President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Department of Labor is worrying some Republicans and causing a backlash in right-wing media due to her relatively pro-union record as a member of Congress.
Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore., the daughter of a Teamsters member, recently lost her bid to return to Congress but was named last week as Trump's labor secretary, a move that was welcomed by organized labor.
“Lori Chavez-DeRemer has built a pro-labor record in Congress, including as one of only three Republicans to cosponsor the Protecting The Right To Organize (PRO) Act," AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement, referring to legislation that would have made it easier for workers to form a union and harder for states to prevent them with so-called right-to-work laws. Although the lawmaker has just a 10% lifetime score from the AFL-CIO for her votes on organized labor and the working class, support for the PRO Act alone makes her stand out in the GOP.
The knives, accordingly, are coming out for her.
"Trump’s labor pick is ‘toxic’ anti-conservative RINO who is too close to unions, critics allege," the New York Post said in a headline published over the weekend. The Post, a part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, cited Chavez-DeRemer's support for "the radical, union-backed PRO Act."
“In this woman’s America, every worker would have to have a boss and pay the union for the privilege of working,” conservative activist Grover Norquist told the right-wing tabloid. "This is an outrage. This is not mildly bad. This a huge thing that she voted for."
The New York Times' Farah Stockman noted that criticism of the nomination is also being voiced by elected Republicans, some of whom "are in a full-blown panic about her nomination."
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., for example, says he wants to know how a Trump labor secretary could justify voting for "Democrat legislation" and whether she still believes state right-to-work laws — which undercut unions by allowing workers to reap the benefits of organized labor without paying any dues — should be preempted by federal legislation.
On the left, meanwhile, cautious optimism is paired with the memory of what happened before, when Trump first entered the White House. As the Economic Policy Institute notes, the president-elect has a proven record of coupling "populist pro-worker rhetoric" with "an anti-worker agenda."
