Republican senators raise concerns about Trump's firing of Labor Dept. official [View all]

Source: nbc


Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday after the agency released a jobs report that showed a significant slowdown in hiring in the U.S.

Updated Aug. 1, 2025, 7:44 PM CDT Brennan Leach and Raquel Coronell Uribe

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Several Republicans told NBC News that they would take issue with the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the BLS, if it is the result of Trump disliking the jobs report numbers, which showed the U.S. job market in the past months has been considerably weaker than previously thought.

Trump defended his decision Friday, saying without evidence that the report’s numbers were “phony” and accused McEntarfer of releasing favorable jobs numbers before the election to give former Vice President Kamala Harris an edge.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wy., said if the data is untrustworthy, the public should find out, but firing the commissioner before knowing whether the numbers are inaccurate is “kind of impetuous.”

“If the president is firing the statistician because he doesn’t like the numbers but they are accurate, then that’s a problem,” Lummis said. “It’s not the statistician’s fault if the numbers are accurate and that they’re not what the president had hoped for.”................

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., blasted Trump’s decision to fire McEntarfer as well.

“If she was just fired because the president or whoever decided to fire the director just did it because they didn’t like the numbers, they ought to grow up,” Tillis said...........

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/republican-senators-raise-concerns-trumps-firing-bls-commissioner-rcna222584

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“BLS operates as a federal statistical agency and is afforded autonomy to ensure the data it releases are as accurate as possible,” it added.
https://nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/republican-senators-raise-concerns-trumps-firing-bls-commissioner-rcna222584 via @nbcnews

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