Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer looks on during a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on May 22, 2025.
Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images
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Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is leaving her position amid an internal investigation launched by complaints of misconduct.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung announced the departure at Cheung said Chavez-DeRemer was taking a stand in the private sector.
A senior Labor Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the departure said the secretary had resigned.
Chavez-DeRemer is the third Cabinet member to leave during President Trump’s second term.
In early March, Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem shortly after lawmakers on Capitol Hill reviewed her over her agency’s handling of immigration enforcement as well as its $220 million ad campaign featuring the secretary on horseback.
A month later, Attorney General Pam Bondi resigned amid simmering frustration over her leadership of the Justice Department and its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
While Chavez-DeRemer has played a much less visible role than Bondi or Noem in Trump’s second term, her tenure has also been marked by controversy.
In January, the New York Post first reported that the Labor Department’s inspector general was investigating complaints that Chavez-DeRemer was having an affair with a subordinate, drinking alcohol at work and using taxpayer-funded trips to visit friends and family.
NPR has not independently verified the content of the investigation.
While in office, Chávez-DeRemer spent much of his time outside Washington. A year ago, she launched her “America at Work” listening tour, an initiative that took her to all 50 states.
Chavez-DeRemer’s chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, who had been on leave since January, resigned in early March. A third senior member of her staff, Melissa Robey, said in a statement issued on March 26 that she had been fired a couple of days earlier after giving a four-hour interview to the Office of Inspector General.
Meanwhile, the New York Times was the first to report that Chavez-DeRemer’s husband, Shawn DeRemer, an anesthesiologist from Portland, Oregon, had been banned from the Department of Labor headquarters in Washington, D.C., after at least two employees reported that he had touched them inappropriately. Washington, DC police and federal prosecutors closed the investigations without filing charges.
An unconventional choice
Trump’s choice of Chavez-DeRemer to lead the Labor Department was seen by many as a concession to Teamsters President Sean O’Brien. O’Brien had been friendly to Trump during the presidential campaign, taking a prime-time spot at the 2024 Republican National Convention and then refusing to endorse Trump’s opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
O’Brien had pushed for Chavez-DeRemer’s selection, noting that she was one of the few Republicans in Congress who had supported the PRO Act. That bill aimed to make it easier for workers to organize unions, including by repealing state right-to-work laws, which weaken unions.
At the time, Trump wrote: “Lori’s strong support from the business and labor communities will ensure that the Department of Labor can unite Americans of all backgrounds.”
Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, who has already been running much of the Labor Department’s day-to-day operations, has been named acting secretary, according to Cheung’s X post.
Sonderling previously worked at the Department of Labor during the first Trump administration and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under the Biden administration, having been nominated by Trump during his first term to fill a Republican seat.