President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Republican Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon for the job of labor secretary.
Throughout his campaign, Trump made many promises to America's workers — that he would protect their jobs, bring manufacturing back to the U.S., and restore their ability to achieve the American dream. He also proposed ending taxes on tips and overtime. Pieces of this agenda could end up on Chavez-DeRemer's plate.
"Lori's strong support from both the Business and Labor communities will ensure that the Labor Department can unite Americans of all backgrounds," Trump wrote in a statement released by his campaign.
In 2022, Chavez-DeRemer was elected to her first term in Congress to represent Oregon's 5th Congressional District, flipping a blue seat to red. Earlier this week, as word spread Chavez-DeRemer could become Trump's pick for labor secretary, the freshman Republican issued a statement on her plans for the role.
"I'd be honored to have the opportunity to support President Trump's mission to empower and grow our nation's workforce," she said. "Hardworking Americans finally have a lifeline with the president, and I'd work tirelessly to support his impressive efforts to remake the Republican Party into the Party of the American worker."
In her re-election bid this year, House Speaker Mike Johnson repeatedly campaigned on Chavez-DeRemer's behalf to try to fend off a popular Democratic challenger.
However, she faced headwinds as a blue wave took hold of several down-ballot races in the Pacific Northwest. The freshman Republican member ultimately lost to state lawmaker Janelle Bynum.
Ahead of plans for a new role in the next administration, Chavez-DeRemer wrote on X earlier this week about Trump's success in expanding his working-class coalition.
"This is a true political realignment," she wrote. "We must continue to be the party of the American Worker, with President Trump leading the way!"
In recent days, Teamsters President Sean O'Brien had pushed for Chavez-DeRemer's selection, noting that she is one of only a few Republicans in Congress to have supported the PRO Act, a bill aimed at making it easier for workers to organize unions including by overturning state Right to Work laws, which weaken unions.
On Friday evening, O'Brien thanked Trump for the nomination, posting a photo of himself alongside Trump and Chavez-DeRemer on X.
In her re-election bid this fall, Chavez-DeRemer received the endorsements of a number of unions, including her local Teamsters branch, but ended up losing her seat.
How will unions fare under Trump?
Trump won a sizable amount of support from union workers in the 2024 election. While O'Brien declined to endorse Trump after speaking at the Republican National Convention, he nonetheless signaled a willingness to work with whichever administration addressed issues important to his 1.3 million members.
What remains unclear is how Trump might treat unions. On the campaign trail, he joked with billionaire Elon Musk about firing striking workers and said UAW President Shawn Fain should be fired. Still, some close to Trump, including Vice President-elect JD Vance and Sen. Marco Rubio — his nominee to lead the State Department — have supported organized labor in the past.
While Chavez-DeRemer was seen as the only pro-union candidate among those who were rumored to be under consideration by Trump, it's hard to imagine the Trump administration taking as active a role in high-profile labor disputes as President Biden's picks for the job have done. Most recently, Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su helped broker a deal on wages between ocean carriers and East Coast dockworkers. Those negotiations are ongoing, however. A deadline to reach a final deal comes just five days before the inauguration in January.
The future of Biden-era rules in question
If confirmed, Chavez-DeRemer would be coming into a Labor Department facing numerous legal challenges over rules and regulations issued under Biden.
Already, a federal court in Texas has struck down a rule that expanded overtime to some 4 million additional workers. Others, including one limiting who can be classified as an independent contractor and another aimed at raising the wages of workers on federal construction projects, are also being challenged in federal court.
There's been some expectation in the business community and beyond that the Trump administration would either roll back these rules or decline to defend them in court. It's unclear whether Chavez-DeRemer would support those moves.
Trump also said he would nominate Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, the same position he held during Trump’s first presidency. Vought was closely involved with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term that the GOP nominee tried to distance himself from during the campaign.
The announcements showed how Trump was trying to balance competing perspectives as he pursued an aggressive and sometimes contradictory economic agenda that included cutting taxes, reducing government spending, putting tariffs on foreign imports, and lowering prices for American consumers.
Although Bessent is closely aligned with Wall Street and could earn bipartisan support, Vought is known as a Republican hardliner on budget and cultural issues.
Trump said Bessent would “help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States,” while Vought “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government.”
After announcing his choices for key financial posts, Trump kept up the pace of what has been a breakneck transition process.
Trump picked Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, a rare Republican who is considered a stalwart union ally, as his labor secretary. He also said he would nominate Scott Turner, a former football player who worked in Trump’s first administration, to serve as his housing secretary.
More choices were named for health and national security positions. In less than three weeks since the election, Trump has announced decisions for almost his entire Cabinet.
Bessent, 62, is the founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, after having worked on and off for Soros Fund Management since 1991. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the nation’s first openly gay treasury secretary.
He told Bloomberg in August that attacking the U.S. national debt should be a priority, which includes slashing government programs and other spending.
“This election cycle is the last chance for the U.S. to grow our way out of this mountain of debt without becoming a sort of European-style socialist democracy,” he said then.
As of Nov. 8, the national debt stands at $35.94 trillion, with both the Trump and Biden administrations having added to it. Trump’s policies added $8.4 trillion to the national debt, while the Biden administration increased the national debt by $4.3 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog.
Even as he pushes to lower the national debt by stopping spending, Bessent has backed extending provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which Trump signed into law in his first year in office. Estimates from different economic analyses of the costs of the various tax cuts range between nearly $6 trillion and $10 trillion over 10 years. Nearly all of the law’s provisions are set to expire at the end of 2025.
Before becoming a Trump donor and adviser, Bessent donated to various Democratic causes in the early 2000s, notably Al Gore’s presidential run. He also worked for George Soros, a major supporter of Democrats. Bessent had an influential role in Soros’ London operations, including his famous 1992 bet against the pound, which generated huge profits on “Black Wednesday,” when the pound was de-linked from European currencies.
Bessent previously told Bloomberg that he views tariffs as a “one-time price adjustment” and “not inflationary,” and he said tariffs imposed during a second Trump administration would be directed primarily at China. And he wrote in a Fox News op-ed this week that tariffs are “a useful tool for achieving the president’s foreign policy objectives,” such as encouraging allies to spend more on defense or deterring military aggression.
In addition, Bessent has floated ideas for how Trump could put pressure on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May 2026. Last month, Bessent suggested Trump could name a replacement chair early, and let that person function as a “shadow” chair, with the goal of essentially sidelining Powell.
But after the election, Bessent reportedly backed away from that plan. Powell, for his part, has said he wouldn’t step down if Trump asked him to do so, and added that Trump, as president, wouldn’t have the authority to fire him.
Trump repeatedly attacked Powell during his first term as president for raising the Fed’s key rate in 2017 and 2018. During the 2024 campaign, he said that as president he should have a “say” in the central bank’s interest rate decisions. Presidents traditionally avoid commenting on the Fed’s policies.
Vought, 48, was the head of the Office of Management and Budget from mid-2020 to the end of Trump’s first term in 2021, having previously served as the acting director and deputy director. He’s paired a deep knowledge of government finances with his own Christian faith.
After Trump’s initial term ended, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a think tank that describes its mission as renewing “a consensus of America as a nation under God.”
The Center for Renewing America released its own 2023 budget proposal entitled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government.” The proposal envisioned $11.3 trillion worth of spending reductions over 10 years and about $2 trillion in income tax cuts in order to bring the budget into surplus by 2032.
“The immediate threat facing the nation is the fact that the people no longer govern the country; instead, the government itself is increasingly weaponized against the people it is meant to serve,” Vought wrote in the introduction.
Vought’s proposed budget plan would cut spending on food aid through the Agriculture Department. There would be $3.3 trillion in spending reductions in the Health and Human Services Department in large part through how Medicaid and Medicare funds are distributed. It also contains about $642 billion in cuts to the Affordable Care Act. The budgets for the Housing and Urban Development and Education departments would also be cut.
Vought’s budget ideas were independent of Trump, who has not entirely spelled out the details of his economic plans.
Trump’s choice for labor secretary, Chavez-DeRemer, 56, narrowly lost her reelection bid earlier this month. She received strong backing from union members in her district.
Chavez-DeRemer is one of a few House Republicans to endorse the “Protecting the Right to Organize” or PRO Act that would allow more workers to conduct organizing campaigns and would add penalties for companies that violate workers’ rights. The act would also weaken “right-to-work” laws that allow employees in more than half the states to avoid participating in or paying dues to unions that represent workers at their places of employment.
Trump said in a statement that she would help “ensure that the Labor Department can unite Americans of all backgrounds behind our Agenda for unprecedented National Success.”
In addition, Trump added to his health team on Friday evening. He chose Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a general practitioner and Fox News contributor, to be surgeon general; Dr. Dave Weldon, a former Republican congressman from Florida, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon, as head of the Food and Drug Administration.
Trump previously said he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime spreader of conspiracy theories about vaccines, as health secretary.
Alex Wong was named as principal deputy national security adviser, while Sebastian Gorka will serve as senior director for counterterrorism. Wong worked on issues involving Asia during Trump’s first term, and Gorka is a conservative commentator who spent less than a year in Trump’s first White House.
President-elect Donald Trump on Friday nominated Dr. Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration, selecting a surgeon and author who gained national attention for opposing vaccine mandates and some other public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, is the latest in a string of Trump nominees who have declared the U.S. health system “broken,” vowing a shakeup. As part of a flurry of nominations late Friday night, Trump also tapped doctor and former Republican Rep. Dave Weldon of Florida to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat, meanwhile, is set to be the nation’s next surgeon general.
Some of Makary’s views align closely with the man who is poised to be his boss — prominent environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine organizer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump put forward as the next U.S. Department of Health and Human Services secretary.
In books and articles, Makary has decried the overprescribing of drugs, the use of pesticides on foods, and the undue influence of pharmaceutical and insurance companies over doctors and government regulators, points that Kennedy has also harped on for years.
Trump said Makary, trained as a surgeon and cancer specialist, “will restore FDA to the gold standard of scientific research, and cut the bureaucratic red tape at the agency to make sure Americans get the medical cures and treatments they deserve.”
Headquartered in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington, the 18,000 employees of the FDA are responsible for the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs, vaccines, and medical devices as well as a swath of other consumer goods, including food, cosmetics, and vaping products. Altogether those products represent an estimated 20% of U.S. consumer spending annually, or $2.6 trillion.
Makary gained prominence on Fox News and other conservative outlets for his contrarian views during the COVID-19 pandemic. He questioned the need for masking and, though not opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine, had concerns about booster vaccinations in young children. He was part of a vocal group of physicians calling for greater emphasis on herd immunity to stop the virus, or the idea that mass infections would quickly lead to population-level protection.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that COVID-19 vaccinations prevented more than 686,000 U.S. deaths in 2020 and 2021 alone. While children faced much lower rates of hospitalization and death from the virus, medical societies including the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded that vaccinations significantly reduced severe disease in the age group.
Makary has lamented how drugmakers used misleading data to urge doctors to prescribe OxyContin and other opioids as low-risk, non-addictive pain relievers. That marketing was permitted under FDA-approved labeling from the 1990s, suggesting the drugs were safe for common ailments like back pain.
In more recent years, the FDA has come under fire for approving drugs for Alzheimer’s, ALS, and other conditions based on incomplete data that failed to show meaningful benefits for patients.
A push toward greater scrutiny of drug safety and effectiveness would be a major reversal at the FDA, which for decades has focused on speedier drug approvals. That trend has been fueled by industry lobbying and fees paid by drugmakers to help the FDA hire additional reviewers.
Kennedy has proposed ending those payments, which would require billions in new funding from the federal budget.
Other administration priorities would likely run into similar roadblocks. For instance, Kennedy wanted to bar drugmakers from advertising on TV, a multibillion-dollar market that supports many TV and cable networks. The Supreme Court and other conservative judges would likely overturn such a ban on First Amendment grounds that protect commercial speech, experts note.
Less is known about Trump’s pick for the Atlanta-based CDC, which develops vaccines and monitors for infectious disease outbreaks.
Weldon is a staunch, self-described “pro-life” Republican. Legislation he introduced more than 20 years ago outlawed human cloning. He also brokered a deal with lawmakers to bar patents on human organisms, including genetically engineered embryos. Weldon also advocated against the removal of the feeding tube for Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman whose family battle over her vegetative state turned into a national debate.
Weldon’s nomination is likely to placate some anti-abortion advocates, who have been concerned about Trump’s nomination of Kennedy, a longtime Democrat and proponent of abortion rights, as the nation’s top health official.
Weldon retired from his congressional seat in 2008, after 14 years in public office. Earlier this year, he lost in a GOP primary for a seat in the Florida Legislature.
If he’s confirmed, he’ll be in charge of more than 13,000 employees and nearly 13,000 other contract workers.
Nesheiwat, meanwhile, will oversee 6,000 U.S. Public Health Service Corps members if the Republican-controlled Senate approves her nomination as the surgeon general. She is a medical director for an urgent care company in New York. She appears regularly on Fox News and has expressed frequent support for Trump, sharing photos of them together on her social media pages.
Surgeons general also have the power to issue advisories, warning of public health threats in the U.S. Those advisories can influence how the government, public and medical community respond to health crises in the country.
Democrats’ crushing loss in Montana’s nationally important U.S. Senate race settled a fierce political debate over whether a surge of newcomers in the past decade favored Republicans — and if one of the new arrivals could even take high office.
Voters answered both questions with an emphatic “yes” with Tim Sheehy’s defeat of three-term Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, helping deliver a GOP Senate majority and laying bare a drastic cultural shift in a state that long prided itself on electing home-grown candidates based on personal qualifications, not party affiliation.
It’s the first time in almost a century that one party totally dominates in Montana. Corporations and mining barons known as the Copper Kings once had a corrupt chokehold on the state’s politics, and an aversion to outsiders that arose from those times has faded, replaced by a partisan fervor that Republicans capitalized on during the election.
Tester, a moderate lawmaker and third-generation grain farmer from humble Big Sandy, Montana, lost to wealthy aerospace entrepreneur Sheehy, a staunch supporter of President-elect Donald Trump who arrived in Montana 10 years ago and bought a house in the ritzy resort community of Big Sky.
“The political culture in Montana has changed fundamentally over the past 10 to 15 years,” said University of Montana history professor Jeff Wiltse. “The us vs. them, Montanans vs. outsiders mentality that has a long history in Montana has significantly weakened.”
The state’s old instinct for choosing its own, regardless of party, gave way to larger trends that began more than a decade ago and accelerated during the pandemic.
Job opportunities in mining, logging, and railroad work — once core Democratic constituencies — dried up. Newcomers, many drawn by the state’s natural social distancing, came in droves — with almost 52,000 new arrivals since 2020. That’s almost as many as the entire prior decade, according to U.S. Census data. As the population changed, national issues such as immigration and gender identity came to dominate political attention, distracting from local issues.
The 2024 Senate race brought a record-setting flood of outside money on both sides — more than $315 million, much of it from shadowy groups with wealthy donors. That effectively erased Montana’s efforts over more than a century to limit corporate cash in politics.
Sheehy’s win came after the party ran the table in recent Montana elections where voters installed other wealthy Republicans including Gov. Greg Gianforte, U.S. Sen. Steve Daines and U.S. Rep.-elect Troy Downing.
Daines is the only one of the group originally from Montana — once a virtual requirement for gaining high office in the state.
Apple-flavored whiskey and Champagne
The contrast between Montana’s old and new politics was on vivid display on election night. Tester’s party was a sedate event at the Best Western Inn in Great Falls — rooms for $142 a night — where the lawmaker mingled with a few dozen supporters and sipped on apple-flavored whiskey in a plastic cup.
Sheehy’s more boisterous affair was in Bozeman — the epicenter of Montana’s new wealth — at an upscale hotel where a standard room costs $395. Long before his victory was announced, carts bearing Champagne were rolled in as the candidate remained sequestered in a secure balcony area most of the night with select supporters.
Sheehy, a former U.S. Navy SEAL from Minnesota, moved to Montana after leaving the military and, along with his brother, founded Bridger Aerospace, an aerial firefighting company that depends on government contracts. Sheehy also bought a ranch in the Little Belt Mountains, and during the campaign cast himself as the modern equivalent of an early western settler seeking opportunity.
Tester received 22,000 more votes on Nov. 5 than in his last election — a gain that exceeded his margin of victory in previous wins. Yet for every additional Tester voter, Sheehy gained several more. The result was a resounding eight-point win for the Republicans, removing Democrats from the last statewide office they still held in Montana.
For Republicans, it completed their domination of states stretching from the Northern Plains to the Rocky Mountains.
“We have North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Utah — we’re all kind of red now,” said Montana Republican Party Chairman Don Kaltschmidt.
Democrats as recently as 2007 held a majority of Senate seats in the Northern Plains and almost every statewide office in Montana.
Daines — who led GOP efforts to retake the Senate as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee — pointed out during Sheehy’s election party that Republicans would control both Montana Senate seats for the first time in more than a century.
‘Conservative refugees’
Tester and other Democrats bemoan the wealth that’s transformed the state. It’s most conspicuous in areas like Big Sky and Kalispell, where multimillion-dollar homes occupy the surrounding mountainsides while throngs of service workers struggle to find housing.
It’s not quite the same as the Copper Kings — who at their peak controlled elected officials from both major parties — but Democrats see parallels.
“What do they say — history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes,” said Monica Tranel, the defeated Democratic candidate in a western Montana House district. “It is very evocative of what happened in the early 1900s. It’s very much a time of change and turmoil and who has a voice.”
Montana in 2022 gained a second House seat due to population growth over the prior decade, giving Democrats a chance to regain clout. After a narrow loss that year to former Trump Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke and Tranel ran again this year and lost.
Even as she turned to history to explain Montana’s contemporary political dynamic, Tranel considered the future. She acknowledged that Democrats have fallen out of step with a conservative electorate more attuned to party labels.
“The label itself is what they are reacting to,” she said. “Do we need a different party at this point?”
Republican officials embraced wealthy newcomers.
Steve Kelly, 66, who calls himself a “conservative refugee,” moved to northwestern Montana from Nevada at the height of the pandemic. He spent most of his 30-year career in law enforcement in Reno, but said he was tired of the city as it grew and became more liberal — “San Francisco East,” he called it.
In 2020, Kelly and his wife bought a house outside Kalispell on a few acres so they could have horses. He got involved with the local Republican party and this fall won a seat in the state Legislature on an anti-illegal immigration platform.
“It seems to be different here. Most of the people we have met have also been conservative refugees, getting away from other cities,” he said.
Driving the growth are transplants from western states dominated by Democrats, especially California, where more than 85,000 Montana residents originated, or about 7.5% of the population, Census data shows. Almost half of Montana residents were born out of state.
Worker wages in Montana have been stagnant for decades, said Megan Lawson with the independent research group Headwaters Economics in Bozeman. Income from stocks, real estate, and other investments has risen sharply, reflecting the changing — and wealthier — demographic.
“Certainly a large share of it is coming from folks who are moving into this state,” Lawson said. “When you put all this together it helps to explain the story of the political shift.”