On Wednesday, the Senate held its confirmation hearing for Lori Chavez-DeRemer, President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of labor. In her opening statement, Chavez-DeRemer revealed that she is the mother of twin daughters, one a Republican and the other a Democrat. The former representative is a union-endorsed Republican, so it’s fitting that her twin daughters seem to have split the difference.
“Trump’s cabinet is one of the most ideologically diverse in American history.”
But this is more than just a charming anecdote. As for many American families, politics for the Chavez-DeRemers is less divisive than it is among the elites who seek to capitalize on polarization, often literally. Indeed, the real polarization in America is the class divide between a working class and a divided ruling class. The elite’s internal schisms have been on full display during the recent confirmation hearings.
President Trump’s cabinet is one of the most ideologically diverse in American history. Take Chavez-DeRemer, who was one of the co-sponsors of the PRO Act, a piece of legislation loathed by most Republicans for weakening right-to-work laws and levying hefty fines on employers for getting in the way of unions. Chavez-DeRemer had the support of Oregon’s unions when she ran as a congresswoman, and supports a host of things that were once central to the Democratic Party platform: not just the right to organize, but vocational training, limits on immigration, and investigating companies that are non-compliant with labor law.
Yet none of this managed to endear her to senators on the other side of the aisle. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a nominal independent who caucuses with the Democrats, hammered Chavez-DeRemer over the fact that she no longer supports the PRO Act. Other Democratic senators demanded to know whether she supported a national minimum wage, what she was going to do about the career bureaucrats Trump laid off, and what her plan was for the cost of housing.