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Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R), who lost her reelection bid to Democrat Janelle Bynum in the November elections and is now President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, appears to be moving full steam ahead in her bid while dodging the intense scrutiny that Trump’s other nominees have received. 

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On December 12, Chavez-DeRemer was in attendance with Vice President-elect JD Vance and other cabinet nominees at the New York Stock Exchange when Trump triumphantly rang the opening bell.

The union interests who are pushing for Chavez-DeRemer to be confirmed want to create this illusion of inevitability and normalcy, as if there are no conflicts of interest or issues with this nominee. There are plenty, and until the Senate advises, consents, and confirms, the 64 million independent professionals and small business owners, along with the nationwide network of franchisers, remain tacitly uncomfortable and continue to demand Trump rescind this nomination. 

President Joe Biden recently propped up his failed nominee, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, at the proclamation signing for FDR-era Labor Secretary Frances Perkins’ home becoming a national monument. Perkins, Su, and Chavez-DeRemer share more than just the same sex: they all climbed on the backs of independent professionals and economic freedom in order to tailor calculated paths that aligned with labor unions and their lust for power and control. The “R” after her name means little: Chavez-DeRemer will simply be Julie Su 2.0 and serve to further the labor union agenda that Su kept in place and furthered. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

But the theater of confirmation continues. After her NYSE visit, Chavez-DeRemer reportedly flew to Mar-a-Lago on Monday to interview potential top-level staff for the Department of Labor. On Wednesday, she will hold her first Senate meeting with Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a member of the Senate HELP committee who will be part of the decision-making on whether her nomination should be advanced.

The Labor Secretary designee’s trip this week to Trump’s Florida political compound comes roughly three weeks after her nomination to the job, which consists of overseeing Occupational Safety and Health Administration and workplace regulations under a GOP that has warmed to unions in recent years. Just last week, for example, Trump had high praise for the International Longshoremen’s Association after meeting with the group’s leaders.

“I’ve studied automation, and know just about everything there is to know about it,” the president-elect wrote in a December 12 social media post railing against port automation. “The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt, and harm it causes for American Workers, in this case, our Longshoremen.”

The labor secretary nomination will fall under the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s jurisdiction under the leadership of soon-to-be Chairman Bill Cassidy (R., La.). She must win support of a simple majority of HELP Committee members to advance to a confirmation hearing.

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As usual, legacy media and even certain conservative outlets fail to detail Chavez-DeRemer’s negative impact on independent professionals and small businesses in her sponsorship of the PRO Act, which seeks to strip right-to-work laws in 27 states. Sen. Mullin did an able job of pointing out Acting Secretary Julie Su’s lack of small business experience and her inability to represent both sides of the American economy and workforce during her confirmation hearing. Let us hope Mullin digs more deeply into how quickly Chavez-DeRemer abandoned her so-called small business background in order to gain the allegiance and support of big labor.

According to her LinkedIn profile, from 2005 until she was sworn in as a congressperson, Chavez-DeRemer worked as the Marketing Director for the small business her doctor husband started with a partner. Anesthesia Associates Northwest, LLC contracts and staffs hospitals, med-surge clinics, and mobile clinics with experienced anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists. These are the very same independent medical professionals that the PRO Act targets because the majority of this type of specialized practice are independent contractors. So, the disconnect between Chavez-DeRemer’s knowledge of the freedom, flexibility, and financial benefit of the independent contractor model for entrepreneurs and small businesses versus her allegiance to organizations that want forced union employment and membership needs to be brought to light.

When Chavez-DeRemer first ran for the Oregon congressional seat in 2022, she could not talk enough about her small business experience. Her claim: because she had signed the front of the paycheck, she knew what it took to run a small business.

Lori also credits her experience as a small business owner in her suitability to represent Oregon’s CD-5. Lori and her husband opened Anesthesia Associates Northwest in 2005, a health care clinic that now operates several facilities throughout the region. They started with four employees and now have a staff of over 100 employees, including one of their daughters.

“I’ve signed the front of the paycheck. I know what it takes to run a small business,” she said. “I also know what it’s like to fight for small businesses and the infrastructure it takes, particularly when you’re in a city that is growing.” She continued, “People want to know that you are working for them all the time. They need to feel heard. That’s what I’m good at.” If elected, she would like to join the Congressional Main Street Caucus.

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What she did was join the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which, like the Senate HELP Committee, provides oversight to the Department of Labor and controls its funding. This was a calculated move on her part, as I wrote in November.

Chavez-DeRemer’s sole purpose of being a part of the committee was to polish her pro-labor credentials. Chavez-DeRemer missed other committee meetings and press avails, particularly the ones that could be construed as in alignment with her fellow Republicans on the committee.

Unlike strong advocates for independent professionals and small business in the House of Representatives like Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA), Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), and Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), Chavez-DeRemer seemed to quickly morph from a so-called fighter for small business to an advocate for union encroachment. With only six months in office, the swiftness of Chavez-DeRemer’s move in alignment with the union agenda was quite marked. This included missing pivotal committee meetings and votes, like the one on HJ.Res.116, which would have worked to rescind the Biden-Harris final independent contractor rule. 

In July, she became only the third Republican member of Congress to cosponsor the sweeping pro-union bill called the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, and she has courted union endorsements in her reelection campaign while talking about her father’s experience as a member of the Teamsters union. But when her fellow Republicans on the Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee held a series of union-bashing meetings over the past year, Chavez-DeRemer didn’t show up and join Democratic representatives in speaking up for unions.

Chavez-DeRemer spokesman Aaron Britt didn’t say why she missed those five meetings but defended her record on labor issues in a statement. 

“Lori’s opponents are trying to attack her undeniably strong pro-labor record because they are terrified of the independent coalition of support she has worked hard to build throughout her first term,” Britt  said. “There’s a reason Lori has collected endorsements from nearly a dozen labor unions – she has worked tirelessly to earn their trust by fighting for registered apprenticeships, fair wages, safe working conditions and much more.”

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In August, as Chavez-DeRemer continued to be bested by her Democrat challenger Janelle Bynum, Jihun Han, Chavez-DeRemer’s chief of staff, compiled a five-page bullet list touting everything Rep. Chavez-DeRemer had done to support labor unions and her committee assignments. Those same assignments she ditched when it was inconvenient to her union interests. In an online conversation with fellow independent professional and President of New Jobs America Mike Hruby, he also noted this.

The list seems like a bona fides statement for support, as if in submittal for union review, or be just for PR for the unions. It seems to be a long list for a freshman Republican representative.

Hruby took to X to point out, among other issues, how Chavez-DeRemer’s family business, which specifically contracts and places independent professionals, is a clear conflict of interest to her support of big labor’s agenda. Their sole aim is to upend the independent contractor model from which she and her family have profited. 

We independent contractors have already vetted Lori Chavez-DeRemer and have sufficient factual information to declare her UNQUALIFIED to serve the entire population of the United States as Secretary of the Department of Labor.  

— She has a gigantic conflict of interest as owner-by-matrimony of a large medical specialty contracting firm in the Pacific Northwest. 

— Because of her conflict, she will have to recuse herself from all IC-related decisions at DOL, effectively handing over top-level decisions to lower-level administrators who are uniformly and openly union sympathizers. 

— She hasn’t the slightest executive experience to tackle a Cabinet post responsible for $11 billion in annual spending, 17,000 unionized federal employees,  and 31 agencies, bureaus and offices spread across the entire US. 

— She has no record of having the creativity, insight, or negotiation skills to address more than a dozen hot-button social and workplace issues under the Secretary’s authority. 

— Her record as a first-term legislator is one of continually sponsoring or co-sponsoring a five-page list of union legislative wishes, rendering her impartiality deeply suspect in the eyes of at least half the workforce. 

Ms. DeRemer should bow to necessity and ask for her name to be withdrawn promptly from further consideration as Secretary of Labor.

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Mr. Hruby makes excellent points, and Chavez-DeRemer is no friend of independent professionals and small business, if she ever was. Her clear union alliances were cemented and fully concreted by October of 2023. In an article about her courting union support and being a proud “Teamsters daughter,” Chavez-DeRemer’s active pursuit of union interests over small business was glancingly mentioned.

Chavez-DeRemer also retained political consultant Mike Ingrao, a former national AFL-CIO staffer, as a labor advisor.

There’s a reason she lost her reelection bid, and according to a local journalist, she was unconcerned about it. It is almost as if she knew she’d have a soft landing back in D.C. no matter which way the election turned out. 

Chavez-DeRemer’s co-sponsorship seemed like a transparent bid to win union support. While the move failed to save her reelection campaign, it did land her on the short list of Republicans acceptable to union leaders. The former congresswoman thus became their favored candidate to serve as Labor secretary in a second Trump term. Her selection gives these desperate leaders their wish.

Have lawmakers bothered to pay attention to the professions that have been most affected by union overreach embedded in both the US DOL and the NLRB, particularly during the Biden-Harris administration? How can a Trump-Vance administration make assurances that confirmation of Chavez-DeRemer will not ensure more of the same (or worse) as head of the US DOL? Frankly, they cannot, which is why this nomination should go no further.

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As effortlessly as Chavez-DeRemer morphed from a supposed small business champion into a loyal union advocate, she could easily present one face to senators and the Trump camp in order to be confirmed, and once she is installed, will do the work of a Trojan Horse: complete the invasion and destruction of American’s freedom to work as they choose and the entrepreneurial might that fuels the engines of our economy. We aren’t as well-funded as the labor unions, chambers of commerce and other insiders that love to push the Lori Chavez-DeRemers, but we are vocal and persistent. 

Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination must be rescinded.

The 2024 election sent a clear message. 

But many still aren’t ready to hear it. 

America’s working class wants freedom—not bureaucracy. 

Here’s the problem: 

Donald Trump’s labor secretary pick, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, is a gift to union bosses, not workers. 

Her record aligns with the left’s outdated labor priorities, ignoring what workers truly seek: 

autonomy

flexibility

independence 

Surveys consistently find that most workers value control over their schedules—sometimes more than wages. 

The GOP should focus on protecting gig work, tipped wages, and crafting portable benefits. 

Real leadership means empowering workers, not appeasing union leaders. 

Anything less is a missed opportunity.

Senate HELP, President-elect Donald Trump, and VP-elect JD Vance must pay attention. The Trump 2.0 “America First” agenda will never be implemented if they keep putting independent professionals, small business, and franchisers last.

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