Episode August 5, 2025 22 min 13s

Amid Bad Jobs Report, Trump White House Leans Into Politics

The fallout from President Donald Trump’s decision last week to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics over what he called a ‘rigged’ jobs report continued Monday, as White House officials rushed to defend his actions. Amid growing bipartisan outcry, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett put the blame on a familiar culprit in the Trump Cinematic Universe: The Deep State. He told CNBC, “All over the U.S. government, there have been people who have been resisting Trump everywhere they can.” Trump is expected to announce his new pick to run the BLS this week, but already he’s made that person’s job – and the bureau’s job – harder by making Americans even less likely to trust their data. Heidi Shierholz, who served as the chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Barack Obama and now runs the nonpartisan labor think tank the Economic Policy Institute, joins us to talk about the BLS, the important data it compiles, and what the hell a revision is.

And in headlines: Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott escalated the redistricting fight with state Democrats, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace announced her campaign for South Carolina governor, and the Trump administration has reportedly backtracked on the president’s campaign promise to make health insurers cover IVF.

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