by WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — Following a poor employment report earlier this month, President Donald Trump abruptly fired the previous statistician and selected conservative economist E.J. Antoni to take over as head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Our economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE,” Trump said when he announced the choice late Monday on his Truth Social platform.
The former BLS commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate 86-6 in January 2024 after being nominated by former President Joe Biden in 2023, has come under heavy fire from Antoni, an economist at the far-right Heritage Foundation. The bureau keeps tabs on employment and other national economic indicators.
Trump dismissed McEntarfer hours after accusing him of rigging the most recent employment report, which was released on August 1, without offering any supporting proof.
The monthly data states that the economy only added 73,000 jobs in July. Additionally, the BLS drastically reduced the previously estimated 291,000 for May and June to 33,000 for both months. After the agency obtains fresh data from government agencies and corporations, previous reports are frequently revised.
Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve and a Trump appointment, stated last month that U.S. economic data collecting is sometimes referred to as the gold standard.
Trump’s decision to fire McEntarfer drew criticism, even from his own former BLS commissioner.
Trump appointed William Beach to head BLS in 2017, and he told CNN that McEntarfer’s dismissal was unjustified.
Beach stated in the Aug. 3 interview that BLS data is more accurate today than it was thirty years ago.
Antoni stated that BLS data gathering is out of date during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s WarRoom podcast on August 4.
He said to Bannon, “You need someone who is willing to completely revamp it.”
Antoni wrote on X shortly after Trump’s victory in November that DOGE must bring a chainsaw to BLS.
The president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, stated on Tuesday that Trump’s nomination of Antoni was a brilliant move.
According to a statement from Roberts, EJ Antoni is among the country’s most astute economic thinkers and a brave truth-teller who understands that good economics must benefit American families, not transnational elites. His guidance as The Heritage Foundation’s chief economist has been crucial to furthering our goal of safeguarding American families and reestablishing a robust, free-enterprise-based economy.
Prior to Trump’s election victory, the Heritage Foundation released sProject 2025, an approximately 900-page far-right plan to restructure government institutions, to which Antoni contributed.
With a Republican majority in the Senate at the moment (53–47), Antoni will require Senate approval.
Senior member and former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Sen. Patty Murray, denounced Antoni as an unqualified right-wing radical who will stop at nothing to manipulate BLS data and undermine the agency’s integrity in order to appease Trump.
The integrity of our country’s best economic and employment data, which form the foundation of our whole economy, will be destroyed if any senator votes to approve this partisan hack. The Washington state Democrat stated in a statement on Tuesday that if E.J. Antoni is confirmed, “I hope Republicans like playing pretend, because that’s all BLS data will become.”
The committee, which is chaired by Senator Bill Cassidy, will be responsible for bringing Antoni’s nomination to the whole Senate. As of Tuesday at 3 p.m. Eastern, Cassidy of Louisiana had neither an X feed nor a statement on Antoni uploaded.
