In his first five months as president, Joe Biden has offered up his fair share of poor personnel choices. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra are woefully underqualified, and the latter is a partisan hatchet man who should never have been confirmed. David Chipman, Biden’s pick to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, is an anti-gun, conspiracy theory-prone liar who will hopefully not be confirmed. Activist and lobbyist Vanita Gupta was given a top job at the Department of Justice. And Neera Tanden’s nomination to head the Office of Management and Budget couldn’t even garner enough Democratic votes in the Senate.
Yet even against this execrable list, Catherine Lhamon stands apart as the worst. Lhamon’s is a name you might not be familiar with. But, as K.C. Johnson summed recently, “Perhaps no public figure in the past decade has done more to decimate the rights of accused students than Lhamon.”
