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On Friday — the same day Donald Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics chief Erica McEntarfer following a weak jobs report — the Senate voted to confirm Andrea Lucas to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that handles workplace discrimination complaints.
Lucas, who joined the commission during Trump’s first term, was confirmed to serve a five-year term as head of the commission. Since Lucas stepped in as acting EEOC head, Trump has purged two EEOC members, enabling her to turn the mission of the agency, which was intended to target discrimination on the basis of race and gender (among other things), on its head in pursuance of his white-centric, misogynistic agenda.
This year, EEOC has helped wage Trump’s bigoted culture wars, targeting private institutions like Harvard University and some top law firms over diversity policies the president and his movement have falsely portrayed as discriminatory against white men. The EEOC has also done a 180 on anti-trans discrimination, dropping several lawsuits and stalling others in a move that’s prompted activists to sue the organization.
Lucas’ confirmation could portend even greater setbacks for the fight against workplace discrimination in light of Trump’s move to fire the chief of the BLS for publishing accurate economic data that Trump decided made him look bad.
The BLS tracks race-related labor data, and the EEOC uses some of that data to enforce workplace discrimination laws. So, hypothetically, a MAGA loyalist at the BLS could skew or manipulate the data to support conservative claims that white people do face discrimination in the workplace — and a pro-Trump EEOC could use that manipulated data to put marginalized racial and ethnic groups and trans people and women at even greater disadvantage.
It’s a point former Biden administration official Dan Koh alluded to during Friday’s episode of “All in with Chris Hayes,” when he noted that the BLS data on race and immigrant workers are at risk of manipulation by “a loyalist that Trump appoints.”
While much of the concern over Trump’s firing of McEntarfer has centered, understandably, on whether Americans will be able to trust data on the economy in the months ahead, the confirmation of an anti-DEI attack dog to lead the EEOC underscores how dubious jobs data could be used to fuel other administration policies, including its anti-diversity push.