Senate Republicans are offering rare criticism of Donald Trump over his decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after a weak jobs report that showed the economy gained only 73,000 jobs in July and did far worse than previously reported in May and June.
On Friday, Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the BLS, after falsely accusing her of rigging the data “in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.”
The move to fire McEntarfer, who had been confirmed on an 86-8 bipartisan vote in January 2024 during Joe Biden’s presidency, has raised concerns even among Republicans.
“If she was just fired because the president or whoever decided to fire the director just … because they didn’t like the numbers, they ought to grow up,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told The Guardian.
Wyoming Republican senator Cynthia Lummis said, “If the president is firing the statistician because he doesn’t like the numbers but they are accurate, then that’s a problem. It’s not the statistician’s fault if the numbers are accurate and that they’re not what the president had hoped for.”
Other Republican senators pointed out that any data released from the agency going forward will be met with skepticism from the public.
“We have to look somewhere for objective statistics,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said. “When the people providing the statistics are fired, it makes it much harder to make judgments that you know, the statistics won’t be politicized.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska.) told The Guardian “when you fire people, then it makes people trust them even less.”
Democrats also condemned McEntarfer’s firing.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) accused Trump of shooting the messenger.
“What does a bad leader do when they get bad news? Shoot the messenger. That’s just what happened with the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” he said. “Today we got some of the worst labor numbers that we’ve gotten in a long time.”
“Just absolutely insane, absolutely nuts. The economy is tanking and he’s terrified and he’s acting like a dictator,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) referred to the firing as “some weird Soviet shit,” adding, “blaming the messenger? Nothing’s ever his fault.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on X that, “Instead of helping people get good jobs, Donald Trump just fired the statistician who reported bad jobs data that the wanna-be king doesn’t like.”
