Over the last week, the Trump administration has put forward its nominees for Assistant Secretary for both the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Health and Safety Administration (MSHA).
Wayne Palmer, Nominated Assistant Secretary for MSHA
Wayne Palmer is a returning figure to the Trump administration as, during Trump’s first term, Wayne Palmer served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the agency. Prior to his tenure at the Trump administration, Palmer served as the Executive Vice President of the Essential Minerals Associations, a trade association that represents the interests of companies that mine or process minerals that are critical to manufacturing, energy, agriculture, infrastructure, transportation, and technology interests. Palmer served as an Advisor to the Industry Trade Advisory Committee on Critical Minerals & Nonferrous Metals at the Department of Commerce from 2023 to 2025. He was a senior manager of congressional relations at the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition and spent numerous years as a congressional staffer, including as chief of staff to then Senate Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Penn State and a Master of Government Administration from the University of Pennsylvania.
David Keeling, Nominated Assistant Secretary for OSHA
David Keeling began his career as a member of the Teamsters union at UPS in 1985, eventually becoming Vice President of Global Health and Safety from March 2018 to July 2021. Most recently, he served as Director of Global Road and Transportation Safety at Amazon from July 2021 to May 2023. “I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to President Trump for nominating me to be the next OSHA administrator at the U.S. Department of Labor,” Keeling said in a post on LinkedIn.
Palmer and Keeling will likely appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee and make it out of Committee before a full Senate confirmation vote. However, the Senate confirmed MSHA’s last Assistant Secretary of Labor without a hearing. Confirmation hearings for Palmer and Keeling have yet to be scheduled.