Former Vice President Joe Biden has chosen California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) as his nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), reported the New York Times on Sunday.
Both Politico and NBC News confirmed the report.
If confirmed, Becerra, 62, would be the first Latino to lead HHS.
Becerra is a staunch champion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, and has led 20 states in an effort to block Republicans from dismantling it in the case of Texas v. Azar.
The California attorney general is a supporter of Medicare for All. In October 2017, Becerra tweeted that he has been a supporter of Medicare for All throughout all 24 years he served in Congress:
.@DanaPerino asked if I support for #MedicareforAll. Absolutely! I was a supporter of it for all the 24 years that I was in Congress.
— Xavier Becerra (@AGBecerra) October 23, 2017
Becerra, who succeeded Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) as California attorney general, is also a proponent of abortion on demand and, like Harris, has received campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood.
Once Harris became a U.S. senator, Becerra continued her prosecution of David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) after the video journalists exposed Planned Parenthood officials and their associates in the biomedical procurement industry discussing fetal tissue harvesting and sales. CMP was accused of recording confidential conversations.
In 2017, Becerra, according to the Los Angeles Times, touted his office “will not tolerate the criminal recording of confidential conversations.”
“The right to privacy is a cornerstone of California’s constitution, and a right that is foundational in a free democratic society,” he added.
However, in May, Daleiden filed a federal lawsuit against Planned Parenthood, Harris, Becerra, and others in the abortion industry seeking “justice for a brazen, unprecedented, and ongoing conspiracy to selectively use California’s video recording laws as a political weapon to silence disfavored speech.”
CMP noted Daleiden was the first journalist to be prosecuted under the state’s new law against recording “confidential” conversations, “not because of the method of video recording he utilized in his investigation—which is common in investigative journalism in this state,” but, instead, because his investigation revealed content California officials wished to cover up.
In response to Joe Biden’s reported choice of Becerra for HHS secretary, the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said Biden is selecting an “extremist on abortion”:
Becerra is aggressively pro-abortion and a foe of free speech. As attorney general of California, he continued what his predecessor Kamala Harris started by persecuting citizen journalists who exposed Planned Parenthood’s role in baby parts trafficking. Not only that, he went all the way to the Supreme Court to try to force California’s pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise and refer for abortion – a policy the Court rejected as unconstitutional. In Congress, he even voted in favor of partial-birth abortion.
“This pick underscores the importance of winning in Georgia to prevent pro-abortion forces from taking control of the U.S. Senate,” Dannenfelser emphasized. “Republican senators must stand firm and stop this unacceptable nomination from going forward.”
