"Completely unqualified." "An extreme partisan." "Disastrously terrible."
I'm not talking about President Donald Trump, but his new pick to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)—you know, that wonky, historically nonpartisan agency that Trump is waging war against because he didn't like their recent data drop showing weak job growth a few months into his second term. The guy Trump nominated, EJ Antoni, is—brace yourself—an architect of Project 2025 and a conservative economist at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which famously published the more than 900-page roadmap to a second Trump term.
As I explain in a new piece just published, a review of some of Antoni's recent public statements and writings suggest that, if confirmed, he will likely remake BLS in Trump's image:
In his other writings for the Heritage Foundation website, Antoni has alleged Biden’s DOL shared unreliable jobs data, even though there is no evidence to support that. He called criticisms of Trump’s tariffs “overblown and unfounded,” even though major banks have said they create a higher likelihood of recession and economists have estimated they will cost the average US household thousands of dollars per year. He praised the work of DOGE, despite the havoc the DOGE bros wreaked across government. And Antoni has claimed immigrants are stealing jobs from American-born workers and that Trump’s mass deportation policies would raise wages and create more jobs, even though experts say they will tank the GDP and decimate industries including agriculture, health care, and construction, as my colleague Isabela Dias previously reported.
All that does not even include Project 2025's crazy ideas for how to inject the administration's obsession with pronatalism into BLS, and Antoni's plans, if confirmed to run the agency, for the monthly jobs report that so triggered Trump. To learn those details, you'll have to read the full piece.
—Julianne McShane
