Last September, Eugene Scalia became the Secretary of Labor. The son of the late Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Antonin Scalia, he secured the position after Alex Acosta stepped down amid revelations that, in 2008, while serving as U.S. Attorney in Miami, he’d arranged a lenient plea deal for the financier and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Like many other Cabinet officials in the Trump Administration, Scalia had credentials that suggested an antagonism toward the agency he was appointed to run. The official role of the Labor Department is “to foster, promote and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers and retirees of the United States.”
As an attorney, Scalia had spent decades helping corporations gut or evade government regulations, including worker protections.