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Joe Biden chooses former Fed chairman Janet Yellen to lead the Treasury. The Wall Street Journal reports it citing some sources. Yellen will be the first woman in history to hold this position.
It is the latest team name to be made known. The first faces of the future administration announced by Biden are those of trusted veterans of the Obama era and cover key areas such as foreign policy, security and climate.
Among these stand out Anthony Blinken as Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan for National Security, Linda Thomas-Greenfield ambassador to the UN, the former head of diplomacy John Kerry as Presidential Special Advisor for the climate, the first executive in charge of the sector to also sit in the National security council. Among the news Avril Haines, former deputy director of the CIA and former deputy advisor for National Security: she will be the first woman to lead the National Intelligence, the agency that coordinates all 007, one step more than Gina Haspel, who had been elevated by Trump to head of the CIA. Diversity is also embodied in Cuban-American Alejandro Mayorkas, who will be the first Hispanic and the first immigrant to head Homeland security, the Ministry of the Interior, of which he had been deputy secretary.
“We have no time to waste when it comes to our national security and our foreign policy. I need a team ready from day one to help me reclaim America’s place at the head of the table, rally the world to rise to the huge challenges we face, and advance security, prosperity and values. This is the crux of this team ”, commented Biden, underlining that they are“ experts ”but also“ innovative ”because“ we cannot face the current profound challenges with the old way of thinking and unchanged habits ”.
Blinken, 58, the son of a US ambassador to Hungary, who grew up between Paris and New York, with studies at Harvard and Columbia, was the number two on the National Security Council and then in the State Department under Obama. Before starting his diplomatic career at the desk for Europe and as a foreign policy speechwriter for Bill Clinton, he dreamed of being a journalist or film producer. The band that bears his name survived from his youth passions, where he sings and plays the electric guitar. For nearly 20 years he was Biden’s right-hand man, as an advisor when he was on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and then as a ‘national security adviser’ when he was vice president. Open detractor of America first, it is expected to restore trust with its allies, starting with the European ones, and to re-enter the agreements and institutions boycotted by Trump: the Paris agreement on the climate, the one on Iranian nuclear power, the World Health Organization.
At 43, Sullivan will be the youngest National Security Advisor since the Eisenhower administration, a position he also held alongside the then Vice President Biden. Under Obama it played a key role in the Iranian nuclear negotiations.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, an African-American diplomat with 35 years of service on four continents who was a victim of Trump’s purges, will serve as a US representative to the United Nations with that ministerial status, and a seat on the National Security Council, which The Donald had. deleted.
Another ‘safe used’ is John Kerry, who has always remained alongside Biden in the electoral campaign: the decision to also make him join the National Security Council testifies to how the elected president considers climate change an urgent national security issue.
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