Trump's labor pick may turn GOP states into 'fiscal basket cases': WSJ editorial board
President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to oversee labor unions didn't sit well with Rupert Murdoch's prestigious newspaper the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial board lamented Trump's pick Friday night as a "regrettable choice."
Trump nominated Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR) to become the nation's next labor secretary, touting her as the right person for the job to grow languishing wages and resurrect manufacturing jobs. She has the support of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien and teachers union chief Randi Weingarten.
She was the first Republican woman to represent the state in the House and one of the first two Hispanic women from the state elected to Congress. In the past, she has touted her "strong record of delivering bipartisan results."
She lost her re-election bid to Democrat Janelle Bynum during an election in which Chavez-DeRemer was described by Democrats as an "extremist in moderate’s clothing who has attempted over and over to mislead Oregonians about her out-of-touch beliefs – especially on her votes against reproductive freedom."
The Journal reacted by calling the selection "hard to believe," as she appeared to contradict Trump's statement that she will work toward "historic cooperation between Business and Labor." Chavez-DeRemer, the board said, "has backed union giveaways like the Pro Act, which are not 'cooperation.'"
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act is a proposed law that would expand labor protections for workers, including strengthening union rights and banning employers from holding mandatory meetings meant to discourage union membership.
"Why would Mr. Trump want to empower labor bosses who oppose his economic agenda and spent masses to defeat him?" asked the editorial board, calling Chavez-DeRemer a "regrettable choice."
The Journal complained that the legislation would "effectively ban gig jobs" and "upend the franchise business model and contracting arrangements to make it easier for unions to organize workers."
This, the board argued, would return the labor force to World War II era days, when strikes were "rampant" and labor mobility was more difficult.
Moreover, the Journal fears that requiring states and localities to collectively bargain with government workers is a "recipe to turn Texas, Florida and other GOP-controlled states into fiscal basket-cases like Illinois, California and New York."
Putting Chavez-DeRemer in charge of the Labor Department, the Journal concluded, "will make labor bosses, not workers, more powerful again."
As a candidate, Donald Trump insisted he knew nothing about the far-right Heritage Foundation's authoritarian Project 2025 playbook. But as president-elect, Trump is appointing some of its authors to powerful positions in his Cabinet.
On Friday, Trump confirmed previous reports that he would be appointing Russell Vought – president of the Center for Renewing America (CRA) — to be his next director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Vought served in that role in Trump's first administration, and is likely to bring back Trump's controversial "Schedule F" executive order that would make it easier for a president to fire tens of thousands of federal civil service workers and replace them with political loyalists.
After leaving the Trump White House, Vought founded the CRA, which was one of the key partner organizations backing Project 2025. In August, two undercover journalists got Vought to admit in a hidden camera interview that Trump's rhetoric distancing himself from Project 2025 was just for show, and that he has secretly "blessed it" and was "very supportive" of the plan.
As Agence France-Presse journalist Bill McCarthy noted in a Friday tweet, Vought is just the latest Project 2025 contributor to join the Trump Cabinet. Brendan Carr, who Trump nominated to chair the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authored the section of Project 2025 that specifically dealt with the FCC.
Other Project 2025 contributors taking key roles in the Trump administration include Michigan Republican Party chair Pete Hoekstra — who was tapped to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Canada — and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who the president-elect has since nominated to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Tom Homan, who will be Trump's new border czar, is also listed as a contributor to Project 2025.
Homan's contributions were likely concentrated among Project 2025's recommendations for reforming the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). That section, which was chiefly written by former Trump DHS official Ken Cuccinelli, called for rapidly expanding the DHS' staff and consolidating various border enforcement agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under one umbrella. At a far-right conference in Washington, D.C. earlier this summer, Homan — who was Trump's ICE chief in his first administration — promised that if he were given a position within the Trump administration, he would assemble "the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen."
“They ain’t seen s— yet. Wait until 2025," Homan said at the National Conservatism conference.
In June, People magazine published a comprehensive report delving into Project 2025, calling it a "far-right, Christian nationalist vision for America that would corrode the separation of church and state, replace nonpartisan government employees with Trump loyalists and bolster the president's authority over independent agencies."
CNN found that more than 140 of Trump's former advisors and staffers helped assemble the document. Heritage itself has also heavily promoted its close relationship with Trump on its website and in its fundraising materials, pointing out that in his first year as president he implemented roughly two-thirds of their policy recommendations.
"President Trump addressed a group of Heritage members. He confirmed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is on our side," a 2017 email from Heritage read.
