Can Republicans Undo the Damage of Julie Su?
Biden’s wannabe labor secretary brought one of California’s worst workforce ideas to the entire country.
There’s much harrumphing in the media about President Donald Trump’s penchant for norm-busting, but he’s hardly the first to engage in it. Under President Joe Biden, the media generally cheered student loan forgiveness, talk of packing or ignoring the Supreme Court, departmentalist interpretations of the Constitution, and a nearly four-year game of Hide the President.
And then there was Biden’s stubborn refusal to accept the Senate’s constitutional role in confirming cabinet secretaries.
Consider the case of Julie Su. By January 20, Su had clocked a record-setting 681 days as acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor. From her nomination on March 11, 2023, until the end of his term — with a last-minute rush to force Su through the Senate a month after Trump’s election win — Biden insisted that he would not defer to the Senate.
Representative Kevin Kiley (R., Calif.) proposes to clean up some of the mess that Su left behind, particularly her rewrite of federal labor rules that now mirror California’s Assembly Bill 5, one of the most malignant ideas to emerge during Su’s — or anyone’s — time in Sacramento. California’s union leaders designed A.B. 5 to herd independent contractors into larger companies where they’d be more easily targeted by union organizers. As I wrote in National Review a year ago:
When he signed A.B. 5, Newsom said the new law would stop companies from “wrongly classifying” workers as “independent contractors rather than employees,” a “misclassification” that “erodes basic worker protections like the minimum wage, paid sick days and health insurance benefits.” But then he roared when he probably ought to have said nothing: “Assembly Bill 5 is an important step, . . . a next step is creating pathways for more workers to form a union, collectively bargain to earn more, and have a stronger voice at work — all while preserving flexibility and innovation.”
A.B. 5 unleashed chaos in the state economy and personal hardship for hundreds of thousands of California freelancers — including photographers, writers, translators, yoga instructors, wedding planners, and truck drivers — across more than 600 industries. Ignoring all that, Su in March 2024 unveiled federal rules that were, if anything, even worse because of their complexity. Freelancers in California see that complexity — and employers’ fear of violating a law on which even attorneys and courts disagree — as a diabolical feature of the law.
“The chilling effect alone will put many independent contractors out of work,” predicted Karen Anderson, a California writer, editor, photographer, and creator of the Facebook group Freelancers Against A.B. 5. She described Su’s “mind-boggling 339-page” rule change as so complex that even freelancers exempt from California’s byzantine A.B. 5 would find themselves jettisoned by employers who don’t want the compliance hassle and possible punishments associated with the sprawling federal rule.
As a member of the California State Assembly while Su drove the state’s labor department into a ditch, Kiley saw the chaos up close. Now, on Capitol Hill, he proposes to end the yearlong national nightmare of Su’s time in Biden’s Department of Labor. His proposed Modern Worker Empowerment Act would undo Su’s 2024 rewrite of federal rules and replace it with what he calls “a clear and predictable test for determining whether a worker is classified as an independent contractor or an employee.” Moreover, Kiley proposes “a federal safe harbor that allows companies to voluntarily provide portable benefits to independent contractors without the risk of federal agencies reclassifying those workers as employees.”
There may yet be bumps in the road ahead. Trump has nominated Oregon Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer to take Su’s desk at the Labor Department. As Trump did, Chavez-DeRemer’s 2022 congressional campaign attempted to square a circle: to bring together Republicans and organized labor in one slightly rotten Reese’s peanut butter cup. She won narrowly. Once in Congress, Chavez-DeRemer was as good as her word. She co-authored the PRO Act — Biden’s attempt to root Su’s rule change in federal law — and supported Biden’s federal Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act; far from freeing anyone, that law would force government workers everywhere to join unions and would require their government agencies to negotiate with those unions. Since 1978, that same coercive policy has wrecked California government finances, raised taxes, and blunted all attempts to reform any government agency, including the state’s underperforming public schools.
Chavez-DeRemer’s strategy worked until it didn’t. In 2024, Oregon union leaders poured cash into the campaign of Chavez-DeRemer’s Democratic opponent. After November 5, Chavez-DeRemer was looking for work.
Trump appears to have rescued her. But the only people truly happy with his choice are union leaders — the very people who would gladly travel back in time to kill Trump in his cradle. They have universally expressed their affection for Chavez-DeRemer. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien is credited with pushing her nomination. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten — who has called Trump an “existential threat to democracy and freedom” — was suddenly transformed: “Now, this would be a significant appointment for Trump to make,” she crowed on X, of Chavez-DeRemer.
You know you’ve screwed up when Randi Weingarten praises you.
Sources on the Hill, meanwhile, tell National Review that Chavez-DeRemer’s views on labor have evolved in just two months: She has seemingly become an advocate of free markets. “In meetings with Republican senators, she’s showing a real grasp of the issues,” said one. “She’s matured,” said another.
Chavez-DeRemer may be the GOP’s Kamala Harris: a politician on all sides of all issues. But insiders say she may be something else. Another Hill source called her “Trump’s decoy.” In that sense, Chavez-DeRemer might be like a hypnotist’s swinging watch, Trump’s way of temporarily mesmerizing labor leaders before they can mount a counter-attack on a president who’s busily slicing federal employment.
Will Swaim is president of the California Policy Center and co-host with David Bahnsen of National Review’s “Radio Free California” podcast.
This article originally appeared in NRO.
