Donald Trump is tapping the son of the late Justice Antonin Scalia to replace Alexander Acosta at the top of his Labor department. The president announced in a tweet Thursday that he will nominate Eugene Scalia, whom he says “has led a life of great success in the legal and labor field and is highly respected not only as a lawyer, but as a lawyer with great experience working with labor and everyone else.” Scalia the younger, he added, “will be a great member of an Administration that has done more in the first 2 ½ years than perhaps any Administration in history!”
Like other Trump Cabinet nominees, Scalia is a controversial choice. The conservative Federalist Society member has indeed worked on labor issues for much of his career—but, as the New York Times noted, often on behalf of corporations like Walmart seeking to counter unions and weaken labor laws. “[Trump] has again chosen someone who has proven to put corporate interests over those of worker rights,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted of the nomination.
Scalia, who also worked as a special assistant to Attorney General William Barr, previously served in the Labor department as a chief legal officer in the George W. Bush administration. At the time, Democrats criticized him as a threat to workers. “I believe we need someone who would instill much more confidence that the Department of Labor is on the working families’ side,” former Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone told the Times in 2001. But conservatives lobbied Trump for Scalia’s nomination, according to Politico, which was first to report the pick.
If confirmed, he would succeed Acosta, who resigned in scandal over the cushy deal he helped broker for Jeffrey Epstein—the wealthy sex offender who was indicted earlier this month on child sex trafficking charges. (Epstein denies all wrongdoing.) The charges against the financier put a harsh spotlight on Epstein’s rich, powerful friends, such as Trump and Bill Clinton, and provoked a fresh round of outrage over the plea agreement Acosta cut with him as a US attorney in Florida. Acosta attempted to defend his deal in the days ahead of his resignation, but it did nothing to quell the firestorm. Trump nevertheless praised his outgoing secretary, saying he’d been “fantastic” in the position and dismissing his critics. “He made a deal that people were happy with and then 12 years later, they’re not happy with it,” Trump told reporters.
Labor is now one of several Cabinet posts in the Trump administration to be led by an acting secretary—in this case, Acosta’s deputy, Patrick Pizzella. Scalia’s contentious path to confirmation was perhaps inadvertently underscored by Tom Cotton, who told Fox News that he’s “confident [Scalia will] be a champion for working Americans against red tape and burdensome regulation.”
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