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Sonderling Testifies at His Senate HELP Confirmation Hearing for Secretary of Labor, Jul. 16, 2026

July 16, 2026 · PBS NewsHour · 1:56:41

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What happened

Keith Sonderling testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on July 16, 2026, as President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, in PBS NewsHour’s live carry of the hearing — his third appearance before the committee, as he noted in his opening statement. Senators Rick Scott and Ashley Moody introduced him; Scott recounted appointing Sonderling to Florida’s Judicial Nomination Commission fourteen years earlier and his first-term Labor service overseeing, as Scott stated it, a record number of enforcement actions. Chairman Cassidy’s opening credited Sonderling’s record as he stated it: confirmed with bipartisan support as an EEOC Commissioner in 2020, author of the first Trump administration’s independent contractor policy at the Wage and Hour Division, and the joint-employer standard protecting a franchise model that employs over 9 million Americans, as the Chairman put the figure.

In his opening statement, Sonderling traced his own path — Florida labor and employment practice, senior policy adviser at Labor in 2017, head of one of the department’s largest enforcement agencies, EEOC Commissioner until 2024, adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School, head of the President’s labor transition team, then Deputy and Acting Secretary — and stated the administration’s record as he presented it: more than 900,000 private sector jobs created since President Trump took office, wages rising, and 401(k)s at record highs, as he stated the figures. He pledged to keep “restoring compliance assistance, pursuing rulemaking that replaces uncertainty with clarity, expanding retirement investment opportunities, promoting competition in prescription drug pricing, and helping more Americans start families,” and noted his work with Vice President Vance on the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, as he described it.

Questioning ranged across the department. Sonderling committed to Senator Collins to work with Secretaries Rubio and Mullin on technical assistance for religious-worker visas, and described the department’s new Center for Faith and its state-by-state religious-protections website. To Senator Murkowski, he detailed the H-2B lottery reform — breaking the two 33,000-visa tranches into three groups by time of need — and committed to the national registered apprenticeship program, as he stated the changes. To Senator Banks, he said the prior deconfliction memoranda barring ICE from workplaces where Labor was already present “has been withdrawn,” and that H-1B prevailing-wage rules are being fixed so foreign labor cannot undercut American workers, as he stated the policy. Senator Kim pressed him on proposed OSHA budget decreases; Sonderling answered that the department had hired over 90 new OSHA inspectors, as he stated the figure, and committed to full public disclosure of partners in the department’s proposed AI workforce hub. Chairman Cassidy closed by entering statements from over 80 organizations supporting the nomination into the record, as he stated the count; questions for the record were due July 17, 2026.

Why it matters

The hearing is the founding statement of Sonderling’s confirmed tenure: a nominee who had already run the department as Deputy and Acting Secretary presenting the full program — compliance assistance and regulatory clarity, apprenticeship expansion, H-program customer service, PBM and healthcare-price transparency through EBSA, and fraud elimination with the Vice President’s task force — that his October 5, 2026 debut speech as confirmed Secretary then began executing. The OSHA-budget and federal-union exchanges are the attributed criticism and contested record of the nomination, carried here as the senators stated them.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Sonderling’s confirmation commitments as he stated them on July 16, 2026 — the H-2B lottery reform and Office of Immigration Policy customer-service model, the withdrawn ICE deconfliction memoranda, the PBM transparency rule he called the most transparent in the industry’s history, the AI workforce hub’s public partner disclosure, and the record figures he claimed (900,000+ private sector jobs; 90+ new OSHA inspectors hired). Flagged for the scoreboard editor as promise-record material; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: PBS NewsHour, “Keith Sonderling testifies in confirmation hearing for labor secretary” (live carry, Jul. 16, 2026, embedded above; opening statement and testimony as delivered by Mr. Sonderling and members of the committee). Alternate carries of the same hearing (Forbes Breaking News, The Hill, and others) are recorded in the site index, not separately paged.