President Donald Trump, in an on-brand episode of shooting the messenger, fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after a weak July jobs report. As her replacement, he nominated E.J. Antoni, a Heritage Foundation economist, Project 2025 co-author, and long-time critic of the BLS.

Antoni has called BLS numbers “phoney baloney” and has floated the idea of suspending the monthly jobs report altogether. In Trumpworld, that’s the dream: Erase the bad consequences of his policies, or better yet, cook the numbers.

But killing the BLS report won’t make the bad news disappear. It just hands the keys to the only other national monthly jobs snapshot: the private-sector report put out by payroll processor ADP. And ADP isn’t in the business of flattering presidents.

While the

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