US Election: women poised to take top jobs in Joe Biden’s cabinet

Joe Biden is preparing to appoint a number of women to senior roles in his cabinet after he began the transition by unveiling a team of coronavirus advisers.

Douglas Emhoff, Husband of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, white, US President-elect Joe Biden and wife Jill. Picture: AFP

Joe Biden is preparing to appoint a record number of women to senior roles in his cabinet after he began the transition by unveiling a team of coronavirus advisers.

The president-elect has vowed to appoint the most diverse cabinet in American history, saying he wants it to “look like America”. Women are frontrunners for the four most senior jobs: secretary of state, Treasury secretary, Defence secretary and Attorney-General.

In keeping with Mr Biden’s focus on coronavirus, the first names he announced were members of a pandemic advisory group, with cabinet appointments not expected for at least a week.

The team of doctors and health experts has three co-chairmen: Vivek Murthy, surgeon general under Barack Obama, David Kessler, who was the Food and Drug Administration commissioner under George HW Bush, and Marcella Nunez-Smith, an academic at Yale University.

The line-up was announced as David Bossie, the adviser overseeing President Trump’s attempts to challenge the results of the election, tested positive for coronavirus. Earlier in the day Ben Carson, the housing secretary, announced he had tested positive.

Johns Hopkins University, which has been tallying incidents of the virus, said that the US had reached ten million cases since the start of the pandemic.

Mr Biden and Kamala Harris, the vice-president-elect, held their first briefing with the team yesterday (Monday) before Mr Biden spoke in Wilmington, Delaware, about “doing everything possible to get COVID-19 under control”.

Wielding a blue medical mask for effect, Mr Biden said that the “single most effective thing we can do to stop the spread of Covid is wear a mask. It doesn’t matter who you voted for, where you stood before election day … we can save tens of thousands of lives if everyone would just wear a mask for the next few months. Not Democrat or Republican lives, American lives.”

Mr Biden said that “a mask is not a political statement, but it is a good way to start pulling the country together”.

While Mr Biden, 77, will want to maintain a regular public presence he has important personnel decisions to make in the coming days. Of the 15 existing cabinet members appointed by Mr Trump, two are women. Mr Obama had four women in his cabinet and appointed eight in total over his eight years, surpassing George W Bush’s record of six. Mr Biden, who in Ms Harris will have the first female vice-president, is expected to go much further. He may appoint women as Treasury and defence secretaries, roles that have only ever been occupied by men.

The frontrunner for Treasury secretary is Lael Brainard, 58, a former Treasury official under Mr Obama and a current governor of the Federal Reserve, in which capacity she has had a leading role shaping the economic response to coronavirus.

She may encounter some dissent from left-wing Democrats who are anxious about her support of free trade deals around the world. However, Mr Biden’s ability to appease the left of his party will be constrained by Republican control of the Senate, unless the Democrats manage to win two run-off elections in Georgia in the new year.

Should Democrats pull off that coup, some will push for the appointment of Elizabeth Warren, 71, as Treasury secretary. The former presidential candidate was Mr Obama’s consumer finance watchdog. Other women in the frame include Janet Yellen, 74, who was appointed Federal Reserve chairwoman by Mr Obama and then sacked by Mr Trump in 2018.

For Defence Secretary there is a widely acknowledged frontrunner: Michele Flournoy, who was under-secretary of defence for policy under Mr Obama and held a more junior role at the Pentagon during Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Ms Flournoy, 59, who was expected to be given the role if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, has spoken recently about how the US needs to regain its technological edge over China. Another possibility is Tammy Duckworth, 52, the Illinois senator who was on Mr Biden’s vice-presidential shortlist. She had both legs amputated when she was shot down as a helicopter pilot in Iraq.

Three women have been secretary of state: Madeleine Albright under Mr Clinton; Condoleezza Rice under George W Bush; and Mrs Clinton under Mr Obama. Susan Rice is the frontrunner to be the fourth. Ms Rice, who is 55, was UN ambassador and national security adviser under Mr Obama and Mr Biden came close to choosing her as his running-mate.

Her appointment could rest on the Democrats taking command of the Senate: she became a Republican hate figure in 2012 over her response to the Benghazi attacks in Libya, which killed four Americans.

A frontrunner to be Attorney-General is Sally Yates, 60, who was deputy Attorney-General under Mr Obama and briefly acting Attorney-General at the start of the Trump administration. She was sacked after refusing to implement Mr Trump’s “Muslim ban” which blocked travel from a handful of Muslim-majority countries.

The Times