Labor Secretary Resigns Amid Scandals, and F.B.I. Director Sues Over Drinking Claims

Hey, it's Ben Fruman, editor-in-chief of Wirecutter. We put together the ultimate moving guide, and I wanted to find out a few of our writer's favorite tips. When you're first moving into your home, make sure that you change the batteries in your smoke detector. Buy a mattress bag. You can carry a mattress more easily because the handles are built in, and it's going to protect your mattress from the truck and the street. Make sure you have towels on hand. You don't want to end up taking a shower and using a dirty sock to dry off. Yeah. If you're getting ready to move, let Wirecutter help you make a plan at nytimes.com slash moving. From The New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, April 21st. Here's what we're covering. In a major shakeup for President Trump's Cabinet, the Secretary of Labor has resigned as multiple scandals and investigations closed in on her. Lori Chavez-Derimer, a former Congresswoman from Oregon, has been under investigation by the Labor Department's Inspector General, which was looking into claims of widespread misconduct by her, her family, and her staff. There's also been a parallel inquiry by Congress, and together they've surfaced a range of embarrassing accusations. Chavez-Derimer was accused of having an affair with a member of her security detail. There were allegations that she and her staff used taxpayer dollars for personal trips, spending money on fancy hotels and SUV rentals, and text messages reviewed by The Times suggested she was drinking during the workday. Beyond that, staff members filed civil rights complaints describing a hostile work environment, and her aides allegedly tried to steer federal grants to favored political operatives. In addition to Chavez-Derimer's own conduct, the investigations were looking into personal text messages that her father and husband were sending to young female staffers at the department. According to people familiar with the inquiry, the labor secretary told some of the women to, quote, pay attention to the men. Earlier this year, Chavez-Derimer's husband was barred from the agency's DC headquarters after being accused of making unwanted sexual advances. Allegations his lawyer says are false. In response to questions about her resignation, one of Chavez-Derimer's lawyers said she, quote, did not resign because she violated the law. No such finding exists. And a White House spokesman said she had, quote, done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers. The deputy labor secretary, Keith Sonderling, will now step up in an acting capacity. Multiple employees told the Times he's already effectively been doing the job since the secretary was almost never at the office. Chavez-Derimer is now the fourth senior cabinet official to step down or be fired in President Trump's second term. Republican Senator Tom Tillis told reporters that he thinks Congress needs to do a better job of vetting administration nominees. He said, quote, where benefit of the doubt was given in the past, you've got to doubt. Meanwhile, a flurry of accusations has engulfed another top Trump administration official. Cash Patel, the director of the FBI, sued The Atlantic yesterday, accusing the magazine of defamation after it published an article saying he drinks excessively and has had unexplained absences from his job. The article cited more than two dozen anonymous sources who said Patel drinks to the point of obvious intoxication, including at members-only clubs in D.C. and Vegas, and said his conduct has alarmed his colleagues. In Patel's lawsuit, which asks for $250 million in damages, he accused The Atlantic of printing obviously fabricated allegations and said the FBI had been given less than two hours to respond to a list of 19 claims. Later today, Vice President J.D. Vance is expected to fly to Pakistan for potential peace talks with Iran. There's less than 24 hours to go until the current ceasefire expires. Publicly, Iran is trying to send the signals that their participation is not a given. Privately, we are hearing that Iranian officials are still planning to try to make it to the talks in Pakistan this week. My colleague, Erica Solomon, has been covering the war. She says Iranian officials know that getting a deal is critical to end the attacks and potentially rollback years of crippling sanctions, even if their public statements don't always reflect that. Experts that I've spoken to are saying that there are two main pressures that are driving this kind of mixed messaging we're hearing from Iranian officials. One is internal. There is a huge, very emboldened base in Iran that feels like they won this war. They survived U.S. and Israeli bombardments and Israeli bombardment. They managed to basically close the Strait of Hormuz to the global oil trade. They're going out waving rifles, flags, and they've been saying like no surrender, no capitulation. This is the base that kind of underpins the government. They have to find a solution that makes these people feel like they're not just giving up. The second and most argued more important issue is President Trump himself. He has been putting out a lot of threatening statements, vowing that he could go forward with bombing the country's infrastructure. So they feel like Trump is trying to push them into a corner and they don't even fully trust yet that the Americans are actually going to negotiate in good faith. They still have a little bit of anxiety. They could get attacked by Israel as a United States while they're heading to negotiations or on their way back. So the trust is so incredibly low from the Iranian perspective. It's just, it's hard to exaggerate, you know, just how wary they are in spite of the fact that they very much want to go to talks and make a deal. As the war stretches into its eighth week, the headlines is taking your questions about the conflict, on the negotiations, the straight-up or moves, what it means for the Gulf, what it means for the world. You can send us them at the headlines at nytimes.com. On April 21st, vote no on partisan gerrymandering. In Virginia, voters have been getting bombarded by messaging around redistricting, redrawing the state's election map. Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy, but right now they are under threat. The political battle has been supercharged with even former President Obama weighing in, urging Virginians to support a Democratic-led redistricting effort that's up for a vote today. This is all an escalation of the map fight that President Trump kicked off last year, when he urged red states to redraw districts to give the GOP a boost. Lawmakers in Texas, Missouri, and other states did that, and since then, Democrats have been fighting fire with fire. In Virginia, for example, if their referendum passes, Democrats could potentially pick up four extra seats in Congress. Nationwide, it's not clear where the dust will settle. It's possible with all the tit for tat that the number of shifting seats will come out as a draw for the two parties. What the high-profile redistricting fight has done, though, is change the conversation around gerrymandering. Even Obama himself criticized it in the past, but now many lawmakers and voters are calling it a necessary evil. Essentially, if the other side's going to do it, so are we. Apple announced yesterday that its CEO, Tim Cook, will step down after nearly 15 years running the company, during which time he helped make the iPhone absolutely ubiquitous. With Cook at the helm, Apple became the first public company worth $1 trillion. That number is now $4 trillion. But he could never quite get out of the shadow of the company's legendary founder, Steve Jobs. And he faced years of questions about whether Apple would be able to follow up the iPhone with other revolutionary new products. In recent years, the company has grown by leaning more into services like Apple Pay and iCloud, along with raising the prices of its devices. Investors have also worried about its long-term strategy for AI. The company has largely stayed on the sidelines, as the rest of Silicon Valley has gone all in on the technology. Cook will officially move into a new role at Apple in September, executive chairman, and the company has chosen John Ternes to take over as CEO. He's the head of hardware engineering at Apple, and a relative unknown outside the company. The same pressures that Cook faced to create something new and big are set to follow Ternes into the role. With one former longtime Apple employee telling the Times, he will have to, quote, find a way to have Apple make products that make a dent in the universe again. And finally, I'm just here to let you know that I am now in charge of InfoWars. It's an honor to take over the reins and chart a new path towards the future. The Onion, the satirical news outlet, has a new plan to take control of InfoWars, the right-wing conspiracy website. The fate of InfoWars has been in limbo since its founder, Alex Jones, was ordered to pay over a billion dollars in defamation suits for falsely claiming the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax. He declared bankruptcy, leading to the sell-off of assets. At that point, the Onion, best known for headlines like, Study Reveals Babies Are Stupid, or Wealthy Teen Nearly Experiences Consequences, put in a bid to take over the InfoWars brand. Jones has been fighting that ever since. He's continued to operate the website and host its flagship program, the Alex Jones Show. But now, the Onion's got a licensing deal on the works with the court-appointed administrator of the site that would give it the InfoWars domain and the name. The Onion wants to relaunch it as a platform that skewers the kind of fringe conspiracy theories that Jones became famous for, and plans to share proceeds with the Sandy Hook families. The chief executive of the Onion's parent company said, quote, We are excited to lie constantly for cold hard cash, but this time in a cool way, and we'll make sure some of it gets back to the families. Those are the headlines. Again, we are taking your questions about the war with Iran. You can send them to us at the headlines at nytimes.com. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow. .