EJ Antoni, Trump’s pick for labor statistics chief, was at Capitol on January 6 – as it happened

The White House confirmed to NBC News on Wednesday that EJ Antoni, the conservative economist Donald Trump has chosen to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was in the crowd of Trump supporters that surrounded the Capitol on January 6 2021.

A man of Antoni’s appearance, wearing a red varsity jacket, was caught on video posted on the conservative social network Parler walking through the crowd of Trump supporters massed outside the west side of the Capitol about 10 minutes before the mob broke through police lines and into the building.

That video, archived by ProPublica, shows the man in what appears to be a varsity jacket with the University of Pennsylvania crest on it walking away from that entrance to the Capitol at about 1.51 pm that day.

According to NBC News, the man also appears in other footage recorded on the east side of the Capitol building during the riot.

Approached for comment by NBC News, the White House confirmed that the man in the images was Antoni.

“These pictures show EJ Antoni, a bystander to the events of January 6th, observing and then leaving the Capitol area,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers wrote to NBC News. “EJ was in town for meetings, and it is wrong and defamatory to suggest EJ engaged in anything inappropriate or illegal.”

Antoni, who attended a Catholic high school and then St Charles Borromeo Seminary in the Philadelphia suburbs, likely has family links to the University of Pennsylvania, which is also Trump’s alma mater.

The economist’s full name, given on a commencement program from Northern Illinois University, is Erwin J Antoni III. Graduates of the University of Pennsylvania include an Erwin J Antoni, who played varsity baseball, basketball and soccer, from the class of 1948, and an Erwin J Antoni Jr, who graduated in 1978.

As Americans try to learn more about Antoni, given the sudden prominence of the previously obscure economist, his taste in art has also been a subject of online discussion.

In a podcast appearance in 2023, Antoni acknowledged that a painting of a battleship behind him during the recording was from the fleet of Nazi Germany.

Asked by the podcast host if the ship was the Bismarck, which engaged in naval battles with British forces in 1941, Antoni said it was. “The Bismarck, yep, in all his glory,” Antoni said.

Antoni used the same painting as the backdrop for subsequent media appearances during and after the 2024 election campaign.

Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday to cut regulations for the commercial space firms, like those owned by billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, speed the licensing process and eliminate environmental reviews for launches and reentry vehicles.

The order directs the transportation secretary, former reality TV star and Fox News host Sean Duffy, to “eliminate outdated, redundant, or overly restrictive rules for launch and reentry vehicles,” according to a White House fact sheet.

Trump also called for Duffy to “reevaluate, amend, or rescind” Part 450, a section of the Federal Aviation Administration’s licensing process for launches.

The executive order could be a boon to Musk’s SpaceX, which is planning test flights of its Starship rocket. Musk, SpaceX’s CEO, donated heavily to Trump’s campaign and served as a special government employee at the start of his second term, helping to degrade and dismantle multiple government agencies.

Bezos, whose firm Blue Origin also stands to gain from the cut in regulation, intervened late in the 2024 election campaign to bar his newspaper, the Washington Post, from publishing an endorsement of Trump’s rival, Kamala Harris.

The White House announced on Wednesday that Donald Trump has revoked an executive order issued by his predecessor, Joe Biden, in 2021 which made it government policy to promote competition throughout the US economy.

Unlike many of Trump’s orders, this one, which ended 72 federal initiatives to fight corporate monopolies and aid workers and consumers, was released without any publicity at all.

There was no televised signing ceremony in the Oval Office, and no written explanation as to why the initiatives to protect consumers and workers were ended.

The initiatives brought to a quiet end by Trump’s order on Wednesday included government efforts to: lower the cost of hearing aids, by allowing them to be sold over the counter; make it easier for airline passengers to get refunds for shoddy baggage handling or in-flight wifi; make it easier for workers to change jobs, by banning or limiting noncompete agreements on employees; guarantee farmers, motorists and iPhone users the right to repair their own vehicles or devices without voiding warranty protections.

Biden’s order also directed the agriculture department to make it easier for cow, pig and poultry farmers to sue slaughterhouses who refused to pay them agreed upon rates and asked the Federal Trade Commission to establish rules for internet providers and tech companies’ use of data.

Lina Khan, then chair of the Federal Trade Commission, called it “an important cross-government effort to re-center antimonopoly policy as a key tool for promoting a fair and thriving economy” that empowered the FTC “to address unchecked market concentration and promote fair competition”.

When Biden’s order was issued, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote that it included “many of the reforms I’ve been pushing to increase competition in the U.S. economy” and “puts power back in the hands of consumers and workers and reorients the economy towards everyday Americans instead of those of ultra-wealthy corporations and their executives.”

California governor Gavin Newsom, who revels in trolling Donald Trump on social media, just used the president’s bizarre writing style in a post on X to promote a news conference on his state’s plan to counter Texas gerrymandering, scheduled for Thursday at 11:30am Pacific Time.

Here’s the post in full, which is clearly intended as a parody of Trump’s hyperbolic, all-caps style:

HUGE “HISTORIC” EVENT — THURSDAY 11:30AM PACIFIC IN LOS ANGELES!!! A “BEAUTIFUL RALLY” / PRESS CONFERENCE WITH GAVIN CHRISTOPHER NEWSOM & STRONG DEMS. DEMOCRATS WILL DESTROY GREG ABBOTT’S “TOTALLY RIGGED MAPS.” TREMENDOUS WORK IS BEING DONE. DONALD TRUMP (THE CRIMINAL PRESIDENT) GET READY FOR THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PAYBACK YOU’VE EVER SEEN!!! COULD BE THE WORST DAY OF YOUR LIFE AS YOUR PRESIDENCY ENDS (DEMS RETAKE CONGRESS!). AMERICA WILL BE LIBERATED — “LIBERATION DAY” MANY ARE CALLING IT!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GCN

A judge in Adams County, Illinois just rejected a request from the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, to order the arrest of Democrats from the Texas state legislature who left Texas to block a Republican plan to redraw congressional districts.

In a petition filed last Thursday, Paxton had asked the court in a conservative county that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump to honor so-called quorum warrants – civil arrest orders issued by Dustin Burrows, the Republican speaker of the Texas state house – and order Illinois police officers to “effectuate the civil arrest” of the Democratic lawmakers.

In the ruling, which was posted online by Aarón Torres of the Dallas Morning News, the judge ruled that the Illinois circuit court “does not have the inherent power to direct Illinois law enforcement officers, or to allow the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Representatives of the State of Texas, or any officer appointed by her, to execute Texas civil Quorum Warrants upon nonresidents temporarily located in the State of Illinois”.

Today, a US federal judge struck down rules from 2018 that allow employers to not provide insurance coverage for birth control on religious or moral grounds, Reuters is reporting.

During Donald Trump’s first term in office, the supreme court ruled that employers were eligible for religious exemptions when it comes to providing health insurance that covers women’s birth control.

The Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, requires employers to offer health insurance with access to contraception, but stipulates that they can apply for religious exemptions. The 2018 rules, however, offered a blanket exemption.

According to Reuters, Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia said there was a gap between how vast the exception is, and the number of employers who would need it.

Several Texas Democratic lawmakers are now speaking about their redistricting fight alongside Indiana Democrats. They’re joining the legislators to push back against the president’s push for Indiana governor Mike Braun to redraw the state’s congressional map – in a similar vein to Texas governor Greg Abbott.

Today, state representative Gene Wu, who is also chair of the Texas House Democrats, said that “we need more people to join us”.

He added that if Texas Republicans continue to “block the will of the people” Democrats will make to “nullify their actions”.

A number of Indiana Democratic lawmakers said that they stand in solidarity with their Texas counterparts. “We need to support them and stand with them, otherwise our people will be subjected to ever changing districts, none of which are representative,” said Indiana state representative Ed DeLaney.

The White House said on Wednesday that law enforcement made dozens of arrests in Washington DC overnight after federal agents and national guard troops fanned out across the city as part of Donald Trump’s campaign to quell a “crime crisis” that local officials say does not exist.

The national guard arrived on the National Mall late on Tuesday, while agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), FBI and Department of Homeland Security were seen in several neighborhoods , sometimes accompanied by local police officers.

Video circulating on local media showed police and federal agents arresting at least one person that evening in Columbia Heights, home to the city’s largest Hispanic population. Other videos showed traffic stops near Kennedy street in Northwest Washington, which in years past has been the site of gang activity.

A White House official said to expect a “significantly higher” presence of national guard troops over the days to come, as well as round-the-clock patrols by federal agents, which have thus far only been present in the evenings. The administration argues the steps are necessary to fight what Trump has called an “out of control” crime problem in the nation’s capital, but local officials have disputed that characterization.

Data shows that crime rates plunged last year to the lowest levels in three decades, though the capital does have higher rates of some violent crimes compared with cities with similar populations.

Democratic lawmakers have condemned Trump’s incursion as an authoritarian move intended to distract his supporters from outrage over his refusal to make public files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, a one-time friend who has become a fixation of conspiracy theorists.

The Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser, has sought a cordial relationship with Trump since his return to the White House, but changed her tone on Tuesday, urging residents and voters during a social media event “to protect our city, to protect our autonomy, to protect our home rule and get to the other side of this guy and make sure we elect a Democratic House so that we have a backstop to this authoritarian push”.

A White House official said a total of 43 arrests were made on Tuesday night, twice the total of the previous evening. More than 1,450 officers participated, about half of which were from the city’s police department, while only 30 national guard troops were deployed of the roughly 800 that defense officials have said are expected to arrive for the mission.

The White House said a total of 19 teams of officers from various federal agencies are in the city “to promote public safety and arrest violent offenders”, while the national guard will “protect federal assets, provide a safe environment for law enforcement officers to make arrests, and deter violent crime with a visible law enforcement presence”.

More than 40 Ice agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI, which does long-term investigations into transnational crimes) are working with the DC police, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal agencies this week as part of Trump’s takeover of the capital to mitigate crime, NBC News is reporting.

Per NBC’s report, “they can make arrests of citizens with no nexus to immigration violations”. “Yesterday, HSI worked with other agencies in an operation near the DC Metro in Union Station; its agents told NBC News that they were not there for anything immigration related, but were surveying busy areas around DC.”

Separately, Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO, which carries out operations like arresting immigrants for immigration crimes and detaining and deporting them) is increasing its operations in DC, according to NBC. The news outlet reports that “there was a ‘targeted enforcement operation’ to arrest immigrants in a Home Depot parking lot in DC yesterday, and there have been reports of other immigrant arrests in the DC area.”

“The President was clear, he will make DC safe and beautiful again, and ICE is proud to be a part of the solution alongside our federal law enforcement partners,” an agency spokesperson told NBC about the operations. The agency is conducting both immigration enforcement operations and undertaking efforts to fight crime in support of the US Marshals Service, they said.

They said the operations were intelligence-based, and the efforts at Union Station and the Home Depot resulted in arrests of criminal undocumented immigrants convicted of assault, theft and gang activity.

“We will support the re-establishment of law and order and public safety in DC, which includes taking drug dealers, gang members, and criminal aliens off city streets,” they said.

A senior official appointed to the defense department led a thinktank that promoted fake news about the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang, according to InSight Crime, a non-profit analyzing organized crime.

Joseph Humire was appointed this summer to be the head of policy focusing on the western hemisphere within the office of the under secretary of defense for policy. He was previously the executive director of a conservative thinktank focused on global security. Humire’s appointment comes as the Trump administration is ramping up its aggressive strategy against organized crime in Latin America and the Venezuelan government, which it accuses of working with TdA.

Under Humire’s leadership, the Center for a Secure Free Society thinktank published the “TdA Activity Monitor”, tracking alleged crimes by accused members of the gang throughout the US. According to InSight Crime, at least five event entries in the tracker appeared to have been “completely fabricated”. InSight Crime found zero basis for the false entries, with local police departments telling researchers the purported crimes were nonexistent. InSight Crime analyzed more than 90 of the entries, finding many relied on unverified sources.

“Some incidents are included multiple times, inflating the gang’s perceived presence and activities,” researchers found.

Asked if he was confident he could get Putin to stop targeting civilians in Ukraine, Trump said:

Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ve had that conversation with him. I’ve had a lot of good conversations with him. Then I go home and I see that a rocket hit a nursing home, or a rocket hit an apartment building and people are laying dead in the street.

So I guess the answer to that is no, because I’ve had this conversation.

He ended his briefing there.

The president kept it short and blunt when asked about the consequences Russia could face if Putin does not agree to stop the war at their meeting with Trump on Friday in Alaska.

“There will be very severe consequences,” he said. Trump didn’t elaborate on what those penalties will be.

Taking questions on his meeting on Friday with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, the president says that if this week’s meeting goes well he would like a second meeting “almost immediately” with both Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Although Trump adds that is only if the leaders would “like to have me there”.

But when it comes to that possible trilateral summit, Trump doesn’t say it’s a guarantee. “If I feel that it’s not appropriate to have it because I didn’t get the answers that we have to have, then we’re not going to have a second meeting,” Trump adds.

The president confirms that he is looking to extend the initial 30-day limit for the federal takeover of the DC metropolitan police.

“I don’t want to call national emergency. If I have to I will. But I think the Republicans in Congress will approve this pretty much unanimously,” Trump says, referring to the joint resolution in Congress needed to authorize an extension (beyond the 30-days guaranteed by Section 740 of the DC Home Rule Act).

Trump also says that any idea about DC statehood is “ridiculous” and simply states that it’s “not going to happen”, when answering a reporter’s question.

The president has said he will host the Kennedy Center Honors, at the insistence of his chief of staff Susie Wiles. It will take place in December.

The president also announces Sylvester Stallone, the Rocky and Rambo star who is the president’s newly minted “Ambassador to Hollywood”, is one of this year’s honorees.

“Sly is a pillar of the really American pop culture and a Hollywood superstar like few others,” the president said. “One of the biggest names on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In fact, the only one that’s a bigger name of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, they say, is a guy named Donald Trump”.

Stallone has routinely praised Trump, even calling him a “second George Washington”.

The president has now arrived at DC’s landmark performing arts venue, the Kennedy Center, to announce the recipients of this year’s honors.

A reminder that Trump made himself the chair of the Kennedy Center earlier this year, and has overhauled the management and programming of the venue, including ousting its long-serving president Deborah Rutter.

As part of Trump’s domestic policy bill, the Kennedy Center will also receive $257m for an extensive renovation.

Today, a federal appeals court lifted a lower court’s injunction that required the state department to continue making payments to foreign aid contractors.

In a 2-1 decision, the appellate panel effectively granted a victory for Trump, which means that the administration can cut billions in congressionally appropriated funding for foreign assistance.

This also comes after the supreme court rejected a previous appeal to lift district judge Amir Ali’s decision earlier this year.

My colleague Jakub Krupa has been keeping up with the latest developments following Donald Trump’s virtual meeting with European leaders and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

A few of the top lines are here:

• German chancellor Frederich Merz said that Trump “largely shares” the European position, and characterised the meeting as a “very good, constructive talk”.

• For his part Zelenskyy emphasised the importance of a trilateral meeting with Trump and Putin.

• He also confirmed that Trump said he would call him straight after the meeting with Putin to talk it through it.

• Meanwhile, Jakub reports that Nato secretary general Mark Rutte posted on social media, saying it was a “great call”, and emphasised Nato unity to end the war in Ukraine and “achieve just and lasting peace”.

The president is considering 11 candidates to replace Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell when his terms ends in May, according to a report from CNBC.

According to CNBC’s sources this long list includes three people who have not yet been mentioned publicly.

Per CNBC these include: David Zervos, Jefferies chief market strategist, former Federal Reserve governor Larry Lindsey, and Rick Rieder, a chief investment officer at BlackRock.

A reminder, that should Donald Trump replace Powell, his pick must be confirmed by the US Senate.

Donald Trump, ahead of his planned virtual meeting with European leaders and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy later on Wednesday, praised Europe’s leaders in a post on social media and said they “want to see a deal done.”

In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote:

Will be speaking to European Leaders in a short while. They are great people who want to see a deal done.

That was followed shortly after with another post, criticising the way his upcoming meeting with Putin has been portrayed in the media.

Trump wrote:

Very unfair media is at work on my meeting with Putin. Constantly quoting fired losers and really dumb people like John Bolton, who just said that, even though the meeting is on American soil, “Putin has already won.” What’s that all about? We are winning on EVERYTHING. The Fake News is working overtime (No tax on overtime!).

If I got Moscow and Leningrad free, as part of the deal with Russia, the Fake News would say that I made a bad deal! But now they’ve been caught. Look at all of the real news that’s coming out about their CORRUPTION. They are sick and dishonest people, who probably hate our Country. But it doesn’t matter because we are winning on everything!!! MAGA

For more on Trump’s calls with European leaders, follow our Europe live blog.

Muriel Bowser last night hardened her stance on Donald Trump using federal agents to police the city, calling the president’s move an “authoritarian push”.

Speaking during a live town hall on social media, the mayor of Washington DC urged community members to “protect our city, to protect our autonomy, to protect our home rule and get to the other side of this guy and make sure we elect a Democratic House so that we have a backstop to this authoritarian push”.

“We are not 700,000 scumbags and punks,” she added. “We don’t have neighborhoods that should be bulldozed. We have to be clear about our story, who we are and what we want for our city.”

Bowser had previously pledged to work “side with side” with the federal officials Trump has tasked with overseeing the city’s law enforcement, while insisting the police chief remained in charge of the department and its officers.

Speaking on Tuesday after a meeting with Pam Bondi, the attorney general, Bowser told reporters: “What I’m focused on is the federal surge and how to make the most of the additional officer support that we have.”

About 850 officers and agents took part in a “massive law enforcement surge” across Washington DC on Monday night and made nearly two dozen arrests, the White House has said. The violent crime rate in Washington DC is at a 30-year low.

Trump’s intervention has been widely condemned as an authoritarian power grab that undermines the autonomy of Washington’s DC local government and seeks to distract attention from political problems such as the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news.

We start with the news that Donald Trump will be visiting the Kennedy Center on Wednesday, the same day that the recipients of this year’s honors are announced.

Trump avoided the Kennedy Center Honors during his first term after artists said they would not attend out of protest. This year, he has taken over as the Kennedy Center‘s new chair and fired the board of trustees, which he replaced with loyalists.

In a Truth Social post Tuesday, Trump teased a name change for the performing arts center and said it would be restored to its former glory, AP reported.

“GREAT Nominees for the TRUMP/KENNEDY CENTER, whoops, I mean, KENNEDY CENTER, AWARDS,” Trump wrote. He said work was being done on the site that would be “bringing it back to the absolute TOP LEVEL of luxury, glamour, and entertainment.”

“It had fallen on hard times, physically, BUT WILL SOON BE MAKING A MAJOR COMEBACK!!!” he wrote.

It is unclear how this year’s batch of honorees were chosen, though Trump had indicated he wanted a more active role. Historically, a bipartisan advisory committee selects the recipients, who over the years have ranged from George Balanchine and Tom Hanks to Aretha Franklin and Stephen Sondheim. A message sent to the Kennedy Center press office asking how this year’s honorees were selected wasn’t returned Tuesday.

The Kennedy Center did post this on social media, however: “Coming Soon ... A country music icon, an Englishman, a New York City Rock band, a dance Queen and a multi-billion dollar Actor walk into the Kennedy Center Opera House ...”

In other developments:

• The DC national guard began deploying on the city’s streets Tuesday night, a day after Trump ordered their arrival and took control of the city’s police force, calling Washington DC a “lawless” city, despite official crime statistics saying otherwise.

• A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to immediately improve conditions at a New York City immigration holding facility, acting on mounting complaints from detainees that the cells are overcrowded, unsanitary and inhumane.

• The Texas Senate approved a GOP-drawn congressional map that would give Republicans five more House seats ahead of the 2026 midterms. But since House Democrats continue to break quorum, the legislation isn’t going anywhere. Speaker Dustin Burrows said the House will adjourn until Friday, at which point the legislature will attempt to reach quorum one more time.

• Trump is due to speak with European leaders, including Volodymyr Zelenskyy, today ahead of Friday’s meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt characterised Friday’s meeting between Trump and Putin as a “listening exercise” for the president, confirming that Zelenskyy would not be in attendance, but the president has hopes for a trilateral meeting in the future. For more on the upcoming meeting, follow our Europe live blog here.

• California governor Gavin Newsom says the state will draw new electoral maps after Trump “missed” a deadline on Tuesday night in an ongoing redistricting battle between Democratic and Republican states.

• The Trump administration is evidently extending its control of cultural representation at the Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum and research complex. In a letter posted on the White House website, the administration told the Smithsonian that it plans a wide review of exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of the US’s 250th anniversary celebrations in 2026.