The wife of President Joe Biden's top aide has a fancy new gig at the U.S. State Department.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday announced that Monica Medina, wife of White House chief of staff Ron Klain, will serve as U.S. Special Envoy for Biodiversity and Water Resources.
According to the Washington Post, which initially declined to note that Medina is married to Klain, the decision to promote her to the newly established role of "diplomat for plants and animals" is one that "underscores the Biden's administration's desire" to fight climate change.
"There's a direct connection between biodiversity loss and instability in a lot of parts of the world," Klain's wife told the Post. "It's not just about nature for nature's sake. I think it is about people."
Medina currently serves in the State Department as assistant secretary for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs. She is an outspoken proponent of the Green New Deal, a controversial legislative proposal sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) that would cost roughly $9 trillion to implement but would have a negligible effect on global temperatures.
"The Green New Deal is a unifying political message that gets back to the basics of creating an economy that works for all people and protects the planet as a result," Medina wrote in January 2019. A national poll conducted the following month found that just 29 percent of Americans supported the Green New Deal, while 51 percent of respondents said they would rather the government spend trillions of dollars to build a wall on the U.S. southern border.
Medina is also a prominent advocate for fully integrating women into military combat units, which resulted in the lowering of rigorous physical standards to accommodate female trainees.