Biden, who has already announced top nominees for his national security and economic teams, told reporters he expected to name his defense secretary on Friday and his nominee for attorney general sometime this week.
President-elect Joe Biden picked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra for secretary of health and human services on Monday as he prepares his administration’s response to the raging coronavirus pandemic. Biden, who takes office on Jan.20, also chose Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, to run the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was named as Biden’s chief medical adviser on the virus. Biden, who has already announced top nominees for his national security and economic teams, told reporters he expected to name his defense secretary on Friday and his nominee for attorney general sometime this week. Biden’s first major challenge in the White House will be containing a resurgent COVID-19 virus that has killed more than 282,000 Americans, and finding ways to jump-start an economy still reeling from millions of pandemic-fueled job losses. He installed Jeff Zients, an economic adviser known for his managerial skills, as coronavirus “czar” to oversee a response that will include an unprecedented operation to distribute hundreds of millions of doses of a new vaccine, coordinating efforts across multiple federal agencies. “This team of world-class medical experts and public servants will be ready on Day One to mobilize every resource of the federal government to expand testing and masking,” Biden said in a statement, adding they would “oversee the safe, equitable, and free distribution of treatments and vaccines.
