Research

Vanita Gupta’s nomination to serve as Associate Attorney General at the Justice Department was marred by right-wing smears, though she was confirmed in April 2021 after being nominated in January 2021.

Arun Venkataraman, an Indian American nominated for Assistant Secretary and Director General of the US and Foreign Commercial Service, waited 315 days from his nomination to confirmation. This is 226.25 days longer than the average timeline for Biden’s Department of Commerce Nominees.

The nomination of professor of soil biogeochemistry Dr. Asmeret Berhe to the position of director of the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science took over four times as long as the average Biden DOE nominee in the administration’s first year.

On January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden formally nominated Debra Haaland as Secretary of the Interior, making her the first Native American person to be nominated to a cabinet secretary position. Haaland is an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico and served as a U.S. Representative at the time of her nomination.

The nomination of former FCC aid and Georgetown Law Fellow Gigi Sohn to the position of FCC commissioner was history-making, as Sohn would be the first openly LGBTQ individual to serve as a commissioner.

The nomination of Kalpana Kotagal to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is still ongoing. Kotagal was nominated to serve as a commissioner on the EEOC in April 2022 and would give the democrats a 3-2 majority on the Commission.

Kristen Clarke was the first black woman to be nominated to the position of Assistant Attorney General. Clarke’s nomination came the day after the Capitol Riot, and she used the events of that day to stress the importance of the incoming administration’s work: “...we will turn the page on hate and close the door on discrimination..."

The nomination of Lisa Cook to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors was not without bad-faith conservative attacks demeaning Cook’s background. Cook is a tenured economics professor at Michigan State University (MSU) and has held roles at Harvard, Stanford, Federal Reserve Banks, and the White House Council of Economic Advisors under Pres. Obama.

Maria Robinson was nominated by President Biden to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Energy (Office of Electricity) within the Department of Energy on October 4th, 2021.

President Joe Biden’s nomination of Dr. Rachel Levine to the position of Assistant Health and Human Services Secretary drew a vicious wave of anti-trans attacks from right-wing media outlets and groups.