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Trump Withdraws Nomination Of Top BLS Official Amid Critical Blast

President Donald Trump is now withdrawing the nomination of the Heritage Foundation's E.J. Antoni to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

That's according to a Tuesday article in CNN, which reported that the White House has officially submitted its withdrawal paperwork to the U.S. Senate, where Antoni is awaiting formal confirmation. While the White House hasn't officially given a reason for its decision, CNN reported that it may be due to revelations that Antoni administered a secret social media account in which he repeatedly made derogatory remarks about top Democrats and minorities.

CNN reported earlier this month that Antoni was confirmed to be behind an account named "phdofbombsaway" that had been named "ErwinJohnAntoni" up until 2019. That account shared posts implying former Vice President Kamala Harris performed sexual favors to advance her political career, and that referred to Christine Blasey Ford — who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of assaulting her when he was in high school – as "Miss Piggy." At the time, the White House stood by Antoni.

"President Trump has nominated Dr. EJ Antoni to fix the issues at the BLS and restore trust in the jobs reports," White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said earlier this month. "Dr. Antoni has the experience and credentials needed to restore solution-oriented leadership at the BLS — solutions that will prioritize increasing survey response rates and modernizing data collection methods to improve the BLS’s accuracy."

Antoni was nominated to replace former BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer, who Trump fired after the August jobs report showed anemic job growth and issued revisions lowering job growth estimates from previous jobs reports (a common occurrence, as employer surveys tend to trickle in over time). The White House alleged without evidence that McEntarfer had been purposefully publishing weak jobs numbers in order to embarrass the administration.

As of Tuesday evening, Congress has been so far unable to pass a bill to keep government agencies funded beyond September 30, meaning a federal government shutdown is imminent. This means that the BLS will not be publishing an October jobs report next Friday. And even if Congress manages to pass a funding bill and end a shutdown by October 7 (when the House of Representatives is scheduled to return), a clean jobs report with a full month of data isn't likely until September.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

With Threat To Cut 'Large Number Of People' From Health Care, Trump Hails Shutdown

President Donald Trump threatened to cause Americans pain if the government shuts down at midnight on Tuesday, saying he could use a shutdown to make "irreversible" cuts to health care and other benefit programs.

"We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them," Trump said in the Oval Office in response to a question from a right-wing activist masquerading as a reporter. "Like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like."

Trump went on to say that Project 2025 mastermind Russell Vought, who now serves as director of the Office of Management and Budget, will use a shutdown to "trim the budget to a level that you couldn't do any other way."

"Because of the shutdown, we can do things medically, and other ways, including benefits. We can cut large numbers of people out," Trump said, appearing to catch himself realizing that deliberately cutting medical benefits to Americans would be unpopular.

"We don't want to do that," he claimed.

Rather than negotiate with Democrats on a government funding bill, Trump has instead been threatening to cause pain to Americans during a government shutdown.

Democrats want Trump to agree to extend Medicaid subsidies that allow millions of Americans to have health insurance, something the White House said Trump is not inclined to do.

“He read all the shit they’re asking for, and he said, ‘on second thought, go fuck yourself,’” a White House official told Politico of Trump’s feelings on health insurance negotiations.

Already, Trump has threatened massive cuts to the federal workforce—which he was likely going to make whether or not the government shut down.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday also said that if the government shuts down, low-income Americans wouldn’t get their benefits—even though contingency funds are available that could fund those programs for one month in the event of a shutdown.

"The overwhelming majority of the American public wants to keep the government open,” Leavitt said. “They want food assistance programs for women and children and impoverished communities to continue going out the door. All of that will come to an end if Democrats vote against this clean CR that Republicans are proposing."

But now, Trump is clearly confirming that he will use a shutdown as a pretext to cut Medicaid benefits even more than he already did when he signed the “Big Beautiful Bill.”

Already, polling shows voters would blame Trump and congressional Republicans—who have unified control over Washington—if the government shuts down.

A New York Times/Siena College poll released Tuesday found that 26% of registered voters would blame Trump and Republicans in Congress for a shutdown, while 19% would blame congressional Democrats.

If Trump decides to use a shutdown to purposefully hurt Americans, the polling could swing even harder against his party.

But Trump is hell-bent on trying to blame Democrats for a shutdown, rather than negotiate.

On Monday, after meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Trump released a vile deepfake AI video that puts words in Schumer’s mouth and depicts Jeffries in a sombrero.

Don’t be fooled by any of the GOP rhetoric and lies: Trump wants a shutdown so he can hurt poor people and Democrats.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

What's Behind Trump's Doomed Effort To Revive The Coal Industry?

I’ve just gotten back from the Netherlands, which is famous for its picturesque windmills. But wind power in Holland is more than a historical curiosity. There are also modern wind turbines almost everywhere you look, both onshore and off. And the ground is covered with dead birds and whales.

OK, not really. Wind power is, in fact, far cleaner and safer than burning fossil fuels. And I personally like the sight of wind turbines. After all, I value the comforts of modern civilization and find it reassuring to see the power needed to provide those comforts generated without harmful emissions.

But Donald Trump, as everyone knows, hates wind power and loves coal. Both passions are deeply irrational. Yet they are shaping policy.

Trump is doing his best to kill wind power, going so far as to order work halted on a mostly completed wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island. (Orsted, the Danish company behind the project, has sued and gotten the stop-work order lifted.)

And the administration is trying to revive coal, opening federal land for mining, removing pollution limits and providing hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies. But why?Administration officials would have you believe that coal mining is an economically viable industry that has been sabotaged by liberals. On Monday Chris Wright, the energy secretary, declared — in a weirdly dated culture war cliché — that coal is “out of fashion with the chardonnay set in San Francisco, Boulder, Colorado, and New York City.”

The truth, however, is that coal is a dying industry for very good reasons, and anti-wokeism is unlikely to revive it.

Coal stopped being a significant source of jobs decades ago:

At this point there are only around 40,000 coal miners left. In case you’re wondering, vineyards and wineries employ around 130,000 people, three times as many as the coal industry.

Where did all the coal jobs go? The answers may surprise you.

As you can see in the chart above, there was an epic decline in coal employment between 1950 and the 2000s, from half a million miners to around 80,000. But this employment decline didn’t reflect an economy turning away from coal. In fact, use of coal to generate electricity rose steadily over the whole period, peaking in 2008:

So what happened to all the coal jobs? Basically, workers were displaced first by giant power shovels (strip mining), then by explosives used to blow the tops off mountains, exposing the coal beneath. By using these techniques, in 2008 coal companies were able to produce twice as much coal as they did in 1950, while employing 80 percent fewer workers.

Coal consumption finally did start declining after 2008. But if you look at the chart above, you can see that until recently coal was mainly replaced, not by renewable energy, but by natural gas — which became cheap and abundant thanks to the rise of fracking.

Solar and wind power have finally become important sources of energy in recent years. But the reason they have grown rapidly while coal has declined isn’t that the chardonnay set considers coal unfashionable. It’s the simple fact that coal is no longer cost-competitive, while wind and solar are.

Needless to say, Trump and company aren’t going to acknowledge these facts. They may not even be aware of them. In his speech at the U.N. General Assembly, Trump declared that the Chinese sell a lot of wind turbines to the rest of the world, “but they barely use them.” Ahem:

For the rest of us, however, the important thing to understand is that none of the ostensible justifications for promoting coal make sense. It’s not about saving jobs: Coal mining as a way of life vanished decades ago, not because chardonnay-sipping liberals sneered at it, but because corporations replaced miners with machines and explosives. It’s not about reducing energy prices: Trying to keep coal alive will make energy more expensive, not less.

What it’s really about is culture war. Trying to bring back coal is all about owning the libs. And if it damages the environment, well, from MAGA’s point of view that’s a plus.

Reprinted with permission from Substack.

The 'Obamacare Scare' That Forced Government Shutdown

There are many ways to debase a debate and guarantee a government shutdown.

The White House showed its way on Tuesday when Trump posted on social media a deepfake video portraying House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says Democrats “have no voters anymore, because of our woke, trans bullshit” and “if we give all these illegal aliens health care, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial page weighed in with a deepfake economic spin to what other media outlets are calling a “vulgar” (Politico), “racist” (The Independent), and “falsely accusing” (New York Times) video. The Murdoch clan-owned Journal claimed that people who took advantage of the enhanced premium subsidies to buy health insurance (the Democrats’ sole demand for giving Republicans the votes they need to avoid a shutdown) did so to avoid paying for “affordable” health care coverage provided by their employees.

“Workers aren’t supposed to receive ObamaCare subsidies if they have access to ‘affordable’ coverage through their employers, but this rule is barely enforced,” the editorial complained. “Many workers could get employer coverage if the enhanced subsidies lapse at the end of the year, which would save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. Don’t believe the Democrats’ ObamaCare scare.”

Its evidence? The paper cited a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing that take up of employer-offered plans is plunging, especially among low-wage workers. Nearly three-quarters of employers now offer health coverage, up from 71 percent in 2019, according to the BLS. Yet just 65 percent took advantage that offer in 2025, down from 73 percent in 2019.

Among workers in the bottom 25 percent of wage earners, take up was just 49 percent this year compared to 61 percent a half decade ago. And in the lowest 10% percent of income, take up was just 34 percent compared to 57 percent in 2019.

Why? “Perhaps because they can now get ObamaCare plans at no cost,” the opinion page speculated.

Let’s take a closer look at what the Wall Street Journal editorial page deems is “affordable” health care coverage that employers offer to their low-wage workers. The average cost of an annual health insurance plan in 2025 was $25,572 for family coverage and $8,951 for individual coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The average employee contribution to family coverage was 25% of the total or $6,296, according to KFF. For individual coverage, workers paid 16% of the total or $1,368.

Now let’s take a look at what low-wage households earn. In 2024 (BLS data on household income lags behind publication of monthly and annual wage data) families earning at or below $41,400 a year landed in the bottom 25% of all households. Those in the bottom 10% earned at or below $19,900 a year.

That level of income doesn’t make their employer plans affordable. It makes them prohibitive.

A family at the 25th percentile would be paying for an average family plan fully 15 percent of its annual income for coverage. Better-off families that itemize their deductions (lower wage workers almost never itemize) would be able to take half of that as a tax deduction. A better way to characterize Obamacare subsidies is as one way to help to level the playing field of our inequitable tax code.

Meanwhile, a family in the bottom 10 percent of households would be paying a prohibitive 32 percent of its income for health insurance through their employers. No wonder take up of employer-offered plans among low-wage workers is so low, and was so even before arrival of the Affordable Care Act. When you’re poor, paying your rent, food and transportation bills have a higher priority than buying protection against the possibility you’ll be thrown into bankruptcy should someone in your family might get sick in the coming year.

That’s not something an editorial writer who is paid not to understand the economics of health care will ever understand.

Merrill Goozner, the former editor of Modern Healthcare, writes about health care and politics at GoozNews.substack.com, where this column first appeared. Please consider subscribing to support his work.

Reprinted with permission from Gooz News.

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Trump Withdraws Nomination Of Top BLS Official Amid Critical Blast

With Threat To Cut 'Large Number Of People' From Health Care, Trump Hails Shutdown

What's Behind Trump's Doomed Effort To Revive The Coal Industry?

The 'Obamacare Scare' That Forced Government Shutdown

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