Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned as Secretary of Labor on Monday April 20, 2026, becoming the third member of President Trump’s Cabinet to leave in just over two months.
The White House announced her departure by saying she would be taking a job in the private sector.
She had been under investigation by her own department’s inspector general for months over a series of misconduct allegations that had already driven multiple members of her senior staff out of the agency before her.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung made the announcement via X:
“Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be leaving the Administration to take a position in the private sector. She has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives.”
Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, 43, will serve as acting secretary.
Chavez-DeRemer, 58, posted a brief farewell on X. “It has been an honor and a privilege to serve in this historic Administration and work for the greatest President of my lifetime,” she wrote.
She added that leaving did not mean she would stop fighting for American workers and that she was looking forward to her private sector future.
Her attorney, Nick Oberheiden, told NBC News that the resignation “is not the result of legal wrongdoings. It is a personal decision.”
What Were The Investigations About?
The New York Post first reported in January 2026 that the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General had opened an investigation following a formal complaint.
The complaint alleged that Chavez-DeRemer had engaged in an “inappropriate” relationship with a member of her security detail, a subordinate who was hosted at her Washington DC apartment at least three times and in her hotel room while traveling on at least two occasions.
The complaint also alleged she had been drinking on the job, keeping a supply of champagne, bourbon and Kahlua in her office and consuming alcohol during the workday.
A third category of allegations described what was characterized as travel fraud, her chief of staff and deputy chief of staff purportedly constructing official trips to locations where Chavez-DeRemer could spend time with family or friends on the taxpayer’s dime.
The White House and the Labor Department initially dismissed the reports as baseless.
That response became harder to sustain as the investigation widened and its effects became visible inside the agency.
A New York Times report published last Wednesday, April 15, added new details, that Chavez-DeRemer’s husband, Shawn DeRemer, an anesthesiologist in Portland, and her father had exchanged text messages with young female staff members.
The same report described instances in which Chavez-DeRemer and a former deputy chief of staff asked employees to deliver wine to them during official trips.
The Staff Who Left Before Her
The investigation’s footprint inside the agency was extensive before Chavez-DeRemer’s own departure. Her chief of staff and deputy chief of staff had been placed on administrative leave since January and ultimately resigned in early March.
On March 26, a third senior staff member, Melissa Robey, issued a statement saying she had been fired two days earlier, specifically after completing a four-hour interview with the Office of the Inspector General.
Staff members also filed civil rights complaints alleging a hostile work environment under her leadership.
The fact that three senior staffers were gone before the secretary herself underscored how far the internal investigation had progressed.
By the time Chavez-DeRemer’s own departure was announced Monday, the agency had already been operating without its top leadership structure for weeks.
The Third Cabinet Member To Depart
Chavez-DeRemer is the third Cabinet secretary to leave Trump’s second term, and the departures have accelerated in a way that has drawn attention to the administration’s internal stability.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was fired by Trump in early March following sustained controversy over immigration enforcement operations in American cities and a $220 million ad campaign that featured the secretary on horseback, a use of public funds that lawmakers on Capitol Hill berated her over directly.
Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired by Trump earlier in April amid reports that the president was increasingly unhappy with how the Department of Justice was handling matters related to Jeffrey Epstein. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was put in charge.
Chavez-DeRemer’s departure was handled differently from those two. Noem and Bondi’s exits were announced by Trump directly.
Chavez-DeRemer’s was announced by a communications aide, a distinction that speaks to the nature of this departure and the administration’s interest in managing its framing.
Who Is Lori Chavez-DeRemer?
Chavez-DeRemer had an unusual profile for a Trump Cabinet pick. She was a one-term congresswoman from Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, elected in 2022 to a Democrat-leaning seat and defeated in 2024 by Democrat Janelle Bynum.
Before Congress she had been the mayor of Happy Valley, a Portland suburb.
What made her distinctive in the Republican Party was her relationship with organized labor. She was one of only three Republicans in Congress to co-sponsor the PRO Act, legislation designed to expand worker protections and union organizing rights.
She had the strong backing of the Teamsters union, whose members had supported Trump broadly, and that combination, a pro-union Republican with crossover appeal, was part of why Trump nominated her for Labor Secretary in November 2024.
She was confirmed and sworn in during March 2025. At the time, the Labor Department was being swept by the administration’s broader workforce reduction effort.
By February 2026, the agency’s headcount had fallen by nearly 25 percent compared to September 2024, according to Office of Personnel Management data. Significant reductions at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces the country’s most closely watched economic data, drew alarm from economists and researchers who argued the agency no longer had adequate staff to produce and modernize its work.
Trump also fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer following a jobs report that contained large revisions, an action that generated its own controversy.
During her tenure, Chavez-DeRemer launched the “America at Work” listening tour, traveling to all 50 states.
She maintained a lower public profile than many of her Cabinet colleagues and was largely out of the national headlines, until the investigation became public in January.
What’s Next For Her Department?
Keith Sonderling will run the department in an acting capacity. He wrote on X after his appointment was announced, “We will keep up the fight to put American workers first.”
No timeline has been given for naming a permanent replacement, and no nominee has been publicly identified. The White House has not provided details on when exactly Chavez-DeRemer’s departure takes effect.
