Joe Biden has picked former rival Pete Buttigieg to be his new transport secretary – which would make him the first openly gay member of a presidential cabinet.

The 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, ran for the Democratic Party presidential candidate nomination, before suspending his campaign in March and finally endorsing Mr Biden.

In a statement, Mr Biden’s transition team praised him as “a barrier-breaking public servant from the industrial Midwest with a track record of trailblazing, forward-thinking executive leadership”.

The president-elect is planning to formally introduce Mr Buttigieg during a Delaware event on Wednesday with his vice president-elect Kamala Harris.

Mr Buttigieg, an ex-US Navy officer, became a formidable political force in the early primary states and finished well ahead of Mr Biden in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Mr Biden later suggested he could be a bridge to a new generation of Democratic leadership, and is now set to add a youthful dynamic to the new US government.

On Tuesday, the Electoral College decisively confirmed Mr Biden as the nation’s next president.

The victory has all but ended President Donald Trump‘s floundering campaign to overturn his loss of the US presidential election last month.

Mr Biden subsequently criticised Mr Trump after he refused to concede defeat, calling attacks on the election and election officials “simply unconscionable” and attempts to overturn the result an “abuse of power”.

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The president-elect is also intending to choose former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm as his energy secretary.

And he plans to select Gina McCarthy, a former Environmental Protection Agency chief, for the new powerful position of domestic climate chief.

All three – Mr Buttigieg, Ms Granholm and Ms McCarthy – will be central to Mr Biden’s plan to remake the country’s transportation systems in a bid to cut emissions quickly.

Mr Biden is steadily choosing his Cabinet secretaries, selecting former Obama adviser Tony Blinken as his secretary of state, as well as retired army general Lloyd Austin as his defence secretary and former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen as his treasury secretary.

He has also picked Tom Vilsack to reprise his former role as agriculture secretary, and Ohio Rep Marcia Fudge to serve as housing secretary.

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