A Trump Cabinet Pick Gets a Rare GOP Grilling

Republican senators have confirmed a onetime Bernie Sanders supporter to lead the nation’s intelligence community and a member of America’s most famous Democratic family as its health secretary. This morning, however, they saved some of their sharpest questions for a Cabinet nominee who, until last month, served alongside them as a GOP member of Congress.

President Donald Trump’s pick for labor secretary, former Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, knew she’d face a skeptical Republican audience during her Senate confirmation hearing. Last year, she supported a major pro-union bill known as the PRO Act, a decision that has scrambled ideological alliances and thrown her nomination into doubt. The idea that a pro-union candidate might lead a Republican Labor Department was once unthinkable. But Trump’s nomination of Chavez-DeRemer comes at a time when the party’s base includes an unusually large number of union members. Her supporters have hailed her as a bridge between that new constituency and the GOP’s traditional business wing. Now her fate could show how much Trump’s GOP is willing—or able—to bend Republican orthodoxy on organized labor.

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When Trump picked her in November, Chavez-DeRemer initially won praise from Democrats while drawing criticism from conservative lawmakers. This morning, those Republican holdouts began grilling her right away. They pressed her to explain why, as a member of the House, she’d co-sponsored a bill that would make unionizing easier and undermine the GOP’s long-standing opposition to the labor movement. “Yes or no: Do you still support the PRO Act?” asked Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which is overseeing her nomination process.

Chavez-DeRemer didn’t answer directly. Instead, she distanced herself from the PRO Act without completely repudiating it; she had signed onto the bill, she maintained, in order to be “at the table” to help write labor laws that would affect her constituents. “The bill is imperfect,” Chavez-DeRemer said.

Her nomination has earned an unusual mix of endorsements. Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, is an enthusiastic backer of Chavez-DeRemer. So is Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, who once challenged O’Brien to a fight. The two have since bonded over their support for Chavez-DeRemer. Mullin told the committee this morning that she was “uniquely positioned in the center” of labor policy. “If Sean and I can come together on this, then if nothing else that should set some type of example.”

Chavez-DeRemer, whose father was a member of the Teamsters for decades, co-sponsored the PRO Act in July, during her only term in the House. She was only the third House Republican to do so. Conservatives saw the move as an election-year ploy by a moderate trying to save her seat. (If it was, it didn’t work; she lost in November.) Democrats were pleasantly surprised by her nomination over conventional anti-union alternatives, and they signaled they might vote for her confirmation.

But Republicans such as Cassidy and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky made clear that Chavez-DeRemer’s support for the PRO Act was a problem, even though the bill stands little chance of becoming law whether or not she gets confirmed. Both represent states with so-called right-to-work laws that would be threatened by its enactment. Chavez-DeRemer could win confirmation without their votes if Democrats provided some support, but not if Republicans decide to prevent her nomination from reaching the Senate floor. A few conservative advocacy groups, including one founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, urged the GOP to reject her. And Democratic backing is not guaranteed: Some in the party have vowed to oppose all Trump nominees to protest Elon Musk’s assault on the federal government, and others wanted to see whether Chavez-DeRemer would stand by her pro-union record.

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At this morning’s hearing, Chavez-DeRemer’s answer on the PRO Act initially didn’t seem to satisfy either party. Both Sanders, the committee’s top Democrat, and Paul repeated Cassidy’s question nearly verbatim. “Do you support the PRO Act?” Sanders asked her. “I support the American worker,” Chavez-DeRemer replied. “I am gathering that you no longer support the PRO Act,” Sanders said in response.

Paul, who had previously said that he would oppose her nomination over her support of the PRO Act, got an answer more to his liking. When he asked Chavez-DeRemer whether she opposed a specific provision in the bill that would overturn anti-union laws in states such as Kentucky, she said yes. Paul later told reporters the response might make him reconsider her nomination.

By the end of the hearing, Chavez-DeRemer appeared to have solidified her chances at confirmation. Democrats had not turned en masse against her, and Republicans showed little indication that they were prepared to defeat a Trump Cabinet pick for the first time. “You did very well,” Cassidy told her. And with that, Chavez-DeRemer’s supporters in the room erupted in applause.