Two Scandals at Trump’s Labor Department

Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer at the world premiere of Melania at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on January 29. Graeme Sloan/Sipa/AP

In Trumpland, one scandal covers another. Individual acts of corruption get lost in the flood of sleaze that never seems to subside. Melania Trump is paid $40 million by the movie studio of billionaire Jeff Bezos, whose Amazon has billions of dollars in contracts with the US government. Donald Trump’s crypto company pockets $500 million from a UAE firm linked to the royal family which seeks favorable treatment from Washington. And Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump each have invested in drone companies that do business with the Pentagon. I haven’t even mentioned Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, and Howard Lutnick and how they and their families are being enriched due to their service to Trump.

So it wouldn’t be surprising if you’ve missed the Lori Chavez-DeRemer scandal. Or should I say scandals? I’m sure most Americans could not identify her by name or pick her out of a police lineup. (Maybe it will come to that?) She is the secretary of labor. Once upon a time, she was considered the least bad pick of Trump’s Cabinet. She was something of a moderate Republican from Oregon who had served in the US House of Representatives and had sponsored the pro-labor Protecting the Right to Organize Act.

When she was named by Trump for the Cabinet post, Teamsters president Sean O’Brien endorsed her nomination, citing her support for the PRO Act and saying, “As the daughter of a Teamster, Lori Chavez-DeRemer knows the importance of carrying a union card and what it means to grow up in a middle-class household.” Perhaps. During her confirmation hearing, she backtracked, called the measure “imperfect,” and said she did not support its provisions that would challenge state right-to-work laws. She was confirmed by a bipartisan majority of 67 senators.

In early January, the New York Post revealed that a complaint filed with the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General alleged Chavez-DeRemer, who is married, had been “abusing her position” by pursuing an “inappropriate” relationship with a subordinate. The report claimed she had hosted her alleged paramour at her DC apartment and in hotel rooms while traveling. She was also accused of workday drinking in her office and “travel fraud” by having her top aides “make up” official trips to spots where she could visit friends and relatives. She also—egads!—was said to have forced staff to run errands for her.

This was quite the humdinger of an accusation. The sort of stuff you see in an over-the-top television show. The White House called the allegations “baseless.” Three days later, Politico reported that her two most senior aides, who were alleged to have arranged her phony trips, were placed on administrative leave, pending the investigation. Her husband, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, called the allegations false: “There’s not an ounce of truth to this.”

More allegations emerged. The New York Post reported that the OIG was also investigating Chavez-DeRemer for allegedly taking subordinates to an Oregon strip club in April 2025 while on an official trip and that her tryst included two trips to Las Vegas. The New York Times reported that her alleged boyfriend was a member of her security detail, and he had been placed on administrative leave.

Then a week ago, the New York Times added a bombshell to the bombshell, reporting that Dr. DeRemer, an anesthesiologist in Portland, Oregon, had been “barred from the department’s headquarters after at least two female staff members told officials that he had sexually assaulted them, according to people familiar with the decision and a police report.” The women alleged that he had touched them inappropriately at the Labor Department offices in Washington, DC. One of the incidents, according to the Times, “was recorded on office security cameras,” and the video showing DeRemer “giving one of the women an extended embrace” was “reviewed as part of a criminal investigation.”

DeRemer denied the allegations, and on Friday his lawyer said that the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC, had cleared him after reviewing the video. A spokesperson for US Attorney Jeanine Pirro confirmed that, telling the Wall Street Journal, “Based upon the evidence presented to this office in relation to the video, there is no indication of a crime.” (Can Pirro’s office, which pursued the ridiculous prosecution of six Democratic lawmakers who reminded military service members of their obligation to not follow illegal orders and failed to obtain an indictment, be trusted on this politically sensitive matter?) Presumably, the OIG investigation of Chavez-DeRemer’s own conduct is still underway.

The details of this scandal are sordid. But what’s worse is what Chavez-DeRemer has done as labor secretary. During her confirmation hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) praised her labor record as “very good.” Not so as the woman in charge of the Department of Labor.

In July—to meet Trump’s absurd mandate that for every new regulation issued an agency must kill 10—the Labor Department proposed rescinding 63 rules that established safeguards for American workers. These included regulations compelling employers to limit workers’ exposure to assorted harmful substances, such as benzene, asbestos, lead, and cotton dust, as well as a rule providing employment protections for seasonal agricultural workers on H-2A visas.

One of these rollbacks would eliminate minimum wage protections for nearly 4 million domestic workers who provide in-home care and assistance to children, the elderly, and the disabled. As the Center for American Progress noted, without this regulation, “employers will be free to cut wages for millions of domestic workers to less than $7.25 per hour and avoid paying them time-and-a-half pay on hours worked beyond a 40-hour workweek.” Let’s make America not so great for workers who clean bedpans.

On another front, this month, Labor Department data released by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) revealed a 20 percent decline from 2024 in worksite inspections conducted last year by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. And OSHA issued 42 percent fewer fines for severe workplace violations. Last week, Warren and five other Democratic senators sent a letter to Chavez-DeRemer and David Keeling, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, detailing numerous anti-worker actions taken at the Labor Department and requesting information on this decline in OSHA activity. “Your agency has tried to cloak your deregulatory agenda in the language of ‘putting workers first,’ but the reality is that the Labor Department is prioritizing the interests of unscrupulous employers over Americans who work hard in dangerous environments to provide for their families,” they wrote.

By the way, Chavez-DeRemer’s social media team—like the one at Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security—has been zapping out memes and slogans that have drawn comparisons to Nazi propaganda and white supremacist rhetoric.

The real scandal certainly should be how Trump’s Labor Department is screwing the American workers he claims to care so much about. But there’s something quite obscene about the labor secretary allegedly abusing her office to take expensive trips around the nation, including to facilitate an extramarital affair, while she’s sticking it to working stiffs.

The White House appears to be standing by Chavez-DeRemer so far. That seems appropriate. With these allegations that she’s living high on the taxpayer’s dime while making life tougher for working-class Americans, she’s become the perfect embodiment of Trumpism.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaxxer and conspiracy monger who thinks hanging with Kid Rock is cool, tapped Jay Bhattacharya, the head of the National Institutes of Health, to be the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There’s been a months-long vacancy there since Kennedy pushed out Susan Monarez, who lasted only a few weeks in the position after clashing with Kennedy over his vaccine policies.

Bhattacharya, previously a Stanford professor who opposed the far-reaching public health measures to address Covid, had one of the big fails of the pandemic. As I previously pointed out, at the start of the pandemic, in late March 2020, he co-wrote a Wall Street Journal guest column with fellow Stanford professor Eran Bendavid in which they dramatically downplayed the possible consequences of this public health crisis. The pair contended there was “little evidence to confirm” the “premise” that Covid would claim the lives of millions in the absence of such measures as quarantines and shelter-in-place orders.

Citing estimates that predicted 100 million Americans would contract the disease and 2 to 4 million would perish, they wrote, “We believe that estimate is deeply flawed.” They noted that statistical misinterpretations “could make the difference between an epidemic that kills 20,000 and one that kills two million.” They asserted the lower number was “not only plausible but likely based on what we know so far.” The two Stanford professors presented a bunch of statistics to argue that the pandemic would likely be of a “limited scale.” And they made an obvious point: “A 20,000- or 40,000-death epidemic is a far less severe problem than one that kills two million.”

With a “limited” epidemic much more likely, they posited there would be no need for the most severe measures, such as lockdowns. These two supposed experts provided ammo to those who were opposing the restrictions being advocated by public health officials.

Bhattacharya and his colleague were so wrong. Covid has killed more than 1.2 million Americans, and that number would probably be much higher—perhaps in the 2 to 4 million range—had a vaccine not been developed.

Okay, people make mistakes—even Stanford professors. What’s worse is that Bhattacharya won’t concede he was off the mark by a factor of at least 25.

After I wrote an article on his major screwup, he attacked the piece on X, saying, “This is a lie. The [Wall Street Journal] article pointed out that, given the evidence available in early 2020, the pandemic could end up killing anywhere between 20k and 4 million. And it called for a study to reduce the uncertainty. Corn and @MotherJones should stop embarrassing themselves.”

That was not accurate. They were not presenting a wide range. He and his collaborator clearly were suggesting that the pandemic’s death toll would be at the low end. They wrote, “If we’re right about the limited scale of the epidemic, then measures focused on older populations and hospitals are sensible.” That is, there was no need for severe restrictions for the rest of the public.

Bhattacharya blew the call and won’t acknowledge that. A person who can’t look at actual data and admit error should not be leading our public health system.

Earlier this month, writing about Bruce Springsteen’s new song, “Streets of Minneapolis,” I observed that there were not enough on-the-news topical songs being produced these days, especially given that it has become so easy with modern technology and social media to record and distribute a track. No sooner had I noted that, a number of such songs emerged.

Days of Ash, U2. The politically progressive Irish rockers last week released Days of Ash, a six-song EP that the band describes as “an immediate response to current events and inspired by the many extraordinary and courageous people fighting on the frontlines of freedom.” Bono and his mates add, “Four of the five tracks are about individuals—a mother, a father, a teenage girl whose lives were brutally cut short—and a soldier who'd rather be singing but is ready to die for the freedom of his country.”

“American Obituary,” the opening track, name-checks Renée Good: “America will rise / Against the people of the lie...She says / The power of the people is so much stronger than the people in power.”

“Walk Away Renee,” Curtiss A and Friends. Curtiss A is something of the dean of the Minneapolis music scene. He’s been a musical fixture in the Twin Cities for half a century. He opened for Prince. He was in a band with one of the Replacements. As a tribute to both Good and Alex Pretti, he and a group of local musicians recorded a kick-ass version of “Walk Away Renee,” the much-covered 1966 hit from the Left Banke.

“No Kings No Hate No Fear,” Nils Lofgren. After listening to Springsteen’s latest, this is the next song to turn to. Lofgren, a guitar virtuoso, has been a member of the E Street Band since 1984. He also is a member of Neil Young’s Crazy Horse. That’s some pedigree. He’s also an accomplished songwriter and singer who has had a tremendous solo career. Celebrating the Minneapolis resistance, he recently released this anthem.

“Ice, F**k You,” Scared Ketchup. Under the moniker Scared Ketchup, the Seattle-based Sean Haines produces satirical songs and videos for his Substack and YouTube channel. This number, released a few days before “Streets of Minneapolis,” is a compelling mix of hard-driving rock and defiance.