We prepared for total war with the Democrats on Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of defense, director of national intelligence, and Health and Human Services secretary, respectively. Hegseth was the closest to being derailed, but Gabbard and Kennedy, more or less, sailed through. History shows that most presidents get their nominees through the confirmation gambit, barring an extraordinary event or a nominee’s withdrawal. Still, one Trump nomination, labor secretary, might have the most challenging hill to climb.
Former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR) is the bone the Trump crew had to throw to the Teamsters union, though it wasn’t required—they didn’t endorse Trump despite 60 percent of their rank-and-file supporting the president last year. Chavez-DeRemer is a Teamsters gal, but she will need help from Democrats if Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who opposes her nomination, cannot be swayed. Yet, even there, with Trump taking a hatchet to the federal workforce and, by extension, the Democratic Party base, they’re in no mood to help Trump nominees, even with those they might find agreeable (via Semafor):
The former Republican congresswoman is already boxed in ahead of her confirmation hearing this week before the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. She has more bipartisan appeal than most other Trump nominees, but the committee’s membership and growing Democratic outrage at Trump are complicating her path to the Cabinet.
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“You can do the numbers,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who chairs the committee overseeing her nomination, told Semafor. “We need a majority. We need somebody else to vote if Rand’s going to vote negative … Rand is a chair of the right-to-work caucus. So once he establishes something, it’s hard to move him off.”
Cassidy said he’ll try to sway Paul on Chavez-DeRemer, but Democratic support may be an easier path. The committee’s 11 Democrats include several with bipartisan inclinations, and Chavez-DeRemer will have to convince some of them that she’ll stand up for the Labor Department even if Trump comes for it — one of the last flashpoints left as Trump stocks his adviser ranks with loyalists.
Some Democrats on the committee are already against her. Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., said he had a “good conversation” with Chavez-DeRemer but questioned whether anyone at the administration would listen to the labor secretary. His bottom line: “I’m not supporting nominees as long as the lawlessness continues.”
So, Mr. Kim thinks cutting government spending is lawlessness. Democrats do find new ways to be insufferable, but this is one nominee I wouldn’t mind seeing going down.
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