Cabinet and leadership tracker
Track the confirmation progress of President Joe Biden’s
choices for top administration posts
CABINET POSITIONS
Secretary nominees must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate
Announced
Confirmation not needed
Confirmed
Confirmed
STATE
Antony
Blinken
TREASURY
Confirmed
Janet
Yellen
DEFENSE
Confirmed
Lloyd
Austin
INTERIOR
Confirmed
Deb
Haaland
AGRICULT.
Confirmed
Tom
Vilsack
COMMERCE
Confirmed
Gina
Raimondo
ENERGY
Confirmed
Jennifer Granholm
TRANSPORT.
Confirmed
Pete
Buttigieg
LABOR
Confirmed
Marty Walsh
EDUCATION
Confirmed
Miguel Cardona
ATTORNEY
GENERAL
Confirmed
Merrick
Garland
HEALTH
& HUMAN
SERVICES
Confirmed
Xavier Becerra
VETERANS
AFFAIRS
Confirmed
Denis
McDonough
HOMELAND
SECURITY
Confirmed
Alejandro Mayorkas
HOUSING
& URBAN
DEVELOP.
Confirmed
Marcia Fudge
ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTION AGENCY
Confirmed
Michael Regan
NATIONAL
INTELLIGENCE
Confirmed
Avril
Haines
MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
Withdrawn
Neera Tanden
WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF
Ron
Klain
U.S.
TRADE
Confirmed
Katherine Tai
UNITED
NATIONS
Confirmed
Linda Thomas- Greenfield
SMALL
BUSINESS
Confirmed
Isabel Guzman
HIGH RANKING POSITIONS
Some nominees must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate and others do not.
Conf. not needed
Joe Biden has picked Antony Blinken to serve as his secretary of state. Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration and has close ties with Biden. If nominated and confirmed, he would be a leading force in the incoming administration’s bid to reframe the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world after four years in which President Donald Trump questioned longtime alliances.
Antony Blinken
secretary of state
Janet Yellen, Biden’s nominee for treasury secretary, served as chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018, when she placed a greater emphasis than previous Fed chairs on maximizing employment and less focus on price inflation. If confirmed, she would be the first woman to lead the department.
Former national security adviser
Janet Yellen
Former Federal Reserve chair
treasury secretary
Retired four-star Army general Lloyd J. Austin has been nominated to be secretary of defense. If confirmed by the Senate, Austin would be the first Black leader of the Pentagon. As a career military officer, the 67-year-old Austin is likely to face opposition from some in Congress and in the defense establishment who believe in drawing a clear line between civilian and military leadership of the Pentagon.
Lloyd Austin
Former U.S. Army general
defense secretary
Biden has selected New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland as his nominee for interior secretary, a historic pick that would make her the first Native American to lead the powerful federal agency that has wielded influence over the nation's tribes for generations. Haaland, 60, is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and, as she likes to say, a 35th-generation resident of New Mexico. The role of interior secretary would put her in charge of an agency that has tremendous sway not only over the nearly 600 federally recognized tribes, but also over much of the nation’s vast public lands, waterways, wildlife, national parks and mineral wealth.
Deb Haaland
U.S. Representative (D), New Mexico
interior secretary
President Joe Biden nominated Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor and Democratic presidential candidate, to return to his old job at the Agriculture Department, saying his eight years of experience there under former President Barack Obama would ensure quicker help to rural and poor areas that are “reeling” from the pandemic and economic downturn. Vilsack, 70, will become the Biden administration’s chief spokesman for rural America.
Tom Vilsack
Former agriculture secretary
agriculture secretary
Gov. Gina Raimondo is Biden's choice to become commerce secretary. Raimondo, 49, is a former venture capitalist serving her second term as governor of Rhode Island after previously serving as state treasurer. As commerce secretary, Raimondo would help set the Biden administration's trade policy and promote U.S. opportunities for growth domestically and overseas.
Gina Raimondo
Rhode Island governor
commerce secretary
Biden will nominate former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm as his energy secretary. Granholm, 61, served as Michigan’s attorney general from 1999 to 2003 and two terms as Michigan’s first female governor, from 2003 to 2010.
Jennifer Granholm
Former Michigan governor
energy secretary
Biden introduced Democratic primary rival Pete Buttigieg as his nominee for transportation secretary, calling the 38-year-old ex-mayor “a new voice, with new ideas determined to move past old politics." Buttigieg, a former city leader of South Bend, Indiana, would also be the first openly gay person confirmed by the Senate to a Cabinet post.
Pete Buttigieg
Former South Bend, Indiana mayor
transportation secretary
Mayor Marty Walsh is Biden's candidate for labor secretary. Walsh, 53, has been Boston's mayor since 2014. When the Democrat took the oath of office in 2018 for his second term, Biden presided over the inauguration. Walsh was a state representative for more than a decade before becoming mayor. He also has a long history with organized labor, formerly serving as president of Laborers Local 223 and heading the Boston Building Trades — a union umbrella organization.
Marty Walsh
Boston mayor
labor secretary
President Joe Biden has chosen Miguel Cardona, Connecticut's education chief and a lifelong champion of public schools, to serve as education secretary. Cardona, 45, was raised in a housing project in Meriden, Connecticut, and went through the city's public schools before returning to work as a fourth-grade teacher in the district in 1998. At age 28 he had become the youngest principal in the state before working his way up to assistant superintendent of the district.
Miguel Cardona
Connecticut education commissioner
education secretary
President Joe Biden has selected Merrick Garland, a federal appeals court judge who in 2016 was snubbed by Republicans for a seat on the Supreme Court, as his attorney general, two people familiar with the selection process said Wednesday. In picking Garland, Biden is turning to an experienced judge who held senior positions at the Justice Department decades ago, including as a supervisor of the prosecution of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Garland has been on the federal appeals court in Washington since 1997. Before that, he had worked in private practice, as well as a federal prosecutor, a senior official in the Justice Department’s criminal division and as the principle associate deputy attorney general.
Merrick Garland
Federal judge
attorney general
Biden has picked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be his health secretary, putting a defender of the Affordable Care Act in a leading role to oversee his administration's coronavirus response. If confirmed by the Senate, Becerra, will be the first Latino to head the Department of Health and Human Services, a $1 trillion-plus agency with 80,000 employees and a portfolio that includes drugs and vaccines, leading-edge medical research and health insurance programs covering more than 130 million Americans. Becerra, a former senior House Democrat, said that in Congress he helped pass the Affordable Care Act and as California’s attorney general he has defended it.
Xavier Becerra
California attorney general
Secretary of Health and Human Services
Biden has nominated Denis McDonough, President Obama's former chief of staff, to serve as veterans affairs secretary. McDonough, 51, was previously Obama’s deputy national security adviser, including during the Navy SEAL raid in 2011 that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, and was a longtime congressional staffer.
Denis McDonough
Former White House chief of staff
veterans affairs secretary
Alejandro Mayorkas, 61, has been nominated to be Biden's secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and would be the first Latino to head the agency. Mayorkas, a former deputy secretary at DHS, will be tasked with rebuilding the department that the Trump administration used to enforce its border policy, including family separation at the US-Mexico border.
Alejandro Mayorkas
Former DHS deputy secretary
homeland security secretary
President Joe Biden selected Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge as his housing and urban development secretary. Fudge, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, was just elected to a seventh term representing a majority Black district that includes parts of Cleveland and Akron. Biden has viewed Fudge, 68, as a leading voice for working families and a longtime champion of affordable housing, infrastructure and other priorities.
Marcia Fudge
U.S. Representative (D), Ohio
housing and urban development secretary
Sources: Associated Press reports; White House
Ron Klain will serve as White House chief of staff. His gilded resume, deep knowledge of the gears and levers of power in the capital and decadeslong association with Biden have also done something unusual in today’s Washington: drawn praise from both sides of the ideological divide. The 59-year-old father of three has a reputation among Democrats and, strikingly, even some Republicans for competence.
Ron Klain
Former VP chief of staff
White House
chief of staff
North Carolina official Michael Regan would be the first African American man to run the Environmental Protection Agency. Regan, the state environmental head since 2017, has made a name for himself by pursuing cleanups of industrial toxins and helping the low-income and minority communities significantly affected by pollution.
Michael Regan
North Carolina state environmental regulator
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY administrator
Avril Haines, a former deputy director of the CIA, has been picked to serve as director of national intelligence, the first woman to hold that post.
Avril Haines
Former deputy CIA director
director of national intelligence
Neera Tanden is Biden’s choice for director of the office of management and budget. Tanden, 50, is the president and CEO of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress and was the director of domestic policy for the Obama-Biden presidential campaign. She first made her mark in the Clinton orbit, and served as policy director for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential race.
Neera Tanden
Center for American Progress
director of the office of management and budget
Katherine Tai is the Biden administration's choice to take over as the U.S. trade representative. Tai is the chief trade counsel for the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means. She was born in Connecticut to Taiwanese parents.
Katherine Tai
House committee counsel
U.S. trade representative
Biden nominated Linda Thomas-Greenfield as his U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Thomas-Greenfield, a low-key, veteran foreign service officer, reflects the president-elect's intent to return to a more traditional role at the world body as well as offer an olive branch to a beleaguered diplomatic corps. She is a 35-year veteran of the State Department who served as ambassador to Liberia, director general of the foreign service and top diplomat for Africa before being forced out during the early months of the Trump administration.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield
Former ambassador
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
Isabel Guzman is Biden's pick to lead the Small Business Administration. Guzman is the current director of California's Office of the Small Business Advocate in the California governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. Guzman has played a role in the state’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff at the SBA, the federal agency she's been tapped to lead, and was an adviser at the first California-chartered, Latino-formed business bank to form in Los Angeles in over 35 years.
Isabel Guzman
California business advocate
small business administrator
Isabel Guzman is Biden's pick to lead the Small Business Administration. Guzman is the current director of California's Office of the Small Business Advocate in the California governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. Guzman has played a role in the state’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff at the SBA, the federal agency she's been tapped to lead, and was an adviser at the first California-chartered, Latino-formed business bank to form in Los Angeles in over 35 years.
Isabel Guzman
California business advocate
small business administrator
Neera Tanden is Biden’s choice for director of the office of management and budget. Tanden, 50, is the president and CEO of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress and was the director of domestic policy for the Obama-Biden presidential campaign. She first made her mark in the Clinton orbit, and served as policy director for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential race.
Neera Tanden
Center for American Progress
director of the office of management and budget
Isabel Guzman is Biden's pick to lead the Small Business Administration. Guzman is the current director of California's Office of the Small Business Advocate in the California governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. Guzman has played a role in the state’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff at the SBA, the federal agency she's been tapped to lead, and was an adviser at the first California-chartered, Latino-formed business bank to form in Los Angeles in over 35 years.
Isabel Guzman
California business advocate
small business administrator
Avril Haines, a former deputy director of the CIA, has been picked to serve as director of national intelligence, the first woman to hold that post.
Avril Haines
Former deputy CIA director
director of national intelligence
Biden nominated Linda Thomas-Greenfield as his U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Thomas-Greenfield, a low-key, veteran foreign service officer, reflects the president-elect's intent to return to a more traditional role at the world body as well as offer an olive branch to a beleaguered diplomatic corps. She is a 35-year veteran of the State Department who served as ambassador to Liberia, director general of the foreign service and top diplomat for Africa before being forced out during the early months of the Trump administration.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield
Former ambassador
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
Ron Klain will serve as White House chief of staff. His gilded resume, deep knowledge of the gears and levers of power in the capital and decadeslong association with Biden have also done something unusual in today’s Washington: drawn praise from both sides of the ideological divide. The 59-year-old father of three has a reputation among Democrats and, strikingly, even some Republicans for competence.
Ron Klain
Former VP chief of staff
White House
chief of staff
Biden has picked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be his health secretary, putting a defender of the Affordable Care Act in a leading role to oversee his administration's coronavirus response. If confirmed by the Senate, Becerra, will be the first Latino to head the Department of Health and Human Services, a $1 trillion-plus agency with 80,000 employees and a portfolio that includes drugs and vaccines, leading-edge medical research and health insurance programs covering more than 130 million Americans. Becerra, a former senior House Democrat, said that in Congress he helped pass the Affordable Care Act and as California’s attorney general he has defended it.
Xavier Becerra
California attorney general
Secretary of Health and Human Services
Alejandro Mayorkas, 61, has been nominated to be Biden's secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and would be the first Latino to head the agency. Mayorkas, a former deputy secretary at DHS, will be tasked with rebuilding the department that the Trump administration used to enforce its border policy, including family separation at the US-Mexico border.
Alejandro Mayorkas
Former DHS deputy secretary
homeland security secretary
President-elect Joe Biden selected Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge as his housing and urban development secretary. Fudge, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, was just elected to a seventh term representing a majority Black district that includes parts of Cleveland and Akron. Biden has viewed Fudge, 68, as a leading voice for working families and a longtime champion of affordable housing, infrastructure and other priorities.
Marcia Fudge
U.S. Representative (D), Ohio
housing and urban development secretary
President-elect Joe Biden has selected Merrick Garland, a federal appeals court judge who in 2016 was snubbed by Republicans for a seat on the Supreme Court, as his attorney general, two people familiar with the selection process said Wednesday. In picking Garland, Biden is turning to an experienced judge who held senior positions at the Justice Department decades ago, including as a supervisor of the prosecution of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Garland has been on the federal appeals court in Washington since 1997. Before that, he had worked in private practice, as well as a federal prosecutor, a senior official in the Justice Department’s criminal division and as the principle associate deputy attorney general.
Merrick Garland
Federal judge
attorney general
Biden introduced Democratic primary rival Pete Buttigieg as his nominee for transportation secretary, calling the 38-year-old ex-mayor “a new voice, with new ideas determined to move past old politics." Buttigieg, a former city leader of South Bend, Indiana, would also be the first openly gay person confirmed by the Senate to a Cabinet post.
Pete Buttigieg
Former South Bend, Indiana mayor
transportation secretary
Biden has nominated Denis McDonough, President Obama's former chief of staff, to serve as veterans affairs secretary. McDonough, 51, was previously Obama’s deputy national security adviser, including during the Navy SEAL raid in 2011 that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, and was a longtime congressional staffer.
Denis McDonough
Former White House chief of staff
veterans affairs secretary
Mayor Marty Walsh is Biden's candidate for labor secretary. Walsh, 53, has been Boston's mayor since 2014. When the Democrat took the oath of office in 2018 for his second term, Biden presided over the inauguration. Walsh was a state representative for more than a decade before becoming mayor. He also has a long history with organized labor, formerly serving as president of Laborers Local 223 and heading the Boston Building Trades — a union umbrella organization.
Marty Walsh
Boston mayor
labor secretary
Gov. Gina Raimondo is Biden's choice to become commerce secretary. Raimondo, 49, is a former venture capitalist serving her second term as governor of Rhode Island after previously serving as state treasurer. As commerce secretary, Raimondo would help set the Biden administration's trade policy and promote U.S. opportunities for growth domestically and overseas.
Gina Raimondo
Rhode Island governor
commerce secretary
President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Miguel Cardona, Connecticut's education chief and a lifelong champion of public schools, to serve as education secretary. Cardona, 45, was raised in a housing project in Meriden, Connecticut, and went through the city's public schools before returning to work as a fourth-grade teacher in the district in 1998. At age 28 he had become the youngest principal in the state before working his way up to assistant superintendent of the district.
Miguel Cardona
Connecticut education commissioner
education secretary
Biden has selected New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland as his nominee for interior secretary, a historic pick that would make her the first Native American to lead the powerful federal agency that has wielded influence over the nation's tribes for generations. Haaland, 60, is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and, as she likes to say, a 35th-generation resident of New Mexico. The role of interior secretary would put her in charge of an agency that has tremendous sway not only over the nearly 600 federally recognized tribes, but also over much of the nation’s vast public lands, waterways, wildlife, national parks and mineral wealth.
Deb Haaland
U.S. Representative (D),
New Mexico
interior secretary
President-elect Joe Biden nominated Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor and Democratic presidential candidate, to return to his old job at the Agriculture Department, saying his eight years of experience there under former President Barack Obama would ensure quicker help to rural and poor areas that are “reeling” from the pandemic and economic downturn. Vilsack, 70, will become the Biden administration’s chief spokesman for rural America.
Tom Vilsack
Former agriculture secretary
agriculture secretary
Biden will nominate former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm as his energy secretary. Granholm, 61, served as Michigan’s attorney general from 1999 to 2003 and two terms as Michigan’s first female governor, from 2003 to 2010.
Jennifer Granholm
Former Michigan governor
energy secretary
Joe Biden has picked Antony Blinken to serve as his secretary of state. Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration and has close ties with Biden. If nominated and confirmed, he would be a leading force in the incoming administration’s bid to reframe the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world after four years in which President Donald Trump questioned longtime alliances.
Antony Blinken
Former national security adviser
secretary of state
Janet Yellen, Biden’s nominee for treasury secretary, served as chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018, when she placed a greater emphasis than previous Fed chairs on maximizing employment and less focus on price inflation. If confirmed, she would be the first woman to lead the department.
Janet Yellen
Former Federal Reserve chair
treasury secretary
Neera Tanden is Biden’s choice for director of the office of management and budget. Tanden, 50, is the president and CEO of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress and was the director of domestic policy for the Obama-Biden presidential campaign. She first made her mark in the Clinton orbit, and served as policy director for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential race.
Neera Tanden
Center for American Progress
director of the office of management and budget
SCIENCE
Announced
Eric
Lander
ECONOMIC AFFAIRS
Confirmed
Cecilia Rouse
SCIENCE
Announced
Eric
Lander
Economic Affairs
Confirmed
Cecilia Rouse
North Carolina official Michael Regan would be the first African American man to run the Environmental Protection Agency. Regan, the state environmental head since 2017, has made a name for himself by pursuing cleanups of industrial toxins and helping the low-income and minority communities significantly affected by pollution.
Michael Regan
North Carolina state
environmental regulator
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY administrator
North Carolina official Michael Regan would be the first African American man to run the Environmental Protection Agency. Regan, the state environmental head since 2017, has made a name for himself by pursuing cleanups of industrial toxins and helping the low-income and minority communities significantly affected by pollution.
Michael Regan
North Carolina state
environmental regulator
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY administrator
Eric Lander is the founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and was the lead author of the first paper announcing the details of the human genome. Also a mathematician, Lander is a professor of biology at both Harvard and MIT and his work has been cited nearly half a million times in scientific literature.
Eric Lander
Broad Institute, MIT and Harvard
Science Adviser
Cecilia Rouse, a labor economist and head of Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, served on the CEA from 2009 to 2011, and served on the NEC from 1998 to 1999 in the Clinton administration. Rouse would be the first Black woman to lead the CEA in its 74 years of existence.
Cecilia Rouse
Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs
Chair, Council of Economic Affairs
Withdrawn
