Biden picks California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be Secretary of Health and Human Services

Noam N. Levey, Eyan Halper,  and Patrick McGreevy for the Los Angeles Times  reported that President-elect Joe Biden has tapped California Attorney General  Xavier Becerra to be Health and Human Services secretary, which would make him the first Latino to hold the office. According to the story, Becerra “has become one of the most important defenders of the Affordable Care Act, leading the fight to preserve the landmark law against efforts by the Trump administration and conservative states to persuade federal courts to repeal it. . . . And he has become a leading champion of reproductive health, going to court repeatedly to challenge Trump administration efforts to scale back women’s access to abortion services and contraceptive coverage.”

Becerra’s mother was born in Jalisco, Mexico and immigrated to the United States after marrying his father, who was born in Sacramento and raised in Tijuana.  Becerra’s father started out picking vegetables. “He got treated like he wasn’t a citizen,” Becerra recalled in 2017. “He couldn’t walk into restaurants because the sign said ‘No dogs or Mexicans allowed.’”

Elected to the House in 1992, he rose through the ranks to become the highest-ranking Latino in Congress at the time.

As Attorney General, Becerra has filed 100 challenges to Trump administration policies, including many immigration and immigrant-related ones such as the rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, efforts to defund sanctuary cities, addition of a U.S. citizenship question to Census 2020, and more.  Just last week Becerra won a challenge to President Trump’s public charge rule in the Ninth Circuit.

KJ