Trump on Friday proved that fears about the president manipulating official data in his favor are founded, as he fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, due to a disappointing July jobs report.

The bureau’s report, released earlier in the day, showed a marked slowdown in job growth. It also revised previous months’ gains downward, shaving nearly 260,000 jobs off May’s and June’s report. Reacting to the news, Trump adviser Steve Bannon suggested appointing “a MAGA Republican that President Trump knows and trusts” to head the BLS.

Shortly thereafter, Trump announced his plan to do just that.

“I was just informed that our Country’s ‘Jobs Numbers’ are being produced by a Biden Appointee,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday afternoon. He baselessly accused McEntarfer of having fabricated job numbers, both in July and in the lead-up to the 2024 election—when, he claims, McEntarfer attempted to help rig the election for Kamala Harris.

“I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote. “She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.” The president dubiously insisted that “the Economy is BOOMING under ‘TRUMP.’”

The move is a remarkable one, as Trump has all but confessed to a plan to ensure that official data (whose integrity has already been imperiled by his cuts to federal statistical agencies) suits MAGA’s narrative.

Steve Benen of MSNBC last month observed that some were worried Trump would cook the books by, for example, telling “the Labor Department to manipulate the data and deceive the public.” However, Benen noted, “there’s been no evidence of statistics being altered to fit a political narrative” to date.

If Trump appoints a MAGA lackey to head the BLS, he wouldn’t have to tell anyone to do anything; the new commissioner would know that the bureau’s numbers are to reflect favorably on the administration no matter what.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will be shutting down in response to federal funding cuts, it announced on Friday.

The closure marks a victory in Donald Trump’s war against public media. The CPB’s announcement cites the federal recissions package, which clawed back $1.1 billion in previously approved funding for the organization, and its exclusion from a fiscal spending bill for the first time in over five decades.

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” said CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison.

The company, which helps support more than 1,500 locally managed public television and radio stations nationwide, including NPR and PBS, will begin an “orderly wind-down” of its operations, including the termination of the majority of its employees by September 30.

Organizations like NPR and PBS have been the targets of Republican ire for years over alleged liberal bias. The national organizations will survive the CPB’s announcement, since they receive most of their funding through nongovernmental sources. But small, local news stations that serve rural areas will be seriously affected by these closures.

Some stations, like KCUW in Pendleton, Oregon; KUHB in St. Paul, Alaska; and WVLS in Monterey, Virginia; rely on CPB for 90 percent of their funding, according to Axios.

“Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,” Harrison said in the announcement. “We are deeply grateful to our partners across the system for their resilience, leadership, and unwavering dedication to serving the American people.”

Ghislaine Maxwell has been moved to a minimum-security prison amid speculations that Donald Trump might pressure the Epstein co-conspirator to clear his name.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons confirmed that Maxwell had been moved to the Federal Prison Camp Bryan, a women-only, minimum-security prison in Bryan, Texas. She had previously been held at FCI Tallashassee, a low-security facility in Florida.

Just 24 hours earlier, a Trump administration official told CNN that the government had no such plans to go easy on Maxwell. “No leniency is being given or discussed. That’s just false,” the official said. “The president himself has said that clemency for Maxwell is not something he is even thinking about at this time.”

Maxwell’s sudden move arrives amid swirling rumors that the president may try to offer her a presidential pardon in exchange for helping him disperse the heightened scrutiny over his numerous mentions in the Epstein files, which the government had coincidentally decided not to release.

The family of Virginia Giuffre, the former Trump employee who claimed she was recruited by Maxwell at 16 to travel with the convicted sex offender, previously warned against giving Maxwell leniency and blasted Maxwell’s favorable treatment in a

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