Mary Ellen Klas, Columnist

Just Call It the Department of Male Labor

One of Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s first moves has been to eliminate all funding for the Women’s Bureau. It’s part of a pattern.

August 31, 2025 at 12:00 PM UTC

By Mary Ellen Klas

Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.

New decor at the DOL.
Photographer: Drew Angerer/AFP/Getty Images

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In honor of Labor Day, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has chosen to hang two massive banners from the front of her department’s headquarters in Washington. One features President Donald Trump; the other, former President Theodore Roosevelt. In a social media video, she explained that they honor two “transformational leaders” with a “commitment to the American worker.”

But Trump has shown that he’s only committed to one kind of worker: the male kind.