Trump’s Federal Labor Board Pick Has a History of Bigoted Statements

The appointee who went before the Senate oversaw a campus newspaper that regularly published prejudiced articles and images.

Sens. Rand Paul and Gary Peters.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Sen. Rand Paul and ranking member Gary Peters held Charlton Allen’s nomination hearing for general counsel at the Federal Labor Relations Authority. J. Scott Applewhite/AP

President Donald Trump’s pick to run the agency that oversees federal workers’ labor rights founded and ran a student newspaper that belittled and disparaged Black, LGBTQ+, Jewish groups and individuals, among others.

Charlton Allen, who Trump nominated to be general counsel at the Federal Labor Relations Authority, appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for his confirmation hearing Wednesday, alongside a dozen other nominees.

In 1993, while in law school at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Allen founded the Carolina Review as a conservative campus newspaper. His leadership and writing at the paper have raised concerns from federal employee groups whose labor disputes he would adjudicate.