Eugene Scalia, President Trump’s nominee to head the Labor Department, was approved Sept. 24 by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. The full Senate will now vote on his nomination, though a date has not yet been set.
Scalia was approved by the HELP Committee on a 12-11 party-line vote. The committee held a three-hour hearing Sept. 19 at which the nominee was questioned on a wide range of labor-related topics.
Scalia is currently a partner at the Washington, D.C. office of the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm. During the administration of President George W. Bush, he served as Solicitor of Labor, the Department’s principal legal officer with responsibility of a broad range of regulatory and enforcement matters. He is also, of course, the son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
If he is subsequently by the full Senate, Scalia would succeed Alexander Acosta, who resigned July 12 in the wake of controversy regarding a plea deal Acosta negotiated more than a decade ago with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
