Trump nominates E.J. Antony as the new head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, floating a new idea to improve government data collection. And he s already being attacked. All that and more coming up in just a moment on Your AM Update.
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00:02:40.520On Monday evening, President Trump nominating Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antony as the new Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner.
00:02:50.120The announcement coming 10 days after President Trump fired the previous Biden-appointed commissioner following a string of massive revisions to the jobs numbers.
00:02:59.020The July jobs report coming in softer than expected with only 73,000 jobs added.
00:03:05.380It also included a downward revision on May and June jobs numbers by a combined total of 258,000, the steepest monthly downward revisions since May 2020.
00:03:17.500Antony, long critical of the BLS data-gathering process, telling Fox News Digital last week,
00:03:23.260quote, it's a serious problem that needs to be fixed immediately.
00:03:27.520Antony adding that until there is a fix, quote, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports,
00:03:33.780but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely quarterly data.
00:03:38.060Antony adding, quote, major decision makers from Wall Street to D.C. rely on these numbers,
00:03:43.200and a lack of confidence in the data has far-reaching consequences.
00:03:46.400Antony's nomination predictably drawing backlash from anti-Trump critics who say his nomination will further erode trust in the numbers,
00:03:55.200suggesting Antony will bend economic data to President Trump's will.
00:03:59.900Democrat Senator from Washington, Patty Murray, writing on X, quote,
00:04:03.560Any senator who votes to confirm this partisan hack is voting to shred the integrity of our nation's best economic and jobs data,
00:07:21.180BLS commissioner is a position that requires Senate confirmation, and Tony's hearing date has yet to be determined.
00:07:27.260The July Consumer Price Index, the monthly report gauging inflation, coming in slightly better than expected, rising just 0.2% for the month and 2.7% on an annual basis.
00:07:41.720As of Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reporting that investors believe an interest rate cut is likely at the upcoming Fed meeting in September.
00:07:50.700Traders predicting a 9 in 10 chance of a cut, up slightly from Monday.
00:07:54.920The S&P 500 and Nasdaq closing at record highs off the news.
00:08:01.720Press Secretary Caroline Levitt touting the latest numbers on Tuesday.
00:08:05.580Overall, inflation has run at a 1.9 average annual pace in President Trump's first six months in office.
00:08:14.080Energy prices fell in July, including gasoline, which is down nearly 10% over last year, and propane, which is down 2.5% over last year as well.
00:08:24.920Egg prices fell once again in July and are down 20% since President Trump took office.
00:08:30.760Shelter inflation, the largest contributor to overall inflation, is at its lowest level since October of 2021.
00:08:39.620Wage growth for American workers is beating inflation once again.
00:08:43.920American real wages are up 1.3% over last year and have increased each month since President Trump took office.
00:08:51.220And small business optimism, according to this morning's report, has also reached a five-month high.
00:08:57.540Ignore the panikins and trust in President Trump.
00:09:00.260That is our motto here at the White House.
00:09:02.480The America First economic agenda is working.
00:09:05.560On CNBC, host Joe Kernan noting that President Trump's tariffs have not yet caused the surge in inflation that his critics predicted.
00:09:13.560People were thinking this will finally be the time when we see it.
00:09:23.880You know, if I look at all the metrics, as I said, we were hotter in the beginning of the year, even on the hottest read on that year-over-year core.
00:09:31.160What it tells me is that if you take it very simple, you summarize very accurately.
00:09:36.440There has been a push that things are going to get worse.
00:09:39.240You're going to look at a month that's going to be really scary.
00:09:41.840But most likely, if you look at the entire regime of the effects of tariffs and the uncertainty, we are definitely over the hump.
00:09:50.200And considering that this number isn't worse than expected, I would say moving forward that your interpretation is exactly correct.
00:09:57.600Coming up, an attempt to redraw congressional maps in Texas set to spark a red versus blue redistricting war.
00:10:06.660Senior legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky from the Heritage Foundation breaks down that battle.
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00:11:25.520What began as a legal skirmish in Texas over redrawing its congressional map, now threatening to spark a full-blown gerrymandering war between America's red and blue states.
00:11:39.240Earlier this month, a group of Democrat state lawmakers fleeing Texas for friendly blue states to deny the quorum needed in a special session to pass a new congressional map that would likely add five GOP seats in Texas.
00:11:53.080The stunt in turn prompting arrest warrants and a legal push by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to declare their seats abandoned and vacant, which, if successful, would allow the governor to fill the seats.
00:12:06.380ABC News reporting Tuesday evening the Texas Dems are considering a return now to the Lone Star State just in time for a second special session.
00:12:14.860Governor Abbott announcing Tuesday morning he plans to adjourn the current special session early, ending this Friday instead of next week, and then will initiate a second special session.
00:12:26.340ABC reporting one source says the Democrats loosely plan on returning this weekend, declaring a victory by having killed the first session.
00:12:35.140One source telling ABC plans could change if Republicans go back on their word to end the first session early, robbing Democrats of their symbolic victory.
00:12:44.860The Texas House Democrats ex-account posting, quote, members are still assessing their strategies going forward and are in a private meeting to make decisions about future plans currently.
00:12:54.200If and when Texas House Democrats breaking quorum decide to go home is squarely dependent on the actions of the governor, speaker and Texas Republicans with regard to prioritizing flood victims over redistricting that hurts Texans.
00:13:08.480It is unclear if the Democrats are planning a similar boycott of the second session.
00:13:12.140The governor has indicated he will call as many special sessions as needed to bring a vote on these maps.
00:13:18.640Also still unclear, if the Dems return, what happens with A.G. Paxton's legal effort to declare their seats vacated?
00:13:25.860The debacle infuriating blue state governors who are now threatening to retaliate against Texas by redrawing their own maps, aiming to counter the five additional GOP-leaning U.S. House seats.
00:13:37.120Amid this battle, President Trump calling for a new census, one that would exclude illegal immigrants.
00:13:43.900We spoke to senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Hans von Spakovsky, who says this Texas fight is not merely political gamesmanship.
00:13:55.120They received a warning letter from the Justice Department in July telling them, listen, you've got four districts that are unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.
00:14:06.120You've got to fix it because of a court decision last year in the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
00:14:13.600In 2021, the Texas legislature created four congressional districts, really at the behest of Democrats, to elect Democrats, which was made up of what they call coalition districts.
00:14:26.460So what they did in these coalition districts, they combined two different racial groups, black voters and Hispanic voters, so that they together would constitute a majority of the vote in those districts.
00:14:39.660And what the Fifth Circuit said last year is that the Voting Rights Act does not protect political alliances of those type.
00:14:49.520The bottom line is those districts were drawn up based on race.
00:14:54.040That was the primary factor used to draw the boundary lines.
00:14:57.460That makes them unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.
00:15:02.060That is something you cannot do under the Constitution.
00:15:05.460Democrat governors, including Gavin Newsom in California, Kathy Hochul in New York, and J.B. Pritzker in Illinois, floating redistricting efforts of their own in retaliation, even more than their states have done in the past.
00:15:20.160Spakovsky noted the irony of Democrat outrage as gerrymandering was invented in a blue state and perfected thereafter in blue states.
00:15:28.420Democrats really have perfected gerrymandering in New England, the blue states.
00:15:34.960You know, the term gerrymandering comes from Massachusetts, from the former governor in 1812, Elbridge-Derry, who basically approved the first gerrymander there.
00:15:47.600And Massachusetts has carried on that tradition, the Democrats there.
00:15:52.560Today, even though 35 percent of the statewide vote has been Republican in past elections, out of the nine congressional districts, there's not a single one that a Republican holds.
00:16:06.660And that's typical throughout the New England states.
00:16:09.220In Illinois, 45 percent, the statewide vote is Republican, yet out of 17 congressional seats, only three of them are held by Republicans.
00:16:19.680And that is directly the result of some of the most, if I can call it the best, most skillful redistricting in the country.
00:16:29.380Amid this battle, President Trump earlier this month saying he was ordering the Commerce Department to conduct a new census, the last one done in 2020.
00:16:38.640Census results decide how the 435 House seats are divided among the states and help determine the number of electoral college votes a state has.
00:16:48.400Mr. Trump posting to True Social, quote,
00:16:50.940People who are in our country illegally will not be counted in the census.
00:16:54.860Many on the left and states benefiting from higher illegal immigrant populations for greater representation, decrying the move, saying the Constitution requires, quote,
00:17:05.040all persons, not just legal citizens, to be counted.
00:17:09.040And they say the president cannot simply order a new census.
00:17:12.800Critics also pointing to a Supreme Court ruling under Trump 1.0, in which the high court rejected a Trump administration effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
00:17:23.420What the Supreme Court said was that it was perfectly constitutional and the president had the legal authority to do it.
00:17:35.260It's simply that he administratively did not give a full and sufficient explanation of why he wanted to do it.
00:17:46.560They simply didn't have time to then go back and do that, as the Supreme Court told them to, because they had to get the census forms printed and distributed.
00:17:57.420I've heard some folks say that the president doesn't have the power to do a second census.
00:18:04.960Back in the 1970s, Congress actually amended the federal statute on the census and directed the Commerce Department to do a mid-decade census.