Biden will propose a sweeping immigration plan on first day in office. Here’s what is expected to be in it.

Avril Haines, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to be director of national intelligence, pledged Tuesday to turn the corner after President Trump’s warring with the intelligence community.

The intelligence community Haines would lead upon her Senate confirmation has been frequently under assault from a President who has accused a so-called “deep state” of undermining his presidency, particularly when it came to Russia and his impeachment.  

Trump has fired officials in the intelligence community, and he placed a loyalist in the top intelligence post, John Ratcliffe, who clashed with career officials declassifying documents related to the FBI’s Russia investigation and the extent that Russia and China sought to interfere in the 2020 election.

Haines was introduced during her confirmation hearing by Dan Coats, Trump’s first director of national intelligence and a former GOP senator, who repeatedly clashed with Trump over Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

“Most important to me as former director of national intelligence,” Coats said of Haines’ qualifications, “is her commitment to bringing non-politicized truth to power and restoring trust and confidence in the intelligence community and the American public.”

A former deputy CIA director and deputy national security adviser under President Barack Obama, Haines would be the first woman to lead the intelligence community in a role that was created following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who will become chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, once Biden is sworn in Wednesday, said that Haines’ job will be to ensure the intelligence community “recovers” from the Trump era. 

“The dedicated men and women of the Intelligence Community have been through a lot over the last four years,” Warner said in his opening statement. “Our intelligence professionals have been unfairly maligned. Their expertise, knowledge and analysis has often been ignored or even sometimes ridiculed by a president who seems oftentimes uninterested in facts. Those who bravely spoke the truth were vilified, reassigned, fired or retaliated against.”

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the outgoing acting Republican chairman of the intelligence panel, did not mention Trump’s fights with the intelligence community in his opening statement, but said that it was important to fill the key national security role as quickly as possible.

In addition to pledging to restore trust both inside and outside the intelligence community, Haines noted the many challenges US intelligence agencies face, from China to the global Covid-19 pandemic to cybersecurity threats like the recent SolarWinds hack. 

“We must strengthen our cybersecurity, safeguard our critical infrastructure, and turn the ongoing technological revolution from a threat to an advantage by integrating new technologies to improve the capacity and superiority of our intelligence into the future,” Haines said.

Haines is likely to be among the first Biden Cabinet officials to be confirmed by the Senate, and there’s expected to be little-if-any opposition to her nomination.

The Intelligence Committee had initially sought to schedule her confirmation hearing last Friday in order to expedite the process, but a senator objected to holding the hearing virtually, leading to Tuesday’s in-person session.