Press Releases

WASHINGTON – Today, Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) sent follow-up letters to White House Chief of Staff Jeffrey Zients and Department of Labor (DOL) Acting Secretary Julie Su inquiring about workplace safety protocols at the White House following 12 dog bite incidents involving President Biden’s dog, Commander. Neither the White House nor DOL responded to Chairwoman Foxx’s letter from October 11, 2023, in which she raised concerns about the White House not following the law or providing a safe working environment for its employees. 
 
In the letter to Zients, Foxx writes: “The Committee has an interest in ensuring that the White House is meeting the expectations it sets for the private sector. I wrote my initial letter in response to several widely reported biting incidents involving the President’s dog, Commander. … The White House should not have a ‘rules for thee, but not for me’ attitude toward workplace safety. … These incidents raise the concern that there are other workplace injuries at the White House that have evaded scrutiny.”  

In the letter to Su, Foxx writes: “Your failure to respond leads me to believe the administration is interested in avoiding the exact sort of public scrutiny that it wants to place on private employers. It is telling that the administration would dismiss concerns about requiring the publication of data from these [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] forms in order to name and shame private businesses, but then it fails to provide the same information on the [Executive Office of the President] to the congressional committee overseeing implementation of the [Occupational Safety and Health Act].”
 
To read the full letter to Zients, click here. 
To read the full letter to Su, click here.
 

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