First round of Biden, Harris Cabinet picks on Nov 24

New York: US President-elect Joe Biden’s first wave of Cabinet picks are expected on November 24 amid the thick of ongoing obstruction to the political transition process from sitting president Donald Trump.

“You’re going to see the first of the president-elect’s cabinet appointments on Tuesday of this week,” Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain told ABC News on Sunday.

Post-election, Biden has promised that his Cabinet will look like America and will be the most diverse in the country’s modern political history.

Talk has been swirling about more glass ceilings that could be shattered. Will Biden nominate a woman to head the Pentagon, the Treasury or the Department of Veterans Affairs? Also being closely watched is whether Biden will pick an African American to head Defence, the Interior Department or Treasury.

Biden’s running mate and now Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is the first woman, the first South Asian and the first African American to ever ascend to the highest political office in the United States.

Biden said in televised remarks last week that he has already decided on his Treasury pick, someone who will be agreeable “for both the moderate and progressive sides of the party.”

Klain said plans for the January 20 inauguration are also underway, although it will be transformed by the public health imperative of the still-raging pandemic, which has killed more than a quarter million Americans in 10 months.

“They’re going to try to have an inauguration that honours the importance and the symbolic meaning of the moment, but also does not result in the spread of the disease. That’s our goal,” Klain said.