Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is being floated for a Cabinet post inside President-elect Joe Biden’s administration, CNBC reports.
Klobuchar is being considered by Biden and his team for a number of positions, including attorney general and secretary of Agriculture.
James Hohmann: “Perhaps as consequential as President Trump firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper via tweet on Monday, which has been widely expected for months, was the hiring of Michael Ellis to be the National Security Agency’s general counsel.”
“As one of the most controversial staffers in the White House over the past four years, Ellis has shown himself to be as much a staunch Trump loyalist as anyone else in the administration. But his new job means that he will no longer be a political appointee. Instead, as a civilian member of the senior executive service, he gets protections that will make it quite difficult for President-elect Joe Biden to fire him.”
“Burrowing down into what Trump derides as “the deep state” will give Ellis, a former Republican campaign operative, a powerful platform from which he could seek to complicate or undermine the incoming Democratic administration’s agenda. This is a preview of the sort of behavior from Trump that many on Biden’s transition team expect, and fear, during the lame-duck president’s final 71 days in power, even as he refuses to concede defeat.”
The Biden transition team is officially reaching out to Democratic lawmakers, telling them that President-elect Biden is eager “to seize this transition period to get started,” Axios reports.
“The transition is signaling that it wants to work with congressional offices and draw on their expertise — and personnel — to implement Biden’s agenda.”
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Leaders at agencies across the federal government have been instructed not to cooperate with Joe Biden’s transition team until President Trump finally accepts that he’s lost the election, the Washington Post reports.
“Officials at agencies across the government who had prepared briefing books and carved out office space for the incoming Biden team to use as soon as this week were told instead that the transition would not be recognized until the Democrat’s election was confirmed by the General Services Administration, the low-profile agency that officially starts the transition.”
CBS News: Biden transition barrels forward while Trump administration stalls.
Joe Biden’s transition team is warning that it may take “legal action” if the General Services Administration fails to make an official determination that Joe Biden has won the election, Axios reports.
Washington Post: “A leading candidate for the post is Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard, who served as a senior Treasury Department official in the Obama administration. Brainard has broad policymaking experience, particularly during economic crises, as well as wide respect among international foreign ministries and central banks from her time as the department’s top diplomat.”
“At the same time, Biden could face pressure from the Democratic Party’s left wing to pick a more liberal figure, someone who could push for aggressive financial overhauls and prove more adversarial to supporters of free trade. Such a nominee, however, could face difficulty winning Senate confirmation if Republicans retain control.”
“A Trump administration appointee is refusing to sign a letter allowing President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team to formally begin its work this week, in another sign the incumbent president has not acknowledged Biden’s victory and could disrupt the transfer of power,” the Washington Post reports.
“One near-certainty about Joe Biden’s Cabinet: Pete Buttigieg will be in it. Biden officials have made clear to donors and party officials the question surrounding Buttigieg is not if, but where, he lands,” Axios reports.
“The multilingual Buttigieg has told friends he wants U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but he may face internal competition from Julie Smith, a longtime Biden foreign policy confidant.”
“Other slots for Buttigieg range from Housing and Urban Development to Veterans Affairs to the Office of Management and Budget.”
“Never before has a president-elect inherited a complex set of urgent — and epic — emergencies like the ones confronting Joe Biden and America,” Axios reports.
“FDR, no doubt, inherited a hot American, Depression-era mess in 1932. President-elect Biden’s spoils, in some respects, are similarly rotten: a spreading pandemic, sky-high long-term unemployment, stratospheric federal debt, an outgoing president claiming the Democrat stole the election, a nation bitterly divided, and misinformation and lies spreading at scale on platforms available to every citizen for free.”
“Any one of these crises would take a presidential term to tame. Six, at once, seem almost incomprehensible in their scale and complexity.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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