The stability of Joe Biden's Cabinet seemed bombproof.
Midway through his tenure, not a single member of the original team he appointed upon arrival at the White House has left office.
That, however, is going to change and it is going to do it in style.
His chief of staff and right-hand man, Ron Klain, a kind of shadow prime minister, is preparing to leave his post, according to various US media, citing White House sources.
Klain is preparing his departure for the coming weeks, possibly after the speech on the State of the Union that Biden plans to deliver in Congress on February 7, although for the moment there has been no official announcement in this regard.
His resignation, attributed to job exhaustion, comes at a sensitive time in the Biden presidency.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate why Biden had in his possession (in a private office and at his home) classified documents from his time as Barack Obama's vice president.
The Chief of Staff is willing to stay a few more weeks to facilitate the transition and they are already beginning to think about who can be his replacement, although at least half a dozen names appear in the pools without a clear favorite.
The departure of the Chief of Staff may lead to a broader renewal of Biden's Cabinet for the recently launched second half of his presidency.
In the United States there is no proper council of ministers.
Cabinet meetings are infrequent, barely half a dozen since Biden assumed the presidency in January 2021. The collegiate body does not approve projects or decrees, nor does it have specific powers beyond advising the president, so its meetings also have something symbolic .
It is made up of the vice president, the 15 secretaries of executive departments, the chief of staff and eight other members with different positions.
The president and, especially, his chief of staff dispatch directly with the secretaries of the departments and hence the power of whoever holds that position in the West Wing of the White House.
Klain opted for a person with three decades of political experience to hold that position, more important in day-to-day government action even than the vice president, Kamala Harris.
Lawyer, adviser to several presidents, vice presidents and senators and a key person within the Democratic apparatus, he is a person very close to the president.
When he chose him in 2020 after winning the elections, he was full of praise for him: “Ron has been invaluable to me during the many years that we have worked together, including when we rescued the economy from one of its worst moments in its history in 2009 and when a public health emergency [Ebola crisis in 2014] later occurred,” he said in a statement at the time.
“Its deep of him,
[Breaking news.
There will be expansion soon]
Follow all the international information on
and
, or in
our weekly newsletter
.