“I'll tip my hat to the new Constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again, no, no

Yeah
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss” 

--Won’t Get Fooled Again, Peter Townsend, The Who

One thing about Donald Trump is he seems to have an uncanny, sixth sense about how to appeal to voters. He can whisper to their fears, stroke their prejudices, and rile up their hurts. And he can motivate them to vote. Whatever the future brings, the MAGA coalition is like no other American political movement before it, except perhaps the demagogic Huey Long. And if you want to see the parallels read  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long. Huey Long fashioned himself a working class hero, with “Every man a king.” Trump has cultivated some of the same appeal. (By the way, All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren, a Huey Long allegory, is a fabulous book, one of my top 10 ever written).

Trumps political instincts seem to have led him to a spot of political moderation in his selection of Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a lame duck Oregon Republican congresswoman, as the Secretary of Labor.  As a moderate Republican, and a supporter of organized labor, she is a surprising choice in an administration that leans either right or far right. What that means for the future of labor policy is unclear. But I think it signals Trump’s recognition that to secure the future votes of the working class voters he captured in 2024, he doesn’t want to be viewed as an enemy of the working people. The most radical, pro-business, anti-labor policies are likely off the table. Trump may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and selected the first billionaire cabinet, but he doesn’t want to be wholly at odds with his Teamster’s Union constituency. Ms. Chavez-DeRemer was apparently the recommendation of the Teamster’s President and perhaps the first dividend to come from his speech at the Republican convention and the union’s refusal to endorse Harris during the election campaign. The Teamster’s Union, along with the firefighters and the police unions, have flirted with the Republicans for decades.

Ms. Chavez-DeRemer nomination bodes well for less radical change at the Department of Labor (“DOL”), at least initially, compared to elsewhere in the government. Indeed, under Reagan, Bush the Elder, and George W. Bush, the DOL ship never turned sharply. And in the first Trump Administration, Trump did some significant reversal of Obama policies, but he also left some in place. I expect him to proceed incrementally on labor policy shifts. I am betting the noncompete rules, perhaps the Biden Contractor Minimum Wage Executive Order, and other executive action see early repeals, but that the new Davis-Bacon Act regulations and union initiatives proceed more slowly. You may even see a bipartisan deal to increase the FLSA minimum wage in return for tax cuts.

Perhaps the biggest impact to DOL will come from the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) effort. You don’t have to change much to just hollow out the enforcement efforts by staff reductions. And I do think an already stretched DOL is likely to be stretched out further by budget cuts. As Trump is fond of saying, “we’ll see….” .