On Monday, March 24, Catherine Eschbach, the new head of a civil rights agency within the Labor Department, sent an email to her staff introducing herself and announcing her plans to downsize the agency and investigate whether the work it's been engaged in for decades is constitutional.
"I look forward to meeting and working with you as we implement the agenda that the American people elected President Trump to enact," she wrote in the email, shared with NPR by a Department of Labor employee who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation.
"We will restore the agency to full compliance with its constitutional and statutory authority," concluded Eschbach.
Eschbach is now leading the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, a watchdog agency within the Department of Labor that both audits and investigates federal contractors to ensure they are obeying equal opportunity and anti-discrimination laws.
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Eschbach comes to the watchdog agency after most recently working at private law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where she represented SpaceX in an ongoing legal battle between SpaceX and the National Labor Relations Board, an independent agency that investigates and adjudicates unfair labor practice charges. The chief executive of SpaceX, Elon Musk, is also a senior adviser to President Donald Trump.
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