US labour secretary steps down amid internal investigation

WASHINGTON – Ms Lori Chavez-DeRemer, President Donald Trump’s embattled labour secretary, stepped down on April 20 as multiple scandals and investigations closed in on her.

“Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be leaving the administration to take a position in the private sector,” Mr Steven Cheung, a White House spokesperson, posted on the social platform X.

He said that deputy secretary of labour Keith Sonderling would serve as acting secretary.

Mr Cheung said Ms Chavez-DeRemer had “done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labour practices and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives”.

But pressure on her mounted in recent weeks, as investigators and Congressional leaders homed in on questions about her conduct in office, and that of her aides and family members.

The Labor Department’s inspector-general’s office is nearing the end of a months-long investigation into a whistleblower’s allegations of professional misconduct by Ms Chavez-DeRemer and her closest aides.

The claims that she was having an affair with a member of her security team and that she used department resources for personal trips.

Ms Chavez-DeRemer was expected to be interviewed in the matter in the coming days.

Investigators spoke with several dozen witnesses, and uncovered evidence that Ms Chavez-DeRemer and her staff abused federal spending limits on personal trips, several people familiar with the investigation said, including on fancy hotels, SUV rentals and meals.

Four people have already left or been forced out of their jobs in connection with the investigation.

Investigators had also reviewed personal text messages sent to young female staff members by Ms Chavez-DeRemer, her former deputy chief of staff, her husband and her father.

The messages, reported last week by The New York Times, suggested that the secretary was drinking during the workday and raised questions about professionalism with her staff.

Mr Nick Oberheiden, a lawyer representing Chavez-DeRemer in the internal investigation, said on April 20 that she “did not resign because she violated the law; no such finding exists”.

“Her resignation,” he continued, “is much more a reflection of her commitment to the overall mission: To avoid further distractions within the US Department of Labor.”

The likelihood that the inspector-general’s investigation would reveal embarrassing details was compounded by a parallel inquiry on Capitol Hill: Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, demanded internal records and statements from the department in connection with the allegations.

And Ms Chavez-DeRemer’s husband has been barred from the department’s headquarters, after female staff members accused him of making unwanted sexual advances, including filing a police report.

Although police and prosecutors have said they would not bring criminal charges against him, the situation has continued to reverberate in the secretary’s office.

In recent weeks, three claims of a hostile work environment were filed against Ms Chavez-DeRemer with the department’s civil rights office.

Mr Sonderling, a labour lawyer with a decade of government experience, has been effectively leading the Labor Department during Ms Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure, multiple employees told the Times.

Ms Chavez-DeRemer, 58, a one-term former Republican member of Congress from Oregon, was nominated to the secretary position with backing from the Teamsters union, whose president Sean O’Brien had supported Mr Trump’s 2024 run.

But her leadership of the department left many employees frustrated and demoralised, including career staff and political appointees. Dozens described, in interviews with the Times, a toxic workplace characterised by an absentee secretary and hostile aides.

Inappropriate requests and messages

The evidence gathered in the inspector-general’s investigation, along with the related police report and civil rights complaints, painted a picture of an executive office in which younger female staff members often fielded inappropriate requests and messages from Ms Chavez-DeRemer, her family and her close aides.

Young women in the executive office were also instructed to “pay attention” to the secretary’s husband and father, people familiar with the matter said.

In one 2025 text message exchange reviewed by the Times, a female staff member apologized to Mr Shawn DeRemer for not being in touch, and promised to check in.

“You better,” Mr DeRemer, an anesthesiologist, responded. “I was feeling forgotten. I figured you were still in church repenting after your exposure to the demon state of Oregon.”

In another exchange, Ms Lori Chavez-DeRemer asked a staff member to bring her a bottle of “josh Sauvi B”, a reference to white wine, to her hotel room from the hotel bar while they were on a work trip.

Many in the department – and in Washington more broadly – sensed that her days as secretary were numbered, with the specter of potentially embarrassing details emerging in an investigative report.

Ms Chavez-DeRemer’s resignation was reported earlier on April 20 by Notus.

On April 20, senators arriving on Capitol Hill for the first vote of the week responded to the news of her departure.

“The secretary demonstrated a lot of wisdom in resigning, and I think she read the room,” said Senator John Kennedy.

Senator Thom Tillis said senators, who will vote to confirm her replacement, needed to do a better job vetting Trump administration nominees.

“I think what we have to do is anywhere where benefit of the doubt was given in the past, you’ve got to doubt,” he said. NYTIMES