WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden is expect­ed to nom­i­nate Antony Blinken as sec­re­tary of state, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple peo­ple famil­iar with the Biden team’s planning.

Blinken, 58, served as deputy sec­re­tary of state and deputy nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and has close ties with Biden. If nom­i­nat­ed and con­firmed, he would be a lead­ing force in the incom­ing administration’s bid to reframe the U.S. rela­tion­ship with the rest of the world after four years in which Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ques­tioned long­time alliances.

In nom­i­nat­ing Blinken, Biden would side­step poten­tial­ly thorny issues that could have affect­ed Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion for two oth­er can­di­dates on his short list to be America’s top diplo­mat: Susan Rice and Sen. Chris Coons.

Rice would have faced sig­nif­i­cant GOP oppo­si­tion and like­ly rejec­tion in the Sen­ate. She has long been a tar­get of Repub­li­cans, includ­ing for state­ments she made after the dead­ly 2012 attacks on Amer­i­cans in Beng­hazi, Libya.

Coons’ depar­ture from the Sen­ate would have come as oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors are being con­sid­ered for admin­is­tra­tive posts and the par­ty is hop­ing to win back the Sen­ate. Con­trol hangs on the result of two runoff elec­tions in Geor­gia in January.

Biden is like­ly to name his Cab­i­net picks in tranch­es, with groups of nom­i­nees focused on a spe­cif­ic top area, like the econ­o­my, nation­al secu­ri­ty or pub­lic health, being announced at once. Advis­ers to the president-elect’s tran­si­tion have said they’ll make their first Cab­i­net announce­ments on Tuesday.

If Biden focus­es on nation­al secu­ri­ty that day, Michèle Flournoy, a vet­er­an of Pen­ta­gon pol­i­cy jobs, is a top choice to lead the Defense Depart­ment. Jake Sul­li­van, a long­time advis­er to Biden and Hillary Clin­ton, is also in the mix for a top job, includ­ing White House nation­al secu­ri­ty adviser.

For his part, Blinken recent­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in a nation­al secu­ri­ty brief­ing with Biden and Vice Pres­i­dent-elect Kamala Har­ris and has weighed in pub­licly on notable for­eign pol­i­cy issues in Egypt and Ethiopia.

Biden’s sec­re­tary of state would inher­it a deeply demor­al­ized and deplet­ed career work­force at the State Depart­ment. Trump’s two sec­re­taries of state, Rex Tiller­son and Mike Pom­peo, offered weak resis­tance to the administration’s attempts to gut the agency, which were thwart­ed only by con­gres­sion­al intervention.

Although the depart­ment escaped mas­sive pro­posed cuts of more than 30% in its bud­get for three con­sec­u­tive years, it has seen a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of depar­tures from its senior and ris­ing mid-lev­el ranks, from which many diplo­mats have opt­ed to retire or leave the for­eign ser­vice giv­en lim­it­ed prospects for advance­ments under an admin­is­tra­tion that they believe does not val­ue their expertise.

A grad­u­ate of Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty and Colum­bia Law School and a long­time Demo­c­ra­t­ic for­eign pol­i­cy pres­ence, Blinken has aligned him­self with numer­ous for­mer senior nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cials who have called for a major rein­vest­ment in Amer­i­can diplo­ma­cy and renewed empha­sis on glob­al engagement.

“Democ­ra­cy is in retreat around the world, and unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s also in retreat at home because of the pres­i­dent tak­ing a two-by-four to its insti­tu­tions, its val­ues and its peo­ple every day,” Blinken told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press in Sep­tem­ber. “Our friends know that Joe Biden knows who they are. So do our adver­saries. That dif­fer­ence would be felt on day one.”

Blinken served on the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil dur­ing the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion before becom­ing staff direc­tor for the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee when Biden was chair of the pan­el. In the ear­ly years of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, Blinken returned to the NSC and was then-Vice Pres­i­dent Biden’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er before he moved to the State Depart­ment to serve as deputy to Sec­re­tary of State John Kerry.

Biden has pledged to build the most diverse gov­ern­ment in mod­ern his­to­ry, and he and his team often speak about their desire for his admin­is­tra­tion to reflect Amer­i­ca. He is being watched to see whether he will make his­to­ry by nom­i­nat­ing the first woman to lead the Pen­ta­gon, the Trea­sury Depart­ment or the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs, or the first African Amer­i­can at the top of the Defense Depart­ment, the Inte­ri­or Depart­ment or the Trea­sury Department.

Ron Klain, Biden’s incom­ing chief of staff, said Sun­day the Trump administration’s refusal to clear the way for Biden’s team to have access to key infor­ma­tion about agen­cies and fed­er­al dol­lars for the tran­si­tion is tak­ing its toll on plan­ning, includ­ing the Cab­i­net selec­tion process. Trump’s Gen­er­al Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion has yet to acknowl­edge that Biden won the elec­tion — a deter­mi­na­tion that would remove those roadblocks.

“We’re not in a posi­tion to get back­ground checks on Cab­i­net nom­i­nees. And so there are def­i­nite impacts. Those impacts esca­late every day,” Klain told ABC’s “This Week.”

Even some Repub­li­cans have bro­ken with Trump in recent days and called on him to begin the tran­si­tion. Join­ing the grow­ing list were Sens. Kevin Cramer of North Dako­ta, Lamar Alexan­der of Ten­nessee, Pat Toomey of Penn­syl­va­nia and Lisa Murkows­ki of Alas­ka. For­mer Repub­li­can Gov. Chris Christie of New Jer­sey, a long­time Trump sup­port­er, told ABC that it was time for the pres­i­dent to stop con­test­ing the out­come and called Trump’s legal team seek­ing to over­turn the elec­tion a “nation­al embarrassment.”

Mean­while, plan­ning was under­way for a pan­dem­ic-mod­i­fied inau­gu­ra­tion Jan. 20. Klain said the Biden team was con­sult­ing with Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship in the House and Sen­ate over their plans.

“They’re going to try to have an inau­gu­ra­tion that hon­ors the impor­tance and the sym­bol­ic mean­ing of the moment, but also does not result in the spread of the dis­ease. That’s our goal,” Klain said.

Asso­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Julie Pace in Wash­ing­ton, Alexan­dra Jaffe in Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware, and Bill Bar­row in Atlanta con­tributed to this report.