Biden officially names Homeland Security secretary and director of national intelligence

(Image credit: PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP via Getty Images)

last updated 23 November 2020

President-elect Joe Biden's transition team officially announced his nominees for several key national security posts on Monday.

As had previously been reported, Antony Blinken will be the nominee for secretary of state, Linda Thomas-Greenfield gets the nod for United Nations ambassador, and Jake Sullivan has been tapped as national security adviser.

The announcement also reveals Biden will nominate Alejandro Mayorkas for Homeland Security secretary and Avril Haines for director of national intelligence. If confirmed, Mayorkas, who served deputy secretary of homeland security in the Obama administration and helped create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, would be the first immigrant and Latino to run the department, the transition team noted.

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John Kerry will also be back in the mix as Biden's special envoy for climate. The former secretary of state signed the Paris Climate Agreement on behalf of the U.S. in 2015, a deal which Biden is expected to rejoin. Read more about Biden's picks here. Tim O'Donnell

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.