Cabinet Madness
Let’s review the litany of some of Donald Trump’s absurdly frightening and frighteningly absurd Cabinet appointments so far:
Attorney General: Matt Gaetz – Trump attack-dog with a Disney-villain visage who paid a seventeen-year-old for sex.
Secretary of Defense: Pete Hegseth – Hawkish Fox News host in favor of pardoning war criminals with his own history of alleged sexual misconduct.
Secretary of Homeland Security: Kristi Noem – Dog-murderer, enough said.
Medicare and Medicaid administrator: Dr. Mehmet Oz – Celebrity physician with dubious medical credentials and even more dubious medical advice.
Bureau of Government Efficiency: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy – A bureau… with two co-presidents… and undetermined political authority… intended to make the government more efficient…
But hope remains! Yes, Trump still has to appoint both his Secretary of Labor and Treasury Secretary. Supporters of the working class must hope Trump exercises considerably better judgment with these two remaining selections.
Regardless of political persuasion, anyone pro-union should welcome the fact that Oregon Republican representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer is on Trump’s shortlist for Secretary of Labor. Her alleged consideration has sent neoconservatives at the National Review into a predictable frenzy while being welcomed by Teamsters President Sean O’Brien. In the pages of Compact magazine, O’Brien offered a ringing endorsement of Chavez-DeRemer, citing her pro-worker bona fides and support for the PRO Act. As one of only three Republicans to support the PRO Act and one of only six pledging to accept the results of the 2024 election, she has demonstrated a bipartisan conscience that will be invaluable as Labor Secretary.
Meanwhile, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Treasury will also have a bearing on how the working class fairs in this second MAGA administration. Trump was elected by large swaths of the working class in part in order to institute harsher tariffs against Chinese and other foreign goods. Whether or not this protectionist policy prevails will demonstrate how representative and democratic our representative democracy actually is. So far, some of Trump’s potential nominees – financier Kevin Warsh and hedge fund manager Scott Bessent among them – threaten to reinforce the neoliberal globalist status quo instead of instituting a populist economic program. Supporters of Trump, and indeed leftist populist supporters of Bernie Sanders, would be wise to oppose the nomination of any Wall Streeters as Treasury Secretary.
Instead, I’d recommend readers turn to Sohrab Ahmari’s insightful endorsement in Compact magazine of Robert Lighthizer for Treasury Secretary. Ahmari writes: “Attacking neoliberal globalization and promoting tariffs, Donald Trump has rallied to America’s battered real economy—the one in which Americans build useful stuff, or used to anyway. To defend the real economy from further erosion, and ensure its advancement in our century, Trump needs Lighthizer at Treasury.” The appointments of Chavez-DeRemer as Labor Secretary and Lighthizer as Treasury Secretary would be a win for Trump’s MAGA base and, perhaps surprisingly, also for leftists.
