The U.S. Department of Labor distributed close to $60 million in funds to organizations with racial focuses or liberal mission statements during Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer's tenure, according to grant records reviewed by The Washington Examiner.

The disbursements landed at groups ranging from the National Urban League to Chicanos por la Causa, organizations whose activism frequently collides with the very agenda the Trump administration was elected to advance.

The revelation arrives alongside a separate and deepening crisis for the secretary herself. Chavez-DeRemer faces an internal investigation following accusations that she used public funds for personal travel, engaged in politically motivated grantmaking, created a hostile work environment, and engaged in an affair with a subordinate. She has denied the allegations.

The combination is potent: a cabinet agency hemorrhaging taxpayer money to left-aligned nonprofits while its leader is accused of treating the department like a personal fiefdom. Staffers have reportedly described Chavez-DeRemer as an "absentee secretary" who has left employees "deeply demoralized."

Where the Money Went

The grant records paint a picture that should trouble anyone who took the 2024 election results seriously. In October 2025, the National Urban League won $13,295,208 in grant funding from the Department of Labor. Nearly $2 million went to an electrician training organization affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Some of the funding flowed through the Senior Community Service Employment Program. The DOL held up funding related to this program to conduct a review in 2025 and was subject to litigation for doing so, a detail that underscores how entrenched these spending pipelines have become. When an agency tries to pause and audit, the beneficiaries sue to keep the spigot open.

Then there are the recipients whose missions speak for themselves. Chicanos por la Causa participated in a lawsuit that successfully blocked the first Trump administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. In September 2025, the group posted on social media attacking immigration enforcement:

"This is not immigration policy, this is racial profiling against Latinos, Asians, and other people of color that runs counter to long-held American values."

That is the organization receiving Labor Department dollars under a Republican administration.

The Diverse Elders Coalition, another recipient, describes its own mission in explicitly identitarian terms on its website:

"Founded in 2010, the Diverse Elders Coalition (DEC) advocates for policies and programs that improve aging in our communities as racially and ethnically diverse people; American Indians and Alaska Natives; and lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) people."

These are not workforce development organizations that happen to serve diverse populations. These are groups organized around identity categories, funded by an administration that promised to dismantle exactly that framework.

The Bureaucracy Does What the Bureaucracy Does

A source at the DOL, requesting anonymity, claimed that none of the grantees identified by the Washington Examiner "were selected by this administration." That defense raises its own question: if the current leadership didn't select them, who is running the department?

Mike Watson, director of research at the Capital Research Center, offered a blunt diagnosis. The Labor Department, he said, "certainly is an institutional bureaucracy." His assessment of what happens when leadership checks out was sharper:

"When the cat's away, the mice will play."

Watson elaborated on the structural problem, one that extends well beyond any single secretary:

"Bureaucrats who aren't being supervised, who aren't being closely watched, they'll do what they want to do, they'll do what they have been doing, they'll do what they got into government to do, which is to make government bigger, which is to make government more intrusive, and which is to make government carry out the progressive agenda."

Watson conceded that reining in some of these expenditures, particularly union-related ones, could be beyond the abilities of even a competent labor secretary. That caveat matters, because the federal bureaucracy was not built in one administration and will not be dismantled by one either. But it makes the case for engaged, vigilant leadership stronger, not weaker.

A Secretary Under Siege

The grant controversy might have remained a policy story. Chavez-DeRemer's personal conduct has made it something worse.

Beyond the grantmaking accusations, she allegedly focused on taking staffers to a strip club and using departmental funds to throw herself a birthday party. Two of her top aides are reportedly part of the investigation. Helen Luryi, a staffer who left the department in April 2025, did not mince words in speaking to the New York Times:

"Over the past few weeks, we've learned that not only is she not doing her job, she's embroiling the department in scandal and possible criminal activity."

Luryi added simply: "It's frankly embarrassing."

The secretary's lawyer told the New York Post in January that Chavez-DeRemer "firmly denies any allegations of wrongdoing" and that her "utmost priority remains to advance President Trump's agenda by continuing her hard and successful work for the betterment of the American people."

The DOL has pointed to real accomplishments. Spokeswoman Courtney Parella stated that the department acted "swiftly and decisively to eliminate discriminatory DEI funding and other grants that put America Last, saving taxpayers tens of millions of dollars annually." In May, the Labor Department claimed it had saved $400 million by cutting wasteful spending, primarily by pruning Biden-era programs. Parella also pointed to investments in Registered Apprenticeships and workforce development as evidence the department is aligned with the administration's vision.

Those numbers are not trivial. But $400 million in claimed savings looks different when $60 million simultaneously flowed to organizations whose missions read like DEI mission statements.

The Oversight Question

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) framed the issue in structural terms, emphasizing the relationship between executive authority and congressional accountability:

"The executive branch functions under the authority and direction of the President, and federal agencies are expected to carry out the policies and priorities established by the administration."

Sessions made clear where the current administration's mandate leads on grant funding:

"Under the Trump administration, the expectation is clear: federal agencies should focus grant funding on programs that deliver real results for the American people, and initiatives associated with what many have described as the 'woke' DEI agenda do not have a place in the use of taxpayer-funded grants."

He also noted that the president "has directed agencies to move away from policies and funding structures rooted in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives advanced by the previous administration, and instead ensure that federal resources are allocated based on merit, effectiveness, and the public interest."

The directive is clear. The execution, at least within the Department of Labor, has not matched it.

What Conservatives Should Take From This

This story is a case study in a problem the right has discussed for years but rarely confronts with sufficient urgency: the permanent bureaucracy does not change direction because an election happened. It changes direction when someone stands over it and watches.

Grant pipelines built over decades do not shut off because a new secretary takes the oath. They shut off when someone physically reviews the grants, fires the career staff who keep approving them, and endures the lawsuits that follow.

The 2024 mandate was not ambiguous. Voters sent the Trump administration back to Washington to do exactly what Rep. Sessions described: allocate federal resources based on merit, effectiveness, and the public interest. Every dollar that flows to an organization whose primary identity is racial advocacy or progressive activism is a dollar that betrays that mandate.

The Department of Labor needs leadership that is present, accountable, and relentless about where the money goes. Right now, the grant records suggest it has something else.