Trump’s Labor Solicitor Pick Distances Himself From Project 2025

President Donald Trump’s nominee for US Labor Department chief attorney sought to separate himself from his Project 2025 proposals, vowing to enforce workplace laws and emphasizing that the position doesn’t involve policymaking.

Jonathan Berry, who authored the Project 2025 chapter on the DOL, told lawmakers Wednesday his participation in the conservative blueprint was merely scholarly. The chapter proposed broad scale changes to federal labor laws and federal agency oversight, including revising overtime pay calculations and abolishing the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, policies the Trump administration have advanced.

In response to questions about the project’s suggestion that the H-visa program for temporary foreign workers should be abolished, Berry said his writing “was part of my ongoing attempts at contributing to the policy conversation on these issues.”

“My role, if confirmed as solicitor of labor, is not policymaking,” he said. “My role would be to help enforce the law and to keep the department within its legal bounds, to the best of my abilities.”

The comments came as the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee also weighed the nominations of Andrew Rogers to lead the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division and Anthony D’Esposito as the agency’s inspector general.

Questions for the three nominees largely centered on their plans to combat child labor and human trafficking.

D’Esposito, a former New York lawmaker and New York Police Department detective, said he would insure the inspector general’s office worked to “embed” itself into local and state authorities to help “pinpoint” human trafficking across the country.

“You have departments, especially in communities where the child and human trafficking is a real issue, who have groups and teams set up just for this issue, and they don’t even realize that the Office of the Inspector General could be a helpful resource,” D’Esposito said.

Rogers, meanwhile, emphasized that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has promised to “double down” on the agency’s child labor enforcement.

“One of those ways is to use the resources that we have and to use the data that’s available to drive down where those violations are most likely,” Rogers said.

The committee scheduled a June 26 vote on the nominees, the last step before they can be confirmed by the full Senate.

Project 2025

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) pressed Berry on whether he is tethered to the ideas outlined in Project 2025. She asked whether he supported the Trump administration’s push to eliminate the DOL’s Women’s Bureau, which conducts policy research around women in the workforce.

After Berry said he would defer to the administration’s decision, Baldwin told Berry, “it’s a simple yes or no question. He has proposed that.” Berry responded, “Yes.”

Though Berry’s section of Project 2025 doesn’t call for eliminating the Women’s Bureau, it says the sub-agency “tends towards a politicized research and engagement agenda that puts predetermined conclusions ahead of empirical study.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said he was “made aware” that Berry “stated that women like to work part time” in his interview with Democratic committee staff. He asked Berry, “Do you think that part-time work is sort of more of a woman’s thing?”

The nominee clarified he was referring to labor market surveys finding that American women have a higher “stated or revealed preference” for part-time work than men.

“This is not a category statement about women at all,” he said. “It was a survey-driven and data-driven observation.”

Berry also served as former chief counsel to Trump and was principal deputy assistant secretary for policy at the DOL during the president’s first term, a role that put him in charge of crafting and approving agency regulations.

He later became managing partner at Boyden Gray PLLC and represented red-state attorneys general and private parties challenging the Biden administration’s green retirement investing rule. He also was involved in a lawsuit against the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s backing of Nasdaq rules aimed at getting more women and minorities on corporate boards.

The National Partnership for Women and Families has condemned his nomination as a “threat to gender equity and civil rights.”

If confirmed, Berry would have “enormous power to carry out a far-right agenda that undermines protections for women, workers of color, LGBTQI+ individuals, and people with disabilities,” the group said in a press release on the nominee.