Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer Is Out — Take Your Pick of Provocations

By Will Swaim

Monday, April 20, 2026

 

Donald Trump has pushed Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer off Love Island, in part perhaps because of antics that looked like outtakes from a cringeworthy reality show.

 

In January, the Department of Labor’s inspector general began investigating allegations that Chavez-DeRemer ordered her staff to create official-looking reasons for personal travel, that she was a day-drinker and had an extramarital affair with a member of her security team, that she took staff to dine at strip clubs — because who doesn’t go to a jiggle joint for the fine food?

 

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said Chavez-DeRemer was leaving “to take a position in the private sector.” In a separate release, Chavez-DeRemer praised herself and her accomplishments — claims that Joe Biden’s acting Labor Secretary Julie Su might have bragged about.

 

C-DR’s real misdeeds (in one person’s mind, at least) had to do with her loyalty to government unions. As I wrote during her nomination a year ago:

 

Trump has nominated Oregon Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer to take Su’s desk at the Labor Department. As Trump did, Chavez-DeRemer’s 2022 congressional campaign attempted to square a circle: to bring together Republicans and organized labor in one slightly rotten Reese’s peanut butter cup. She won narrowly. Once in Congress, Chavez-DeRemer was as good as her word. She co-authored the PRO Act — Biden’s attempt to root Su’s rule change in federal law — and supported Biden’s federal Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act; far from freeing anyone, that law would force government workers everywhere to join unions and would require their government agencies to negotiate with those unions. Since 1978, that same coercive policy has wrecked California government finances, raised taxes, and blunted all attempts to reform any government agency, including the state’s underperforming public schools.

 

Chavez-DeRemer’s strategy worked until it didn’t. In 2024, Oregon union leaders poured cash into the campaign of Chavez-DeRemer’s Democratic opponent. After November 5, Chavez-DeRemer was looking for work.

 

Trump appears to have rescued her. But the only people truly happy with his choice are union leaders — the very people who would gladly travel back in time to kill Trump in his cradle. They have universally expressed their affection for Chavez-DeRemer. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien is credited with pushing her nomination. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten — who has called Trump an “existential threat to democracy and freedom” — was suddenly transformed: “Now, this would be a significant appointment for Trump to make,” she crowed on X, of Chavez-DeRemer.

 

You know you’ve screwed up when Randi Weingarten praises you.

 

You’ve also screwed up pretty badly when you let your anesthesiologist husband roam the Labor Department. A New York Times report last week said Dr. Shawn DeRemer, “an anesthesiologist, was barred from the department headquarters this year after several women told the inspector general’s investigators that he was making unwanted advances at them. One of the women filed a report with Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, which opened a sexual assault investigation. The department and the federal prosecutor’s office later said they would not bring charges in the matter.”