Padilla on BLS chief firing: 'I think an investigation is certainly in order'

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said on Sunday he would support an investigation into President Trump’s firing of the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

“I think an investigation is certainly in order,” Padilla said in an interview on NBC News’s ‘Meet the Press.”

Padilla noted he recently called for an investigation into potential violations of the Hatch Act related to the White House’s involvement in the GOP's redistricting effort.

“The example after example of Donald Trump weaponizing, no longer just the Department of Justice, but he's trying to weaponize the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” Padilla said.

Trump on Friday directed his team to fire BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer following a large jobs data revision that he blamed squarely on the appointee of former President Biden.

The jobs report released Friday showed a significant downturn in May and June of this year, suggesting the U.S. added 258,000 fewer jobs over those months than had initially been reported.

Trump said McEntarfer “faked the Jobs Numbers” before the 2024 election in order to boost former Vice President Kamala Harris’s White House bid, citing labor statistics revisions during the Biden administration that boosted job numbers ahead of the election.

Padilla said Trump’s decision to fire the commissioner reveals the GOP's anxiety about the economy.

“That tells you a lot about their insecurity about the economy and the state of economic affairs in America because everything that they're claiming to be true is not true,” he said.

“Prices are still going up. This is from a president who promised to bring prices down. And so the American people are feeling it. The impact of tariffs, $2,400 a year for working families across the country. That's the reality of tariffs.”