The White House sent paperwork to the Senate on Monday to withdraw the nomination of anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracy theorist E.J. Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The White House didn’t comment on why.

Antoni used recent media appearances and Heritage Foundation blog posts to style himself as a government accountability watchdog, CNN reported. However, Antoni previously posted many anti-LGBTQ+ messages on his now-inactive Twitter account that he ran from 2015 to 2019.

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When Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) published an October 8, 2019, tweet in support of “LGBTQIA+” workplace anti-discrimination laws, Antoni responded, “Does the I stand for incest? With your brother?” His comment repeated a right-wing lie about Omar.

In March 2020, he wrote, “There is only one sexual orientation — everything else is a disorientation.”

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He also repeatedly and baselessly referred to liberal economist Paul Krugman, then-President Joe Biden, and former FBI director James Comey as pedophiles, an insult often applied as a far-right insult against LGBTQ+ people and their allies. He also made “sexually graphic anti-gay taunts” at out gay CNN anchors Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper, CNN reported.

Antoni also made other posts arguing that abortion (or “child sacrifice,” as he called it) should be illegal even in cases of rape, insulting feminists, and suggesting that then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) used sex to advance her career. He stopped using the account after Twitter banned the current president for inciting the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots. Antoni said he himself was a “bystander” to the riots; no evidence shows Antoni entered the Capitol on that day.

Antoni faced a Senate confirmation hearing that would have undoubtedly highlighted his many past comments. Some economists worried that, if confirmed into the traditionally non-partisan bureau, he would have distorted national employment data to seem more favorable to the president. The president fired the previous BLS head after they issued an unflattering jobs report.

With a federal government shutdown possibly looming, it’s unclear if the BLS will issue a jobs report for September or the year’s third quarter. However, one MSNBC journalist has said that new data proves that the president’s tariff policies are “backfiring completely” against the administration’s stated goals of creating more jobs and an American manufacturing renaissance.

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