Incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain said Sunday that President-elect Joe Biden will begin announcing his Cabinet picks early this week.
Klain said on ABC News' "This Week" that Americans will see the first of Biden's nominees Tuesday.
"Meeting the pace — beating, in fact, the pace that was set by the Obama/Biden transition, beating the pace set by the Trump transition," Klain said, adding, "But if you want to know what Cabinet agencies they are, who's going to be in those Cabinet agencies, you'll have to wait for the president-elect to say that himself on Tuesday."
Last week, Biden told reporters that he has settled on a treasury secretary and that he would be naming the person around Thanksgiving. He gave no indication who that person might be.
Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," Jen Psaki, a senior Biden transition official, said she expects some Cabinet secretaries to be named this week, with others to be announced the following week.
"The Cabinet and the team will look like America. That means diversity of ideology, diversity of background, and he wants to have a range of views of people at the table," Psaki said. "He wants to have a diversity of voices at the table because he fully understands that's how he's going to move an agenda forward."
In other transition news:
- Bypassing McConnell: Democrats push Biden to aggressively use executive power.
- "A huge catastrophe": Democrats grapple with congressional and state election losses.
- A federal judge dismisses another Trump election lawsuit in Pennsylvania.
- The Trump campaign asks for another Georgia recount.
- Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a longtime Trump ally, calls Trump's legal strategy a "national embarrassment."
- Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska calls for a transition to begin: "President Trump has had the opportunity to litigate his claims, and the courts have thus far found them without merit. A pressure campaign on state legislators to influence the electoral outcome is not only unprecedented but inconsistent with our democratic process. It is time to begin the full and formal transition process."
Klain said that because of the continued surge in Covid-19 cases, Americans can expect to see a nontraditional inauguration on Jan. 20.
"I think it's going to definitely have to be changed," Klain said. "We started some consultations with House and Senate leadership on that. Obviously, this is not going to be the same kind of inauguration we had in the past."
Klain said Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are "going to try to have an inauguration that honors the importance and the symbolic meaning of the moment but also does not result in the spread of disease."
"I think we'll have some mix of those techniques, some mix of, you know, scaled-down versions of the existing traditions," Klain said. "People have a lot to celebrate on January 20th."
