I hear that Bannon is pushing Heritage Chief Economist EJ Antoni for BLS Commissioner.
EJ Antoni: Source: Heritage Foundation, accessed 8/7/2025.
If he is nominated, I’ll just observe that he declared (with St. Onge) a recession starting in 2022 [1]. And another recession in starting in July or August 2024 –[2], [3]– without ever having declared the recession of 2022 ended. Taken literally, he believes we have been — and remain even today — in recession.
For the record:
EJ Antoni/Heritage: “Back from the Brink: Trump’s Economy Soars Instead of Crashing”
The Great Replacement “Theory” * Comes to Economics at Heritage
Even assuming little Antoni was a real economist, the Commissioner isn’t just an economist. The Commissioner overseas a complex process of data collection, collation and publication. There is a more or less constant process of experimentation with new data series. There are resource constraints requiring executive judgment. There is cooperation with other agencies. That’s why the Commissioner is drawn from the rans of senior bureaucrats.
Antoni has never been involved in any of these things. Bannon doesn’t care, and I doubt that the felon-in-chief does, either. Crippling government is a goal of MAGA, on the way to turning government into one big grift, but voters actually depend on government in general and BLS in particular.
Much like Kennedy as Surgeon General, all Antoni can do is harm. Neither has the knowledge to do good.
Miran to the Fed? I assume Senate confirmation will be slow in coming.