Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Trump’s Labor Secretary, Steps Down Amid Internal Investigation 68%
By Rebecca Davis O’Brien0%
4/20/2026, 9:33:34 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 32 faulty reasoning types, including Availability Heuristic, Pessimism Bias, and Appeal to Authority, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 45.5% saturation with 327 hits. Analysis detected 1,809 faulty-reasoning hits from 719 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 61.9% and a BS Rank of 68% (5,444 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 67.60% of the article peer group.
Lori Chavez-DeRemer, President Trump’s embattled labor secretary, stepped down on Monday 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,” Steven Cheung, a White House spokesman, posted on social media.
He said Keith Sonderling, the deputy secretary of labor, would serve as acting secretary.
Pressure on Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer had mounted in recent weeks, as investigators and congressional leaders homed in on questions about her conduct in office, and that of her aides and members of her family.
The Labor Department’s inspector general’s office is nearing the end of a monthslong investigation into a whistle-blower’s allegations of professional misconduct by Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer and her closest aides.
The claims include that she was having an affair with a member of her security team and 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, S.U.V. rentals and meals.
Four people have left or been forced out of their jobs in connection with the investigation.
Investigators had also reviewed text messages sent to young 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.
Nick Oberheiden, a lawyer representing Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer in the internal investigation, said on Monday said 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 U.S.
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 Charles E.
Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chair of the Judiciary Committee, demanded internal records and statements from the department in connection with the allegations.
And Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer’s husband, Dr.
Shawn DeRemer, 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 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.
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 Monday by Notus.
On Monday, 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, Republican of Louisiana.
Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, 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.
Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer led the department during a period in which the labor market weakened but proved surprisingly resilient.
Job growth has slowed to a crawl in recent months, wage growth has slowed and the unemployment rate has ticked up gradually.
Younger workers, in particular, have struggled to gain a foothold in the labor market, and Americans have become increasingly concerned about the threat that artificial intelligence could pose to their career prospects.
Yet layoffs across the economy remain historically low, and many economists say weak hiring has more to do with a lack of supply — in part because of Mr.
Trump’s crackdown on immigration — than a lack of demand from employers.
Economists describe the labor market with words like “stagnant” and “anemic,” but not necessarily weak.
Ben Casselman and Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.
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