President Trump on Tuesday withdrew the nomination of E.J. Antoni to serve as the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after ousting the previous head of the agency over criticism of jobs data.
Trump had announced in August that he would nominate Antoni, a top economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Heritage Foundation confirmed late Tuesday that Antoni was returning to his role with the think tank.
It is undeniable that BLS needs reform and @RealEJAntoni was the right man for the job,” Heritage President Kevin Roberts posted on X. “E.J. will keep calling for that reform and serving the interests of the American people from his invaluable role as chief economist at @Heritage.”
A White House official in a statement called Antoni a “brilliant economist and an American patriot that will continue to do good work on behalf of our great country.”
“President Trump is committed to fixing the longstanding failures at the BLS that have undermined the public’s trust in critical economic data,” the official said. “The president plans to announce a new nominee very soon.”
Antoni had in the past expressed skepticism about the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He was among those who urged Trump to fire the previous commissioner, Erika McEntarfer.
Trump had in early August ordered the firing of McEntarfer, a Biden White House appointee who was confirmed with a large bipartisan majority in the Senate in 2024. The move came after the August jobs report showed lower-than-expected hiring in July and major downward revisions to the jobs reports from May and June.
In addition to concerns from Democrats and economists that Antoni could politicize jobs data or withhold it entirely, CNN’s KFile earlier this month reported that Antoni ran a since-deleted social media account that made inflammatory posts about gay people and Trump critics.
CNN, which first reported that Antoni’s nomination was being withdrawn, also reported that Antoni may have run into difficulty securing the support of Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), potentially imperiling his path to confirmation.
