{"id":312496,"date":"2025-08-02T17:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T17:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/312496\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T17:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T17:50:09","slug":"republicans-slam-trumps-firing-of-bureau-of-labor-statistics-chief-republicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/312496\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans slam Trump\u2019s firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics chief | Republicans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senior Republican<\/a> lawmakers are condemning the decision of their party leader, Donald Trump<\/a>, to fire<\/a> the leading US labor market statistician after a report that showed the national economy added just 73,000 jobs \u2013 far fewer than expected \u2013 in July.<\/p>\n

The disappointing figures \u2013 coupled with a downward revision of the two previous months amounting to 258,000 fewer jobs and data showing that economic output and consumer spending slowed in the first half of the year \u2013 point to an overall economic deterioration in the US.<\/p>\n

Trump defended his decision to fire US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner Erika McEntarfer. Without evidence to back his claims, the president wrote on social media<\/a> that were numbers were \u201cRIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad\u201d and the US economy was, in fact, \u201cBOOMING\u201d on his watch.<\/p>\n

But the firing of McEntarfer, who had been confirmed to her role in January 2024 during Joe Biden\u2019s presidency, has alarmed members of Trump\u2019s own party.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the president is firing the statistician because he doesn\u2019t like the numbers but they are accurate, then that\u2019s a problem,\u201d said Wyoming Republican senator Cynthia Lummis. \u201cIt\u2019s not the statistician\u2019s fault if the numbers are accurate and that they\u2019re not what the president had hoped for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lummis added that if the numbers are unreliable, the public should be told \u2013 but firing McEntarfer was \u201ckind of impetuous\u201d.<\/p>\n

North Carolina senator Thom Tillis, a Republican, said: \u201cIf she was just fired because the president or whoever decided to fire the director just \u2026 because they didn\u2019t like the numbers, they ought to grow up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kentucky senator Rand Paul, another Republican, questioned whether McEntarfer\u2019s firing was an effective way of improving the numbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to look somewhere for objective statistics,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen the people providing the statistics are fired, it makes it much harder to make judgments that you know, the statistics won\u2019t be politicized.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to NBC News<\/a>, Paul said his \u201cfirst impression\u201d was that \u201cyou can\u2019t really make the numbers different or better by firing the people doing the counting\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tillis and Paul were both opponents of Trump\u2019s recent economic legislative package, which the president dubbed the \u201cbig, beautiful bill\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who supported the legislation after winning substantial economic support for her state, remarked that the jobs numbers could not be trusted \u2013 and \u201cthat\u2019s the problem\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when you fire people, then it makes people trust them even less,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

William Beach, a former BLS commissioner appointed by Trump in his first presidency, posted on X <\/a>that McEntarfer\u2019s firing was \u201ctotally groundless\u201d. He added that the dismissal set a dangerous precedent and undermined the BLS\u2019s statistical mission.<\/p>\n

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Beach also co-signed a letter<\/a> by \u201cthe Friends of the Bureau of Labor Statistics\u201d that went further, accusing Trump of seeking to blame someone for bad news and calling the rationale for McEntarfer\u2019s firing \u201cwithout merit\u201d.<\/p>\n

The letter asserted that the dismissal \u201cundermines the credibility of federal economic statistics that are a cornerstone of intelligent economic decision-making by businesses, families and policymakers\u201d.<\/p>\n

The letter pointed out that the jobs tabulation process \u201cis decentralized by design to avoid opportunities for interference\u201d, adding that US official statistics \u201care the gold standard globally\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen leaders of other nations have politicized economic data, it has destroyed public trust in all official statistics and in government science,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n

Democrats have also hit out at Trump\u2019s decision. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders described it as \u201cthe sign of an authoritarian type\u201d, and he said the decision would make it harder for the American people \u201cto believe the information that comes out of the government\u201d.<\/p>\n

Paul Schroeder, executive director of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, described the president\u2019s allegation against McEntarfer as \u201cvery damaging and outrageous\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cNot only does it undermine the integrity of federal economic statistics, but it also politicizes data which need to remain independent and trustworthy. This action is a grave error by the administration and one that will have ramifications for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senior Republican lawmakers are condemning the decision of their party leader, Donald Trump, to fire the leading US…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3090],"tags":[51,1700,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-312496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114960441297527827","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}