Trump's Labor Department secretary was busy running up a tab on various scandals.
Her department was busy running up a different tab – with your money.
Now $60 million in taxpayer grants to anti-Trump, Soros-linked organizations tells you exactly what happens when nobody's minding the store.
Inside the Labor Department Scandal Letting DEI Grants Flow to Anti-Trump Groups
While Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer was allegedly dragging staffers to Portland strip clubs, throwing herself birthday parties on the government's dime, and carrying on what investigators describe as an inappropriate relationship with a member of her security detail, her agency was doing what left-wing bureaucrats do when supervision disappears.
They funded the Left.
The National Urban League – led by the former Democratic mayor of New Orleans, a man who publicly called for Trump's prosecution over January 6 – pulled in $13.3 million from Chavez-DeRemer's Labor Department in October 2025 alone.
The Soros family's Open Society Foundations funds the National Urban League.
That same Open Society Foundations has funneled over $80 million into groups tied to extremist violence, according to the Capital Research Center.
Your tax dollars went to an organization funded by the same network now under DOJ investigation for financing domestic terrorism.
Mike Watson, research director at the Capital Research Center, laid out exactly how this happens.
"When the cat's away, the mice will play," Watson said. "The bureaucrats will do what the bureaucrats have been doing for as long as these agencies have existed, which is trying to use big government to advance the progressive agenda."
Chavez-DeRemer handed those bureaucrats a year of unsupervised runway to prove it.
Taxpayer Funded Groups Opposing Trump Immigration Policy Kept Receiving Federal Grants
The National Urban League wasn't alone.
Chicanos Por La Causa – a Hispanic advocacy group that accepts seed funding from the National Council of La Raza – kept a consistent stream of Labor Department cash flowing under Chavez-DeRemer's watch.
In September 2025, the group posted to social media calling Trump's immigration enforcement "racial profiling against Latinos, Asians, and other people of color."
They were attacking the President's policies with one hand and cashing his Labor Secretary's checks with the other.
The group also brags about successfully blocking Trump's first administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census and runs voter registration drives targeting Latino voters.
A coalition of race-based elder care organizations – the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging, the National Association for Hispanic Elderly, and the National Indian Council on Aging – also received DOL funds.
All three belong to the Diverse Elders Coalition, which opposes Trump's deportation agenda, supports DACA, and lobbies for looser immigration laws.
The DOL tried to freeze funding through the Senior Community Service Employment Program – the pipeline for some of these grants – and got sued for it.
Courts stepped in and the money kept flowing.
The Deep State Playbook Is Always the Same
This didn't come out of nowhere.
Under Biden, federal DEI spending exploded from $27 million in 2019 to over $1 billion annually by 2024, according to a City Journal analysis of government contracting data.
The Labor Department alone paid a DEI consulting firm $4.4 million to run "immersive" critical race theory training at Job Corps centers across the country.
Biden built the pipeline. The bureaucracy – running unsupervised under Chavez-DeRemer – kept it open.
Watson identified the structural problem: bureaucrats who spent years building these grant relationships don't abandon them when a new administration arrives. They wait for a distracted secretary – and then they act.
"Bureaucrats who aren't being supervised, they'll do what they want to do, they'll do what they got into government to do, which is to make government bigger, more intrusive, and which is to carry out the progressive agenda," Watson said.
Trump signed the executive orders and set the mandate. And a distracted secretary handed the deep state a year of runway to spend $60 million proving they don't care.
The Inspector General is now investigating Chavez-DeRemer's travel fraud, her hostile workplace, her alleged affair with a subordinate, and her husband's sexual misconduct at the DOL building itself. Three of her top aides have been placed on administrative leave or forced to resign. DC Metro Police opened a sexual assault investigation at the Labor Department's own headquarters.
Rep. Pete Sessions put it bluntly: federal agencies exist to carry out the President's agenda. Under Trump, that means zero DEI grants. Zero race-based advocacy funding. Zero dollars to organizations suing his 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 the 'woke' DEI agenda do not have a place in the use of taxpayer-funded grants," Sessions told the Washington Examiner.
Chavez-DeRemer's department failed that test – and handed the deep state exactly the cover they needed to fail it.
The Soros-linked groups, the anti-deportation coalitions, the organizations that sued Trump's first administration – they all got paid. Watson said it best: the cat was away.
Sources:
- Robert Schmad, "Scandal-plagued Labor Department sends millions to liberal, race-based organizations," Washington Examiner, March 6, 2026.
- "Third Aide to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer Placed on Administrative Leave As OIG Probe Deepens," RedState, March 6, 2026.
- "Two DOL aides resign amid ongoing probe into 'toxic' workplace at Chavez-DeRemer's labor department," HR Brew, March 5, 2026.
- Ryan Mauro, "Exclusive: Soros' Open Society gave $80 million to pro-terror groups," Capital Research Center, September 2025.
- Steven Malanga, "DEI Cash Cow," City Journal, November 2024.
- Rep. Pete Sessions, quoted in Washington Examiner, March 6, 2026.
