WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is withdrawing the nomination of E.J. Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to a White House official and an AP source who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the action, which has yet to be publicly announced.
The White House official declined to say the reasons for withdrawing the nomination, only to say that Antoni was a talented economist and that President Donald Trump plans to announce a new nominee soon. The Senate received paperwork formally withdrawing Antoni’s nomination on Tuesday.
Antoni’s nomination, announced in August, was an attempt by Trump to gain greater control over the federal agency responsible for producing key economic data, including the monthly jobs report and consumer price index, which is used to measure inflation. As the chief economist at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, he was a major critic of the BLS. Yet most economists saw him as overtly partisan and warned that his basic misreads on recessions, import prices and other measures made him a risk to lead the federal agency.
Kyle Pomerleau, a tax expert for the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote on X after Antoni's nomination in August: “There are a lot of competent conservative economists that could do this job. E.J. is not one of them.”
Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action, said in a statement that Antoni “continues to be one of the sharpest economic minds in the country” and that he “was the right man for the job” at the BLS. But the statement said that Antoni would remain at the conservative think tank instead of taking a job in the government.
Other details emerged about Antoni that caused worry about his credibility as an economic scorekeeper. NBC News reported that Antoni was in the crowd outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. And observers found that the wall art behind Antoni during interviews on TV was of the German battleship Bismarck used by the Nazis in World War II.
Financial disclosures show that Antoni earned in excess of $495,000 for his work at The Heritage Foundation, in addition to other payments for speeches and consulting.
Trump fired Erika McEntarfer as BLS commissioner on Aug. 1 after the July jobs report showed a rapid slowdown in hiring, with job gains in May and June revised much lower than initially estimated.
The White House has maintained that it wants accurate figures after a series of downward revisions to the jobs report, but Trump has said on his social media site that the numbers were rigged to undermine him politically.
In the four months after Trump initially announced his country-by-country tariffs, job gains have averaged less than 27,000 a month. The slowdown was severe enough for the Federal Reserve in September to cut its benchmark rate in hopes of stabilizing the job market.
The White House also on Tuesday withdrew the nomination of Brian Quintenz to join the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as chairman. A White House official, insisting on anonymity to discuss the decision, called Quintenz a trusted ally and said that a new nominee would be forthcoming.
CNN first reported the withdrawal of Antoni's nomination.
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President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House before signing an executive order regarding childhood cancer and the use of AI, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Authorities in Southern California on Friday were racing to figure out how to prevent the explosion of a storage tank that has been leaking a hazardous chemical used to make plastic parts, as some 40,000 people were under evacuation orders in the area.
A storage tank holding between 6,000 and 7,000 gallons (22,700 and 26,500 liters) of methyl methacrylate overheated Thursday and began venting vapors into the air at an aerospace plastics facility in Garden Grove, a city in Orange County, the local fire authority said.
The tank could fail and crack, releasing the chemical onto the ground, or it could explode, Orange County Fire Authority Division Chief Craig Covey said Friday.
“This thing is going to fail, and we don’t know when,” Covey said. “We’re doing our best to figure out when or how we can prevent it.”
Officials ordered residents in Garden Grove to leave and expanded evacuation orders Friday to some residents of five other Orange County cities — Cypress, Stanton, Anaheim, Buena Park and Westminster — after being unable to stop the leak overnight on the tank at GKN Aerospace, which makes parts for commercial and military aircraft.
No injuries or deaths have been reported, authorities said.
In an update later Friday, Covey said authorities have been able to maintain the tank's temperature, buying time to figure out how to fix it.
Garden Grove is about 38 miles (61 kilometers) south of downtown Los Angeles and next to Anaheim, home to Disneyland’s two theme parks, which were not under evacuation orders Friday.
Danny Pham said he was deep in a dream when his roommate banged on his door around 7 a.m. Friday morning and told him he needed to leave immediately. Pham had been working late the night before at a Vietnamese restaurant and had not seen the news.
“It was shocking to me,” said Pham, who lives only a couple blocks from the plastics plant. “I didn’t know how serious it would be. I never knew that a thing like this could happen.”
He left minutes later, grabbing only his wallet and passport, and took shelter at a friend’s restaurant in a neighboring city.
By late Friday afternoon, Pham was still trying to figure out where he would stay the night and worrying that he had only the clothes on his back, possibly for days to come.
Covey said crews have created containment barriers with sandbags in case there is a chemical spill from the tank to prevent the toxic chemical from getting into storm drains or reaching creeks or the nearby ocean.
Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, the county health officer, said if the chemical heats up, it can release a vapor that is harmful to people’s health. It can cause respiratory issues, itching and burning eyes, nausea and headaches.
Crews were initially successful and were able to neutralize one of two damaged tanks, but Covey said they determined Friday morning that the remaining tank was “in the biggest crisis.”
GKN Aerospace said specialized hazardous material teams are assessing the situation.
“There are no reports of injuries at this time and our priority remains the safety of our employees, responders, and the surrounding community,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We will provide verified updates as soon as more information becomes available.”
Kim Yen, a retiree in Garden Grove, was settling in for the night Thursday when she heard a sirenlike sound coming from her phone. An alert told her she needed to leave her home, which was just two blocks from the chemical leak.
As Yen drove to her daughter’s house in Seal Beach, she worried that others in the local Vietnamese community might ignore or not understand the evacuation alert because it was in English.
“They are family,” she said. “I’m hoping they stay alert and listen to the news and the authorities. This is scary.”
Yen, who is originally from Vietnam and has lived in Orange County since 1980, quickly stopped by her house Friday morning to grab important documents and medications. By then her neighborhood was “a ghost town,” and she was comforted to see police officers going door to door to make sure everyone had evacuated.
“We understand that this is frightening,” Garden Grove Mayor Stephanie Klopfenstein said. “But the evacuation orders are in place for your safety.”
Local Vietnamese television stations translated updates from officials and urged residents to take the situation seriously.
Rodriguez reported from San Francisco, Rush from Portland, Oregon, and Schoenbaum from Salt Lake City.
Water is sprayed on a tank that overheated at an aerospace plant in Garden Grove, Calif., Friday, May 22, 2026. (Jeff Gritchen/The Orange County Register via AP)
Orange County Fire Authority Division Chief Craig Covey speaks during a news conference at the Los Alamitos racetrack in Cypress, Calif., Friday, May 22, 2026, about hazmat situation in Garden Grove, Calif. (Jeff Gritchen/The Orange County Register via AP)
