White House Defends BLS Firing as Trump Orders Nuclear Submarine Deployment

WASHINGTON – In a tumultuous week for the White House, President Donald Trump has taken two significant and highly controversial actions, drawing swift reactions from both domestic and international fronts. The President has ordered the repositioning of two nuclear submarines following a social media spat with a former Russian leader, and his administration has defended the abrupt firing of a key federal economic official.

Naval Deployment Follows “Provocative” Russian Comments

President Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that he had ordered two U.S. nuclear submarines to be “positioned in the appropriate regions” in response to what he called “highly provocative statements” from Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and current deputy chairman of its Security Council. The President did not specify the exact locations of the deployment, citing military protocol.

The move comes after Medvedev issued a post on X, formerly Twitter, in which he warned Trump that a new ultimatum on the Ukraine conflict was “a threat and a step towards war.” Trump had previously issued a 10-day deadline for a ceasefire in Ukraine, threatening new sanctions if Russia did not comply. The exchange has been characterized as a significant escalation of rhetoric between the two nations, with analysts noting that while the U.S. routinely has such submarines deployed, the public announcement and justification are highly unusual.

BLS Commissioner Fired Amid Jobs Data Controversy

Domestically, the White House is defending its decision to fire Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The dismissal came just hours after the agency released a July jobs report showing a weaker-than-expected gain of 73,000 nonfarm jobs. The report also included a significant downward revision of 258,000 jobs for the preceding two months.

In a series of social media posts, President Trump accused McEntarfer, a Biden-era appointee, of “faking” and “rigging” the jobs numbers for political purposes. He announced that McEntarfer, who was confirmed by the Senate with bipartisan support in 2024, would be replaced by “someone much more competent and qualified.”

Senior White House officials have since defended the decision. On Sunday talk shows, National Economic Adviser Kevin Hassett stated that the president “is right to call for new leadership” and expressed concern over the scale of the recent data revisions. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer added that the president had “real concerns” about the data’s reliability.

The firing has been met with widespread criticism from economists and policymakers, who warn that politicizing a non-partisan statistical agency could undermine the credibility of U.S. economic data and rattle financial markets. McEntarfer, in a social media post of her own, praised the career civil servants at the BLS and called her time as commissioner “the honor of her life.”