Back in August, Donald Trump nominated Project 2025 writer EJ Antoni to rig the jobs numbers for him at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But in another TACO spell, Trump has caved to nearly universal criticism of that choice and pulled Antoni’s name from consideration:
The White House is withdrawing the nomination of E.J. Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics amid criticism of the pick from across the political spectrum.
…Antoni’s appointment was particularly worrisome to economists and statisticians who said he lacked the qualifications to serve as BLS commissioner. Staffing shortages and declining survey response rates were already creating uncertainty about the agency’s trajectory, and Antoni’s track record as a partisan bomb thrower only heightened concern among professional economists and top Democrats about the potential for political manipulation that would undermine the credibility of BLS’s reports.
…Antoni received his PhD in economics in 2020 and spent the bulk of his relatively short career at conservative think tanks including the Heritage and Texas Public Policy Foundation. He was a fixture on conservative talk radio and podcasts — including Steve Bannon’s “War Room” — and frequently writes pro-Trump commentary on topics ranging from immigration and housing to international trade and the Department of Government Efficiency.
His nomination quickly ran into trouble after it emerged that he’d called for the agency to pause releases of critical employment data — something that even allies like former Trump adviser Stephen Moore cautioned against.
Democrats also panned his nomination after reports surfaced that he was present at the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. He was also accused of having controlled a social media account that sexually denigrated former Vice President Kamala Harris [Meredith Lee Hill, Sam Sutton, and Lawrence Ukenye, “White House Withdraws E.J. Antoni’s Nomination to Lead BLS,” Politico, 2025.09.30].
Of course, Trump doesn’t need to put a political hack in charge of the Bureau of Labor Statistics to suppress unpleasant facts about the labor market; he can just keep failing to take his job seriously and let the federal government shut down.