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Biden’s Cabinet and Senior Advisers

President Biden’s nominees are slowly making their way through Senate confirmation.

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced his nominations and appointments for national security positions in Wilmington, Del.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Biden has chosen a team of cabinet members and senior advisers who bring government experience and expertise in their fields to confront four fronts of challenges: getting control of Covid-19, systemic racism, the economy and climate change.

Victories for Democrats in twin runoff races in Georgia in early January handed Mr. Biden’s party control of the Senate, and with it, the power to choose from a larger menu of potential executive department heads, with minimal need to win Republican approval. But even with a Democratic majority in the Senate, Mr. Biden has turned to a predominately established and moderate circle of advisers — one that is ethnically diverse, yet for the most part ideologically uniform.

Mr. Biden has now filled out his cabinet. Here are his picks:

Attorney General

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Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Almost five years after his nomination to the Supreme Court was blocked by Senate Republicans in March 2016, Judge Merrick B. Garland has returned to the political stage as Mr. Biden’s pick to be the country’s chief law enforcement officer and oversee the Justice Department.

Judge Garland has extensive experience working for the department he has been selected to lead, having served under three former presidents — Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He also approaches the role with considerable knowledge of the judicial system informed by his work as a former clerk for Justice William J. Brennan Jr. on the Supreme Court and now on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where he was chief judge from 2013 to 2020.

In choosing Judge Garland, Mr. Biden appears keen on restoring the Justice Department’s independence, particularly after the departments’ lawyers and former attorneys general repeatedly became ensnared in politicized investigations under Mr. Trump.

Several prominent Republicans including Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky have expressed support for Judge Garland’s nomination, bolstering Mr. Biden’s hopes that his reputation and background leave him uniquely qualified to steer the department away from partisan politics.

Read more: Judge Garland brings a steady hand to a department overcome by partisan rancor.

Secretary of State

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Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

In tapping Antony Blinken to serve as secretary of state, Mr. Biden appears determined to rebuild relationships with foreign leaders and international organizations that have atrophied under the isolationist policies that defined former President Trump’s “America First” agenda.

Mr. Blinken is taking charge of a State Department that has shrunk in size and stature under Mr. Trump, as staff reductions and resignations have thinned its ranks.

Mr. Blinken, 58, is well versed in the mechanisms of diplomacy. He worked for the department under two previous administrations, including as deputy secretary of state under President Barack Obama.

In Mr. Blinken, Mr. Biden hopes to install a measured and well-credentialed negotiator who can represent the United States internationally as well as restore a sense of purpose within the State Department.

Read more: Antony Blinken is looking to reverse the Trump administration’s confrontational approach to diplomacy.

Treasury Secretary

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Credit...Lexey Swall for The New York Times

Looking for a trusted economist to lead the country’s economy out of a pandemic-driven downturn, Mr. Biden has selected Janet Yellen, the former chair of the Federal Reserve.

Ms. Yellen is the first woman to lead the Treasury in its 231-year history.

During her stint as Fed chair from 2014 to 2018, Ms. Yellen oversaw a record-long economic expansion that would go on to drive unemployment down to its lowest rate in 50 years and that helped produce a thriving economy that was upended by the coronavirus pandemic.

In selecting Ms. Yellen, Mr. Biden appeared to have opted for a safe and proven name. She easily won confirmation by a vote of 84 to 15. Other economists proposed by the Democratic Party’s progressive wing were likely to have been less acceptable to Republicans in the Senate.

Read more: Ms. Yellen’s first challenge will be to help steer Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package through Congress.

Secretary of Defense

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Credit...Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the former commander of the American military effort in Iraq, was confirmed by the Senate during Mr. Biden’s first days in office.

General Austin, 67, was for years a formidable figure at the Pentagon and the only African-American to have headed U.S. Central Command, but he is less known for his political instincts and has shown little interest in the public-facing parts of the job. He made history as the first African-American to lead the Defense Department.

The retired general was approved overwhelmingly, after Congress granted him a waiver from a law restricting those who are retired from military service fewer than seven years from leading the Pentagon.

Read more: General Austin is confirmed by the Senate.

Secretary of the Interior

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Credit...Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Wire, via Alamy

In emphasizing his intent to redirect the country’s course on environmental policy, Mr. Biden has picked Representative Deb Haaland, Democrat of New Mexico, to oversee the Interior Department.

Ms. Haaland, who was confirmed by a 51-40 vote in the Senate, is the first Native American appointed to a cabinet secretary position, a barrier she broke after she and Sharice Davids of Kansas became the first two Native American women elected to Congress in 2018.

Ms. Haaland’s heritage as a 35th-generation New Mexican and a member of the Laguna Pueblo makes her nomination especially meaningful given the agency’s role in providing services to 1.9 million Indigenous people and helping maintain the government’s relationship with 574 federally recognized tribes. Both the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education operate within the department.

However, Ms. Haaland will also be tasked with overseeing elements of a sweeping and ambitious environmental agenda alongside several of Mr. Biden’s top climate aides such as Gina McCarthy and John Kerry.

As a candidate, Mr. Biden promised to “transition away from the oil industry,” a move he has said will involve banning new oil and gas permits on the public lands and waters that Ms. Haaland would oversee. She will also be at the forefront of Mr. Biden’s efforts to ramp up protection of vast tracts of the 500 million acres of federal land that the Trump administration has opened up to mining, logging and construction.

Ms. Haaland served on the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the Interior Department. That experience could help inform her vision for the department.

Read more: A historic choice would place a Native American in charge of the agency that aids Indigenous communities.

Secretary of Agriculture

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Credit...Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

Tom Vilsack, who was the secretary of agriculture for eight years under Mr. Obama, was confirmed by the Senate to lead the department again.

Mr. Vilsack, 70, was a traditional choice to lead the agency — he is a former governor of Iowa, an important rural farming state — and was approved overwhelmingly by a vote of 92 to 7.

“It’s not lost on me, ironically, that this is Groundhog’s Day, and I realize that I’m back again,” Mr. Vilsack said during his confirmation hearing. “But I also realize that this is a fundamentally different time and I am a different person, and it is a different department.”

Mr. Biden’s pick for the agency was a source of friction with prominent Black leaders, who had urged the president to instead nominate Marcia L. Fudge, now the nominee for housing secretary, and called to shift the agency’s focus away from farming and toward hunger.

In the end, Mr. Biden struck a compromise: tapping a safe, white candidate to champion at least some of the hunger policies aimed at aiding communities of color.

“I think we face a ‘why not’ moment with reference to food security that plagues millions,” Mr. Vilsack said at his confirmation hearing. “A ‘why not’ moment on nutrition and security that causes millions of Americans, especially people of color, to cope with obesity and diabetes and other chronic diseases.”

Read more: Mr. Vilsack is the seventh cabinet member Mr. Biden has chosen.

special presidential envoy for climate

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Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

Emphasizing his intent to make addressing the global threat posed by climate change a pillar of his policy agenda, Mr. Biden selected John Kerry, the former secretary of state, to take up a newly created cabinet-level position as his “climate czar.”

Mr. Kerry’s job also includes a seat on the National Security Council. It is the first time that an adviser wholly dedicated to the issue of climate change will join the forum, placing him among other top advisers in the national security and foreign policy arena.

Mr. Kerry’s approach to the role is likely to be heavily informed by his experience working with other countries on agreements to set meaningful benchmarks on carbon emissions and encourage sustainable growth. While secretary of state under Mr. Obama, Mr. Kerry was a chief negotiator for the United States on the Paris Agreement on climate change, which Mr. Biden recommitted the nation to on his first day in office.

Read more: Mr. Kerry is charged with making climate change “an essential element of U.S. foreign policy and national security.”

Secretary of Commerce

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Credit...Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times

Mr. Biden selected Gina Raimondo, the governor of Rhode Island, to run the Commerce Department, a role atop what is often described informally as the country’s data agency.

Before being elected governor in 2015, Ms. Raimondo served as general treasurer of Rhode Island and founded a joint venture firm that helped finance a number of start-ups. She is viewed by many as a traditional choice for the post, in which she will oversee relations with businesses as well as technology regulation, weather monitoring and economic data collection.

Ms. Raimondo, who was confirmed on a vote of 84 to 15, is immediately faced with completing the collection and analysis of the country’s 2020 census data, which was not completed by the end of Mr. Trump’s term.

While Ms. Raimondo has been hailed for her business acumen, some progressive groups have resisted her nomination, pushing for candidates who might be more inclined to pursue goals such as decreasing gerrymandering through census changes and regulating prescription drug costs.

Read more: Ms. Raimondo’s moderate credentials are another disappointment for progressives.

Secretary of Labor

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Credit...Pool photo by Pat Greenhouse

Facing a backsliding economy in which millions of workers have suffered from anemic pandemic relief and persistent unemployment, Mr. Biden has selected the mayor of Boston, Martin Walsh, to help alleviate the plight facing workers as head of the Labor Department.

Mr. Walsh has been mayor since 2013, ascending to the office with strong support from organized labor. Mr. Walsh himself has been a union member since early adulthood, rising through the ranks to serve as president of Laborers Local 223 in South Boston, and previously led Boston’s Building and Construction Trades Council from 2011 to 2013. He was a state representative in Massachusetts for 17 years.

If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Walsh would be expected to focus on policies promoting higher wages and protections for workers, as well as revitalizing the country’s manufacturing sector, as Mr. Biden promised throughout his campaign.

Mr. Walsh would also oversee the resuscitation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which has been criticized for poor workplace oversight during the pandemic when meatpacking plants experienced virus outbreaks.

Read more: Mr. Walsh comes to the job with longstanding connections to the labor movement.

Secretary of Health and Human Services

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Credit...Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

Xavier Becerra, Mr. Biden’s surprise pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is an outspoken advocate of improved health care access and has led legal efforts on health care as the attorney general of California.

Mr. Becerra is a Democratic former congressman and is the first Latino to serve as health secretary after the Senate confirmed him on a vote of 50 to 49. He faces a daunting task in tackling the coronavirus pandemic, which has taken a particularly devastating toll on people of color.

As California’s attorney general, Mr. Becerra filed more than a dozen lawsuits about health care alone, including one in which California led 20 states and the District of Columbia in a campaign to protect the Affordable Care Act from being dismantled by his Republican counterparts.

He is also expected to bring to the forefront the unequal effect that environmental damage has had on the health of Americans in vulnerable communities.

Read more: Some medical experts are unhappy with Mr. Becerra’s selection.

National Security Adviser

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Credit...Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

Mr. Biden picked Jake Sullivan to advise him on matters of national security. Mr. Sullivan has been hailed in Washington as a gifted legal mind, one who has a long history of working with Mr. Biden. He does not need to be confirmed by the Senate for this position.

Mr. Sullivan’s list of accomplishments is extensive. A Rhodes scholar and graduate of Yale Law School, Mr. Sullivan has built a lengthy résumé including a clerkship for Justice Stephen G. Breyer and work as chief counsel to Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom he worked for as the department’s head of policy planning, has described him as a “once-in-a-generation talent.”

Mr. Sullivan has also worked closely with other members of Mr. Biden’s planned cabinet, succeeding Mr. Blinken as Mr. Biden’s national security adviser in 2013, when he was vice president. Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Blinken maintain a close friendship and a shared philosophy about the United States’ role in the world that is expected to shape Mr. Biden’s approach in international affairs.

Read more: Mr. Biden picks a close confidant to head national security.

U.N. Ambassador

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Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

The Senate confirmation of Linda Thomas-Greenfield, to become the United States ambassador to the United Nations, comes as President Biden’s administration seeks to become a more active force in the global body.

“Diplomacy is back,” said Ms. Thomas-Greenfield, when Mr. Biden announced her nomination in November, echoing a theme of Mr. Biden’s in talks with other world leaders. “Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is back.”

Mr. Biden has restored the post of U.N. ambassador to cabinet-level status after Mr. Trump downgraded it, giving Ms. Thomas-Greenfield a seat on his National Security Council. As America’s top representative to the United Nations, Ms. Thomas-Greenfield, 68, said she will work to restore alliances and re-engage in multilateral efforts to address global problems like the coronavirus pandemic.

Ms. Thomas-Greenfield has more than 35 years of experience in the Foreign Service, having worked as the U.S. ambassador to Liberia and having served in posts in Switzerland, Pakistan, Kenya, Gambia, Nigeria and Jamaica.

She has also worked in the private sector, as a senior vice president at the Albright Stonebridge Group, the consulting firm founded by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, overseeing the firm’s Africa practice.

Read more: After the Trump administration pushed for American retreat from the United Nations, Ms. Thomas-Greenfield has said she will set about re-engagement.

U.S. Trade Representative

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Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Mr. Biden has turned to Katherine Tai to be the country’s trade representative, a role that took on greater importance under the previous administration, which used the post to impose substantial tariffs against foreign countries and negotiate a series of trade deals, both small and large.

Ms. Tai has served as the chief trade lawyer in the House and has extensive experience with China. She also played a key role in hammering out the new North American Free Trade Agreement. Her nomination was approved by a vote of 98 to 0, making her the first member of President Biden’s cabinet to be confirmed with no opposing votes.

In this cabinet-level role that carries the rank of ambassador, Ms. Tai will be responsible for rebuilding trade relationships and helping to decide whether to continue collecting tariffs on Chinese goods.

Ms. Tai, who is Asian-American, is also the first woman of color to be the U.S. trade representative.

Read more: Ms. Tai’s tasks would most likely include fighting climate change and encouraging domestic investment.

Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council

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Credit...Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Mr. Biden has chosen Susan Rice, a former national security adviser to Mr. Obama, to be the director of his Domestic Policy Council. In this role, Ms. Rice will oversee a large part of the president’s agenda, including the administration’s response to the pandemic. The position does not require Senate confirmation.

At one point, Ms. Rice was on Mr. Biden’s short list to be vice president. She has been a favorite target of Republicans, who criticized her role in responding to the 2012 terrorist attack on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya. The attack left four Americans dead and prompted months of Republican-led congressional hearings.

Ms. Rice brings years of experience to the job, having served as an assistant secretary of state and ambassador to the United Nations. She is widely known for coordinating Mr. Obama’s foreign policy portfolio.

She was a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times for three years; her last column was published on Dec. 1.

Read more: Ms. Rice, a lifelong national security professional, is being placed in a top domestic policy job.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs

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Credit...Zach Gibson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Biden has selected Denis McDonough to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, the agency that runs the largest health care system in the country and has a history of career-ending scandals.

Mr. McDonough assumes leadership at a tenuous time. Thousands of veterans and more than 100 V.A. employees have died from the coronavirus, and the department fell behind on thousands of appointments during the most acute phase of the pandemic.

The V.A.’s “capabilities have not always risen to the needs of our veterans,” Mr. McDonough said at his confirmation hearing in January. “I promise to fight every single day to ensure that our veterans have the access to the world-class, compassionate care they have earned.”

While Mr. McDonough is only the department’s second nonveteran leader since it became a cabinet position in 1989, he has worked on behalf of military families and with Robert A. McDonald, the former veterans affairs secretary, on improving care for veterans after devastating reports of long waits to see doctors. He has also made frequent trips to meet with members of the military.

During the Obama administration, Mr. McDonough served as the president’s deputy national security adviser and later his chief of staff, roles in which he worked closely with Mr. Biden.

Read more: Mr. McDonough enjoyed bipartisan praise during his confirmation hearing.

Director of National Intelligence

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Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Avril Haines was the first member of Mr. Biden’s cabinet to win Senate confirmation and she is the first woman to serve in the top intelligence role. She has strong ties to the intelligence community after serving in both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations.

A trained physicist, Ms. Haines also helped oversee a number of covert programs at the National Security Council beginning in 2010 and then as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2013 to 2015. They included the controversial targeted killing program involving precision drone strikes, some of which killed civilians.

Read more: The Senate confirmed Avril Haines as intelligence director, Biden’s first and only Cabinet official to be approved on Day 1.

SECRETARY OF Homeland Security

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Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

After four years of immigration policy narrowly tailored to President Donald J. Trump’s personal whims, Mr. Biden tapped Alejandro Mayorkas, a lawyer and former deputy homeland security secretary, to reorient the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Mayorkas is charged with overseeing the rollback of the Trump administration’s more punitive immigration policies in his new role. He approaches that task as the first immigrant to hold the position, as well as the first Latino.

Mr. Mayorkas faces the challenge of rebuilding an agency that suffered from unfilled vacancies and a chain of interim leaders in recent years. It has also been embroiled in scandal over, among other issues, the Trump administration’s family separation policy.

Read more: Mr. Mayorkas will lead a task force aimed at reuniting families separated at the border.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

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Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Mr. Biden selected Representative Marcia L. Fudge, Democrat of Ohio, to serve as the secretary of housing and urban development.

The decision has the potential to disappoint allies of Ms. Fudge, 68, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus, of which she was a chairwoman. Allies of Ms. Fudge had urged Mr. Biden to put her at the Agriculture Department, where she had hoped to shift the agency’s focus away from farming and toward hunger, including in urban areas.

But after news of her selection leaked out, Ms. Fudge told reporters: “If I can help this president in any way possible, I am more than happy to do it. It’s a great honor and a privilege to be a part of something so good.”

Ms. Fudge has been in the House since 2008. In 2018, she mulled a challenge to Speaker Nancy Pelosi before dropping the idea and endorsing her. Now, Ms. Fudge will leave Congress to lead the nation’s sprawling housing agency instead.

Read more: Ms. Fudge had openly campaigned to become Mr. Biden’s agriculture secretary.

SECRETARY OF ENERGY

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Credit...Sipa, via Associated Press

Jennifer Granholm, a former governor of Michigan, has been confirmed as the secretary of energy.

A longtime champion of renewable energy development, Ms. Granholm, 61, is widely credited with steering Michigan through the 2008 recession and working with the Obama administration on the subsequent bailout of the automobile industry, which included clean energy investments.

Though Ms. Granholm is not necessarily steeped in the core mission of the department — ensuring the safety of the country’s nuclear arsenal — her selection was seen as a nod to environmental groups. She is expected to lead with a vision for driving a clean-energy transformation.

After her second term as governor ended in 2011, Ms. Granholm became an advocate for renewable energy development, including giving a TED Talk on how investing in alternative energy resources can bolster state economies, something Mr. Biden has focused on in his coronavirus recovery plan.

Ms. Granholm, a longtime champion of renewable energy development, was confirmed by a vote of 64 to 35, with support from both Democrats and Republicans. She will be the second woman to lead the Department of Energy, after Hazel R. O’Leary, who served under President Bill Clinton.

Read more: Several people close to the transition said advisers had struggled over the pick to lead the Energy Department.

SECRETARY of Transportation

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  Credit...Pool photo by Kevin Lamarque

Hoping to cut through years of gridlock that have stalled bipartisan efforts to overhaul and repair the country’s infrastructure and transportation systems, Mr. Biden selected Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., to lead the Transportation Department.

The selection was immediately hailed as a major breakthrough by L.G.B.T. advocacy groups. Mr. Buttigieg is the first openly gay person to be confirmed as a cabinet secretary.

Taking advantage of the slimmest possible majority in the Senate, Mr. Biden may make an early priority of pushing through a major infrastructure bill that would create desperately needed jobs in an economy ravaged by the pandemic.

How much Mr. Buttigieg may be able to guide those plans is less certain.

Throughout his bid for the presidency in 2020, Mr. Buttigieg drew criticism for his relatively limited political credentials, running as a small-town mayor while losing some support over his handling of police brutality and other issues during his tenure. Mr. Biden selected him over other prospective candidates with more direct experience overseeing major urban transportation networks and public transit agencies.

However, in his time as mayor, Mr. Buttigieg notched noted wins on transportation policy, bringing to fruition an ambitious $25 million project aimed at revitalizing the downtown area of South Bend with thoughtfully placed traffic corridors, bike lanes and parking improvements.

The plan helped to significantly reshape the city’s core, leading to more than $100 million in private investment and a thriving downtown center.

Read more: Mr. Buttigieg takes charge as the county’s public transportation systems are reeling from the pandemic.

White House Climate Coordinator

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Credit...Sarah Blesener for The New York Times

Gina McCarthy, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Mr. Obama, is Mr. Biden’s senior White House adviser on climate change.

Ms. McCarthy is known as the architect of some of Mr. Obama’s most far-reaching regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions, including the Clean Power Plan, which set the first national limits on carbon emissions from power plants.

As the senior White House adviser on climate change, Ms. McCarthy will coordinate domestic climate policy and help make good on Mr. Biden’s campaign promise of putting the United States on track to reach carbon neutrality before 2050.

Advocates for stronger action to fight climate change have lauded the choice. They have said Ms. McCarthy’s selection signals that the administration is prepared to bypass Congress and use executive authority to begin reducing greenhouse gases after the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal and weaken much of Ms. McCarthy’s work as the E.P.A. administrator.

Since January, Ms. McCarthy has served as the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

Read more: In the Biden administration, Ms. McCarthy’s role as climate adviser may have significantly more influence than before.

Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

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Credit...Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer, via Associated Press

Mr. Biden picked Michael Regan, the secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

A longtime air-quality specialist at the E.P.A. in both the Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations, Mr. Regan later worked for the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group. In 2017, Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, tapped Mr. Regan to lead North Carolina’s environmental agency.

There he replaced Donald R. van der Vaart, a Trump administration ally who has questioned the established science of climate change. Mr. van der Vaart also fought Obama-era rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and championed a pro-business agenda of deregulation.

Mr. Regan was confirmed by a vote of 66 to 34, with all Democrats and 16 Republicans in the Senate voting in favor.

Supporters of Mr. Regan said he improved low morale and emphasized the role of science at the department. Several called it an obvious parallel to what he would be expected to do at the E.P.A., where Andrew Wheeler, Mr. Trump’s administrator and a former coal lobbyist, has discouraged the agency from working on climate change and independent auditors have identified a “culture at the top” of political interference in science.

The selection of Mr. Regan is in many ways a conventional choice. Democratic presidents have a history of elevating E.P.A. leaders from state environmental agencies. Ms. McCarthy and Lisa Jackson, who both ran the agency under Mr. Obama, had been the heads of state environmental agencies.

Mr. Regan, who is the first Black man to lead the agency, is expected to bring a strong focus on racial equity.

Read more: Mr. Regan will be on the front lines of the effort to undo one of Mr. Trump’s most sprawling transformations of the federal government.

Secretary of Education

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Miguel Cardona, President Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Education.Credit...Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

Dr. Miguel A. Cardona, a career educator who rose through the ranks of Connecticut’s school system, was confirmed as Education Secretary.

Since 2019, Dr. Cardona served as Connecticut’s first Latino commissioner of education after two decades of experience in public schools, including as a kindergarten teacher and a school principal.

He now leads a department responsible for bringing elementary, secondary and higher education systems back from the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, which has widened the achievement gap between affluent students and poorer pupils.

In interviews, Dr. Cardona has emphasized his parents’ Puerto Rican roots and his upbringing in Connecticut’s public housing and education systems as experiences that have anchored his career.

“It’s not lost on me, the significance of being the grandson of a tobacco farmer who came here for a better life, who despite having a second-grade education was able to raise his family and create that upward mobility cycle,” he said in a profile in The Connecticut Mirror in 2019.

Read more: Dr. Cardona has emerged as an urgent voice pressing to reopen schools safely during the pandemic.

Aishvarya Kavi and Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting.

A correction was made on 
March 1, 2021

An earlier version of this article overstated the breakthroughs Miguel A. Cardona achieved as a top education official. He served as Connecticut’s first Latino commissioner of education; he would not be the first Latino to be confirmed as Secretary of Education. 

How we handle corrections

Zach Montague is based in Washington, D.C. He covers breaking news and developments around the district. More about Zach Montague

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Biden’s Cabinet and Senior Adviser Nominees. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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