After serving just over a year, Lori Chavez-DeRemer has announced she is stepping down as Secretary of the Labor Department.
The announcement came as published reports have noted that Chavez-DeRemer has been under investigation by the Labor Department’s Inspector General’s office for a series of infractions, which according to the site Politico, may have seen top aides concocting “official events to facilitate her personal travel plans.”
The investigation has seen four top officials with the department in recent months resigning their posts.
According to the Washington Times, additional charges against Chavez-DeRemer have included “having an affair with a subordinate and drinking alcohol on the job.”
Chavez-DeRemer was the 30th Secretary of Labor and had one of the briefest tenures of office in recent memory. A former Republican member of Congress representing the 5th District of Oregon, Chavez-DeRemer was supported by organized labor, particularly the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, during her Senate confirmation hearings.
A supporter of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which called for expanding protections for workplace union organizing, Chavez-DeRemer additionally said she was in favor of a national right-to-work law.
In 2025 she backed President Trump in his effort to fire Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, after publication of a downer Bureau of Labor Statistics report. When Trump said the statistics in the report were inaccurate, Chavez-DeRemer, in a statement that generated controversy, remarked that “jobs numbers must be fair, accurate, and never manipulated for political purposes.”
Chavez-DeRemer additionally supported including such assets as cryptocurrency and private equity in retirement plans.
During Chavez-DeRemer’s term of office the total number of Labor Department employees dropped from around 15,600 to just under 11,000.
The departure of Chavez-DeRemer was scored by AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, who issued a statement within hours of the announcement declaring: “We need a labor secretary who understands working people and will work to make our lives better—not just be a rubber stamp for corporations’ wish lists and gut the protections we count on.”
In announcing Chavez-DeRemer’s resignation, Steven Cheung, a White House spokesman, said she had done a “phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives.”
Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling will now serve as acting secretary. Sonderling’s duties to date at the Labor Department have included service as chief operating officer overseeing, among other things, information technology and human resources.
April 21, 2026
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of Department of Labor
