Good Tuesday morning!
A number of Senate committees will hold confirmation hearings today for several of President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet picks.
Janet Yellen, Avril Haines and Alejandro Mayorkas will testify in front of Senate committees this morning, while Tony Blinken and Lloyd Austin are scheduled to appear before the Foreign Relations and the Armed Services Committees, respectively, this afternoon. More below.
A report in
Politico indicates that Biden’s transition team is alarmed about the number of Trump appointees “burrowing into career positions throughout the federal government.”
Biden has selected Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine to be assistant secretary of health. If approved, Levine would be the first openly transgender official confirmed by the Senate.
Rachel Levine, Biden s pick for key health role, to become first trans woman federal official The professor of pediatrics at the Penn State College of Medicine has led Pennsylvania s response to the coronavirus outbreak as the country s top health official The Associated Press January 20, 2021 09:31:15 IST A pediatrician and former Pennsylvania physician general, Levine was appointed to her current post by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf in 2017, making her one of the few transgender people serving in elected or appointed positions nationwide. AP
Washington: President-elect Joe Biden has tapped Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine to be his assistant secretary of health, leaving her poised to become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the US Senate.
However, vaccine supply in the Commonwealth remains low.
January 19, 2021
PHOTO: SUTTERSTOCK
The head of Pennsylvania’s COVID-19 task force announced Tuesday that people 65 and older, and people 16-64 with certain medical conditions are now included in the first group eligible to receive the vaccine. The decision means that more than 3.5 million state residents are included in Phase 1A of the state’s vaccination plan.
“It will be challenging because we haven’t received additional vaccine doses, however, we are recognizing that we want to go with the 65 and older and those 16 to 64 (with health conditions) to vaccinate our most vulnerable in Pennsylvania as quickly as we can,” Deputy Secretary of Health Cindy Findley said in a virtual press conference.
Rachel Levine is Joe Biden s selection for Assistant Secretary of HHS. She will be the first transgender nominee to a Senate-confirmed position (or maybe just the first known one). I don t care. Do you? What I care about is Levine s record as Pennsylvania s Health Secretary. It is sickening, as Ed Morrissey shows: While Levine ran the Pennsylvania health department, she followed the example of Andrew Cuomo in ordering nursing homes
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01/19/2021 06:58 PM EST
Welcome to POLITICO’s 2021 Transition Playbook, your guide to one of the most consequential transfers of power in American history.
The afternoon the networks declared
JOE BIDEN the victor in November, we published a story about the “contenders” to be in his Cabinet. It was speculative, but the product of dozens of calls from people around the newsroom.