New BLS Head, Trump v Higher Ed, Reclassifying Marijuana

The Politics Guys

Michael Baranowski

Politics, News

4.4 • 783 Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mike and Joey open this midweek supporters’ episode with a discussion of President Trump nominating E.J. Antoni to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mike argues that Antoni is too inexperienced for the position, while Joey counters that it’s Antoni’s lack of time in the establishment that may make him a more effective change agent at BLS. They both agree that there are significant issues with BLS’s data collection methodology that need to be addressed. Next is a look at President Trump’s continuing battle against elite universities. Mike allows that the administration has a civil rights case to make, but that using the stick of removing unrelated federal funding is both inappropriate and potentially unconstitutional. Joey argues that federal dollars are the people’s money, Trump was elected by the people, and so using the threat of ending federal funding is an entirely appropriate way to force change in elite higher ed. They close by considering whether President Trump will continue Biden-era efforts to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III in federal drug classification. Mike argues that this could actually bolster the case for the anti-marijuana side, an argument Joey finds compelling. Joey points out the legitimacy issues that arise when there is widespread defiance of the law, making a case for clear federal supremacy when the federal government is acting within proper constitutional constraints. The Politics Guys on Facebook | X Mike’s Substack: What Fresh Hell is This? Check out the excellent Sustainable Planet podcast. Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo, we’re @PoliticsGuys. The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	atheists agnostics long-haired widows short-haired widows vandal.
0:04.7	I love the government hug the government, hug the government, love the government, hug the government, love the government, hug the government.
0:12.0	Welcome to the politics, guys, a place for bipartisan, rational, and civil debate on American politics and policy.
0:18.7	I'm Northern Kentucky University political scientist Michael
0:21.4	Barronowski. I'm joined today by my conservative counterpart, Cincinnati area attorney, Joy Ashbrook.
0:27.3	Hey, Mike, great to be with you. Yeah, I am looking forward to getting to the stories we didn't have
0:32.3	time for on our weekend show, starting with something, is sort of a carryover from last week,
0:39.6	if you will, because last week, Justin and Ken discussed the firing of the previous BLS head,
0:45.5	but they kind of left it at that because they sort of had to.
0:48.1	And as folks know, there was an uproar following President Trump's firing of Bureau of Labels,
0:58.6	labor statistics commissioner Erica McIntyffer,
1:09.3	I'm sure I'm getting that wrong, on August 1st, that followed the jobs report that showed slower than expected growth in July and downward revisions to the May and June job numbers.
1:12.3	Now, the president claimed without any supporting evidence that the numbers had been, here's that word again from last weekend show rigged to make him look bad.
1:17.5	Now, this week, President Trump announced his nominee for BLS Commissioner E.J. Antony,
1:23.3	who's currently the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation. Antony has been a long-time critic of how BLS collects their data.
1:31.0	In fact, this week, he posted on X that there are better ways to collect, process, and disseminate data.
1:37.2	That is the task for the next BLS commissioner.
1:40.5	And only consistent delivery of accurate data in a timely manner will rebuild the trust that has
1:45.7	been lost over the last several years.
1:48.7	Now, Antony earned his Ph.D. in economics from Northern Illinois University in 2020, not that
1:54.6	long ago, after which he worked at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is a conservative
1:59.5	think tank, and then he joined Heritage.
	...

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