Todd started the new position Wednesday, Jan. 20, according to an email she sent to colleagues that was seen by Bloomberg. She didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
Brown described Todd as having done “unrelenting work” on the trade deal between the U.S., Canada and Mexico that went into effect in July. The agreement won Democratic support after changes for Mexico’s labor system demanded by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and engineered by her chief trade lawyer Katherine Tai, now President Joe Biden’s intended nominee for USTR. Todd worked closely with Tai on those changes.
“She believes in the dignity of work and will serve honorably as USTR Katherine Tai‘s chief of staff,” Brown said. “For too long, our trade policies have prioritized corporate interests at the expense of American workers. As the Biden-Harris administration works to pursue a trade policy to level the playing field and put workers first, I am encouraged to know Nora will be at the center of those efforts.”
One of the most exciting things about this slate of “climate Cabinet” nominees is the experience and success in state-level climate leadership it will bring to the federal government. After all, for the past half-decade and longer, states have been laying a roadmap for bold, nationwide climate action.1 Many of these nominees have served in or at the top of state government, including in Michigan, North Carolina, and New York. Others hail from states that have recently made great strides in clean energy such as New Mexico. All of them can now put lessons from their states’ leadership to work toward advancing federal policy and supporting ambitious climate action at all levels of government.
In December, Electrek reported that President-elect Joe Biden named the NRDC’s Gina McCarthy domestic climate czar. McCarthy and her deputy, Ali Zaidi, will coordinate action across multiple federal agencies and Congress. Here’s a brief background on six of Biden’s latest appointments to McCarthy’s climate team [via E&E], and more hires will follow.
David Hayes, special assistant to the president for climate policy: Executive director for New York University’s State Energy and Environmental Impact Center, where he helped state attorneys general fight the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks. Deputy interior secretary during the Obama and Clinton administrations.
Cecilia Martinez, senior director for environmental justice, the White House Council on Environmental Quality: Served on Biden’s climate engagement advisory council since the general election campaign. Co-founder and executive director of the Minneapolis-based Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy, and has worked as a research professor at the University of Delaware.
Maggie Thomas, chief of staff, the Office of Domestic Climate Policy: First served as deputy climate director for Governor Jay Inslee’s (D-WA) presidential campaign, and then as Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) climate policy adviser. Political director at Evergreen Action. She was on the Interior Department agency review team and was a policy volunteer during the campaign. She is a NextGen America alumna.
Sonia Aggarwal, senior adviser, climate policy and innovation: Cofounder of the think tank Energy Innovation, where she led policy and analytical programs. The firm helped the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis create its report of policy recommendations. Aggarwal managed global research at the ClimateWorks Foundation.
Jahi Wise, senior adviser, climate policy and finance: policy volunteer on the Biden campaign. Policy director, the Coalition for Green Capital, a clean energy accelerator, where he led the push to create a national climate bank. He formerly worked for BlocPower, which aims to cut building emissions.
Jeff Marootian, special assistant to the president for climate and science agency personnel, working within the Presidential Personnel Office: Director of the District of Columbia’s Transportation Department. Served on the agency review team for the US Department of Transportation (DOT). Previously the DOT’s liaison to the Obama White House, assistant secretary for administration and chief sustainability officer.
2021-01-20 Gina McCarthy outlines Biden’s first climate actions Joe Biden will spend his first hours as president trying to obliterate much of the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda, restore public land protections and reestablish the United States as a global leader on climate change policy.
Biden will sit in the Oval Office later today and sign a sweeping executive order to rejoin the Paris Agreement and undo President Trump’s rollback of greenhouse gas policies, said Gina McCarthy, Biden’s national climate adviser. “We know rejoining [Paris] won’t be enough, but along with strong domestic action, which this executive order kicks off, it is going to be an important step for the United States to regain and strengthen its leadership opportunities,” McCarthy told reporters late yesterday.
The process of rejoining the Paris Agreement will begin today with a letter to the United Nations requesting U.S. membership. It will take 30 days for the U.S. to formally reenter the nonbinding global agreement to reduce emissions. The administration will also rescind the permit for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, McCarthy said. The line transports crude from the western Canadian province of Alberta to refineries in Illinois and Texas and to other oil facilities in Oklahoma.
2021-01-17 Flint Activists Remember How Gina McCarthy, Biden’s Pick for Climate Policy, Failed Their City On Thursday, nine people, including former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, were charged over the crisis. Nick Lyon, Snyder’s health director, and Dr. Eden Wells, Snyder’s chief medical executive, were charged with involuntary manslaughter. Snyder was charged with two misdemeanor counts of willful neglect of duty. But the failure to help the people of Flint reached from the city level all the way to the top of the federal government. In 2014, the city switched water sources to the Flint River to save costs. The water was not treated to reduce corrosion, causing the water to be contaminated with lead. At the same time, bacteria in the water was blamed for an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease.
McCarthy is preparing to lead a new office of domestic climate policy at the White House, a position that does not require approval from Congress. She wrote in a blog post that she thinks the U.S. should aim for 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035 and a carbon-neutral economy by 2050.
20120-12-16 Former mayor says Biden appointee Gina McCarthy failed Flint during water crisis Former Mayor Karen Weaver, who dealt directly with Gina McCarthy during the Flint water crisis, says she is disappointed that the former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been tapped to lead President-elect Joe Biden’s massive, coordinated domestic campaign to slow climate change.
During congressional testimony in March 2017, McCarthy said that the EPA waited too long to make its voice heard as levels of lead, bacteria and chlorination byproducts rose in Flint water in 2014 and 2015. “In hindsight, we should not have been so trusting of the state for so long,” she said at the time. “We missed the opportunity to quickly get EPA’s concerns on the radar screen. That, I regret.”
While the former Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has taken the brunt of criticism for its oversight of Flint water, McCarthy’s EPA was also under fire for the agency’s passive role as it unfolded, and former Region 5 Director Susan Hedman resigned amidst mounting outrage over the crisis.
2020-12-15 Biden to name Gina McCarthy to top domestic climate job President-elect Joe Biden will name Gina McCarthy as his White House climate czar, a source familiar with the decision tells CNN, making the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency his top domestic climate coordinator.McCarthy, who currently serves as the head of the Natural Resources Defense Council, will lead Biden’s newly formed Office of Domestic Climate Policy, a source said. McCarthy served as the administrator of the EPA from 2013 to 2017 under President Barack Obama.The source added that Ali Zaidi, currently New York’s deputy secretary of energy and environment, will serve as White House deputy climate coordinator. Zaidi served in different climate-focused roles in the Office of Management and Budget and on the White House Domestic Policy Council during the Obama administration.The move is the latest example of Biden’s prioritization of the climate crisis.
Vanita Gupta Biography and Interesting Facts Vanita Gupta was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General and acting head of the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice as of January 20, 2017. Her first case, while working for the LDF directly after law school, involved 40 African Americans and six white or Latino people who were convicted on drug dealing charges. In almost every case, the only evidence was the testimony of an undercover agent, Tom Coleman. Gupta won the release of her clients four years after going to prison in 2003, then negotiated a $ 6 million settlement for those arrested. In August 2017, director Seth Gordon announced that he would be directing a film titled Tulia. In 2007, after becoming a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, Gupta filed a lawsuit that was later settled with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency on terms of detention for asylum seekers.
2021-01-08 Joe Biden praises Vanita Gupta, says she is ‘proud daughter’ of immigrants from India Vanita Gupta is one of the most respected civil rights lawyers in America and a “proud daughter” of immigrants from India who has fought for greater equity, US President-elect Joe Biden has said as he nominated the Indian-American to be his associate attorney general. If confirmed by the Senate, Gupta, 46, would be the first woman of colour to serve in this role.
“As associate attorney general, the number three job at the department, I nominate Vanita Gupta. A woman I’ve known for some time. One of the most respected civil rights lawyers in America,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware as he announced some of the key nominations in the Justice Department on Thursday.
While this is not the first time 45-year-old Gupta will be part of the Justice Department, having served as the head of the civil rights division under the Obama administration, the associate attorney general is the third-highest position in the US Department of Justice.
As mentioned by Biden, Gupta has had a long and illustrious career as a litigator, especially cases relating to civil rights.
Lisa Monaco – The Aspen Institute Lisa served as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism from 2013 to 2017. She was responsible for advising the President on all aspects of counterterrorism policy and strategy and coordinating homeland security-related activities on issues ranging from terrorist attacks at home and abroad to cybersecurity, pandemics, and natural disasters. Lisa also chaired the Cabinet-level Homeland Security Principals’ Committee, which advises the President on homeland security policy issues and crises.
She now co-chairs O’Melveny’s Data Security and Privacy group and a member of the firm’s White Collar Defense and Corporate Investigations Practice Group.
Prior to her service in the White House, Lisa spent fifteen years at the Department of Justice, where she served both as a career federal prosecutor and in senior management positions at the Justice Department and the FBI. She was Counsel to and then Chief of Staff at the FBI. In 2011, Lisa was nominated by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as Assistant Attorney General for National Security, the first woman to serve in that position. Lisa made investigating and prosecuting national security cyber threats a top priority during her tenure and under her leadership, a nationwide network of national security cyber prosecutors was created.
Lisa began her legal career as a law clerk to the Honorable Jane R. Roth on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She later served as Counsel to the Attorney General and then as a Federal prosecutor. She is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School.
2021-01-15 Biden taps Lisa Monaco as homeland security adviser to inauguration amid rising threats President-elect Joe Biden has asked Lisa Monaco, his deputy attorney general nominee, to temporarily step away from those duties and serve as a homeland security adviser to his inauguration team, a Biden transition official said, a sign that the rising security concerns demand high-level coordination.This is a temporary position, which will continue only until Inauguration Day, when Monaco will go back to preparing for confirmation hearings as the No. 2 official at the Department of Justice.”The President-elect has asked Lisa Monaco to serve as a temporary advisor to the transition on homeland security around the Inauguration, ensuring there is coordination across the incoming team and working with current officials in the days leading up to and on Inauguration Day to help ensure a safe and seamless handoff on homeland security issues,” a Biden transition official said in a statement Thursday evening.
2021-01-08 Joe Biden names former KeyBank official Don Graves his Deputy Commerce Secretary President-elect Joe Biden on Friday formally introduced former KeyBank official Don Graves as his nominee to serve as a deputy Commerce Department secretary, calling Graves “a longtime trusted adviser” who helped him lead efforts to get Detroit out of bankruptcy during President Barack Obama’s presidential administration.
“He did a great job working with city and state officials on its road to recovery,” Biden said of Graves, who was KeyBank’s Cleveland-based head of corporate responsibility and community relations before he went back to work for Biden.
2020-11-12 Joe Biden’s Transition Aide Helped Steer $3M to Hunter Biden-Linked Firm In December 2013, Hunter Biden, along with his long-time business associate Devon Archer, invested in a Hawaii-focused venture capital fund called mbloom. The investment, which was meant to provide seed capital for technology startups, was the result of a public-private partnership between Biden’s firm, Rosemont Seneca Technology (RST) Partners, and the state of Hawaii.
As part of the agreement, RST would provide five million for the fund, with the Hawaii Strategic Development Corporation (HSDC) matching the same amount. Little-known at the time, however, was that more than half of HSDC’s contribution, nearly $3 million, came from the Treasury Department’s State Small Business Credit Initiative. The program, which expenses more than $1.5 billion to state economic development agencies, fell under the purview of then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Don Graves.
Graves’ success in leveraging his relationship with the Biden family sharply contrasts with that of taxpayers in the state of Hawaii. Within months of HSDC inking the mbloom deal with Hunter Biden’s firm, the fund was embroiled in scandal. Most notably, two of the companies that first received capital from mbloom were owned by individuals, Arben Kryeziu and Nick Bicanic, tasked with managing the fund.
The scandal only grew when the company owned by Bicanic went under, without ever reporting a profit, and Kryeziu fell afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission. HSDC, which initially saw mbloom as an opportunity to diversify Hawaii’s service-centered economy, stepped in to stabilize the fund.
Those efforts proved futile, especially when Archer was indicted for defrauding a Native American tribe in May 2016. The charges against Archer stemmed in part from allegations that he and a business associate conspired to use tribal bonds under their control to drive up the stock price of Code Rebel, a technology company also owned by Kryeziu.
In the aftermath of the indictment, RST Partners agreed to give up its stake in mbloom to an investor lined up by HSDC. It remains unclear if Hunter Biden’s firm recouped its initial five-million-dollar investment. Despite hopes of salvaging mbloom, further investment never materialized. In June 2016, HSDC opted to shutter the fund in an effort to prevent any more tax dollars from going to waste.
2020-11-10 Biden’s tough choice on who will lead Treasury Biden’s Treasury secretary, which he is expected to name in the coming weeks, will be tasked with presiding over a U.S. economy that has not only been ravaged by the pandemic, but is facing new reckonings over racial inequality and climate change. The Treasury chief is also the incoming cabinet’s primary financial policymaker, with influence over bank regulatory changes, reforming the housing finance system, and what legislation affecting banks gets the administration’s support.
2020-10-27 Here’s who is on Biden’s new economic transition team Biden’s economic team appears to be diverse in gender, age, and ideology, but most of them have the common background of having worked with Biden or former President Barack Obama during the last administration.
The first four members of Biden’s new economic transition team confirmed by the Washington Examiner are Jared Bernstein, a longtime Biden economic adviser, Don Graves, who advised Biden for many years, Cecilia Munoz, who was a senior staffer in the Obama White House, and Joelle Gamble, a Democratic organizer who interned at the Treasury Department in 2018.
Other prominent economists known to be advising the Biden campaign include Ben Harris and Heather Boushey. Harris served as chief economist to Biden when he was vice president and is now teaching at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Boushey is president of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a liberal nonprofit research organization. She also served as chief economist for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential transition team.
2020-12-17 Biden To Nominate Brenda Mallory To Run Council On Environmental Quality President-elect Joe Biden plans to nominateenvironmental lawyer and Obama administration veteran Brenda Mallory to run the Council on Environmental Quality, according to a source with knowledge of the decision who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect private conversations.
The White House office oversees environmental reviews for virtually all major infrastructure projects, including pipelines and highways.
Biden has promised to make climate change a top priority, and Mallory’s appointment fleshes out a climate team with expertise in regulation, finance, diplomacy and environmental law. Mallory would work with John Kerry, the National Security Council’s first special presidential envoy on climate; and Gina McCarthy, who would coordinate the domestic climate group within the White House. Biden’s top economic adviser, Brian Deese, also has experience crafting climate policy.
2020-12-16 What You Need to Know About Brenda Mallory and the White House Council on Environmental Quality President-elect Joseph Biden has nominated Brenda Mallory to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Mallory’s nomination sends a strong signal that the new administration will take meaningful steps to address the climate and biodiversity crises and combat environmental injustice. Read on to learn more about Mallory’s background and CEQ’s role in shaping environmental policy:
CEQ acts as “mission control” for environmental policy decisions and reviews across the federal government.
The agency advises the White House and Congress about how to address important environmental issues ranging from land use to energy policy to endangered species.
One of CEQ’s most important tasks is overseeing the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) — the law that gives the public a voice in environmental decision-making.
Mallory brings a wealth of experience to the job.
Mallory is currently the director of regulatory policy at the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Under the Obama administration, she served as general counsel at CEQ.
Earthjustice senior legislative counsel Stephen Schima says Mallory “holds a deep commitment to protecting everyone, including the most vulnerable,
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is a memorial day designated by the United Nations to mark the anniversary of the January 27, 1945, liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp.
The National Archives is the international epicenter of Holocaust-related research. NARA holds millions of records created or received by the U.S. Government during and after World War II that document Nazi war crimes, wartime refugee issues, and activities and investigations of U.S. Government agencies involved in the identification and recovery of looted assets (including gold, art, and cultural property)—as well as captured German records used as evidence at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunals. We not only hold these records, we provide access to them.
For those looking to conduct research on the Holocaust and other World War II-related topics, we encourage you to browse recent posts and questions on History Hub:
History Hub is our support community for researchers, genealogists, history enthusiasts, and citizen archivists. Ask questions, share information, work together, and find help based on experience and interests. Researchers can ask—or answer—questions on History Hub, or search to see if a question has been asked before.
Washington (CNN)President-elect Joe Biden has appointed John Kerry as his special presidential envoy for climate, underscoring his commitment to tackling the global crisis and offering a symbolic rebuke to President Donald Trump’s lack of leadership on the issue.Kerry, who was President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, will be a Cabinet-level official in Biden’s administration and will sit on the National Security Council.”This marks the first time that the NSC will include an official dedicated to climate change, reflecting the president-elect’s commitment to addressing climate change as an urgent national security issue,” the Biden transition team said in a statement on Monday.
The elevation of the issue in Kerry’s appointment previews a shift in policy and approach from the current President’s repeated denial of the scientific reality of the crisis and systematic rollback of environmental policies.
Kerry, the former US secretary of state, acknowledged that America had been absent from the international effort to contain dangerous global heating during Donald Trump’s presidency but added that “today no country and no continent is getting the job done”.Biden raises hopes of addressing climate crisis as Cop26 nearsRead more
There would need to be a “wholesale transformation of the global economy” if the world is to reach net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, Kerry said. He said it was necessary for coal to be phased out five times faster than recent trends, the planet’s tree cover to be increased five times faster, renewable energy to be ramped up six times faster and a transition to electric vehicles to be 22 times faster than present.
The plan involves dramatically increasing the power of government through expansive new social programs like the Green New Deal and using vast regulatory schemes and government programs to coerce corporations into supporting left-wing causes. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”
Internationally, the Great Reset has already been backed by influential leaders, activists, academics and institutions. In addition to the World Economic Forum and United Nations, the Great Reset movement counts among its the International Monetary Fund, heads of state, Greenpeace and CEOs and presidents of large corporations and financial institutions such as Microsoft and MasterCard.
The two justifications for the proposal, which has been aptly named by its supporters the “Great Reset,” are the COVID-19 pandemic (the short-term justification) and the so-called “climate crisis” caused by global warming (the long-term justification).
While it’s unclear exactly how much Kerry benefited from his wife’s company, private jets have been estimated to emit upward of 40 times as much carbon per passenger as commercial flights.
2020-11-24 Biden prioritizes climate crisis by naming John Kerry special envoy President-elect Joe Biden has appointed John Kerry as his special presidential envoy for climate, underscoring his commitment to tackling the global crisis and offering a symbolic rebuke to President Donald Trump’s lack of leadership on the issue.Kerry, who was President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, will be a Cabinet-level official in Biden’s administration and will sit on the National Security Council.”This marks the first time that the NSC will include an official dedicated to climate change, reflecting the president-elect’s commitment to addressing climate change as an urgent national security issue,” the Biden transition team said in a statement on Monday.
2020-12-23 Biden’s Cabinet: The Scorecard So Far Progressives have done better than many of us feared, for three reasons. One is the sheer power and strategic coherence of the progressive movement, and its influence on the process. The second reflects Joe Biden’s admirable quest for diversity. The third is that events—the pandemic, the recession—have conspired to press Biden to be a bolder president than he anticipated.
progressiveissuesblog 