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Jane Coaston: It’s Tuesday, August 5th. I’m Jane Coaston and this is What a Day, the show that says let’s not put a nuclear reactor on the moon. Let’s not do that. Let’s do a lot of other things, but let’s not put a nuclear reactor on the moon. [music break] On today’s show, the Trump administration backtracks on the president’s campaign promise to make health insurers cover IVF. Shocking. And Texas Republican governor, Greg Abbott, escalates the redistricting fight with state Democrats. But let’s start by talking about the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a markedly non-partisan entity, which president Donald Trump has, surprise, surprise injected partisan politics into. After a recent jobs report that was not, shall we say, good. The fallout from Trump’s decision last week to fire the head of the BLS in the wake of the report continued Monday. And amid growing bipartisan outcry, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett put the blame on a familiar culprit in the Trump cinematic universe, the Deep State. 

[clip of Kevin Hassett] And for goodness sakes, we know that that hopefully not much of the data area, but all over the U.S. Government, there have been people who have been resisting Trump everywhere they can. And so to make sure that that’s not going to happen in the data agencies, to make sure that the data are as transparent and as reliable as possible, we’re going to get highly qualified people in there that have a fresh start and a fresh set of eyes on the problem. 

Jane Coaston: Of course, Hasset was totally fine with the BLS as recently as February of this year, here he is speaking to Bloomberg on how downward revisions were totally fine, if they could be used to criticize the Biden administration. 

[clip of Kevin Hassett] And so I say that what we learned with all these outer revisions is that the Biden economy, the Biden jobs market was way worse than markets thought. And that’s sort of consistent with the rest of our views that their policies were unwise and there’s a lot of cleaning up to do. 

Jane Coaston: Ok, sure, the White House turning to Trump good, Biden bad when it’s up against the wall isn’t really news at this point. But Trump firing someone because she told him information he didn’t want to hear is bad, especially when that information is used to make big government decisions that affect all of us. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a very hard job. Survey more than 100,000 businesses about how many people they employ and do so at a time when the response rate is under 50 percent. Trump says he’s going to announce his pick to run the BLS this week. But already he’s made that person’s job and the Bureau’s job even harder by making Americans even less likely to trust them. He’s trying to control the narrative around the economy, but I don’t think that’s going to work. So to talk more about the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Trump, and what the hell a revision is, I spoke to Heidi Shierholz. She’s the president of the Economic Policy Institute, which is a nonpartisan labor think tank, and she served as the chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Barack Obama. Heidi, welcome to What a Day. 

Heidi Shierholz: Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: You raised some serious alarms over President Trump’s firing of Erika McEntarfer. What’s the biggest issue for you? 

Heidi Shierholz: This is going in the absolute opposite direction, taking down the commissioner of BLS because the numbers themselves were bad is a real marker of something is not right here. This is a move that an autocrat makes, not in a democracy, and then it’s also bad for the economy, and I’m also happy to talk more about that. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, I mean, I was struck by the president alleging the commissioner faked the jobs report to make him look bad, which you called preposterous because it is. But can you touch on the BLS process and help us understand why it’s so outlandish to claim the commissioner would essentially make job numbers up for no reason?

Heidi Shierholz: It is impossible to make up like literally hundreds of people go into working on these numbers. It’s huge trying to capture a labor market that’s as big as ours. Like it just takes a ton of people. So the idea that one person could affect these numbers is outrageous. And then the other thing is what he was really focusing on was that there were revisions to earlier data and all say on that is BLS has to balance two competing needs. People need to have the numbers in a timely way as soon as possible, and they need the numbers to be accurate. So what they do is they put out initial estimates with, you know, they don’t have all the data in, we know that they’re not perfect yet, but people want the timely data, and then later they revise them when they get more of the data. It is how it has always been done. Nothing that happened was weird. It is a good way to walk the line between timeliness and accuracy. The idea that we’re going after BLS for doing what they do, that they are one of the most respected statistical agencies in the world. Going after them for this kind of methodology, it’s just outrageous. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, the White House’s biggest objections were about the revisions to the May and June numbers, which, as you point out, happen all the time. And I do want to ask, the May numbers were revised from a monthly gain of 139,000 jobs to just 19,000 jobs. And I am not a statistician. My stats 350 experience in college, not fun. So is a revision that big unusual? I mean, it is a big difference. 

Heidi Shierholz: Yes. 

Jane Coaston: I get that. I totally understand. 

Heidi Shierholz: Yes, it is a big revision. It is unusual to have them be that big. There you know sometimes the revisions are positive, sometimes they’re negative, sometimes they’re big, sometimes they’re small, but this was an unusually large downward revision. One of the things that that could mean is that we are heading into a downturn. And the reason that is, is um when, as I said before, they when the initial estimates come out, BLS doesn’t have all the surveys because, turns out, not all businesses turn in their survey responses right on time. Right. So they they actually have to impute a bunch of the data based on models. And those models look at the trends that have been happening. But if we are starting to fall off, like if we’re starting to head into a recession, those models don’t work as well as they usually do. 

Jane Coaston: Would we see this kind of revision gap? Like if I went back and looked at the revisions for the Great Recession or some of like the tougher economic times we’ve had since in the last 60 years, since the BLS has been doing this, would I see these same kind of revisions? 

Heidi Shierholz: Yes. Yes, you would. What you what we see is during inflection points, the models don’t work as well, so the revisions are bigger. And so I don’t know for sure that we’re heading into a recession, but this these kinds of weak, weak numbers and big downward revisions sort of point to things are potentially looking like they’re really deteriorating out there. 

Jane Coaston: Right. I’ll note that some economists were surprised that the May and June jobs numbers were as good as they were when first reported because of–

Heidi Shierholz: Yes. 

Jane Coaston: –all the mass layoffs. And so it does kind of follow that the numbers would revise down. But–

Heidi Shierholz: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: Now the BLS has lost a commissioner because Donald Trump got mad and the administration is looking for a replacement that it deems, quote, “qualified.” What kind of impact does this kind of disruption have on the broader economy? 

Heidi Shierholz: So it will depend on what the power that this person has. Like right now, there is only one appointed official in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the commissioner. Right now, every single person in the bureau of labor statistics is a career staff who’s devoted to the independent non-partisan data that they put out. So if another person comes in, and it is a, you know, a sort of Trump lackey or whatever, it will be hard for them to mess with the numbers because they will have literally 2,000 people in there who are devoted to the integrity of the numbers. So, and I do think that if they do try to mess with the number, we will have 2,00 whistleblowers. Like these folks at BLS are so unbelievably devoted to the integrity of the data. But the whole world doesn’t understand that, right? The whole world just saw that Trump just fired the person who produced independent numbers because they didn’t tell the story that he liked. And so that calls into question the integrity of all of our numbers, and that’s a real problem. Like our economy runs on reliable data, like businesses deciding whether they’re gonna hire and expand, the Federal Reserve, like macroeconomic policymakers in this country deciding where to set interest rates. It’s absolutely crucial that we have good data. I’ve been saying it’s like without having trust in your data, it’s like just trying to drive a car blindfolded. That is the kind of thing the rest of the world thinks we’re doing now. And so there’s no trust in what’s going on. It’s really going to erode our standing and it’s going to have negative impacts, real negative impacts on our economy. I think this is the kind of way that you actually hurry along a recession. 

Jane Coaston: So let’s talk about the broader state of the economy right now. We have the weaker jobs report, plus more tariffs kicking in. I feel like there’s been a lot of talk about how for recent college graduates, it’s really hard to find a job. There’s just been kind of these like, you know, people keep joking online about how like X or Y is a recession indicator. I believe a new Justin Bieber album counts as a recession indicator. 

Heidi Shierholz: Amazing. 

Jane Coaston: It feels like things are shifting in the last couple of days, but not in a good direction. So what are you seeing out there? 

Heidi Shierholz: So I think the way to say this is, we don’t know if we are headed into a recession right now, but the kinds of things that we are seeing is what heading into a recession looks like. We had way slower GDP growth in the first half of this year. We’ve had very, very weak jobs numbers for the last three months. Like those the softer data, the consumer confidence, the how people feel about their financial position, those kinds of things have been sort of giving red flags for a really long time. We know though, that there are tons of moving parts in our economy. I cannot say for sure that in you know another three months, it’ll be like very clear that we are in a recession, but what we are seeing now, absolutely is a setup for that. And then I also just think that this sort of stepping back even further, the broader concern about what this says about our democracy is real. It is the idea that we have a leader that when they get bad news about the economy, instead of rethinking their economic policies, they fire the person who delivered the bad numbers. It’s unprecedented and it really signals a big concern about what’s going on in this country sort of more broadly. 

Jane Coaston: Heidi, thank you so much for joining me. 

Heidi Shierholz: It’s been my pleasure. I appreciate it very much. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute and chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Obama. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five-star review on Apple podcasts and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Dustin Burroughs] Members, a quorum is not present. The roll has been called and a quorum has not been established. 

Jane Coaston: That’s Texas Republican House Speaker Dustin Burroughs on the chamber floor Monday. Burrough’s threatened consequences for state house Democrats who got out of dodge to prevent the Republican counterparts from moving forward with a redrawn congressional map to help President Trump in next year’s midterms. This is a fast moving story, and we are recording this at around 8 p.m. Eastern, so the details may have changed by the time you’re listening to this. On Sunday, dozens of Democratic state representatives left Texas and traveled to New York and Illinois. In doing so, the Republican-dominated Texas House was not able to establish the quorum of lawmakers required to do business. Sabotage at its finest. So the House voted to issue civil arrest warrants for the absent members Monday. Totally normal reaction. And Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott backed the move by ordering state troopers to help find and arrest those who fled. But Democrats who were not in Texas are beyond the jurisdiction of state authorities. Wompity wompity. Abbott railed against Democrats during a Fox News interview Monday morning. 

[clip of Texas Governor Greg Abbott] Our fellow Texans are being let down and not getting the flood relief they need because these Democrats have absconded from the responsibility and I believe they have forfeited their seats in the state legislature because they are not doing the job they were elected to do. 

Jane Coaston: Somehow, I feel like if this special session was really about helping desperate Texans get relief from last month’s deadly floods and not about doing the orange overlord’s bidding, the Democrats would not have fled the state. Just saying. Attorney General Pam Bondi is officially leaning into the Trump administration’s Russia gate reboot. On Monday, she personally ordered the Department of Justice to open a grand jury investigation into claims that the Obama administration faked intelligence to undermine Trump’s first term. Fox News broke the story, citing an anonymous source. Other outlets have since reported the same information. Fox says Bondi has ordered an unnamed federal prosecutor to lead the investigation and present results to a grand jury. It could allow the DOJ to eventually issue indictments. It’s not clear which former officials might be the target of the investigation. This comes after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard alleged that the Obama administration committed, quote, “treason” by fabricating evidence that Russia was trying to help Trump in the 2016 election in order to damage his reputation. Gabbard handed over a bunch of documents she declassified for criminal referral to the DOJ. Well, if we wanted more proof that the Justice Department is being used to achieve Trump’s political ends, this looks pretty damning. Who could forget the many, many times the president mentioned wanting to, so very badly, put his political opponents in jail? To be explicitly clear, multiple special councils, congressional committees, and the Justice Department’s own inspector general have studied Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf. Nothing the Trump administration has released so far has undercut those conclusions. 

[clip of Representative Nancy Mace] So to the establishment this morning, and the cowards hiding behind their long-written press releases, buckle up. To the radical left, brace yourselves. And to the great people of the great state of South Carolina, help is on the way. [applause] You and me, this is where our mission begins. God is not done with South Carolina, and neither am I. 

Jane Coaston: Sorry, South Carolina. That’s self-proclaimed Trump in high heels, Republican Representative Nancy Mace. On Monday, she officially threw her hat, but I guess not her heels, in the ring to be the next governor of the fine state of South Carolina. The race is already shaping up to be a knife fight among several other Republican candidates to gain the coveted endorsement of their Lord and Savior, President Donald Trump. The state’s Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and Representative Ralph Norman have already entered the primary. If you’re not familiar with Mace’s specific brand of MAGA insanity, here’s a little taste from her campaign announcement. 

[clip of Representative Nancy Mace] We’re going to ban pronouns in the classroom. I don’t wanna see any glitter parties. I want kids coming home with A’s and B’s, not they and them. And let me be very clear, no state dollars to any K through 12 school, college or university that teaches there are more than two genders. 

Jane Coaston: She used multiple pronouns in this very announcement. Sad. Remember, this is a congresswoman who just three years ago was considered a moderate Republican. Mace really leaned into the whole shebang of right-wing talking points in the rest of her speech, including, but not limited to, railing against quote, “illegals,” promising to bring state taxes down to zero and vowing to stop quote, “biological men from entering women’s bathrooms.” Mace entered her third term in Congress last year, earning Trump’s endorsement in that race. Recent polls show she could have a slight edge over her competition in the state’s Republican primary, but there is no clear frontrunner yet. Because we live in hell. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] For people that are using IVF, which is fertilization, we are going to, the government is going to pay for it or we’re going to get or mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We’re going do that. We want to produce babies in this country, right? We want to produce babies. 

Jane Coaston: Yep, that’s Trump, almost a year ago, at a campaign event in Wisconsin, promising to do something that would help Americans, especially real human women, in the creepiest way imaginable. He even went so far as to call himself the quote, “father of IVF,” at that Fox News all-female town hall right before the election. Remember that? Well, it turns out he’s more like the deadbeat dad of IVF, because the White House reportedly has no plans to require health insurance companies to cover the procedure. That’s according to two anonymous sources who spoke to the Washington Post. A few weeks into a second term, Trump signed an executive order giving his administration 90 days to present a list of recommendations to protect access and reduce the cost of IVF treatment, which can range from $12,000 to $25,000 per cycle. But the matter has proven to be a bit more complicated than perhaps the president thought it would be, for a variety of reasons. One being,  money. Requiring state-subsidized health care plans to cover the procedure could lead to higher premium costs for everyone on them. And that could be bad for Republicans ahead of the midterm elections. But the political risks of axing Medicaid coverage for millions of Americans clearly didn’t stop them before, so really, who’s to say? And that’s the news. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, contemplate that a zoo in Denmark has a great idea for your elderly pets and you are not going to like it at all and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about how the Alberg Zoo in Copenhagen posted on Facebook that pet owners could donate their rabbits, guinea pigs, and small horses to be, quote, “gently euthanized and then fed to predator animals” like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/ subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and no, no, no nuclear reactors on the moon, no sending your bunnies to the farm upstate that is actually a zoo where they will be eaten by lions. No, no thank you. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Gina Pollack, and Laura Newcomb. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. We had help with the headlines from the Associated Press. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

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