Trump’s Labor Secretary’s Impressive Legacy of Sleaze |
Trump’s Labor Secretary’s Impressive Legacy of Sleaze
Lori Chavez-DeRemer is perhaps the least well known of the administration’s departing Cabinet members. That’s not for want of trying.
In September 2024, the Teamsters, whose strutting fool of a president, Sean O’Brien, had been gifted the month before with a prime time slot at the Republican National Convention, took a dive on endorsing a presidential candidate. It was the first time the Teamsters had not endorsed since 1992, and a thoroughly irrational choice, given that Donald Trump opposed labor rights during his first term and, unsurprisingly, has continued to do so in his second. After Trump was elected, O’Brien was rewarded with the selection of his favored candidate, former Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Republican of Oregon, for labor secretary. She turned out to be a total, scandal-plagued hack, and on Monday she joined the procession of departing Cabinet officials—Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and now Chavez-DeRemer—judged too corrupt, or perhaps (in the case of Bondi) not corrupt enough, to serve the most corrupt president in American history.
Chavez-DeRemer is by far the least well known in this (notably all-female) cavalcade, probably because people seldom pay much attention to the labor secretary. Her initial reception among labor unions was mildly favorable, with AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler taking note that she’d been one of only three House Republicans to co-sponsor the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would expand labor rights for private-sector unions, and one of only eight to co-sponsor the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which would do the same for public-sector unions. It was encouraging to observe some opposition to Chavez-DeRemer in the business world and among conservative GOP legislators. “She’s one of them,” Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, told Politico. “She’s pro-union.”
But it turned out Tuberville (now running for Alabama governor) had little to........