Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Shalanda Young, a working mom, is the first woman of color to take charge of America’s budget

Shalanda Young, Office of Management and Budget

Shalanda Young speaks during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, held in February, on her nomination to run OMB.

Pool/Getty Images

Originally published by The 19th.

For the first time, a woman of color is the director of what President Joe Biden called “the nerve center of government.” The Senate voted 61-36 on Tuesday to confirm Shalanda Young’s position as the head of the Office of Management and Budget.

“As evidenced by the strong bipartisan confirmation vote she received, Shalanda Young is well known to many of us due to her years of experience on the House Appropriations Committee staff,” said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who supported Young’s confirmation. She added: “Shalanda is smart, fair, and knowledgeable. I look forward to working closely with her.”

The Biden administration is on track to be the most diverse as promised. In addition to Young, more than a dozen of Biden’s chosen leaders are the first in their community to hold a position, including Kamala Harris, Janet Yellen, Deb Haaland and Katherine Tai. On his first day in office, Biden issued an executive order on advancing racial equity through the federal government and directed the head of OMB — the office Young now formally takes over — to coordinate these efforts in the budget and across agencies.


Young is familiar with the office: She began serving as acting director in March 2021. Her confirmation process began toward the end of last year and took about 110 days — longer than the average time it took previous administrations. It took the Senate 103 days on average to confirm a Biden nominee, 100 for Trump, 80 for Obama and 48 for Bush. Presidents are required to fill about 4,000 politically appointed positions, including more than 1,200 that require confirmation in the Senate. The process entails a formal nomination from the White House, a Senate committee hearing and then a full vote on the Senate floor to formally confirm the nomination. Young is one of nearly 300 positions that have been confirmed thus far, according to Partnership for Public Service’s tracker.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The confirmation vote came the same day one of Biden’s more high-profile picks, Sarah Bloom Raskin, withdrew from consideration for the Federal Reserve Board’s vice chair for supervision. Raskin, who has previously served on the Fed and in the Obama administration, faced Republican opposition in part because of her willingness to address climate change through policy. She joins several other nominees, most prominently Neera Tanden, who were unable to clear Republican objections.

The Biden administration had initially nominated Tanden, the former president of the Center for American Progress, to serve as director of the OMB. However, the White House pulled the nomination after Tanden faced strong opposition in the Senate and was instead named White House staff secretary in October.

“[Young] earned the trust, respect and admiration of Democrats and Republicans alike,” Biden said when announcing her nomination in November. “In her eight months as acting director of OMB, she’s continued to impress me and congressional leaders as well.”

Young, who previously worked for the House Appropriations Committee, has been acting director of the agency since March 2021, overseeing the president’s budget and vision across the executive branch. In her confirmation hearing, Young said “a budget is your values” and “the federal budget can and should help make the promise of this country real for all families.” She described growing up in a Louisiana town with a population of around 2,000 — the same town where her maternal great grandparents lived and had her grandmother in 1928.

“Somehow, even then, in the segregated South, my great grandparents sent their child, my grandmother, to college,” Young said. “I am grateful they prioritized education — a commitment that has stayed in my family for generations. All families deserve to see their children have that same opportunity to pursue their potential.”

Last fall, Young went on maternity leave following the birth of her daughter —which was mentioned as an advantage at her Senate Budget Committee hearing on February 1.

“Working moms have felt some of the worst of this pandemic — and at a time when a full-blown child care crisis and the lack of a strong national, paid leave policy has been especially hard for working moms, forcing so many to turn down extra hours, promotions — or quit entirely,” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said at the hearing. “I can’t think of anything more appropriate than putting a working mom in charge of America’s budget.”

Murray, a Democrat who said she has known Young for years, characterized the new mother as a “steady hand” with years of experience negotiating across the aisle, who would help revive the country’s crippled economy. Young has previously voiced support for increasing the federal minimum wage, decreasing student debt, expanding Medicare eligibility, guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid parental leave and making child care more affordable.

Read More

Employees being let go, laid off, fired.
Getty Images, mathisworks

Part One, The Impact of Trump’s Executive Actions: The Federal Workforce

Project Overview

This essay is part of a series by Lawyers Defending American Democracy, explaining in practical terms what the administration’s executive orders and other executive actions mean for all of us. Each of these actions springs from the pages of Project 2025, the administration's 900-page playbook that serves as the foundation for these measures. The Project 2025 agenda should concern all of us, as it tracks strategies adopted by countries such as Hungary, which have eroded democratic norms and have adopted authoritarian approaches to governing.

Keep ReadingShow less
Dictionary definition of tariff
Would replacing the income tax with higher tariffs help ‘struggling Americans’?
Devonyu/Getty Images

Trump's Tariff Chaos: Strategy or Stumble?

Few would argue with the claim that President Trump’s tariff policy is chaotic.

In early April 2025, Trump announced sweeping tariffs on all U.S. trading partners, including a 10% blanket tariff and higher rates for specific countries like China (145%) and Canada (25%). Just a few days later, however, he rolled back many of these tariffs, citing the need for "flexibility".

Keep ReadingShow less
Competitive Authoritarianism Comes for Civil Society

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on April 3, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Andrew Harnik

Competitive Authoritarianism Comes for Civil Society

The following is reposted with permission from his Substack newsletter, The Art of Association.

I make a point of letting readers know when I change my mind about matters that bear on the ongoing discussion here at The Art of Association. I need to introduce today’s newsletter about what the second Trump Administration entails for civil society with just such an update.

Keep ReadingShow less
USAID flag outside a building
A USAID flag outside a building.
J. David Ake/Getty Images

A Profound Distortion of Humanity’s Purpose on Earth

In the comments section of his New York Times column titled “Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True,” Nick Kristof wrote: “I think that President Trump and Elon Musk thought the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would be an easy target and could be a practice run for raiding something harder, like Medicaid. In reporting this story, I tried to put human faces on the aid cuts and appeal to readers' consciences, but I wonder whether it's more effective to appeal to the public's sense of self interest? Which arguments do you think are most effective in reaching people and changing minds?”

As a citizen advocate who has spent more than 40 years working to improve USAID, waves of grief keep coming over me due to the reckless and shameful dismemberment of the agency. Attempts by Musk and Trump to shut down USAID amount to vandalizing America’s soul.

Keep ReadingShow less