This is all about American weakness and an incompetent President.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2012
Putin has shown the world what happens when America has weak leaders. Peace Through Strength!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 28, 2014
Putin has no respect for our President --- really bad body language.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2012
🚨🚨 The final draft map from the California state legislature is now public.
— VoteHub (@VoteHubUS) August 16, 2025
Our partisanship index (2024/2020 presidential results composite) shows:
🔵 48 Democratic seats (+5)
🔴 4 Republican seats (-5) pic.twitter.com/StPeUKEk6V
TRUMP JUST FLED THE PODIUM WITH PUTIN — NO QUESTIONS, NOTHING! TOTAL LOW ENERGY. THE MAN LOOKED LIKE HE’D JUST EATEN 3 BUCKETS OF KFC WITH VLAD. IS HE AFRAID THE PRESS WILL ASK ABOUT ME??? (AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR) AND THE FACT I "STOLE THE CAMERAS" THIS WEEK WITH “THE MAPS”?…
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) August 15, 2025
As Gov. Gavin Newsom prepared to announce that he would take on President Trump’s redistricting plans on behalf of California, scores of federal immigration agents massed outside the venue Thursday.
Newsom was set to speak at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles, when Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, who has been leading the immigration operations in California, arrived in Little Tokyo, flanked by agents in helmets, camouflage, masks and holding guns.
“We’re here making Los Angeles a safer place since we won’t have politicians that’ll do that, we do that ourselves,” Bovino told a Fox 11 reporter in Little Tokyo. “We’re glad to be here, we’re not going anywhere.”
When the reporter noted that Newsom was nearby, Bovino responded, “I don’t know where he’s at.”
Newsom’s office took to X to share that agents were outside, posting: “BORDER PATROL HAS SHOWED UP AT OUR BIG BEAUTIFUL PRESS CONFERENCE! WE WILL NOT BE INTIMIDATED!”
Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is on an ominous course.
Homan: President Trump doesn’t have a limitation on his authority to make this country safe again. There is no limitation on that pic.twitter.com/fFcWciVEso
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 13, 2025
Trump on DC: “The White House is in charge. The Military and our Great Police will liberate this City, scrape away the filth, and make it safe, clean, habitable and beautiful once more!” pic.twitter.com/BJ5nAWzHcP
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 13, 2025
REPORTER: Your federalization of the police has a 30 day limit unless Congress acts. Are you talking to Congress about extending it?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 13, 2025
TRUMP: If it's a national emergency we can do it without Congress pic.twitter.com/8p0yOUT1cN
According to a commencement program from Northern Illinois University, Antoni earned a master’s and Ph.D. in economics from that school in 2018 and 2020, respectively, and a bachelor of arts degree from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. Antoni’s LinkedIn profile says he attended Lansdale Catholic High School outside Philadelphia from 2002 to 2006.
According to the profile, Antoni went to work in 2021 as an economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin that has sued the federal government to overturn climate-change regulations. The following year, he joined the conservative Heritage Foundation as a research fellow studying regional economics. He is now the foundation’s chief economist and an adviser to the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a group of conservative economic commentators.
Past BLS commissioners have had extensive research experience, and many have climbed the ranks of the agency itself. Antoni doesn’t fit that profile. He doesn’t appear to have published any formal academic research since his dissertation, according to queries of National Bureau of Economic Research working papers and Google Scholar. Much of his commentary on the Heritage website praises Trump’s policies and economic record. He frequently posts on X and appears on conservative podcasts such as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room,” where he criticized the economy under President Joe Biden and lauds Trump’s economy.
...
According to Google Scholar, Antoni’s paper has earned one citation, by the Texas Public Policy Foundation in 2021, while he worked there. Publications by Erika McEntarfer—the BLS commissioner who was ousted by Trump on Aug. 1, midway through her term, after a weak jobs report—have been cited 1,327 times.
Trump fired McEntarfer after a report showing significant downward revisions to prior months’ job growth. Trump supporters have since seized upon the agency’s tendency to revise some of its numbers, as well as other issues they see with the data.
Economists said they found Dr. Antoni’s history of distorting economic statistics to support partisan positions more concerning.
They cited numerous examples of Dr. Antoni’s appearing to misunderstand the same government data that he will now, if confirmed, be in charge of. In one case, he cited the rising number of Americans who aren’t in the labor force, without acknowledging the role of the aging population; in another, he appeared not to know that the bureau’s measure of import prices did not include the effect of tariffs.
“He has either shown a complete misunderstanding of economic data and principles, or he’s showing a willingness to treat his audience with contempt and mislead them,” said Kyle Pomerleau, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
And apparently, he was a J6er:
Trump’s new pick for Bureau of Labor Statistics claims to have been a “bystander” on J6 who just wandered over because he heard about it on the news.
— Jim Stewartson, Antifascist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🏴☠️🇺🇸 (@jimstewartson) August 14, 2025
That is a flat out lie. This is all the way up front. Tens of thousands are behind him.https://t.co/B5jDQlGmQt pic.twitter.com/6JX2omRktV
Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
Rep. Doug LaMalfa, the Republican who represents much of California’s rural north, had barely begun his prepared remarks at a town hall in Chico early Monday when a chorus of boos and jeers overpowered him.
The raucous interjections didn’t relent for nearly 90 minutes.
The crowd of more than 650 people at the local Elks Lodge peppered him with obscenity-laden comments and slammed him for his vote for President Donald Trump’s budget bill, which cuts more than $1.1 trillion in federal spending for Medicaid, Medicare and plans under the Affordable Care Act over the next decade. The crowd excoriated LaMalfa for supporting legislation they said will “devastate” rural hospitals and hurt vulnerable people with disabilities and poor families.
But LaMalfa claimed the legislation makes “no cuts to the people themselves” in California’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, and instead only targets “waste, fraud and abuse” – a common and misleading line that House Republicans across the country have employed to defend the legislation.
...
The in-person, open mic town hall has gradually become a relic in the age of social media, as fewer elected officials are willing to prostrate themselves in today’s hyperpartisan era. House Republicans even discouraged their members from hosting face-to-face forums after a wave of negative headlines out of viral town hall confrontations – including with their own GOP supporters – earlier this year.
Nicholas Wu, Cassandra Dumay and Mia McCarthy at Politico:
Such scenes of angry constituents confronting lawmakers are nothing new. They were commonplace in 2009 as Democrats pressed forward with a health care overhaul and in 2017 when Republicans sought to undo it.
This time around, there is a fierce debate underway about whether the town hall explosions are part of a genuine backlash to GOP governance in Washington — one that could presage another wave election as seen in 2010 and 2018 — or just another reflection of America’s political polarization.
Many Republicans are dismissing the outbursts, concluding they have been choreographed by Democrats and groups aligned with them and do not reflect genuine voter sentiment. Some — including Trump — have claimed without evidence that paid protesters are responsible.
“I think Democrats have been organized to actually act out in town halls, and I think if you’re going to have a town hall where you’re inviting people to come in with the intent of protesting, that’s what you’re going to get,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said Tuesday.
But left-of-center activists say the GOP dismisses voters’ outrage at their peril. Groups might be helping to publicize and organize protests around lawmakers’ events, they say, but that is merely harnessing a real grass-roots backlash to what Republicans are pursuing in Washington.