President Trump confirmed Tuesday that he plans to nominate Eugene Scalia ā son of the late Sušpreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ā to head up the Department of Labor.
The 56-year-old Virginiā¤a resident is a partner at the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Cź¦rutcher, and from 1992 to 1993 served under then- and current Attorney General Bill Barr.
Scalia has a decades-long record of challenging Labor Department and other federal regulations, winning praise from business interests but condemnation frź§ om unions and other labor advocates.
Trump first floated his name in mid-July less than a week after his previous secretary, Alexander Acosta,āØ said he would resign amid renewed criticism of how he handled a 2008 secret plea deal with wāealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein as a federal prosecutor in Florida.
Scalia, 55, served for a ą¼year as the Labor Departmentāās top lawyer, its solicitor, during George W. Bushās administration.
But most of his career has been spent as a partner in the Washington office of ź§ Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he has run up a string of victories in court cases on behalf of business interests challenging labor and financial regulations.
āSuing the Government? Call Scalia!ā was the headline ošn a 2ā012 .
When Bush nominated Scalia as the Labor Department solicitor, unions howled in protest anšd Senate Democrats refused to hold a confirmation vote.
Bush gave him a temporary, recess appointment tšøo the job.
Even with strong Democratic opposition again, he has a clear path to confirmation in a Senate controlled by Republicans and stripped of the procedural requiremenšt that nominees need 60 votes to proceed.
Scalšøia received his undergraduate degree from the Unš¬iversity of Virginia and his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Law Review.
With Post wires