Tag Archives: Census Bureau

Associated Press: What to know about a large-scale immigration raid at a Georgia manufacturing plant

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Hundreds of federal agents descended on a sprawling site where Hyundai manufactures electric vehicles in Georgia and detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals.

This is the latest in a long line of workplace raids conducted as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. But the one on Thursday is especially distinct because of its large size and the fact that it targeted a manufacturing site state officials have long called Georgia’s largest economic development project.

The detainment of South Korean nationals also sets it apart, as they are rarely caught up in immigration enforcement compared to other nationalities.

Video released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Saturday showed a caravan of vehicles driving up to the site and then federal agents directing workers to line up outside. Some detainees were ordered to put their hands up against a bus as they were frisked and then shackled around their hands, ankles and waist. Others had plastic ties around their wrists as they boarded a Georgia inmate-transfer bus.

Here are some things to know about the raid and the people impacted:

The workers detained

South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Saturday that more than 300 South Koreans were among the 475 people detained.

Some of them worked for the battery plant operated by HL-GA Battery Co., a joint venture by Hyundai and LG Energy Solution that is slated to open next year, while others were employed by contractors and subcontractors at the construction site, according to Steven Schrank, the lead Georgia agent of Homeland Security Investigations.

He said that some of the detained workers had illegally crossed the U.S. border, while others had entered the country legally but had expired visas or had entered on a visa waiver that prohibited them from working.

But an immigration attorney representing two of the detained workers said his clients arrived from South Korea under a visa waiver program that enables them to travel for tourism or business for stays of 90 days or less without obtaining a visa.

Attorney Charles Kuck said one of his clients has been in the U.S. for a couple of weeks, while the other has been in the country for about 45 days, adding that they had been planning to return home soon.

The detainees also included a lawful permanent resident who was kept in custody for having a prior record involving firearm and drug offenses, since committing a crime of “moral turpitude” can put their status in jeopardy, Lindsay Williams, a public affairs officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Saturday.

Williams denied reports that U.S. citizens had been detained at the site since “once citizens have identified themselves, we have no authority.”

Hyundai Motor Company said in a statement Friday that none of its employees had been detained as far as it knew and that it is reviewing its practices to make sure suppliers and subcontractors follow U.S. employment laws. LG told The Associated Press that it couldn’t immediately confirm how many of its employees or Hyundai workers had been detained.

The South Korean government expressed “concern and regret” over the operation targeting its citizens and is sending diplomats to the site.

“The business activities of our investors and the rights of our nationals must not be unjustly infringed in the process of U.S. law enforcement,” South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lee Jaewoong said in a televised statement from Seoul.

Most of the people detained have been taken to an immigration detention center in Folkston, Georgia, near the Florida state line. None of them have been charged with any crimes yet, Schrank said, but the investigation is ongoing.

Family members and friends of the detainees were having a hard time locating them or figuring out how to get in touch with them, James Woo, communications director for the advocacy group Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, said Saturday in an email.

Woo added that many of the families were in South Korea because many of the detainees were in the United States only for business purposes.

Raid is the result of a monthslong investigation

The raid was the result of a monthslong investigation into allegations of illegal hiring at the site, Schrank said.

In a search warrant and related affidavits, agents sought everything from employment records for current and former workers and timecards to video and photos of workers.

Court records filed this week indicated that prosecutors do not know who hired what it called “hundreds of illegal aliens.” The identity of the “actual company or contractor hiring the illegal aliens is currently unknown,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote in a Thursday court filing.

The sprawling manufacturing site

The raid targeted a manufacturing site widely considered one of Georgia’s largest and most high profile.

Hyundai Motor Group started manufacturing EVs at the $7.6 billion plant a year ago. Today, the site employs about 1,200 people in a largely rural area about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Savannah.

Agents specifically honed in on an adjacent plant that is still under construction at which Hyundai has partnered with LG Energy Solution to produce batteries that power EVs.

The Hyundai site is in Bryan County, which saw its population increase by more than a quarter in the early 2020s and stood at almost 47,000 residents in 2023, the most recent year data is available. The county’s Asian population went from 1.5% in 2018 to 2.2% in 2023, and the growth was primarily among people of Indian descent, according to Census Bureau figures.

Raid was the ‘largest single site enforcement operation’

From farms and construction sites to restaurants and auto repair shops, there have been a wide array of workplace raids undertaken in this administration. But most have been smaller, including a raid the same day as the Georgia one in which federal officers took away dozens of workers from a snack-bar manufacturer in Cato, New York.

Other recent high-profile raids have included one in July targeting a legal marijuana farm northwest of Los Angeles. More than 360 people were arrested in one of the largest raids since Trump took office in January. Another one took place at an Omaha. Nebraska, meat production plant and involved dozens of workers being taken away.

Schrank described the one in Georgia as the “largest single site enforcement operation” in the agency’s two-decade history.

The majority of the people detained are Koreans. During the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, 2024, only 46 Koreans were deported during out of more than 270,000 removals for all nationalities, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Community members and advocates have mixed reactions

Kemp and other Georgia Republican officials, who had courted Hyundai and celebrated the EV plant’s opening, issued statements Friday saying all employers in the state were expected to follow the law.

The nonprofit legal advocacy organization Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta described the raid in a joint statement as “unacceptable.”

“Our communities know the workers targeted at Hyundai are everyday people who are trying to feed their families, build stronger communities, and work toward a better future,” the statement said.

Sammie Rentz opened the Viet Huong Supermarket less than 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from the Hyundai site six months ago and said he worries business may not bounce back after falling off sharply since the raid.

“I’m concerned. Koreans are very proud people, and I bet they’re not appreciating what just happened. I’m worried about them cutting and running, or starting an exit strategy,” he said.

Ellabell resident Tanya Cox, who lives less than a mile from the Hyundai site, said she had no ill feelings toward Korean nationals or other immigrant workers at the site. But few neighbors were employed there, and she felt like more construction jobs at the battery plant should have gone to local residents.

“I don’t see how it’s brought a lot of jobs to our community or nearby communities,” Cox said.

Something’s fishy here — many had 90-day visa waivers but had been for a much shorter time.

This looks like part of a desperate attempt to meet the ghoulish Stephen Miller’s goal of 3000 deportations monthly.

What to know about a large-scale immigration raid at a Georgia manufacturing plant
Hundreds of federal agents descended on a sprawling site where Hyundai manufactures electric vehicles in Georgia and detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals.

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-raid-hyundai-plant-4dd1a6b2ad66d27567b2463c5f3c97bb

CNN: Trump’s pick to lead [Bureau of Labor Statics] ran Twitter account with sexually degrading, bigoted attacks

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President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics operated a since-deleted Twitter account that featured sexually degrading attacks on Kamala Harris, derogatory remarks about gay people, conspiracy theories, and crude insults aimed at critics of President Donald Trump.

E.J. Antoni, a 37-year-old economist for the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, posted the comments from approximately 2017 through 2020 under a series of usernames and display names. CNN verified that all of Antoni’s posts came from the same Twitter account and that the posts from the anonymous aliases shared strikingly similar biographical details as Antoni.

An outspoken critic of the nonpartisan BLS, which calculates US job growth and unemployment figures, Antoni is a stout Trump loyalist. NBC News reported and CNN confirmed that he was a “bystander” at the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. There is no evidence he entered the Capitol.

His appointment comes after Trump fired the Biden-appointed BLS commissioner and accused the agency without evidence of corruption after a report showed job growth in May and June was weaker than previously estimated.

Antoni has positioned himself as a watchdog for government accountability in media appearances and Heritage Foundation blog posts. But his own digital trail reveals a pattern of incendiary rhetoric that veered frequently into conspiracy theories and misogyny.

In 2019, the since-deleted account known as “ErwinJohnAntoni” changed its username to “phdofbombsaway.” The account posted at least five sexually suggestive tweets implying that then Sen. Kamala Harris had advanced her career through sexual favors.

Shortly after Harris ended her 2020 presidential campaign, Antoni wrote, “You can’t run a race on your knees,” in response to a tweet of a doctored campaign poster that depicted a sexually explicit image of Harris.

Antoni also referred to Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, as “Miss Piggy.” In February 2020, he retweeted a post titled “Advice For Women: How To Land a Great Guy,” which instructed women to “be in shape,” “grow your hair long,” “be sweet,” “learn to cook,” and “don’t be annoying.” The post concluded: “Angry feminists and simps will try to sabotage you in the comments. Don’t listen to them. Listen to me.”

Wired first reported the existence of the account, detailing Antoni’s posts engaging with conspiracy theories on the 2020 election and Covid-19, and referencing weapons used by Nazi Germany in World War II. After that story was published, Antoni’s cousin, a right-wing podcaster, defended Antoni in a social media post, saying the family was proud their grandfather had fought for the US in World War II.

In a statement, the White House defended Antoni and did not address whether he still holds beliefs he espoused on the account.

“President Trump has nominated Dr. EJ Antoni to fix the issues at the BLS and restore trust in the jobs reports. 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,” said Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson.

Trump’s decision on August 1 to fire BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer drew criticism from economists who warned that politicizing the government’s employment data risks eroding trust and disrupting markets. The BLS is critical to the way governments, businesses and everyday people view the economy.

Unlike McEntarfer, who had decades of experience working in government, Antoni has none. He earned a Ph.D. in economics from Northern Illinois University in 2020 and took positions at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Heritage Foundation, where he now works as an economist. The Heritage Foundation is the architect of Project 2025, which envisioned a blueprint for Trump’s second term.

Among its suggestions was a recommendation to consolidate BLS with the Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau to make it “a more manageable, focused, and efficient statistical agency.”

Antoni’s academic work is also sparse, causing concern from prominent economists. Last year, he co-published a report that purported “the American economy has actually been in recession since 2022,” which economists across the political spectrum have criticized.

In past appearances on cable media, Antoni echoed Trump’s dissatisfaction with labor statistics and with the Federal Reserve. In one appearance from earlier this year, Antoni accused the central bank of “election interference” for cutting rates close to the 2024 presidential election, a claim Trump has also made.

Antoni, who is not currently leading the bureau, faces a difficult Senate confirmation process. His nomination must first pass through the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, which counts moderate Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins as members.

A spokesperson for HELP committee Chairman Bill Cassidy told CNN the committee plans to hold a hearing for Antoni pending completed paperwork.

A hearing for Antoni would be rare, as the committee does not typically hold hearings for the position. But it wouldn’t be unprecedented. The last time this occurred was during Trump’s first term for another Heritage Foundation economist, William Beach.

Antoni as ‘phdofbombsaway’

Antoni’s Twitter account was created in 2015, according to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. He initially appears to have used his full name – ErwinJohnAntoni – as the username and Erwin J. Antoni III as the display name. The account’s profile picture featured Trump in revolutionary garb gripping a massive gun, an American flag at his back, a bald eagle perched on his opposite arm, and flames rising behind him.

Under two separate display names, Antoni frequently referred to himself as an “economist” on the account. In March 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, the account tweeted twice that he was an economist.

By May 2020, after Antoni was awarded his Ph.D., he had reverted the display name to Dr. Erwin J. Antoni III while keeping the handle phdofbombsaway. A conservative think tank tagged Antoni on the account in 2020, which helped CNN trace the account to him.

That summer, after he changed his display to Dr. Erwin J. Antoni III, he tweeted four separate times that he was an economist.

The account also used the phrase “You called down the thunder, now reap the whirlwind,” across both display names 20 times. On his professional account, “RealEJAntoni,” Antoni used the phrase “reap the whirlwind” at least three times.

Antoni’s posts during this time often mirrored Trump’s rhetoric. In January 2018, Antoni criticized a potential government shutdown as a way to “derail” the economy. “#SchumerShutdown is the Dems’ pathetic attempt to derail the Trump Train economy. It won’t work – get on board or get run over,” he wrote.

When Arizona Sen. John McCain passed away in August 2018, Antoni tweeted under his real name, “I like a senator who doesn’t die” — echoing Trump’s infamous line from 2015 insulting McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War.

Sometime in mid-2019, when Antoni was a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Northern Illinois University, the account’s username changed to “phdofbombsaway” with the display name “Dr. Curtis LeMay.” The profile image also changed to what looks to be a nuclear explosion. The username and display name appear to be a reference to “Bombs Away LeMay,” a reference to the Cold War general and his controversial stance promoting the use of nuclear weapons. LeMay ran alongside segregationist George Wallace on his 1968 presidential ticket for the far-right American Independent Party.

In other posts, Antoni frequently targeted progressive congresswomen in the so-called “Squad.” He called Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “whack job” and “space cadet.” In November 2019, he called her an “antisemite” after she led an effort to try to force Trump White House staffer Stephen Miller to resign after leaked emails showed Miller shared articles from a White nationalist website before he worked at the White House. In March 2020, Antoni tweeted about Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Trump critic, saying “No one wants to have sex with that catfish.” When Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota tweeted in support of “LGBTQIA+” issues, Antoni invoked a debunked conspiracy theory that Omar was married to her brother. “Does the I stand for incest? With your brother?” he wrote.

He also repeatedly tweeted that liberal economist Paul Krugman was a pedophile, a smear for which there is no evidence – and one he also hurled at former President Joe Biden and former FBI director James Comey.

In February 2020, Antoni declared: “Feminism is that belief by which women are liberated from false slavery to men in order to become true slaves to corporations.” And in another post, responding to a post to #TellMeALie, he wrote “attractive feminists exist.”

And in March 2020, he dismissed LGBTQ people’s existence, writing: “There is only one sexual orientation — everything else is a disorientation.”

Some of his other provocative posts were sexually graphic anti-gay taunts at CNN anchors Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper, both of whom are gay.

Antoni also promoted the debunked conspiracy theory that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich — who was murdered in 2016 in what police described as a botched robbery — was actually the source of leaked DNC emails during the 2016 presidential campaign, rather than Russian hackers.

He engaged with an account that promoted the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory in hashtags, in a tweet attacking Sen. Adam Schiff, who was then a House representative. And he frequently tweeted at the far-right account “Catturd2,” known for spreading conspiracy theories.

Antoni, using his given name, also used the account to promote hardline socially conservative views.

In September 2020, he argued against abortion even in cases of rape, writing: “If the original principle was that abortion is wrong because it kills an innocent human life, then the manner of conception does not change that fact. In this line of thinking, abortion after rape would be punishing an innocent child for someone else’s crime.”

As phdofbombsaway in 2019, he once posted that abortion was “child sacrifice.”

Antoni abandoned his Twitter account after Trump was banned from the platform following the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. He migrated over to the now-defunct website Parler using the phdofbombsaway username.

In one of the few archived posts from the account, he posted a meme of a Twitter avatar-like bird wearing an Adolf Hitler mustache and Nazi armband, writing “I believe censorship is bad, 1984-level bad.”

Bigots in Trumpville? Why am I not surprised? Remember that Trump himself was sued several times for refusing to rent his New York City apartments to blacks. He’s the same old bigot, just older, fatter, and uglier.

Trump’s pick to lead Bureau of Labor Statistics ran anonymous Twitter account filled with sexually degrading and bigoted attacks | CNN Politics
President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics operated a since-deleted Twitter account that featured sexually degrading attacks on Kamala Harris, derogatory remarks about gay people, conspiracy theories, and crude insults aimed at critics of President Donald Trump.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/05/politics/kfile-ej-antoni-bureau-of-labor-statistics-twitter-account-vis

Newsweek: Donald Trump’s new census could be bad news for Texas

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Is there anything that King Donald can’t seek to manipulate and destroy?

President Donald Trump‘s proposal for a new national census that excludes people living in the United States illegally could reduce Texas’ political power by reducing both its number of Electoral College votes and seats in the House of Representatives.

Why It Matters

The Trump administration is pushing for a new census despite the next one not being due until 2030. Excluding those in the U.S. illegally from the figures would reduce the political representation of states with disproportionately high illegal migrant populations, such as California and Texas.

Citing “two people with knowledge of the effort,” The Texas Tribune reported that the administration’s primary goal behind the new census was to boost Republicans politically, though some experts have expressed skepticism over whether this would happen.

What To Know

On August 7, Trump said he had instructed the Department of Commerce to begin work on a new national census that would exclude illegal migrants, using data from the 2024 presidential election as a baseline.

Census Bureau data is used to determine how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives and also how many Electoral College votes it gets during presidential elections. So if a state loses population disproportionately once illegal migrants are excluded, it would see its political influence decrease.

In 2024, the Department of Homeland Security estimated that in January 2022 there were 10,990,000 people residing in the U.S. illegally. It found that California had the largest illegal migrant population with 2,600,000 people, followed by Texas with 2,060,000, Florida with 590,000 and New Jersey with 490,000.

Speaking with Newsweek, Joshua Blank, who heads the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said a new census without illegal migrants would reduce the state’s population and therefore its House representation. He added that Texas “did nothing to promote census participation” in 2020.

Blank said: “While, ostensibly, this move would reduce Texas’ population size for the purpose of congressional districts, it’s probably the case that it’s less than it would if Texas were to have engaged in a serious effort to get a good count in the first place.”

In terms of the nationwide political effect, Blank added: “This would apply to other states, including other states with large immigrant populations, and those that actually sought to get an accurate count, like California. So the overall exchange of seats, since the number of overall congressional seats remains fixed, is pretty hard to game out.”

Trump’s new census plan would almost certainly face legal challenges, with critics arguing that it violates the 14th Amendment, which states that seats in the House should be based on “counting the whole number of persons in each State.”

What People Are Saying

Gil Guerra, an immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, told Newsweek: “These numbers matter enormously for apportionment—states like California, Texas, and Florida have substantial undocumented populations that currently contribute to their congressional representation.”

Speaking with The Texas Tribune about the president’s new census proposal, Robert Warren, a demographer at the Center for Migration Studies, said: “It wouldn’t shift enough [House] seats to make any difference, and that’s been true for five straight censuses.”

President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on August 7: “I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024. People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

A Department of Commerce spokesperson told Newsweek: “The Census Bureau will immediately adopt modern technology tools for use in the Census to better understand our robust Census data. We will accurately analyze the data to reflect the number of legal residents in the United States.”

What Happens Next

If Trump pushes ahead with his plan, it will almost inevitably spark a major legal battle. Even if the courts approve, experts agree that the overall effect on American politics is hard to determine, though states with a high illegal migrant population—such as Texas—will likely lose some influence.

Donald Trump’s new census could be bad news for Texas
President Donald Trump has requested a new national census excluding illegal migrants, but it is likely to face legal challenges.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-new-census-could-bad-news-texas-2114326

Alternet: Donald Trump just debunked his own lie — and it should get him sued | Opinion

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Walmart, Apple , and Amazon, the most successful companies in the U.S., base their corporate strategies on data: consumer behavior data, market research, financial, product, and competitive analysis data.

Any CEO who deliberately relied on falsified data, or who demanded cooked books, would be fired immediately — and likely sued by the Board of Directors.

Any CEO of any company who tried to manipulate the appearance of short-term success for his own personal gain, at the expense of long-term viability for the company, would also be fired and likely sued for malfeasance, and worse.

A successful CEO knows that falsifying economic or financial data can lead to charges of securities fraud, wire fraud, and other financial crimes, because false data can ruin investors, corporations, and markets overnight.

Enter Donald Trump, whose self-proclaimed governing philosophy is “running the country like it’s a business.” Debunking the lie of his own manufactured image as a “successful businessman,” last Friday Trump angrily fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner because he didn’t like her data — even as he wears 34 felony convictions for falsifying records.

Dr. Erika McEntarfer, a widely respected statistician, enjoyed bipartisan support, including confirmation votes from Marco Rubio and JD Vance. Appointed commissioner under the Biden administration, she holds a Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Tech, and served at the Census Bureau for two decades under both parties prior to her BLS appointment.

By federal law, McEntarfer’s appointment ends in 2028. Trump fired her anyway because he was embarrassed by jobs data that didn’t match his own hype.

In May, the White House said that April’s jobs report “proved” that Trump was “revitalizing” the economy. In June, Trump posted, “GREAT JOBS NUMBERS.” After the Labor Department released revised jobs figures for those months — a common practice because jobs reports are sample projections that get adjusted when actual employer data come in — Trump fired the messenger.

Trump’s penchant for hiding and falsifying data has put American corporations and the economy in more danger. Just as he scrubbed government websites of climate data to bolster his fossil fuel donors, just as he ordered the Smithsonian to remove an exhibit accurately reflecting his own impeachments, Trump thinks reality is whatever he says it is.

As he fantasizes about returning America to the Gilded Age, where robber barons extracted the earth’s resources for unimaginable profit while laborers worked for starvation wages, he’s forgetting that his oligarch donors need accurate economic data too. At least oligarchs creating real products and delivering real services—as opposed to merely speculating in Trump’s image—need real, reliable, and uncooked data.

McEntarfer should sue

When Trump fired McEntarfer in a social media post, he declared that her numbers were “phony.” He wrote on Friday, “In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” adding: “But, the good news is, our Country is doing GREAT!”

He said the numbers had been manipulated for political purposes, and announced he fired McEntarfer as a result.

Trump also baselessly accused McEntarfer of manipulating jobs numbers before the November election to advantage Kamala Harris. Trump said to reporters, “I believe the numbers were phony, just like they were before the election, and there were other times. So you know what I did? I fired her, and you know what? I did the right thing.”

When asked what his source was, he said, “my opinion,” confirming that there was no evidence to back up his reckless claims, claims that permanently tanked the reputation of a celebrated career professional.

Presidents not immune from civil prosecution

No doubt Trump slurred McEntarfer based on his own “opinion” to avoid defamation liability, but an opinion that implies a false fact is still defamatory, it is still actionable, and presidents are not immune from civil lawsuits for defamation.

The four legal elements of defamation are easily found here: false statement; publication; negligence in repeating the falsehood; and reputational harm.

More, a president has immunity from civil lawsuits only for actions taken in furtherance of his core constitutional powers. One of the main “core constitutional powers” of a president is ensuring the faithful execution of laws, such that acting to impede the execution of federal law would fall outside core official responsibilities. (As an aside, even under the disastrous Trump v. US criminal immunity ruling, Trump’s J6 conduct would likely have fallen outside his core function, had it proceeded to trial.)

Trump knowingly and intentionally lied about the BLS commissioner in a manner that directly conflicts with the Department of Labor’s statutory mission; as such, it was not a “core Constitutional function.” Announcing that previous labor reports were “falsified” causes immediate reputational harm to the Commissioner, the Department of Labor, and the US economy overall. It directly impedes the accurate compilation of labor data, a charge mandated by the Wagner-Peyser Act of 1933 as well as the Fair Labor Standards Act.

By implicitly directing that all future US data should be falsified to suit his own political narrative, Trump’s statements not only harm America’s economy, but they hinder rather than aid the faithful execution of laws.

As McEntarfer’s predecessor puts it, McEntarfer’s “totally groundless firing” sets a dangerous precedent and “undermines the statistical mission of the bureau.”

“We need accurate Jobs Numbers,” Trump told reporters, suggesting McEntarfer’s jobs numbers weren’t.

“She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified,” he added, suggesting McEntarfer was neither.

Missing the risible irony as he seeks manipulated jobs data for his own political purposes, Trump added, “Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”

Donald Trump just debunked his own lie — and it should get him sued | Opinion

https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-lie-debunked

Guardian: IRS commissioner’s removal reportedly over clash on undocumented immigrant data

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Trump removed Billy Long from post months after agency said it couldn’t release information on some taxpayers

The removal of the Internal Revenue Service commissioner Billy Long after just two months in the post came after the federal tax collection agency said it could not release some information on taxpayers suspected of being in the US illegally, it was reported on Saturday.

The IRS and the White House had clashed over using tax data to help locate suspected undocumented immigrants soon before Long was dismissed by the administration, according to the Washington Post.

Long’s dismissal came less than two months after he was confirmed, making his service as Senate-confirmed IRS commissioner the briefest in the agency’s 163-year history. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent will serve as acting commissioner, making him the agency’s seventh leader this year.

The outlet reported the Department of Homeland Security had sent the IRS a list of 40,000 names on Thursday that it suspects of being in the country illegally. DHS asked the tax service to crosscheck confidential taxpayer data to verify their addresses.

The IRS reportedly responded that it was able to verify fewer than 3% of the names on the DHS list, and mostly names that came with an individual taxpayer identification, or ITIN number, provided by DHS.

Administration officials then requested information on the taxpayers the IRS identified, which the service declined to do, citing taxpayer privacy rights.

The White House has identified the IRS as a component of its crackdown on illegal immigration and hopes that the tax agency help locate as many as 7 million people in the US without authorization. In April, homeland security struck a data sharing agreement with the treasury department – which oversees the IRS.

But Long appears to have resisted acting on that agreement, saying the IRS would not hand over confidential taxpayer information outside its statutory obligation to the treasury.

Related: Trump removes IRS commissioner Billy Long two months after he was sworn in

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson rejected the notion that the IRS was not in harmony with administration priorities.

“Any absurd assertion other than everyone being aligned on the mission is simply false and totally fake news,” Johnson told the Post. “The Trump administration is working in lockstep to eliminate information silos and to prevent illegal aliens from taking advantage of benefits meant for hardworking American taxpayers,” she addedIn fact, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7bn in federal, state and local taxes in 2022, including $59.4bn to the federal government, helping to fund social security and Medicare, despite being excluded from most benefits, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy thinktank.

DHS told the Post that its agreement with IRS “outlines a process to ensure that sensitive taxpayer information is protected, while allowing law enforcement to effectively pursue criminal violations”.

Pressure on federal agencies to conform to administration priorities has also led to pressures on the Census Bureau to conduct a mid-decade population review as well as the firing of Bureau of Labor head last week after it published a unfavorable job report.

After being dismissed on Friday, Long, a former six-term Missouri congressman, said that he would be the new US ambassador to Iceland.

“It is a honor to serve my friend President Trump and I am excited to take on my new role as the ambassador to Iceland,” Long said in post on X. “I am thrilled to answer his call to service and deeply committed to advancing his bold agenda. Exciting times ahead!”

He followed that up with a more humorous entry that referred to former TV Superman actor Dean Cain’s decision, at 59, to join to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency.

“I saw where Former Superman actor Dean Cain says he’s joining ICE so I got all fired up and thought I’d do the same. So I called @realDonaldTrump last night and told him I wanted to join ICE and I guess he thought I said Iceland? Oh well.”

IRS commissioner’s removal reportedly over clash on undocumented immigrant data
Trump removed Billy Long from post months after agency said it couldn’t release information on some taxpayers

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/09/billy-long-irs-removal-immigrant-data-trump

Newsweek: DOGE cuts to cause 2 million extra visits to Social Security offices: Study

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Staffing cuts and office closures at the Social Security Administration (SSA), driven by Elon Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), are estimated to force seniors to make nearly 2 million additional annual trips for necessary in-person assistance, according to a new study.

It’s never good to remove options, but for some people this will work out better. Getting through to Social Security by phone can waste many hours of time. Depending on the wait time at your local office and the travel time, it can be more convenient.

In my family’s case the local office was hopeless — the line was out the door and down the block. But we found a suburban office where the waits were much shorter with sufficient indoor seating for everyone.

Nevertheless I expect there will be more losers than winners here.

DOGE cuts to cause 2 million extra visits to Social Security offices: Study
“There’s just going to be a lot of people who are not able to complete this process,” one of the study’s co-authors told Newsweek.

https://www.newsweek.com/doge-social-security-seniors-benefits-elon-2078102

Bloomberg: Deportations Won’t ‘Cure’ Blue Cities. They’ll Get Worse.

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Trump has repeatedly disparaged American urban centers as dystopian hellscapes. His solutions are likely to hurt more than help.

It’s no secret that President Donald Trump has beef with America’s cities, especially the ones run by Democrats. He has long falsely cast them as crime-ridden, chaotic and dystopian — and often blamed immigrants for every urban ill.

Sure, cities aren’t perfect. But pandemic-era rates of violent crime have been dropping and cities remain economic engines, creating roughly 90% of the country’s output. And as US birth rates fall, cities owe much of their population growth to immigrants.

Deportations Won’t ‘Cure’ Blue Cities. They’ll Get Worse.
Trump has repeatedly disparaged American urban centers as dystopian hellscapes. His solutions are likely to hurt more than help.

Deportations Won’t ‘Cure’ Democrat-Led Cities. They’ll Get Worse. – Bloomberg