Five things to ask Trump's Labor Secretary pick.

Ahead of Wednesday's confirmation hearing for Lori Chavez-Deremer, a DOL-'insider' look at key workforce and policy issues that should be top of mind for the Senate.

Within a few minutes of Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination for Labor Secretary in November, I had about a dozen texts on my phone. All of them could be summarized with one question: “WTF?”

I was still at the Labor Department at the time. When folks pressed me, my gut reaction amounted to this: I don’t think the Trump people know what they want from Labor, but I think they didn’t like what they got from us the first time.

The disjointedness in Project 2025’s DOL section seems to back this up. Nine times, DOL’s Project 2025 section indicates that there was not agreement among its builders on issues important to the workforce. In contrast, no such disagreement exists in its sections on the Departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, and Justice.

Make no mistake, the bones of the Trump White House are not worker-friendly. But the raw politics of the last election—including friendliness with Teamsters leadership and support among rank-and-file union members—have led parts of Trumpworld to try to construct a pro-worker portico where presumably Chavez-DeRemer will reside.

About that.

Since the inauguration, the Trump Administration snapped the legal backbone of DOL’s civil rights agency, threatened to stop payments to workforce grantees, and created chaos at DOL’s cousin agency the National Labor Relations Board that Whole Foods just cited as a reason it shouldn’t recognize a union vote at one of its stores. Conversely, Chavez-DeRemer’s support among Senate Republicans has softened because of her labor-friendly track record in her sole term in the House. Business interests and conservative thinktanks have raised questions about the pick.

That means she might need Senate Democrats to get over the finish line. Given the last few weeks, they should have many questions, with “WTF?” being a fair one.

Below, I try to offer some slightly more articulate alternatives¹ based on my experience at DOL and what’s happening in workforce policy right now, much of which can be summarized using the words “Trump” and “hollow” or “gut.”² I don’t shoot for “realism” here—these are more reporter-ly questions than the scripted speeches-as-questions you most likely will hear from senators on Wednesday.

However, the topics frame how hard it will be for Chavez-DeRemer to stick the picture of a moderate that she might well need to get confirmed, and they help unbox what type of Labor Department the second Trump Administration may well get.