Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, ran into stiff opposition from Senate Republicans on Wednesday. As one of Biden’s most radical nominees, Becerra was sure to elicit a strong challenge from Republicans, who have highlighted both his complete lack of healthcare and medical experience as well as his record opposing Californians’ religious liberty and right of conscience. His hearing performance didn’t help.

So what are Becerra’s “qualifications”? For the Biden administration, his commitment to pursuing a radical leftist agenda is paramount. By nominating Becerra, Biden is seeking to weaponize the HHS into an enforcement agency.

During his confirmation hearing, it became patently clear that Becerra is fully on board the radical leftist agenda, as his record as California’s AG attests. Socialist Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) asked if he would help push the Left’s racial “equity” agenda by committing “to collect the data we need to see the racial disparities in our health care system and to attack those disparities head on.” Becerra readily answered, “Senator, I’m looking forward to working with you on this because it’s time.”

Becerra is an abortion absolutist and enthusiast. When questioned by Republican Senator Steve Daines (MT) if he could “name one abortion restriction that you might support,” Becerra demurred. Again Daines asked, “To be clear, is there any line you would draw? Is there just one restriction that relates to abortion that you might support?” Once again Becerra dodged, refusing to give a straight answer and saying only, “I respect those who take a particular view; my job will be to make sure that I’m following the law.”

On the issue of religious liberty, Becerra was challenged for falsely claiming he “never sued nuns” for objecting to and fighting against ObamaCare’s contraception mandate. “You actually sued the federal government who had given an exemption to the nuns,” Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) observed. “Can you explain what the Little Sisters of the Poor were doing wrong?”

Becerra sought to spin away from the obvious by hiding behind semantics: “Our problem was that the federal government was not abiding by the law as we saw it … and we took action … so that California could administer its programs to make sure that the Affordable Care Act continued to work.” Sasse called out Becerra for a “complete nonsense answer” and continued to press: “What you’re saying isn’t true. You say you didn’t sue the nuns, you sued the federal government that was keeping you from making sure that the nuns had to buy contraceptive insurance. Were the nuns going to get pregnant?” Once again Becerra responded by hiding behind semantics.

As noted above, it’s clear that Becerra’s experience and record do not qualify him for the position of HHS secretary. He’s a radical who would seek to use the agency against Americans’ freedoms of conscience and religion under the guise of promoting “healthcare.”

David Daleiden, the undercover journalist who exposed Planned Parenthood’s trafficking of aborted baby parts, was ruthlessly attacked by California’s then-Attorney General Kamala Harris, but that was an effort continued by Xavier Becerra. Daleiden warns, “Becerra’s treatment of me shows exactly why he shouldn’t be put in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. His record shows that he would abuse the power of this agency as a weapon in the culture war, wielding it on behalf of political allies like Planned Parenthood and against ‘enemies’ like the Little Sisters of the Poor and me. Most gravely, he would fail in HHS’s most basic responsibility to protect the lives and health of the tiniest Americans, instead exploiting them for experimental use and turning the clock back to old policies that say our children are more valuable dead than alive. We all deserve better.”