Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R), who misplaced her reelection bid to Democrat Janelle Bynum within the November elections and is now President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, seems to be shifting full steam forward in her bid whereas dodging the extraordinary scrutiny that Trump’s different nominees have obtained.
On December 12, Chavez-DeRemer was in attendance with Vice President-elect JD Vance and different cupboard nominees on the New York Inventory Change when Trump triumphantly rang the opening bell.
I loved being on the @NYSE this morning with @realDonaldTrump and lots of of my fellow cupboard nominees — beneath President Trump’s management, we are going to Make Our Financial system Nice Once more! 🇺🇲 pic.twitter.com/6k5evLtolQ
— Lori Chavez-DeRemer (@LChavezDeRemer) December 12, 2024
The union pursuits who’re pushing for Chavez-DeRemer to be confirmed need to create this phantasm of inevitability and normalcy, as if there are not any conflicts of curiosity or points with this nominee. There are lots, and till the Senate advises, consents, and confirms, the 64 million impartial professionals and small enterprise house owners, together with the nationwide community of franchisers, stay tacitly uncomfortable and proceed to demand Trump rescind this nomination.
President Joe Biden just lately propped up his failed nominee, Performing Secretary of Labor Julie Su, on the proclamation signing for FDR-era Labor Secretary Frances Perkins’ residence turning into a nationwide monument. Perkins, Su, and Chavez-DeRemer share extra than simply the identical intercourse: all of them climbed on the backs of impartial professionals and financial freedom with a view to tailor calculated paths that aligned with labor unions and their lust for energy and management. The “R” after her title means little: Chavez-DeRemer will merely be Julie Su 2.0 and serve to additional the labor union agenda that Su stored in place and furthered. Meet the brand new boss, similar because the previous boss.
However the theater of affirmation continues. After her NYSE go to, Chavez-DeRemer reportedly flew to Mar-a-Lago on Monday to interview potential top-level employees for the Division of Labor. On Wednesday, she is going to maintain her first Senate assembly with Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a member of the Senate HELP committee who can be a part of the decision-making on whether or not her nomination should be advanced.
Confirming Fox Information that Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s first Senate assembly this week is tomorrow w/ HELP Committee member and GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin
She off Capitol Hill tour after making trek to West Palm Seaside this week to interview candidates for senior roles in Labor Dept ⬇️ https://t.co/PG3IERIDF8
— Audrey Fahlberg (@AudreyFahlberg) December 17, 2024
The Labor Secretary designee’s journey this week to Trump’s Florida political compound comes roughly three weeks after her nomination to the job, which consists of overseeing Occupational Security and Well being Administration and office rules beneath a GOP that has warmed to unions lately. Simply final week, for instance, Trump had excessive reward for the Worldwide Longshoremen’s Affiliation after assembly with the group’s leaders.
“I’ve studied automation, and know nearly every part there’s to find out about it,” the president-elect wrote in a December 12 social media post railing towards port automation. “The amount of cash saved is nowhere close to the misery, damage, and hurt it causes for American Staff, on this case, our Longshoremen.”
The labor secretary nomination will fall beneath the Senate Well being, Schooling, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s jurisdiction beneath the management of soon-to-be Chairman Invoice Cassidy (R., La.). She should win help of a easy majority of HELP Committee members to advance to a affirmation listening to.
As standard, legacy media and even sure conservative shops fail to element Chavez-DeRemer’s damaging influence on impartial professionals and small companies in her sponsorship of the PRO Act, which seeks to strip right-to-work legal guidelines in 27 states. Sen. Mullin did an ready job of stating Performing Secretary Julie Su’s lack of small enterprise expertise and her lack of ability to symbolize either side of the American economic system and workforce throughout her affirmation listening to. Allow us to hope Mullin digs extra deeply into how rapidly Chavez-DeRemer deserted her so-called small enterprise background with a view to acquire the allegiance and help of massive labor.
In response to her LinkedIn profile, from 2005 till she was sworn in as a congressperson, Chavez-DeRemer labored because the Advertising and marketing Director for the small enterprise her doctor husband began with a companion. Anesthesia Associates Northwest, LLC contracts and staffs hospitals, med-surge clinics, and mobile clinics with skilled anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists. These are the exact same impartial medical professionals that the PRO Act targets as a result of nearly all of this sort of specialised apply are impartial contractors. So, the disconnect between Chavez-DeRemer’s information of the liberty, flexibility, and monetary advantage of the impartial contractor mannequin for entrepreneurs and small companies versus her allegiance to organizations that need pressured union employment and membership must be dropped at gentle.mer MDPC
When Chavez-DeRemer first ran for the Oregon congressional seat in 2022, she couldn’t discuss sufficient about her small enterprise expertise. Her declare: as a result of she had signed the entrance of the paycheck, she knew what it took to run a small business.
Lori additionally credit her expertise as a small enterprise proprietor in her suitability to symbolize Oregon’s CD-5. Lori and her husband opened Anesthesia Associates Northwest in 2005, a well being care clinic that now operates a number of services all through the area. They began with 4 staff and now have a employees of over 100 staff, together with one in every of their daughters.
“I’ve signed the entrance of the paycheck. I do know what it takes to run a small enterprise,” she mentioned. “I additionally know what it’s wish to combat for small companies and the infrastructure it takes, significantly once you’re in a metropolis that’s rising.” She continued, “Folks need to know that you’re working for them on a regular basis. They should really feel heard. That’s what I’m good at.” If elected, she wish to be part of the Congressional Principal Road Caucus.
What she did was be part of the Home Committee on Schooling and the Workforce, which, just like the Senate HELP Committee, supplies oversight to the Division of Labor and controls its funding. This was a calculated transfer on her half, as I wrote in November.
Chavez-DeRemer’s sole objective of being part of the committee was to shine her pro-labor credentials. Chavez-DeRemer missed different committee conferences and press avails, significantly those that may very well be construed as in alignment with her fellow Republicans on the committee.
In contrast to sturdy advocates for impartial professionals and small enterprise within the Home of Representatives like Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA), Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), and Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), Chavez-DeRemer appeared to rapidly morph from a so-called fighter for small enterprise to an advocate for union encroachment. With solely six months in workplace, the swiftness of Chavez-DeRemer’s transfer in alignment with the union agenda was quite marked. This included lacking pivotal committee conferences and votes, just like the one on HJ.Res.116, which might have labored to rescind the Biden-Harris ultimate independent contractor rule.
In July, she grew to become solely the third Republican member of Congress to cosponsor the sweeping pro-union invoice known as the Defending the Proper to Set up Act, and she or he has courted union endorsements in her reelection marketing campaign whereas speaking about her father’s expertise as a member of the Teamsters union. However when her fellow Republicans on the Well being, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee held a sequence of union-bashing conferences over the previous yr, Chavez-DeRemer didn’t present up and be part of Democratic representatives in talking up for unions.
Chavez-DeRemer spokesman Aaron Britt didn’t say why she missed these 5 conferences however defended her file on labor points in a press release.
“Lori’s opponents try to assault her undeniably sturdy pro-labor file as a result of they’re fearful of the impartial coalition of help she has labored onerous to construct all through her first time period,” Britt mentioned. “There’s a cause Lori has collected endorsements from almost a dozen labor unions – she has labored tirelessly to earn their belief by preventing for registered apprenticeships, honest wages, protected working situations and way more.”
cc Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who sponsored laws to strengthen academics unions https://t.co/NgCbUj5Jzs
— Michael Watson (@MichaelWatsonDC) December 17, 2024
In August, as Chavez-DeRemer continued to be bested by her Democrat challenger Janelle Bynum, Jihun Han, Chavez-DeRemer’s chief of employees, compiled a five-page bullet list touting every part Rep. Chavez-DeRemer had executed to help labor unions and her committee assignments. Those self same assignments she ditched when it was inconvenient to her union pursuits. In a web-based dialog with fellow impartial skilled and President of New Jobs America Mike Hruby, he additionally famous this.
The checklist looks like a bona fides assertion for help, as if in submittal for union evaluate, or be only for PR for the unions. It appears to be a protracted checklist for a freshman Republican consultant.
Hruby took to X to level out, amongst different points, how Chavez-DeRemer’s household enterprise, which particularly contracts and locations impartial professionals, is a transparent battle of curiosity to her help of massive labor’s agenda. Their sole intention is to upend the impartial contractor mannequin from which she and her household have profited.
We impartial contractors have already vetted Lori Chavez-DeRemer and have ample factual data to declare her UNQUALIFIED to serve your complete inhabitants of the US as Secretary of the Division of Labor.
— She has a huge battle of curiosity as owner-by-matrimony of a giant medical specialty contracting agency within the Pacific Northwest.
— Due to her battle, she should recuse herself from all IC-related selections at DOL, successfully handing over top-level selections to lower-level directors who’re uniformly and brazenly union sympathizers.
— She hasn’t the slightest government expertise to sort out a Cupboard submit liable for $11 billion in annual spending, 17,000 unionized federal staff, and 31 companies, bureaus and workplaces unfold throughout your complete US.
— She has no file of getting the creativity, perception, or negotiation expertise to deal with greater than a dozen hot-button social and office points beneath the Secretary’s authority.
— Her file as a first-term legislator is one in every of frequently sponsoring or co-sponsoring a five-page checklist of union legislative needs, rendering her impartiality deeply suspect within the eyes of at the least half the workforce.
Ms. DeRemer ought to bow to necessity and ask for her title to be withdrawn promptly from additional consideration as Secretary of Labor.
Mr. Hruby makes glorious factors, and Chavez-DeRemer is not any good friend of impartial professionals and small enterprise, if she ever was. Her clear union alliances have been cemented and absolutely concreted by October of 2023. In an article about her courting union help and being a proud “Teamsters daughter,” Chavez-DeRemer’s energetic pursuit of union pursuits over small enterprise was glancingly mentioned.
Chavez-DeRemer additionally retained political marketing consultant Mike Ingrao, a former nationwide AFL-CIO staffer, as a labor advisor.
There is a cause she misplaced her reelection bid, and in line with a neighborhood journalist, she was unconcerned about it. It’s virtually as if she knew she’d have a comfortable touchdown again in D.C. irrespective of which approach the election turned out.
Chavez-DeRemer’s co-sponsorship appeared like a clear bid to win union help. Whereas the transfer failed to save lots of her reelection marketing campaign, it did land her on the quick checklist of Republicans acceptable to union leaders. The previous congresswoman thus grew to become their favored candidate to function Labor secretary in a second Trump time period. Her choice offers these determined leaders their want.
Have lawmakers bothered to concentrate to the professions which were most affected by union overreach embedded in each the US DOL and the NRLB, significantly throughout the Biden-Harris administration? How can a Trump-Vance administration make assurances that affirmation of Chavez-DeRemer won’t guarantee extra of the identical (or worse) as head of the US DOL? Frankly, they can’t, which is why this nomination ought to go no additional.
As effortlessly as Chavez-DeRemer morphed from a supposed small enterprise champion right into a loyal union advocate, she may simply current one face to senators and the Trump camp with a view to be confirmed, and as soon as she is put in, will do the work of a Trojan Horse: full the invasion and destruction of American’s freedom to work as they select and the entrepreneurial would possibly that fuels the engines of our economic system. We aren’t as well-funded because the labor unions, chambers of commerce and different insiders that like to push the Lori Chavez-DeRemers, however we’re vocal and chronic.
Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination have to be rescinded.
The 2024 election despatched a transparent message.
However many nonetheless aren’t prepared to listen to it.
America’s working class needs freedom—not paperwork.
Here is the issue:
Donald Trump’s labor secretary choose, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, is a present to union bosses, not staff.
Her file aligns with the left’s outdated labor priorities, ignoring what staff actually search:
autonomy
flexibility
independence
Surveys persistently discover that the majority staff worth management over their schedules—typically greater than wages.
The GOP ought to deal with defending gig work, tipped wages, and crafting moveable advantages.
Actual management means empowering staff, not appeasing union leaders.
Something much less is a missed alternative.
Senate HELP, President-elect Donald Trump, and VP-elect JD Vance should listen. The Trump 2.0 “America First” agenda won’t ever be applied in the event that they maintain placing impartial professionals, small enterprise, and franchisers final.
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