By Noah Rothstein
On July 13, President Joe Biden nominated Richard Trumka, Jr., a House aide and the son of the late AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
Trumka Jr. worked as general counsel and staff director for the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy since early 2019. Before that, he served as assistant attorney general in Maryland’s Consumer Protection Division.
In the last few years, the subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy has investigated various issues, including the safety of children’s booster seats, the electronic cigarette company JUUL, and Johnson & Johnson’s talc-based baby powder.
The CPSC is tasked with reviewing consumer safety issues for thousands of products. It is currently split with two Democratic and two Republican commissioners.
President Biden announced earlier in July that he will nominate Alexander Hoehn-Saric, who is currently Chief Counsel for Communications and Consumer Protection for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, to be the chair of the CPSC. President Biden also said on July 3 that he would nominate Mary Boyle, the current executive director of the CPSC, to be a commissioner.
The current acting chairman of the CPSC, Robert Adler, a Democrat, announced in February that he plans to retire at the end of his term in October. Elliot Kaye, another Democratic commissioner, is also set to depart in October.
Trumka Jr.’s father, Richard Trumka, died unexpectedly on Aug. 5. He led the AFL-CIO as its president and oversaw a federation of 56 labor unions representing 12.5 million people.
Trumka had mostly complimented President Biden’s efforts in the first six months of his presidency but has also criticized some actions, like canceling the Keystone XL pipeline project.
