Now-former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned Monday after multiple allegations of abusing her position of power. Those allegations include abusing official travel expenses, having an affair with a subordinate, demeaning behavior toward employees, and drinking alcohol on the job.
What took her down was a whistleblower complaint, first reported by The New York Post in January, whose allegations landed at the Office of Inspector General.
This is the third Trump Cabinet member to leave her post after the president fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in March and ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this month.
Jace White, manager of government relations at Advancing American Freedom, did not like union-friendly Chavez-DeRemer from the start.
"This is somebody who was nominated for labor secretary despite being one of the few congressional supporters on the Republican side of a bill that would have eliminated every state right-to-work law in the country," White tells AFN.
That bill is the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, something the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the largest federation of unions in the United States, has described as a "proposal to strengthen labor unions by weakening state right-to-work laws and strengthening collective bargaining" for workers.
"This is kind of a wish list bill for all of Big Labor's bad priorities that would have taken a lot of power away from individual workers and put it into the hands of these large national unions," White explains.
The fact that Cavez-DeRemer enjoyed union support and backed the PRO Act was enough for conservatives and free-market groups to know that she was not somebody that they wanted to serve as head of the U.S. Department of Labor.
Chavez DeRemer was a Republican representing Oregon in the U.S. House from 2023 to 2025. Rather than a conventional anti-union Republican appointment, her selection as labor secretary was widely viewed as a strategic choice to project pro-worker credibility, disrupt Democratic labor alliances, and broaden Trump's appeal in key industrial and swing states.
"Less than two years later, she's now out of the job," White says.
In a statement posted on social media, Chavez-DeRemer wrote, "I am proud that we made significant progress in advancing President Trump's mission to bridge the gap between business and labor and always put the American worker first."
Keith E. Sonderling is now acting secretary of labor.
