Let the Games Begin

U.S. Labor Secretary nominee Lori Chavez-DeRemer's confirmation hearing is Wednesday. Senators on both sides of the aisle have concerns.

A ringing endorsement, it was not, but it wasn’t exactly a dismissal, either.

Last week, when reporters asked Senate Majority Leader John Thune about the upcoming confirmation hearing for U.S. Labor Secretary nominee Lori Chavez-DeRemer, he replied by characterizing how, as a congresswoman, she supported the Protecting the Right to Organize Act—a bill that would spread California-style freelance busting nationwide:

“Support for the PRO Act is not something that most Republicans have tolerated in the past, but I think she’s attempted to address that, and my hope is that she can further clarify her position on some of those issues when she goes through the hearing process.”

Indeed, some fireworks are expected at this week’s hearing, which you can watch here at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, is on the record stating that he will not support Chavez-DeRemer. Paul added that he expects her to lose 15 Republican votes.

At the same time, though, there are—or at least were—indications that some Democrats may help to push her nomination through. Paul also told reporters that Chavez-DeRemer could get 25 Democratic votes, or even all Democratic senators to support her, because she is considered pro-union.

That was, however, before a wave of mass layoffs began to happen at federal agencies. By late last week, some Democrats were suggesting that they may oppose Chavez-DeRemer to send a message to President Trump about their anger over the firings.

Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, told Business Insider:

“I have a feeling much of the hearing is going to focus on, is there going to be a Department of Labor, or is there an effort to destroy it? If it appears that there’s an effort to completely undo the Department of Labor, that could get in her way.”

For independent contractors, Wednesday’s hearing will be the first real chance to get somebody directly associated with the Trump-Vance administration on the record with regard to policymaking about self-employment.

Semafor reported this morning that one reason Chavez-DeRemer was nominated for Labor Secretary was to help advance the ideas of the PRO Act:

“Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., has championed the PRO Act and co-led it with Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., during the previous Congress. Fitzpatrick, who represents a battleground district where union voters are a key constituency, told Semafor he’s ‘100 percent’ planning to be the lead Republican sponsor on the latest version in the coming weeks.

Fitzpatrick also said he believes Chavez-DeRemer’s perch at the Labor Department, assuming she is confirmed by the Senate, will help his cause.

‘That’s why we recommended her,’ he said.”

On the flip side of that, though, Vice President JD Vance did say on the campaign trail that the PRO Act doubled down on failed policy. Unlike Chavez-DeRemer in the House of Representatives, he did not support the bill when he was a member of the Senate.

There’s also the fact that President Trump nominated Chavez-DeRemer for U.S. Labor Secretary even though the stand she took against independent contractors in Congress was the opposite of what his administration did through the U.S. Labor Department to try and protect us during his first term.

On top of all that, the strongest base of support Chavez-DeRemer appears to have is coming from the Teamsters union, which is led by Sean O’Brien, one of the most vocal freelance busters in the nation.

Also of note, we learned last week that Chavez-DeRemer will be introduced at her hearing by Oklahoma Republican Markwayne Mullin—who once challenged O’Brien to a fight on the floor of the U.S. Senate during a hearing. (Yes, really.)

Apparently, that hatchet has been buried, with ABC News reporting that Mullin and O’Brien pitched Trump together on the idea of nominating Chavez-DeRemer:

“The team-up would have been unimaginable in 2023, when O’Brien lambasted Mullin as a ‘greedy CEO who pretends like he’s self-made’ at a hearing that nearly devolved into a fistfight. But in the interceding years, they’d developed a friendship over sports, fitness and the politics of work.”

A post from Mullin last week on X, before the Chavez-DeRemer hearing was postponed to this week, seemed to indicate that several of Mullin’s colleagues had questions about the nominee and in particular her support for the PRO Act:

Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were much higher-profile nominees than Chavez-DeRemer. The fact that Mullin even mentioned the three of them in the same sentence could suggest that behind the scenes on Capitol Hill, Chavez-DeRemer may be seen as equally controversial.

It’s hard to know for sure, since her name hasn’t been flooding the news like the other nominees. Senators aren’t receiving a torrent of constituent calls about her, the way they did with RFK Jr. in particular.

In fact, most Americans have never even heard of Chavez-DeRemer. If they haven’t been in the fight to stop freelance busting, they likely don’t realize how important the Department of Labor is for protecting everyone’s freedom to earn a living.

6 Questions for Lori Chavez-DeRemer

I’ve posted these suggested questions before, and I’m posting them again here with the hope that senators will ask at least some of them at Wednesday’s hearing.

This is what I want to know from Chavez-DeRemer, specific to independent-contractor policymaking.

Question 1

California’s Assembly Bill 5 went into effect five years ago, in January 2020. Democrats such as California Governor Gavin Newsom touted this law as a way to create traditional jobs and pathways to unionization. Instead, research shows that AB5 tanked self-employment by 10.5%, crashed overall employment by 4.4% and failed to increase union membership. It was, quite simply, an income and career killer.

Californians, when given a chance, voted nearly 60-40 to protect independent contractors from this type of policymaking. California lawmakers also backtracked, passing an emergency measure that ultimately exempted more than 100 professions just so people could continue to earn a living.

All of this fallout was documented prior to July 2024, when you chose to join Democrats as a co-sponsor of the PRO Act in an attempt to spread this California-style policymaking nationwide.

Why do you believe an idea that proved so destructive and unpopular in California would be good for the rest of America?

Question 2

During President Trump’s first administration, the U.S. Department of Labor implemented a rule to try and protect independent contractors from California-style freelance busting. The person who had the job you are now seeking—U.S. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia—wrote that the Trump-era rule was needed “so that the many Americans who prefer being in business for themselves can continue to do so.”

The Biden-Harris administration then came into power and rescinded that Trump-era rule. The Biden-Harris team implemented a new rule that most independent contractors said was “biased against independent contracting,” and that is now facing numerous legal challenges, including from independent contractors themselves.

You had a chance, as a member of the House of Representatives, to join with Republicans who sought to reverse the Biden-Harris rule. You declined.

If you are confirmed as U.S. Labor Secretary, do you intend to return to the Trump rule, keep the Biden-Harris rule or do something else?

Question 3

Your record in the House of Representatives makes clear that you are pro-union. Your nomination is being supported the leaders of several prominent unions. Your most vocal champion is Sean O’Brien, the head of the Teamsters union, who has said that he would “like to see everything unionized.”

That idea—of requiring everyone to be in a union job—is something the majority of Americans reject. According to Gallup polling, more than six in 10 adults would prefer to be their own boss instead of having any kind of traditional job. Also according to Gallup, while most Americans support labor unions, 80% of Americans either do not wish to join a union themselves, or are at best neutral on the subject.

If you are confirmed as U.S. Labor Secretary, do you intend to pursue policies with a goal of forcing unionization on all working Americans?

Question 4

In November 2024, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released data showing that more than 80% of self-employed Americans prefer the way they are earning a living. Only 8% of independent contractors said they would prefer a traditional job.

Prior surveys have shown the same thing. This previous research goes back at least a decade, to 2015, when the U.S. Government Accountability Office produced a report noting that “more than 85 percent of independent contractors and the self-employed appeared content with their employment type.”

Given this strong preference for independent contracting, and given the recent legislative and regulatory attacks on Americans’ freedom to be self-employed, what steps would you take as U.S. Labor Secretary to preserve and protect everyone’s right to be their own boss?

Question 5

In mid-December, the outgoing team at the U.S. Labor Department posted on X that after four years of prioritizing enforcement to stop the misclassification of employees as independent contractors, the department had recovered about $41 million in back wages for about 28,000 workers.

That first figure—$41 million—is shockingly lower than the amount of money lawmakers claimed was out there waiting to be recovered. A leading Democrat in the House of Representatives, for instance, claimed that misclassification costs workers nearly $4 billion a year in lost wages and benefits.

Similarly, the fact that only 28,000 workers were helped is also deeply at odds with the recent narrative about misclassification. The claims have been that 10% to 30% of employers misclassify employees as independent contractors, but 28,000 people is less than 1% of all independent contractors.

Do you believe the U.S. Labor Department should continue to prioritize misclassification enforcement? Or has the true scope of the problem been mischaracterized?

Question 6

Back in August, a government Work Arrangements Committee was formed. Among other things, this committee will look into changing the confusing way that the government counts the number of independent contractors nationwide.

But the committee determining a new strategy does not appear to include any independent contractors. This omission is part of a deeply disturbing pattern in which we have seen multiple branches of government make policies and write legislation about independent contractors without giving those same independent contractors a meaningful seat at the table.

If you are confirmed as U.S. Labor Secretary, how will you ensure that America’s tens of millions of independent contractors are given a serious voice in policymaking?