President Donald Trump has nominated Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a one-term Catholic Republican congresswoman from Oregon who lost her seat last fall, as secretary of labor. That news was met with anger from many fiscal conservatives and denounced by the editorial boards of The Wall Street Journal and National Review, even as Ms. Chavez-DeRemer earned cautious praise from progressives such as Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Confirmation hearings have not yet been set for Ms. Chavez-DeRemer, and Bill Cassidy, the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has so far stopped short of promising to support the nominee. But another member of that committee, Senator Rand Paul, has told The Washington Post that he opposes Ms. Chavez-DeRemer because of her past support of the PRO Act, which would allow unions to override “right to work” laws at the state level, forbid employer interference in union elections, and create new penalties for companies and individuals found to violate workers’ rights. Mr. Paul said that Ms. Chavez-DeRemer would need the support of Democratic senators to win confirmation.
The choice of Ms. Chavez-DeRemer is a stark contrast to the former president’s first term. In 2016, Mr. Trump’s initial pick for secretary of labor was C.E.O. Andrew Puzder, but labor unions helped to sink his nomination. The position instead went to the moderate Alexander Acosta. President Trump’s final secretary of labor, Eugene Scalia, son of the late Supreme Court justice, was probably the most pro-corporate secretary in decades.
Ms. Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination is evidence of the growing influence of the “post-liberals” centered around Vice President JD Vance. Sohrab Ahmari, one of the movement’s leading thinkers and the co-founder of Compact magazine, has also praised the choice. Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, celebrated Mr. Trump’s nomination of Ms. Chavez-DeRemer by posting a photo on X of the three of them together. (Ms. Chavez-DeRemer’s father was a Teamster.) And Mr. O’Brien wrote in Compact that Ms. Chavez-DeRemer “has shown herself to be a real fighter for working people.”
Ms. Chavez-DeRemer was endorsed by numerous unions in her re-election bid last year, including the American Federation of Government Employees and Ironworkers Local 29, but she is not the only Republican in Congress with a pro-labor record. Freshman representative Riley Moore of West Virginia trumpeted the numerous endorsements he received from unions. And Chris Smith, a House member from New Jersey who is one of the leaders of the pro-life movement in Congress, cosponsored the PRO Act and has regularly defended unions (and has been endorsed by them). Citing his Catholicism, Mr. Smith has told one reporter, “What my Republican colleagues often don’t understand is that labor is a human rights issue.”
There are other signs of an improved relationship between labor and the G.O.P. Last year Mr. O’Brien was the first Teamsters president to address a Republican National Convention, saying that his union is “not beholden to anyone or any party.” In contrast, the Democratic National Convention apparently declined to invite Mr. O’Brien. The Teamsters ended up not endorsing a candidate, but Mr. Trump won nearly 60 percent of the vote in a poll of union members. (The International Association of Fire Fighters was another major union that declined to endorse the Democrat, Vice President Kamala Harris.)
Outside of the law-enforcement sector, most major unions—including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the United Auto Workers—endorsed Ms. Harris last year, but she lost heavily blue-collar communities across the country. After Mr. Trump’s win, the liberal commentator George Packer bluntly called the Republicans the “party of the working class.”
How the Democrats have alienated the working class
This is not the first time that figures in the Republican Party have tried to build an alliance with organized labor. Indeed, the estrangement of blue-collar workers from the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt has been in the works at least since the early 1970s. One reason is that many liberals have turned from fighting corporate power to embracing globalization and promoting “good government” reforms that do not directly benefit the working class. But the Democrats did not alienate the working class only by supporting things like the NAFTA trade treaty in the 1990s; the party’s rigid cultural progressivism has also been a major factor.
In his history of the “hardhat riot” in 1970 between construction workers and anti-war protestors, the political analyst David Paul Kuhn makes clear that many union voters at the time were angry at liberals over policies such as busing to achieve racial integration in public schools, as well as “soft on crime” policies and the left’s opposition to the Vietnam War. (President Richard Nixon later appointed Peter J. Brennan, a Catholic Democrat and union leader who headed the “hardhat” forces,as secretary of labor.) This cultural divide has grown only wider, but now even the union leadership is becoming out of step with their members.
Take the issue of abortion. In 1990, a group of 14 Democrats in the U.S. House congressmen warned the A.F.L.-C.I.O. against adopting the “pro-choice” side of the issue. “Not only is the abortion issue extraneous to the interests of labor unions,” they wrote in their public letter, “but adoption of the position under consideration would alienate millions of union members who support the right to life.”
Since then, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. has increasingly ignored this counsel. Former President Richard Trumka frequently invoked his faith and worked to maintain an alliance with the Catholic Church, but he and the rest of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. leadership dragged the union into the culture wars by supporting the Equality Act, which would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Critics, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, say the Equality Act will violate conscience protections and require taxpayers to fund abortions. Under the leadership of Liz Schuler, the union’s descent into being a mouthpiece for the liberal establishment has accelerated, encapsulated in the banal slogan of “Reproductive Rights Are Worker Rights.” AsMr. Vance put it in 2021, with unions being “led by people who care more about progressive abortion policy than jobs,” it is no surprise more workers are voting Republican.
However, there are obstacles to an alliance between the G.O.P. and organized labor. Not only is Mr. Trump’s past record on labor issues mixed at best; there is his newfound partnership with Elon Musk. Mr. Musk, who so far seems an almost shadow president, has long opposed unionization efforts at Tesla, the only American car manufacturer not to be unionized. (The share of U.S. workers who belong to labor unions dropped to a record low of 9.9 percent last year). During a conversation last year between the two on X, the social media platform owned by Mr. Musk, Mr. Trump praised him for firing striking workers—to the outrage of U.A.W. President Shawn Fain.
The nomination of Ms. Chavez-DeRemer is a more hopeful sign. In addition, Mr. Vance has already introduced some elements of Catholic social teaching into his politics. As the heir apparent for the Republican nomination in 2028, he may help to further the realignment between Republicans and the working class. The warning to Democrats is clear: If they want to rebuild their traditional relationship with the labor movement, they might also have to start challenging their party’s orthodoxy.
