Trump wants more skilled tradespeople. His Labor Department is trying to cut off a pipeline of workers

Chloe Lawson

Eighteen months ago, at around 7 p.m. practically every night, Chloe Lawson would start a four-mile walk to Subway, where she’d work the overnight shift, earning a buck above the $7.25 federal minimum wage. Eight hours later, the then 19-year-old would clock out and head back to find somewhere to hopefully get some sleep. She had no family, no friends she could stay with in Splendora, Texas, a small town outside Houston. She often found herself at “some shady hotel” or other unsafe places. “I honestly didn’t have a future,” she said. That’s changed in the year and a half since: Lawson, now 21, has interviews lined up to be a train conductor, a job that starts out with an $80,000 annual salary and could open the door for other higher-earning positions in the years to come. But the vocational training program that got her and many others into better jobs is suddenly in jeopardy.