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John Kerry, President Biden’s international “Climate Envoy”, appears to want bold climate change policy. Kerry was a leader in developing the framework for the first UN climate talks in 1992, co-authored cap-and-trade legislation back in 2009 when it could have possibly been useful, and was a major driver of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

If confirmed as Deputy Attorney General, Lisa Monaco will be the second most powerful legal officer in the executive branch. But her financial disclosures raise profound concerns about who Monaco will truly be serving while in office.

It has been over a month since President Joe Biden assumed the presidency. So far, thirteen of his Cabinet picks have received Senate confirmation, while the remaining ten who will require it wend their way through the process. In the meantime, the administration continues to announce names for the nearly 4000 other positions it will need to fill. With only a few exceptions, however, picks for one class of appointment — to independent agency boards — have not yet been forthcoming. The Biden administration undoubtedly faces many competing priorities, but these nominations must rise to the top.

De-Trumpifying all levels of the Department of Justice (DOJ) remains a critical factor in Joe Biden’s success. He needs an energized and progressive pool of U.S. attorneys committed to criminal justice reform, prosecuting white-collar crime, and protecting the environment to do that.

It’s been over a month since Biden took office and four months since he and his transition team began choosing appointees in earnest. That makes it an apt time for a tentative assessment. In a new release with Demand Progress, we gave him a B-, with wide variation across issue areas.

Wall Street executives are digging in their heels against the prospect of divesting from fossil fuel investments. At a February event, they peddled the extremely dangerous and false theory that modern society can “rely on the power of markets” to decarbonize our climate-destroying economy.

As the United States approaches a full year of COVID-19-induced lockdowns, the Revolving Door Project and the Center for Economic and Policy Research called on the White House’s COVID-19 task force director Jeffrey Zients to demand that Pfizer, Moderna, and other American pharmaceutical firms open-source their COVID-19 vaccines.

Almost every homeowner and most of the American mortgage-backed securities financial system is subject to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) regulation. It oversees and guarantees the vast majority of mortgages bought and sold in the United States. The FHFA does this through quasi-public agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which buy mortgages from local banks that they bundle, chop up, and sell to investors. This arrangement ideally allows local banks to provide more and cheaper loans to potential homeowners by letting them sell their mortgage liabilities to the government, and gives investors access to relatively stable investment returns.

At his confirmation hearings this week, Merrick Garland made admirable commitments to reinvigorate a beleaguered Justice Department and redirect its energies towards domestic terrorism, civil rights, and antitrust enforcement. His ability to deliver on those promises and more will depend on his resolve to break with tired norms where necessary and populate the Department’s highest ranks with unabashed champions for the public interest, not corporate apologists.

Jamie Gorelick, a high-powered lawyer who defended the city of Chicago after the police murder of Laquan McDonald and sits on the board of Amazon, is a case study of the influence big corporate law firms wield behind the scenes in Washington — and she has friends like Merrick Garland in high places in the Biden administration. The Revolving Door Project’s Elias Alsbergas and Max Moran spoke with Jacobin’s Alex N. Press about what Gorelick’s ties to Garland could mean for the Biden Administration’s Justice Department.

A coalition of 37 racial, worker, environmental, and social justice organizations demanded that President Biden’s attorney general nominee Merrick Garland keep BigLaw attorneys out of the leadership of his Department of Justice, especially those who generally represent large corporations or alleged white-collar criminals.

Little attention is paid to acting officials, who hold jobs temporarily while permanent appointees go through lengthy confirmation processes. President Biden should choose personnel for these acting positions wisely.

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a foreign policy think tank with at least 16 alumni in the Biden administration, has repeatedly published reports that directly promote the interests of its donors — including defense contractors, fossil fuel companies, and foreign governments — without disclosing their support. These conflicts of interest raise larger questions about what CNAS’ core philosophy of “extending American power” truly means.

On January 20, Joe Biden was sworn in as the country’s 46th President. It will be months, even years, however, before all of the accompanying members of his administration are in place. With over 4000 positions to fill, the vetting and selection process necessary to stand up a new administration is formidable. Add to that the lengthy road to Senate confirmation for over 1000 of those picks and you have a recipe for dysfunction.