Bad Banner

Chavez deRemer’s resignation statement called Donald Trump “the greatest President of my lifetime.”

Note to my future self.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned Monday under an inspector general investigation. The allegations: an affair with a member of her security detail, a stash of alcohol in her office, taking subordinates to a strip club on official travel, and using federal staff to run personal errands for her family. Her husband had been barred from Labor Department headquarters after two staffers accused him of inappropriate touching. More than two dozen department employees, from across the political spectrum, described the workplace to the New York Times as toxic, hostile, and demoralized.

Eight months ago, Chavez-DeRemer did something else worth remembering. On August 25, 2025, her department became the first federal building to drape a giant banner of Trump’s face across its facade. The labor department’s Frances Perkins Building carried a three-story portrait of the president beside the slogan “American Workers First.” At the time she said in a cabinet meeting: “Mr. President, I welcome you to see your big, beautiful face on a banner.”

The Justice Department and other buildings followed soon after and DC now feels like Pyongyang. On the same day the banner went up, Trump said publicly that many Americans “yearn for a dictatorship.”

A decidedly North Korean “Dear Leader” presidency.

At the time, I wrote that the devotional kitsch on a government building was one of many “dear leader” examples. And that the real danger was that we would adapt.

Eight months later we have the comeuppance as the fawning Labor secretary also evidently ran her department as a cash register for herself. The banner and the misconduct came from the same project.

A government staffed by people selected for loyalty and television presence is inherently incompetent, and one that stops doing its actual job.

Chavez deRemer’s resignation statement called Donald Trump “the greatest President of my lifetime.”