President-elect Joe Biden on Monday unveiled his nominations for top national security positions in his administration:

• Secretary of State: Tony Blinken
• National Security Adviser: Jake Sullivan
• Director of National Intelligence: Avril Haines
• Department of Homeland Security: Alejandro Mayorkas
• U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations: Linda Thomas-Greenfield
• Special presidential envoy on climate: John Kerry

New York Times: “The emerging team reunites a group of former senior officials from the Obama administration, most of whom worked closely together at the State Department and the White House and in several cases have close ties to Mr. Biden dating back years. They are well known to foreign diplomats around the world and share a belief in the core principles of the Democratic foreign policy establishment — international cooperation, strong U.S. alliances and leadership but a wariness of foreign interventions after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Axios: “The list, set to be announced at an event in Delaware on Monday, is a deliberate effort to package nominees in a way that suggests diversity — a ‘first’ for women and Latinos, a Black woman, and a white man.”

“The most remarkable part of President-elect Biden’s campaign and early picks for positions of true power is the unremarkable — and predictable — nature of his big moves,” Axios reports.

“Biden is obsessed with bringing stability and conventional sanity back to governance.”

Said one source familiar with his thinking: “He is approaching this — in part — like an experienced mechanic intent on repairing something that’s been badly broken.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) called on President Trump begin the transition process to a Joe Biden administration and decried what she called a “pressure campaign” mounted on state legislators by allies of the president to stop the results from being certified, The Hill reports.

“Vice President-elect Kamala Harris took part in a classified briefing of the Senate Intelligence Committee this week and emerged in a strange position — being more informed about current threats than President-elect Joe Biden but bound by congressional rules to keep that information from him,” CNN reports.

Dan Balz: “Judging by his actions, Trump appears to have a motive other than overturning the election. He is determined to cripple Biden’s presidency even before it becomes official. No defeated president has ever undertaken such an audacious and anti-democratic act. There are short-term and longer-term consequences that could deeply affect Biden’s ability to govern.”

“This is a mean-spirited effort on the part of the president to gum up what should be an orderly, nonpartisan process.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told NBC News that the Trump administration should begin cooperating with President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, even as he repeatedly defended President Trump’s attempts to challenge the results of the presidential election with unproven allegations of widespread fraud.

Said Cramer: “It’s past time to start a transition, to at least cooperate with a transition.”

President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming chief of staff, Ronald Klain, said that some of Biden’s first Cabinet picks will be revealed Tuesday, although he declined to say who or what positions will be announced, the Washington Post reports.

“Joe Biden spent months of his presidential campaign safely ensconced in his basement, communicating to the country via a television camera. His convention speech was delivered to a near-empty room in Delaware. His remarks after being declared the 46th president were given before a distanced parking lot full of honking cars,” the Washington Post reports.

“And now, as candidate Biden transitions to President Biden, he is planning an inauguration ceremony that, like his campaign, will look like no other in recent American history.”

President Trump tweets:

“Why is Joe Biden so quickly forming a Cabinet when my investigators have found hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes, enough to ‘flip’ at least four States, which in turn is more than enough to win the Election?”

“The Biden transition team is weighing attorney general contenders led by Lisa Monaco, who held key national security posts in the Obama administration, and Sally Yates, who gained fame when she was fired by President Trump,” Bloomberg reports.

“The choice of either would help President-elect Joe Biden achieve his goal of having women represented at the highest levels of his administration.”

“Monaco and Yates both had extensive careers inside the Justice Department and previously held positions that required Senate confirmation. But her history of tussling with the Trump White House might make Yates’s approval harder if the Senate is still controlled by Republicans.”

“Democratic senators are calling on President-elect Joe Biden to use executive power to advance goals such as tackling climate change, relieving student debt and creating a more progressive immigration system,” NBC News reports.

“The calls from senators reflect a recognition that Democratic lawmakers may not be able to pass a transformative legislative agenda after under-performing in congressional races. And unless Democrats win two Georgia Senate runoffs on Jan. 5, Biden will be the first president since 1989 to enter office without his party controlling both chambers of Congress.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), a stalwart supporter of President Trump, on Friday referred to Joe Biden as the country’s “president-elect,” a comment her staff later said was a mistake, the Tennessean reports.

She was asked whether she had been in contact with Biden to congratulate him, as president-elect, on his victory.

Said Blackburn: “I have not spoken with the president-elect. We did have the vice president come to the floor, the vice president-elect come to the floor this week to cast a vote. I was presiding at the time. Didn’t get to speak with her.”

The presidential @POTUS Twitter handle will automatically transfer to President-elect Joe Biden the moment he’s sworn in at noon on Inauguration Day — whether or not President Trump has conceded, Politico reports.

President-elect Joe Biden has made his choice for secretary of state, moving quickly to assemble a Senate-confirmable Cabinet even as President Trump refuses to concede the election, Axios reports.

Biden is expected to roll out several top Cabinet picks next week.