President Donald Trump has named a Project 2025 architect to replace the labor statistics chief he fired earlier this month, after receiving a disappointing jobs report.
Trump is nominating E.J. Antoni, a top economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to serve as the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE,” the president announced Monday on Truth Social. “I know E.J. Antoni will do an incredible job in this new role.”
Antoni, who contributed to the Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025 initiative, had the backing of MAGA hardliners, including Steve Bannon. As a longtime skeptic of BLS data, Antoni is in step with Trump’s line of attack on the agency.
The president baselessly accused the last BLS commissioner, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, of manipulating numbers after the July jobs report showed U.S. employers added far fewer jobs than expected. The report also revised May and June figures downward by a sharp 258,000.
Trump fired McEntarfer on Aug. 1, only hours after Antoni bashed her as “incompetent” and called for new leadership at the agency. McEntarfer was appointed under the Biden administration in January 2024, after a bipartisan Senate vote.
Economists condemned the firing, warning that it could erode trust in U.S. economic statistics and mark a dangerous encroachment on democratic norms and data integrity.
Former BLS commissioner William Beach, whom Trump appointed in his first term, decried McEntarfer’s dismissal as “damaging” and said periodic revisions are common.
Antoni, however, argued that the BLS had already lost credibility and appeared to preview his agenda in an X post last week.
“There are better ways to collect, process, and disseminate data—that is the task for the next BLS commissioner, and only consistent delivery of accurate data in a timely manner will rebuild the trust that has been lost over the last several years,” Antoni wrote.
Notably, he continued to cite BLS data in his economic commentary on X.
While Trump outright claims that McEntarfer “rigged” BLS numbers, Antoni’s criticism has focused on the large revisions the job reports have and the falling response rates to BLS surveys.
He indirectly contradicted Trump’s insistence that the economy is “booming” when he addressed the downward revisions while speaking on Bannon’s podcast.
“There’s clearly a negative bias in the revisions, which means there’s a positive bias in the initial numbers. In other words, we get an overly optimistic report, and then we later find out that it wasn’t that great. And so now we see that for the last several months, most of the jobs that we thought we were adding didn’t actually exist,” he said, noting that the downward revisions occurred during the Biden administration as well.
Antoni, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from Northern Illinois University, contributed to Project 2025, the ultraconservative blueprint to overhaul the federal government that became so controversial even Trump sought to distance himself from it on the campaign trail last year.
However, the president has implemented a number of strategies Project 2025 had laid out since taking office.
Antoni now faces confirmation by the Republican-controlled Senate.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on Trump’s nomination.
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