It might be the most shocking news yet to come out of this roller-coaster of a transition: After weeks of choosing cabinet secretaries who seem determined to destroy the agencies they will lead, Donald Trump announced the choice of a secretary of labor whom many American workers actually like.
His pick, Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, who just lost her bid for re-election, was one of only three Republicans to cosponsor the PRO Act, which protects workers’ right to organize. She also cosponsored the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which requires all states to recognize public-sector unions.
In fact, Chavez-DeRemer, the daughter of a Teamster, has such a pro-union record that some Republicans are in a full-blown panic about her nomination.
Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana wrote on X that he plans to question her about her support for “Democrat legislation in Congress that would strip Louisiana’s ability to be a right to work state, and if that will be her position going forward.” The New York Post ran a headline quoting conservatives calling her “toxic” and “unserious.”
Her nomination puts the economic populist wing of the Republican Party on a collision course with more traditional Republicans, who have always been on the side of company bosses. She embodies the contradiction that is the Trump coalition. It won political power with widespread support from blue-collar workers but has up until this point looked poised to hand the federal government over to business-friendly billionaires.
A central question for this next administration is whether economic populists in Trump’s camp will be swept aside by the likes of Elon Musk or Trump will actually spend political capital standing up for the blue-collar people who elected him.
History doesn’t inspire optimism on this front. The labor secretaries of Trump’s first term weren’t labor-friendly at all. One of them in particular, Eugene Scalia, was called a union buster by the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which opposed his nomination.
So why did Trump risk alienating the right wing by choosing Chavez-DeRemer? Maybe he felt the need to throw a bone to labor. President Biden, the most union-friendly president in living memory, is a tough act to follow.
More likely, he wants to publicly reward the Teamsters president, Sean O’Brien, who is said to have pushed personally for Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination. O’Brien stunned the world of organized labor when he traveled to Mar-a-Lago, spoke at the Republican National Convention and declined to endorse a candidate in the presidential election instead of reflexively backing the Democrat.
If Trump wants to prove that he is really on the side of American workers, however, he’s going to have to do more than one cabinet nomination. The real test will be his pick for the National Labor Relations Board, a less sexy but highly consequential position. If he follows this unexpected cabinet pick with a sign of support for the re-confirmation of the current N.L.R.B. chair, Lauren McFerran, that would be a sign that economist populists who stand on the side of workers actually have some influence.
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