WASHINGTON
When Joe Biden last month was mulling over whom to name as his Interior secretary, entrusted with hundreds of millions of acres of public land, a network of nascent environmental groups eager for clout made a move that defied the usual Washington playbook.
They launched a campaign to publicly shame the person believed to be at the top of the president-elect’s shortlist retiring New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall, a longtime Biden friend and former aide whose father held the post in John F. Kennedy’s Cabinet.
“It would not be right for two Udalls to lead the Interior before a single Native American,” they wrote in a public letter to Udall.
22 Dec 2020
The same people who backed and took part in protests in cities across the United States in the name of racial justice are now pressuring President-elect Joe Biden to reward them for their votes with positions in his administration.
“There was a mandate,” Gladys Limón, executive director of California Environmental Justice Alliance, told the
San Francisco Chronicle. “This is a litmus test.”
Biden’s first pick, for example, to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Mary Nichols, who is the head of the California Air Resources Board, drew opposition from this sector of Biden supporters.
“It’s encouraging that President-elect Biden appears to have listened to the concerns of the environmental justice advocates who reminded him of his campaign promises,” Limón said.
Racial justice advocates flex power, ask Biden to do more than check the box
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California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols, shown with Gov. Gavin Newsom last year, was President-elect Joe Biden’s favorite to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. After protests over her record on environmental justice, Biden nominated Michael Regan, a Black man.Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press 2019Show MoreShow Less
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Michael Regan, who has focused on justice as North Carolina’s top environmental official, would be the first Black man to head the EPA
The racial justice movement that packed the streets of scores of U.S. cities last summer is flexing its muscle now to influence President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet picks and potentially a high-profile appointment that Gov. Gavin Newsom will soon make.
(CPUC)
Gov. Gavin Newsom has appointed California Public Utilities Commissioner Liane Randolph to replace the outgoing Mary Nichols, long the center of gravity for the state’s climate policy, as the chair of the California Air Resources Board.
Nichols amassed a considerable amount of power in California as the state’s top air regulator, shepherding through sweeping regulations on power plants, implementing cap-and-trade legislation, and piloting pollution control measures that are some of the strongest in the nation.
A deft political operative, Nichols, who is retiring at the end of the month, was also on the front lines of the state’s policy battles with the Trump administration over the environment and climate change, most notably in her fostering an agreement between the state and five major automakers to follow California’s stricter clean-car rules after Trump sought to relax federal standards. She is reportedly President-elect Joe Biden’s top pick to be the next hea