Trump nominates economist at the Heritage Foundation as the new BLS commissioner
President Donald Trump announced he is nominating EJ Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, 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,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
The nomination comes after Trump fired the BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer earlier this month after the release of a weak jobs report.
Antoni has previously voiced concerns about revisions to the jobs data at BLS.
“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 posted on X earlier this month.
Key events
Closing summary
We are wrapping up our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but will be back at it on Tuesday. In the meantime, here are the latest developments:
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President Donald Trump has nominated conservative economist EJ Antoni to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency that is responsible for collecting and publishing the country’s employment and inflation figures. The nomination comes after Trump fired the BLS commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, earlier this month following the release of a weak jobs report which he claimed had been “rigged”.
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Trump has ordered the national guard to Washington DC and seized control of the city’s police force, describing a “lawless” city in ways that are sharply at odds with official crime statistics. The US president’s move was swiftly condemned as a “disgusting, dangerous and derogatory” assault on the political independence of a racially diverse city. The federal takeover is expected to be in effect for 30 days.
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Trump has once again delayed implementing sweeping tariffs on China, announcing another 90-day pause just hours before the last agreement between the world’s two largest economies was due to expire. On Monday, Trump signed an executive order extending the deadline for higher tariffs on China until 10 November.
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A federal judge in San Francisco on Monday began hearing evidence and arguments on whether the Trump administration violated federal law when it deployed national guard soldiers and US marines to Los Angeles after protests over immigration raids this summer. The Trump administration federalized California national guard members and sent them to the second-largest US city over the objections of the California governor, Gavin Newsom, and city leaders.
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Trump previewed his Friday meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, claiming he will know “probably in the first two minutes” whether a peace deal can be made. Trump confirmed that while Volodymyr Zelenskyy wouldn’t be a part of the summit, he would call him first as soon as he saw a “fair deal” for a ceasefire emerge. He also didn’t rule out the possibility of a future trading relationship with Russia.
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A federal judge rejected on Monday a request from the justice department to unseal the grand jury transcripts relating to the criminal investigation of Ghislaine Maxwell – Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. The judge wrote that the transcripts could not be released publicly – “casually or promiscuously” – as Trump’s government had pushed for because it would risk “unraveling the foundations of secrecy upon which the grand jury is premised”.
A federal judge has barred the Trump administration from withholding federal funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit created by Congress to promote democracy worldwide, The New York Times reports.
In a 15-page ruling, judge Dabney L Friedrich of the US District Court for the District of Columbia found that the administration withheld the money “for impermissible policy reasons,” causing the nonprofit irreparable harm, including layoffs of staff and the suspension of several democracy-promoting programs.
“These harms to the endowment’s global reputation and to the ‘very existence of its programs’ are irreparable,” judge Friedrich wrote. She ordered the release of $95m in federal funds to the nonprofit, roughly 30 percent of its annual budget.
My colleague Lauren Gambino and I are looking over the latest details on the nomination of EJ Antoni as the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Here’s what to know:
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Donald Trump nominated Antoni, the chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, after the president fired Erika McEntarfer earlier this month following the release of a weak jobs report which he claimed, without evidence, had been “rigged”.
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The Senate will have to confirm his nomination to lead the BLS, an independent agency under the labor department. The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that former White House adviser and rightwing provocateur Steve Bannon had advocated for Antoni’s nomination.
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In a statement on X, labor secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said Antoni would “provide the American people with fair and accurate economic data they can rely on”.
House Republicans on Monday backed Trump’s moves to take control of the DC police force and deploy the national guard in the capital.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chair James Comer said he will summon mayor Muriel Bowser, council chair Phil Mendelson, and attorney general Brian Schwalb to Capitol Hill next month for a hearing.
The public questioning would come as the 30-day expiration of Trump’s takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department approaches, which would require congressional action to extend.
“For years, the D.C. Council’s radical, soft-on-crime agenda has emboldened criminals and put public safety at risk in our nation’s capital,” Comer said in a statement.
According to a letter posted on X by the Republican-led Oversight Committee, the panel was notified of Trump’s plans to use the Metropolitan Police Department for federal purposes.
The Trump administration agreed to, again, delay the deadline when tariffs on Chinese imports would increase as discussions between the two countries continue.
The new deadline would be 10 November.
“All other elements of the Agreement will remain the same,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Chinese officials said earlier on Monday that they hoped the United States would strive for “positive” trade outcomes, as the 90-day detente reached between the two countries in May was due to expire.
Currently, US exports to China, one of the United States’ largest trading partners, are subject to tariffs of about 30%. Imports from China are subject to a baseline tariff of 10% and a 20% extra tariff in response to fentanyl smuggling allegations against China. Some products are taxed at higher rates.
Last week, new import taxes took effect on goods from dozens of countries. Prices in the United States have already begun to rise as existing tariffs on imports from China and other nations continue to ripple through the economy.
Michael Sainato reports on the latest pause in the planned increase of China tariffs:
Sam Levin
Trump spreads false narratives about DC crime – just as he did with LA
Donald Trump is deploying the national guard in Washington DC and seizing control of its police force, claiming that the nation’s capital has become “lawless” and is “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world”.
The president portrayed himself as DC’s savior, vowing to rid it of “crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse”.
He demanded unhoused people leave the city, or face eviction.
Trump’s portrayal of Washington DC, where he has been forced to reside as president, cutting short his time in his beloved Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, did not come as a surprise. He’s presented DC as a “nightmare of murder and crime” before, and already in February was reported to be mulling a law-enforcement crackdown.
Nor is it the only major American city in his crosshairs. “Los Angeles has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations,” Trump said in June, while deploying the national guard to quell protests there.
Just as Los Angeles in June wasn’t overrun with insurrectionist mobs – the protests were largely confined to a few city blocks – Trump’s portrayal of crime in Washington DC has little to do with facts, but instead, are rooted in false and misleading claims about crime and homelessness, experts say.
Read the full analysis by Sam Levin here:
Chris Stein
‘Red meat to throw to his base’: DC residents on Trump’s police takeover
As Donald Trump convened reporters at the White House on Monday morning to announce his plans for sending the national guard on to Washington DC streets and taking over the police department, protesters gathered a block away to denounce what they saw as his plans to put the federal district under his thumb.
“Nothing Trump is doing right now is about our safety,” Keya Chatterjee, executive director of Free DC, a group advocating for the city’s autonomy, told the 200 or so people gathered on a block of 16th Street Northwest that had once been called Black Lives Matter Plaza, before the city government ordered the name stripped shortly after Trump’s inauguration this year.
“What we know from history is that authoritarians always want to control the capital and the people in the capital city. It’s because it’s the fastest way to silence dissent and to accelerate their agenda. And I want to be clear, this is not about crime. This is about what Trump is trying to do to DC in order to take over DC and silence us.”
Lamont Mitchell was not so sure. A lifelong Washingtonian who resides among the poorer and more crime-stricken neighborhoods east of the Anacostia river, he regarded Trump’s plans for the homeless as “inhumane”, but was open to his ideas for making the city’s streets safer. Mitchell described how he avoids certain areas on his drive home for fear of being struck by a stray bullet, no longer walks down certain blocks, had his RV stolen and plans to buy a gun.
“As a senior in Washington, I need to feel safe,” said 69-year-old Mitchell, who chairs the Anacostia Coordinating Council community organization. “We gotta take drastic action when drastic action is called for.”
Read the full story by The Guardian’s Chris Stein here:
Trump nominates economist at the Heritage Foundation as the new BLS commissioner
President Donald Trump announced he is nominating EJ Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, 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,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
The nomination comes after Trump fired the BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer earlier this month after the release of a weak jobs report.
Antoni has previously voiced concerns about revisions to the jobs data at BLS.
“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 posted on X earlier this month.
The CDC has tightened security following an attack on Friday on its Atlanta headquarters that left a police officer and the gunman dead, Reuters reports.
Measures include having most employees work from home this week and removing vehicle decals showing where they work.
Both local and federal law enforcement are “conducting intensive monitoring of all potential threats to CDC and its staff,” the agency’s acting chief operating officer Christa Capozzola in an email to staff over the weekend.
An “all-staff” meeting on Tuesday will become a virtual-only event, CDC director Susan Monarez said in a separate email, according to the news wire. She said teams were working to determine “our workplace posture” moving forward.
A union representing CDC employees demanded that the federal government condemn vaccine misinformation after it was known that the shooter blamed the Covid-19 vaccination for making him depressed and suicidal.
In a statement, Mike Zamore, the ACLU’s national director of policy and government affairs, called Donald Trump’s actions to federalise the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington an “assault on our fundamental freedoms”.
“He is using the word ‘emergency’ as a blank check for asserting federal control whenever it suits his agenda – abusing emergency powers while militarizing our communities and endangering the very people he is sworn to protect”, said Zamore.
Monica Hopkins, the executive director of the ACLU of DC, called the move “political theater and a blatantly phony justification for abuse of emergency powers.”
Hopkins added: “The president foreshadowed that if these heavy-handed tactics take root here, they will be rolled out to other majority-Black and Brown cities, like Chicago, Oakland, and Baltimore, across the country. That should alarm everyone, not just Washingtonians”.
The DC Council, the chief policy-making authority for the district, issued a statement calling Trump’s move to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department “unwarranted” and “a manufactured intrusion on local authority.”
“Violent crime in the District is at the lowest rates we’ve seen in 30 years,” the statement said.
“Federalizing the Metropolitan Police Department is unwarranted because there is no Federal emergency. Further, the National Guard has no public safety training or knowledge of local laws. The Guard’s role does not include investigating or solving crimes in the District. Calling out the National Guard is an unnecessary deployment with no real mission,” added the council.
President Donald Trump said on Monday he met with Intel Corp’s chief executive Lip-Bu Tan, along with commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and treasury secretary Scott Bessent.
“The meeting was a very interesting one,” Trump said on Truth Social. “Mr. Tan and my Cabinet members are going to spend time together, and bring suggestions to me during the next week.”
Trump’s remarks come just days after he called on the chief executive to resign, alleging Tan had ties to the Chinese Communist party.
Trump plans to impose a 100% tariff on imported computer chips, a move experts warn could lead companies to pull back on production or raise prices, but could favor Intel as a US-based semiconductor firm.
Tan had invested in hundreds of Chinese firms, some of which were linked to the Chinese military, Reuters reported in April.
Over the weekend, more details emerged about the fatal attack on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that took place on Friday, killing a police officer. In case you missed it:
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We reported that the shooter had blamed a Covid-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal. The suspect’s father contacted police and said his son was upset about the death of his dog, and had also become fixated on the Covid-19 vaccine.
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A union representing CDC employees demanded that the federal government condemn vaccine misinformation after it was known that the shooter blamed the Covid-19 vaccine. The CDC workers’ union said the deadly violence was not random and “compounds months of mistreatment, neglect, and vilification that CDC staff have endured”. It said vaccine misinformation had put scientists at risk.
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The Georgia Bureau of Investigation named Patrick Joseph White as the shooter. After firing shots at the CDC campus near Emory University on Friday, White was found dead on the second floor of the pharmacy building.
Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has recently discussed diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine with secretary of state Marco Rubio.
On Monday, Yermak said in a post on X that Rubio was briefed “on active communications with our partners,” including a meeting with US vice-president JD Vance.
“We coordinated our positions ahead of important diplomatic steps planned for this week,” Yermak said in the post. “For Ukraine, the priority is a just and lasting peace, which requires an unconditional ceasefire as a prerequisite for substantive negotiations, as well as increased pressure on Russia to take real steps in this direction.”
The post comes after UK foreign secretary David Lammy and Vance held a meeting with Ukrainian and European partners in Britain over the weekend, where leaders discussed the drive for peace in Ukraine.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are slated to meet on Friday in Alaska to discuss ways forward to end the years-long war.
CNN is reporting that national guard troops in the nation’s capital deployed by the Trump administration are not expected to openly carry rifles.
An army official told the news outlet that troops will most likely have weapons nearby, like inside their trucks, if they absolutely need to access them for purposes of self-defense.
Still, the official said it is always a possibility that troops could be ordered to operate differently.
Lauren Gambino
Gavin Newsom tried to play nice with Maga. But then in June, Donald Trump sent the national guard to LA, to quell immigration protests following Ice raids on the city, and the California governor went scorched-earth on the new administration.
Since then Newsom’s social media exchanges with Trump and his White House have taunted and trolled, factchecked and alarm-sounded.
Following Trump’s announcement on Monday that he’s activating the National Guard in the nation’s capital and taking over Washington’s police department, Newsom’s social media team set to work.
Newsom warned in one post that other cities were next (and reminded followers that he had predicted this might happen back in June.)
He was just getting warmed up in Los Angeles.
He will gaslight his way into militarizing any city he wants in America.
This is what dictators do. https://t.co/IPvx9Hrp0q
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) August 11, 2025
His press office grabbed a screenshot of the Trump officials looking bewildered.
The team continued its full-frontal social assault, peppering Trump with tweets on the DC takeover, tariffs and his partisan redistricting plan. They deployed a Taco tariffs meme (Trump always chickens out) in response to the news that Trump and China extended their truce for another 90 days. They questioned how Attorney General Pam Bondi, who they said “couldn’t find the Epstein files” might fare as the head of the newly installed DC police department.
They even fired off a Trump-style all-caps missive warning that California would redistrict if he did not call on Texas to stand down.
Following the DC mayor’s press conference, here’s a recap of the day so far
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Donald Trump is launching a federal takeover of DC Metropolitan police department (MPD), and deploying 800 national guardsmen to assist local law enforcement. He declared crime in the city “public safety emergency” in a press conference earlier, invoking a section of the DC Home Rule Act which places MPD under federal control. It’s expected to last 30 days, according to the White House.
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DC’s mayor Muriel Bowser said today that her office plans to comply and cooperate with federal government, but noted there are questions about the “subjectivity” of the emergency declaration. DC has seen a notable drop in violent crime, and even saw a record 30-year low in 2024, according to the justice department.
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Beyond Washington, Trump also previewed his Friday meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, claiming he will know “probably in the first two minutes” whether a peace deal can be made. Trump confirmed that while Volodymyr Zelenskyy wouldn’t be a part of the summit, he would call him first as soon as he saw a “fair deal” for a ceasefire emerge. He also didn’t rule out the possibility of a future trading relationship with Russia.
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And while the ongoing redistricting battle across the US wasn’t the main story of the day, California governor Gavin Newsom said that he will be “forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states” in a letter to Donald Trump. Newsom said he would be left with no choice if the president can’t get governor Greg Abbott to drop his push to redraw Texas’ congressional maps mid-decade.
In a statement, Democratic congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who serves as the House minority leader, said that the president’s plan to federalise the DC police department and deploy the National Guard had “has no basis in law and will put the safety of the people of our Nation’s capital in danger”.
He added:
The violent crime rate in Washington DC is at a 30-year low. Donald Trump doesn’t care about public safety. On his first day in office, he pardoned hundreds of violent felons – many of whom brazenly assaulted law enforcement officers on January 6. We stand with the residents of the District of Columbia and reject this unjustified power grab as illegitimate.
On the president’s statements earlier that he would be comfortable bringing the military into DC if he deems it necessary, Muriel Bowser says that “we don’t believe it’s legal to use the American military against American citizens on American soil”.
Trump did, however, bring in out-of-state, unfederalised national guard troops during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
Bowser does note that she suspected that the national guard would be deployed, but had no prior knowledge of the federal takeover of the Metropolitan police department.
