009 financial crisis and helped negotiate the landmark Paris climate accord.

Jeff Zients
Coronavirus Coordinator
Zients, an economic adviser touted for his managerial skills, was tapped to save the bungled launch of the Affordable Care Act's website for Obama. Under Biden, he will oversee an unprecedented operation to distribute hundreds of millions of doses of a new vaccine, coordinating efforts across multiple federal agencies.

Graphic by

Matthew Weber and Travis Hartman

Editing by

Soyoung Kim

Source

Federal Government websites, news reports, Reuters reporting.

Illustration by

Chris Canipe