Podcasts about labor statistics

Discover all of the podcasts in our network, search for specific episodes, get the Optimal Living Daily workbook, and learn more at: OLDPodcast.com. Episode 3263: Luke Smith explores how poor financial habits and money stress can undermine work performance, leading to reduced productivity, strained workplace relationships, and even burnout. He offers practical strategies, like budgeting, building an emergency fund, and using proven debt repayment methods, to reduce financial anxiety and reclaim focus and energy for the work that matters most. Read along with the original article(s) here: https://www.carlpullein.com/blog/how-financial-habits-and-situations-can-affect-productivity/21/10/2020 Quotes to ponder: "Individuals living paycheck-to-paycheck are existing on the edge of financial ruin." "From paying down your debt in the most efficient way possible to saving an emergency fund, establishing good financial habits will decrease your stress levels and allow you to focus your energy on important tasks." "Having a plan to manage your finances will boost your confidence in other areas of your life." Episode references: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov The Simple Path to Wealth: https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Path-Wealth-financial-independence/dp/1533667926 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the August 2025 episode, co-hosts Ted Stank and Tom Goldsby spoke with Doug Gray, VP of integrated supply chain for Trane Technologies, about driving resilience in the aftermarket business, embedding sustainability into strategic decision-making, and upskilling long-tenured employees to create value in a landscape of AI and automation. Gray, a member of the GSCI Advisory Board, joined Trane's executive leadership in 2024. In his role, he is accountable for the company's supply distribution, including SIOP, order management, quality and packaging, inventory management, and distribution center operations. A global climate innovator, the company provides heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, refrigeration solutions, and connected building technologies, while maintaining a focus on reduced energy use and carbon emissions. Prior to Trane, Gray spent more than 16 years in various supply chain functions for Caterpillar Inc.  Listen in for insights on AI adoption, aftermarket performance, inventory management, and talent development. Plus, Ted and Tom dig into the latest news about U.S. tariffs and trade relationships, the proposed merger between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, and more. The episode was recorded during the GSCI Advisory Board meeting at the Haslam College of Business on August 20, 2025. Related links:  U.S. hikes steel, aluminum tariffs on imported appliances, railvars, and EV parts How Trump's tariffs, the AI boom, and the leadership shake-up at the Bureau of Labor Statistics will impact the economy Doug Gray named a 2025 Rainmaker by DC Velocity Learn about UT's new master's degree in global supply chain management Download our latest white paper on reshoring manufacturing and the talent skills gap for U.S. labor.  GSCI leaders on five points of consideration from the proposed UP-NS merger Save the date for the fall Supply Chain Forum, November 4–6 in Knoxville Download the white paper “Future-Ready Procurement” or read our blog series  Join the Advanced Supply Chain Collaborative, where forward-thinking leaders and companies, like Trane, explore advanced concepts in SCM with UT scholars. Sign up for one of our virtual credentials in Finance (Sept. 15-Nov. 16) and Procurement (Sept. 15–Nov. 16). Become a Text the Tennessee on Supply Chain Management team!

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects higher than average growth in accounting and finance positions in the coming decade. In fact, over 715,000 openings are predicted in the business and finance sphere between now and 2031. With such strong growth (and earning potential), it's no wonder educators want to prepare students for jobs in accounting and finance. In this episode, we sat down with two accounting educators: Ashley Faulkner and David Waite. Ashley is a teacher at Triton High School in North Carolina, where she is a strong certification advocate. Over the past 11 years, Ashley has earned more than 40 certifications—and helped her students earn more than 1,150 individual certifications. She has also served as an FBLA adviser and as the North Carolina Southeast Region advisor. Outside her teaching career, Ashley is the chief financial officer for Simple Web Solutions, Inc., EM Audio, Inc., and Butler Faulkner Enterprise, and she is the mother of two active children.  David began his career as an auditor and was one of the rare humans who genuinely enjoyed it. After earning his CPA, he spent 15 years in public and private accounting before discovering his passion for teaching. An unexpected opportunity to teach accounting in Hawaii led him to academia, where he now focuses on bridging the gap between theory and practice. His teaching philosophy is simple: motivate students to prepare before class, engage actively during class, and tackle real-world challenges after class. Drawing from his industry experience, David strives to bring accounting to life for his students and future professionals.  We talk with Ashley and David about the skills accounting and finance professionals need and how to teach these skills in the classroom. Plus, we dive into connecting with local businesses for students' internship and job opportunities. And last, but not least, how certification empowers students along the way.  Learn more about Intuit certification here.  Connect with educators like Ashley and David in our CERTIFIED Educator Community here.  Get all the CERTIFIED Educator's Conference details here. 

Go to ⁠https://cozyearth.com⁠ and use code HUMANHR for 40% off their best-selling sheets, pajamas, towels, and more. And if you get a post-purchase survey? Let them know you heard about Cozy Earth right here.In this episode of the Bringing the Human Back to Human Resources podcast, Traci Chernoff and Bryan Driscoll return for this month's Policy Pulse segment to cover five timely HR developments.They kick things off by dissecting the political fallout over the July 2025 jobs report and the potential implications of altering or eliminating the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly release. Then, they dive into Texas's new law mandating binary gender classification and its compliance burden on multi-state employers, followed by a deep look into Colorado's strict new AI law and the risks it presents for hiring and automation tools. The conversation wraps with Rhode Island's new menopause discrimination protections and Illinois's “leave for any reason” law—both pushing the envelope on employee support policies.Chapters 00:00 Welcome to August's Policy Pulse 01:10 Controversy Over the July Jobs Report 06:49 Texas Mandates Binary Gender Classifications 14:50 Colorado's Landmark AI Legislation & Compliance Risks 24:00 Rhode Island Protects Menopausal Employees 28:15 Illinois's Leave-for-Any-Reason Law 30:50 PTO, Legal Loopholes & Employer Challenges 32:00 Final Thoughts & What to Watch in SeptemberDon't forget to rate, review, and subscribe! Plus, leave a comment if you're catching this episode on Spotify or YouTube.We hope you enjoyed this month's Policy Pulse episode. If you found our discussion insightful, we'd like you to take a moment to rate our podcast. Your feedback helps us grow and reach more listeners who are passionate about these topics. You can also leave a review and tell us what you loved or what you'd like to hear more of — we're all ears!Connect with Traci here: ⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/HRTraci⁠⁠Connect with Bryan: Website: ⁠https://bryanjdriscoll.com/ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanjohndriscoll/⁠Disclaimer: Thoughts, opinions, and statements made on this podcast are not a reflection of the thoughts, opinions, and statements of the Company by whom Traci Chernoff is actively employed.Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.

We talk the takeover of DC, the stakes in Intel & Nvidia, the redistricting push, the control of The Kennedy Center, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the meeting with Putin.   

It’s estimated that more than 300,000 Black women have left the workforce. Federal layoffs, budget cuts, and diversity, equity, and inclusion rollbacks are among the many contributing factors. While July data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows an overall national unemployment rate of 4.2%, that number rose to 6.3% for Black women—the highest it’s been since October 2021. For a special edition of “Closer Look,” Rose talks with several guests about the unfolding unemployment shift, as well as advice for landing new employment opportunities. Guests include: Dr. Pearl Dowe, the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Political Science and African American Studies at Emory University Amber Cabral, the founder of the diversity, equity, and inclusive leadership-focused consulting firm, Cabral Co. Sherry Sims, the founder of Black Career Women's Network Alicia Thompson, impacted by job loss Alicia Smith, impacted by job loss Sandy, impacted by job lossSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that inflation is slowing, though farmers and ranchers are still facing many other economic challenges. NAFB News ServiceSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's a new day and a new name for the Sunday podcast. Literally. We are moving our fan favorite podcast from Sundays to Fridays, and giving it a new name. SUSPENSION OF THE RULES.Isaac, Ari, and Kmele talk the latest with Trump, Putin and Zelensky. They also get into it about a very interesting report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Lastly, they pivot to a deep discussion about medical assistance in dying, specifically referring to a very intense article from The Atlantic about Canadian's and medical assistance in dying. If you or someone you know is facing mental health struggles, emotional distress, alcohol or drug use concerns, or just need someone to talk to please call the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or visit https://988lifeline.org/Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was hosted by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and Jon Lall. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Donald Trump has nominated a Heritage Foundation economist and Project 2025 contributor E.J. Antoni to head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Tariffs are up, but inflation is still holding steady. Job numbers are down, but the stock market is booming. Meanwhile, President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and he's pushing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates (he's also calling for Fed governor Lisa Cook to resign, but that began after our taping). MSNBC economic analyst Steven Rattner joins Kara to break down the contradictory and confusing economic news of late. Rattner is the chairman and CEO of Willett Advisors, the investment arm for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's personal and philanthropic assets, and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He and Kara discuss the impact of Trump's “economic illiteracy” on the business world; why major price hikes haven't materialized yet and whether Trump's tariffs could lead to inflation; why there's such a disconnect between the economy and the stock market; and whether the AI boom's potential to increase productivity will keep the economy humming during Trump 2.0. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How much have state budgets been taken over by the federal government? Is anything wrong with the Bureau of Labor Statistics? And what's nationalist about trade surpluses? Tony Woodlief joins Econception to discuss. Tony Woodlief is State Policy Network's Senior Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow for SPN's Center for Practical Federalism.

Today I'm talking to economic historian Judge Glock, Director of Research at the Manhattan Institute. Judge works on a lot of topics: if you enjoy this episode, I'd encourage you to read some of his work on housing markets and the Environmental Protection Agency. But I cornered him today to talk about civil service reform.Since the 1990s, over 20 red and blue states have made radical changes to how they hire and fire government employees — changes that would be completely outside the Overton window at the federal level. A paper by Judge and Renu Mukherjee lists four reforms made by states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia: * At-will employment for state workers* The elimination of collective bargaining agreements* Giving managers much more discretion to hire* Giving managers much more discretion in how they pay employeesJudge finds decent evidence that the reforms have improved the effectiveness of state governments, and little evidence of the politicization that federal reformers fear. Meanwhile, in Washington, managers can't see applicants' resumes, keyword searches determine who gets hired, and firing a bad performer can take years. But almost none of these ideas are on the table in Washington.Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood for his judicious transcript edits and fact-checking, and to Katerina Barton for audio edits.Judge, you have a paper out about lessons for civil service reform from the states. Since the ‘90s, red and blue states have made big changes to how they hire and fire people. Walk through those changes for me.I was born and grew up in Washington DC, heard a lot about civil service throughout my childhood, and began to research it as an adult. But I knew almost nothing about the state civil service systems. When I began working in the states — mainly across the Sunbelt, including in Texas, Kansas, Arizona — I was surprised to learn that their civil service systems were reformed to an absolutely radical extent relative to anything proposed at the federal level, let alone implemented.Starting in the 1990s, several states went to complete at-will employment. That means there were no official civil service protections for any state employees. Some managers were authorized to hire people off the street, just like you could in the private sector. A manager meets someone in a coffee shop, they say, "I'm looking for exactly your role. Why don't you come on board?" At the federal level, with its stultified hiring process, it seemed absurd to even suggest something like that.You had states that got rid of any collective bargaining agreements with their public employee unions. You also had states that did a lot more broadbanding [creating wider pay bands] for employee pay: a lot more discretion for managers to reward or penalize their employees depending on their performance.These major reforms in these states were, from the perspective of DC, incredibly radical. Literally nobody at the federal level proposes anything approximating what has been in place for decades in the states. That should be more commonly known, and should infiltrate the debate on civil service reform in DC.Even though the evidence is not absolutely airtight, on the whole these reforms have been positive. A lot of the evidence is surveys asking managers and operators in these states how they think it works. They've generally been positive. We know these states operate pretty well: Places like Texas, Florida, and Arizona rank well on state capacity metrics in terms of cost of government, time for permitting, and other issues.Finally, to me the most surprising thing is the dog that didn't bark. The argument in the federal government against civil service reform is, “If you do this, we will open up the gates of hell and return to the 19th-century patronage system, where spoilsmen come and go depending on elected officials, and the government is overrun with political appointees who don't care about the civil service.” That has simply not happened. We have very few reports of any concrete examples of politicization at the state level. In surveys, state employees and managers can almost never remember any example of political preferences influencing hiring or firing.One of the surveys you cited asked, “Can you think of a time someone said that they thought that the political preferences were a factor in civil service hiring?” and it was something like 5%.It was in that 5-10% range. I don't think you'd find a dissimilar number of people who would say that even in an official civil service system. Politics is not completely excluded even from a formal civil service system.A few weeks ago, you and I talked to our mutual friend, Don Moynihan, who's a scholar of public administration. He's more skeptical about the evidence that civil service reform would be positive at the federal level.One of your points is, “We don't have strong negative evidence from the states. Productivity didn't crater in states that moved to an at-will employment system.” We do have strong evidence that collective bargaining in the public sector is bad for productivity.What I think you and Don would agree on is that we could use more evidence on the hiring and firing side than the surveys that we have. Is that a fair assessment?Yes, I think that's correct. As you mentioned, the evidence on collective bargaining is pretty close to universal: it raises costs, reduces the efficiency of government, and has few to no positive upsides.On hiring and firing, I mentioned a few studies. There's a 2013 study that looks at HR managers in six states and finds very little evidence of politicization, and managers generally prefer the new system. There was a dissertation that surveyed several employees and managers in civil service reform and non-reform states. Across the board, the at-will employment states said they had better hiring retention, productivity, and so forth. And there's a 2002 study that looked specifically at Texas, Florida, and Georgia after their reforms, and found almost universal approbation inside the civil service itself for these reforms.These are not randomized control trials. But I think that generally positive evidence should point us directionally where we should go on civil service reform. If we loosen restrictions on discipline and firing, decentralize hiring and so forth — we probably get some productivity benefits from it. We can also know, with some amount of confidence, that the sky is not going to fall, which I think is a very important baseline assumption. The civil service system will continue on and probably be fairly close to what it is today, in terms of its political influence, if you have decentralized hiring and at-will employment.As you point out, a lot of these reforms that have happened in 20-odd states since the ‘90s would be totally outside the Overton window at the federal level. Why is it so easy for Georgia to make a bipartisan move in the ‘90s to at-will employment, when you couldn't raise the topic at the federal level?It's a good question. I think in the 1990s, a lot of people thought a combination of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act — which was the Carter-era act that somewhat attempted to do what these states hoped to do in the 1990s — and the Clinton-era Reinventing Government Initiative, would accomplish the same ends. That didn't happen.That was an era when civil service reform was much more bipartisan. In Georgia, it was a Democratic governor, Zell Miller, who pushed it. In a lot of these other states, they got buy-in from both sides. The recent era of state reform took place after the 2010 Republican wave in the states. Since that wave, the reform impetus for civil service has been much more Republican. That has meant it's been a lot harder to get buy-in from both sides at the federal level, which will be necessary to overcome a filibuster.I think people know it has to be very bipartisan. We're just past the point, at least at the moment, where it can be bipartisan at the federal level. But there are areas where there's a fair amount of overlap between the two sides on what needs to happen, at least in the upper reaches of the civil service.It was interesting to me just how bipartisan civil service reform has been at various times. You talked about the Civil Service Reform Act, which passed Congress in 1978. President Carter tells Congress that the civil service system:“Has become a bureaucratic maze which neglects merit, tolerates poor performance, permits abuse of legitimate employee rights, and mires every personnel action in red tape, delay, and confusion.”That's a Democratic president saying that. It's striking to me that the civil service was not the polarized topic that it is today.Absolutely. Carter was a big civil service reformer in Georgia before those even larger 1990s reforms. He campaigned on civil service reform and thought it was essential to the success of his presidency. But I think you are seeing little sprouts of potential bipartisanship today, like the Chance to Compete Act at the end of 2024, and some of the reforms Obama did to the hiring process. There's options for bipartisanship at the federal level, even if it can't approach what the states have done.I want to walk through the federal hiring process. Let's say you're looking to hire in some federal agency — you pick the agency — and I graduated college recently, and I want to go into the civil service. Tell me about trying to hire somebody like me. What's your first step?It's interesting you bring up the college graduate, because that is one recent reform: President Trump put out an executive order trying to counsel agencies to remove the college degree requirement for job postings. This happened in a lot of states first, like Maryland, and that's also been bipartisan. This requirement for a college degree — which was used as a very unfortunate proxy for ability at a lot of these jobs — is now being removed. It's not across the whole federal government. There's still job postings that require higher education degrees, but that's something that's changed.To your question, let's say the Department of Transportation. That's one of the more bipartisan ones, when you look at surveys of federal civil servants. Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, they tend to be a little more Republican. Health and Human Services and some other agencies tend to be pretty Democrat. Transportation is somewhere in the middle.As a manager, you try to craft a job description and posting to go up on the USA Jobs website, which is where all federal job postings go. When they created it back in 1996, that was supposedly a massive reform to federal hiring: this website where people could submit their resumes. Then, people submit their resumes and answer questions about their qualifications for the job.One of the slightly different aspects from the private sector is that those applications usually go to an HR specialist first. The specialist reviews everything and starts to rank people into different categories, based on a lot of weird things. It's supposed to be “knowledge, skills, and abilities” — your KSAs, or competencies. To some extent, this is a big step up from historical practice. You had, frankly, an absurd civil service exam, where people had to fill out questions about, say, General Grant or about US Code Title 42, or whatever it was, and then submit it. Someone rated the civil service exam, and then the top three test-takers were eligible for the job.We have this newer, better system, where we rank on knowledge, skills, and abilities, and HR puts put people into different categories. One of the awkward ways they do this is by merely scanning the resumes and applications for keywords. If it's a computer job, make sure you say the word “computer” somewhere in your resume. Make sure you say “manager” if it's a managerial job.Just to be clear, this is entirely literal. There's a keyword search, and folks who don't pass that search are dinged.Yes. I've always wondered, how common is this? It's sometimes hard to know what happens in the black box in these federal HR departments. I saw an HR official recently say, "If I'm not allowed to do keyword searches, I'm going to take 15 years to overlook all the applications, so I've got to do keyword searches." If they don't have the keywords, into the circular file it goes, as they used to say: into the garbage can.Then they start ranking people on their abilities into, often, three different categories. That is also very literal. If you put in the little word bubble, "I am an exceptional manager," you get pushed on into the next level of the competition. If you say, "I'm pretty good, but I'm not the best," into the circular file you go.I've gotten jaded about this, but it really is shocking. We ask candidates for a self-assessment, and if they just rank themselves 10/10 on everything, no matter how ludicrous, that improves their odds of being hired.That's going to immensely improve your odds. Similar to the keyword search, there's been pushback on this in recent years, and I'm definitely not going to say it's universal anymore. It's rarer than it used to be. But it's still a very common process.The historical civil service system used to operate on a rule of three. In places like New York, it still operates like that. The top three candidates on the evaluation system get presented to the manager, and the manager has to approve one of them for the position.Thanks partially to reforms by the Obama administration in 2010, they have this category rating system where the best qualified or the very qualified get put into a big bucket together [instead of only including the top three]. Those are the people that the person doing the hiring gets to see, evaluate, and decide who he wants to hire.There are some restrictions on that. If a veteran outranks everybody else, you've got to pick the veteran [typically known as Veterans' Preference]. That was an issue in some of the state civil service reforms, too. The states said, “We're just going to encourage a veterans' preference. We don't need a formalized system to say they get X number of points and have to be in Y category. We're just going to say, ‘Try to hire veterans.'” That's possible without the formal system, despite what some opponents of reform may claim.One of the particular problems here is just the nature of the people doing the hiring. Sometimes you just need good managers to encourage HR departments to look at a broader set of qualifications. But one of the bigger problems is that they keep the HR evaluation system divorced from the manager who is doing the hiring. David Shulkin, who was the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), wrote a great book, It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Serve Your Country. He was a healthcare exec, and the VA is mainly a healthcare agency. He would tell people, "You should work for me," they would send their applications into the HR void, and he'd never see them again. They would get blocked at some point in this HR evaluation process, and he'd be sent people with no healthcare experience, because for whatever reason they did well in the ranking.One of the very base-level reforms should be, “How can we more clearly integrate the hiring manager with the evaluation process?” To some extent, the bipartisan Chance to Compete Act tries to do this. They said, “You should have subject matter experts who are part of crafting the description of the job, are part of evaluating, and so forth.” But there's still a long road to go.Does that firewall — where the person who wants to hire doesn't get to look at the process until the end — exist originally because of concerns about cronyism?One of the interesting things about the civil service is its raison d'être — its reason for being — was supposedly a single, clear purpose: to prevent politicized hiring and patronage. That goes back to the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883. But it's always been a little strange that you have all of these very complex rules about every step of the process — from hiring to firing to promotion, and everything in between — to prevent political influence. We could just focus on preventing political influence, and not regulate every step of the process on the off-chance that without a clear regulation, political influence could creep in. This division [between hiring manager and applicants] is part of that general concern. There are areas where I've heard HR specialists say, "We declare that a manager is a subject matter expert, and we bring them into the process early on, we can do that." But still the division is pretty stark, and it's based on this excessive concern about patronage.One point you flag is that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is the body that thinks about personnel in the federal government, has a 300-page regulatory document for agencies on how you have to hire. There's a remarkable amount of process.Yes, but even that is a big change from the Federal Personnel Manual, which was the 10,000-page document that we shredded in the 1990s. In the ‘90s, OPM gave the agencies what's called “delegated examining authorities.” This says, “You, agency, have power to decide who to hire, we're not going to do the central supervision anymore. But, but, but: here's the 300-page document that dictates exactly how you have to carry out that hiring.”So we have some decentralization, allowing managers more authority to control their own departments. But this two-level oversight — a local HR department that's ultimately being overseen by the OPM — also leads to a lot of slip ‘twixt cup and lip, in terms of how something gets implemented. If you're in the agency and you're concerned about the OPM overseeing your process, you're likely to be much more careful than you would like to be. “Yes, it's delegated to me, but ultimately, I know I have to answer to OPM about this process. I'm just going to color within the lines.”I often cite Texas, which has no central HR office. Each agency decides how it wants to hire. In a lot of these reform states, if there is a central personnel office, it's an information clearinghouse or reservoir of models. “You can use us, the central HR office, as a resource if you want us to help you post the job, evaluate it, or help manage your processes, but you don't have to.” That's the goal we should be striving for in a lot of the federal reforms. Just make OPM a resource for the managers in the individual departments to do their thing or go independent.Let's say I somehow get through the hiring process. You offer me a job at the Department of Transportation. What are you paying me?This is one of the more stultified aspects of the federal civil service system. OPM has another multi-hundred-page handbook called the Handbook of Occupational Groups and Families. Inside that, you've got 49 different “groups and families,” like “Clerical occupations.” Inside those 49 groups are a series of jobs, sometimes dozens, like “Computer Operator.” Inside those, they have independent documents — often themselves dozens of pages long — detailing classes of positions. Then you as a manager have to evaluate these nine factors, which can each give points to each position, which decides how you get slotted into this weird Government Schedule (GS) system [the federal payscale].Again, this is actually an improvement. Before, you used to have the Civil Service Commission, which went around staring very closely at someone over their typewriter and saying, "No, I think you should be a GS-12, not a GS-11, because someone over in the Department of Defense who does your same job is a GS-12." Now this is delegated to agencies, but again, the agencies have to listen to the OPM on how to classify and set their jobs into this 15-stage GS-classification system, each stage of which has 10 steps which determine your pay, and those steps are determined mainly by your seniority. It's a formalized step-by-step system, overwhelmingly based on just how long you've sat at your desk.Let's be optimistic about my performance as a civil servant. Say that over my first three years, I'm just hitting it out of the park. Can you give me a raise? What can you do to keep me in my role?Not too much. For most people, the within-step increases — those 10 steps inside each GS-level — is just set by seniority. Now there are all these quality step increases you can get, but they're very rare and they have to be documented. So you could hypothetically pay someone more, but it's going to be tough. In general, the managers just prefer to stick to seniority, because not sticking to it garners a lot of complaints. Like so much else, the goal is, "We don't want someone rewarding an official because they happen to share their political preferences." The result of that concern is basically nobody can get rewarded at all, which is very unfortunate.We do have examples in state and federal government of what's known as broadbanding, where you have very broad pay scales, and the manager can decide where to slot someone. Say you're a computer operator, which can mean someone who knows what an Excel spreadsheet is, or someone who's programming the most advanced AI systems. As a manager in South Carolina or Florida, you have a lot of discretion to say, "I can set you 50% above the market rate of what this job technically would go for, if I think you're doing a great job."That's very rare at the federal level. They've done broadbanding at the Government Accountability Office, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The China Lake Experiment out in California gave managers a lot more discretion to reward scientists. But that's definitely the exception. In general, it's a step-wise, seniority-based system.What if you want to bring me into the Senior Executive Service (SES)? Theoretically, that sits at the top of the General Service scale. Can't you bump me up in there and pay me what you owe me?I could hypothetically bring you in as a senior executive servant. The SES was created in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. The idea was, “We're going to have this elite cadre of about 8,000 individuals at the top of the federal government, whose employment will be higher-risk and higher-reward. They might be fired, and we're going to give them higher pay to compensate for that.”Almost immediately, that did not work out. Congress was outraged at the higher pay given to the top officials and capped it. Ever since, how much the SES can get paid has been tightly controlled. As in most of the rest of the federal government, where they establish these performance pay incentives or bonuses — which do exist — they spread them like peanut butter over the whole service. To forestall complaints, everyone gets a little bit every two or three years.That's basically what happened to the SES. Their annual pay is capped at the vice president's salary, which is a cap for a lot of people in the federal government. For most of your GS and other executive scales, the cap is Congress's salary. [NB: This is no longer exactly true, since Congress froze its own salaries in 2009. The cap for GS (currently about $195k) is now above congressional salaries ($174k).]One of the big problems with pay in the federal government is pay compression. Across civil service systems, the highest-skilled people tend to be paid much less than the private sector, and the lowest-skilled people tend to get paid much more. The political science reason for that is pretty simple: the median voter in America still decides what seems reasonable. To the median voter, the average salary of a janitor looks low, and the average salary of a scientist looks way too high. Hence this tendency to pay compression. Your average federal employee is probably overpaid relative to the private sector, because the lowest-skilled employees are paid up to 40% higher than the private sector equivalent. The highest-paid employees, the post-graduate skilled professionals, are paid less. That makes it hard to recruit the top performers, but it also swells the wage budget in a way that makes it difficult to talk about reform.There's a lot of interest in this administration in making it easier to recruit talent and get rid of under-performers. There have been aggressive pushes to limit collective bargaining in the public sector. That should theoretically make it easier to recruit, but it also increases the precariousness of civil service roles. We've seen huge firings in the civil service over the last six months.Classically, the explicit trade-off of working in the federal government was, “Your pay is going to be capped, but you have this job for life. It's impossible to get rid of you.” You trade some lifetime earnings for stability. In a world where the stability is gone, but pay is still capped, isn't the net effect to drive talent away from the civil service?I think it's a concern now. On one level it should be ameliorated, because those who are most concerned with stability of employment do tend to be lower performers. If you have people who are leaving the federal service because all they want is stability, and they're not getting that anymore, that may not be a net loss. As someone who came out of academia and knows the wonder of effective lifetime annuities, there can be very high performers who like that stability who therefore take a lower salary. Without the ability to bump that pay up more, it's going to be an issue.I do know that, internally, the Trump administration has made some signs they're open to reforms in the top tiers of the SES and other parts of the federal government. They would be willing to have people get paid more at that level to compensate for the increased risks since the Trump administration came in. But when you look at the reductions in force (RIFs) that have happened under Trump, they are overwhelmingly among probationary employees, the lower-level employees.With some exceptions. If you've been promoted recently, you can get reclassified as probationary, so some high-performers got lumped in.Absolutely. The issue has been exacerbated precisely because the RIF regulations that are in place have made the firings particularly damaging. If you had a more streamlined RIF system — which they do have in many states, where seniority is not the main determinant of who gets laid off — these RIFs could be removing the lower-performing civil servants and keeping the higher-performing ones, and giving them some amount of confidence in their tenure.Unfortunately, the combination of large-scale removals with the existing RIF regs, which are very stringent, has demoralized some of the upper levels of the federal government. I share that concern. But I might add, it is interesting, if you look at the federal government's own figures on the total civil service workforce, they have gone down significantly since Trump came in office, but I think less than 100,000 still, in the most recent numbers that I've seen. I'm not sure how much to trust those, versus some of these other numbers where people have said 150,000, 200,000.Whether the Trump administration or a future administration can remove large numbers of people from the civil service should be somewhat divorced from the general conversation on civil service reform. The main debate about whether or not Trump can do this centers around how much power the appropriators in Congress have to determine the total amount of spending in particular agencies on their workforce. It does not depend necessarily on, "If we're going to remove people — whether for general layoffs, or reductions in force, or because of particular performance issues — how can we go about doing that?" My last-ditch hope to maintain a bipartisan possibility of civil service reform is to bracket, “How much power does the president have to remove or limit the workforce in general?” from “How can he go about hiring and firing, et cetera?”I think making it easier for the president to identify and remove poor performers is a tool that any future administration would like to have.We had this conversation sparked again with the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. But that was a position Congress set up to be appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and removable by the President. It's a separate issue from civil service at large. Everyone said, “We want the president to be able to hire and fire the commissioner.” Maybe firing the commissioner was a bad decision, but that's the situation today.Attentive listeners to Statecraft know I'm pretty critical, like you are, of the regulations that say you have to go in order of seniority. In mass layoffs, you're required to fire a lot of the young, talented people.But let's talk about individual firings. I've been a terrible civil servant, a nightmarish employee from day one. You want to discipline, remove, suspend, or fire me. What are your options?Anybody who has worked in the civil service knows it's hard to fire bad performers. Whatever their political valence, whatever they feel about the civil service system, they have horror stories about a person who just couldn't be removed.In the early 2010s, a spate of stories came out about air traffic controllers sleeping on the job. Then-transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, made a big public announcement: "I'm going to fire these three guys." After these big announcements, it turned out he was only able to remove one of them. One retired, and another had their firing reduced to a suspension.You had another horrific story where a man was joking on the phone with friends when a plane crashed into a helicopter and killed nine people over the Hudson River. National outcry. They said, "We're going to fire this guy." In the end, after going through the process, he only got a suspension. Everyone agrees it's too hard.The basic story is, you have two ways to fire someone. Chapter 75, the old way, is often considered the realm of misconduct: You've stolen something from the office, punched your colleague in the face during a dispute about the coffee, something illegal or just straight-out wrong. We get you under Chapter 75.The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act added Chapter 43, which is supposed to be the performance-based system to remove someone. As with so much of that Civil Service Reform Act, the people who passed it thought this might be the beginning of an entirely different system.In the end, lots of federal managers say there's not a huge difference between the two. Some use 75, some use 43. If you use 43, you have to document very clearly what the person did wrong. You have to put them on a performance improvement plan. If they failed a performance improvement plan after a certain amount of time, they can respond to any claims about what they did wrong. Then, they can take that process up to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and claim that they were incorrectly fired, or that the processes weren't carried out appropriately. Then, if they want to, they can say, “Nah, I don't like the order I got,” and take it up to federal courts and complain there. Right now, the MSPB doesn't have a full quorum, which is complicating some of the recent removal disputes.You have this incredibly difficult process, unlike the private sector, where your boss looks at you and says, "I don't like how you're giving me the stink-eye today. Out you go." One could say that's good or bad, but, on the whole, I think the model should be closer to the private sector. We should trust managers to do their job without excessive oversight and process. That's clearly about as far from the realm of possibility as the current system, under which the estimate is 6-12 months to fire a very bad performer. The number of people who win at the Merit Systems Protection Board is still 20-30%.This goes into another issue, which is unionization. If you're part of a collective bargaining agreement — most of the regular federal civil service is — first, you have to go with this independent, union-based arbitration and grievance procedure. You're about 50/50 to win on those if your boss tries to remove you.So if I'm in the union, we go through that arbitration grievance system. If you win and I'm fired, I can take it to the Merit Systems Protection Board. If you win again, I can still take it to the federal courts.You can file different sorts of claims at each part. On Chapter 43, the MSPB is supposed to be about the process, not the evidence, and you just have to show it was followed. On 75, the manager has to show by preponderance of the evidence that the employee is harming the agency. Then there are different standards for what you take to the courts, and different standards according to each collective bargaining agreement for the grievance procedure when someone is disciplined. It's a very complicated, abstruse, and procedure-heavy process that makes it very difficult to remove people, which is why the involuntary separation rate at the federal government and most state governments is many multiples lower than the private sector.So, you would love to get me off your team because I'm abysmal. But you have no stomach for going through this whole process and I'm going to fight it. I'm ornery and contrarian and will drag this fight out. In practice, what do managers in the federal government do with their poor performers?I always heard about this growing up. There's the windowless office in the basement without a phone, or now an internet connection. You place someone down there, hope they get the message, and sooner or later they leave. But for plenty of people in America, that's the dream job. You just get to sit and nobody bothers you for eight hours. You punch in at 9 and punch out at 5, and that's your day. "Great. I'll collect that salary for another 10 years." But generally you just try to make life unpleasant for that person.Public sector collective bargaining in the US is new. I tend to think of it as just how the civil service works. But until about 50 years ago, there was no collective bargaining in the public sector.At the state level, it started with Wisconsin at the end of the 1950s. There were famous local government reforms beginning with the Little Wagner Act [signed in 1958] in New York City. Senator Robert Wagner had created the National Labor Relations Board. His son Robert F. Wagner Jr., mayor of New York, created the first US collective bargaining system at the local level in the ‘60s. In ‘62, John F. Kennedy issued an executive order which said, "We're going to deal officially with public sector unions,” but it was all informal and non-statutory.It wasn't until Title VII of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act that unions had a formal, statutory role in our federal service system. This is shockingly new. To some extent, that was the great loss to many civil service reformers in ‘78. They wanted to get through a lot of these other big reforms about hiring and firing, but they gave up on the unions to try to get those. Some people think that exception swallowed the rest of the rules. The union power that was garnered in ‘78 overcame the other reforms people hoped to accomplish. Soon, you had the majority of the federal workforce subject to collective bargaining.But that's changing now too. Part of that Civil Service Reform Act said, “If your position is in a national security-related position, the president can determine it's not subject to collective bargaining.” Trump and the OPM have basically said, “Most positions in the federal government are national security-related, and therefore we're going to declare them off-limits to collective bargaining.” Some people say that sounds absurd. But 60% of the civilian civil service workforce is the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Homeland Security. I am not someone who tries to go too easy on this crowd. I think there's a heck of a lot that needs to be reformed. But it's also worth remembering that the majority of the civil service workforce are in these three agencies that Republicans tend to like a lot.Now, whether people like Veterans Affairs is more of an open question. We have some particular laws there about opening up processes after the scandals in the 2010s about waiting lists and hospitals. You had veterans hospitals saying, "We're meeting these standards for getting veterans in the door for these waiting lists." But they were straight-up lying about those standards. Many people who were on these lists waiting for months to see a doctor died in the interim, some from causes that could have been treated had they seen a VA doctor. That led to Congress doing big reforms in the VA in 2014 and 2017, precisely because everyone realized this is a problem.So, Trump has put out these executive orders stopping collective bargaining in all of these agencies that touch national security. Some of those, like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seem like a tough sell. I guess that, if you want to dig a mine and the Chinese are trying to dig their own mine and we want the mine to go quickly without the EPA pettifogging it, maybe. But the core ones are pretty solid. So far the courts have upheld the executive order to go in place. So collective bargaining there could be reformed.But in the rest of the government, there are these very extreme, long collective bargaining agreements between agencies and their unions. I've hit on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as one that's had pretty extensive bargaining with its union. When we created the TSA to supervise airport security, a lot of people said, "We need a crème de la crème to supervise airports after 9/11. We want to keep this out of union hands, because we know unions are going to make it difficult to move people around." The Obama administration said, "Nope, we're going to negotiate with the union." Now you have these huge negotiations with the unions about parking spots, hours of employment, uniforms, and everything under the sun. That makes it hard for managers in the TSA to decide when people should go where or what they should do.One thing we've talked about on Statecraft in past episodes — for instance, with John Kamensky, who was a pivotal figure in the Clinton-Gore reforms — was this relationship between government employees and “Beltway Bandits”: the contractors who do jobs you might think of as civil service jobs. One critique of that ‘90s Clinton-Gore push, “Reinventing Government,” was that although they shrank the size of the civil service on paper, the number of contractors employed by the federal government ballooned to fill that void. They did not meaningfully reduce the total number of people being paid by the federal government. Talk to me about the relationship between the civil service reform that you'd like to see and this army of folks who are not formally employees.Every government service is a combination of public employees and inputs, and private employees and inputs. There's never a single thing the government does — federal, state, or local — that doesn't involve inputs from the private sector. That could be as simple as the uniforms for the janitors. Even if you have a publicly employed janitor, who buys the mop? You're not manufacturing the mops.I understand the critique that the excessive focus on full-time employees in the 1990s led to contracting out some positions that could be done directly by the government. But I think that misses how much of the government can and should be contracted out. The basic Office of Management and Budget (OMB) statute [OMB Circular No. A-76] defining what is an essential government duty should still be the dividing line. What does the government have to do, because that is the public overseeing a process? Versus, what can the private sector just do itself?I always cite Stephen Goldsmith, the old mayor of Indianapolis. He proposed what he called the Yellow Pages test. If you open the Yellow Pages [phone directory] and three businesses do that business, the government should not be in that business. There's three garbage haulers out there. Instead of having a formal government garbage-hauling department, just contract out the garbage.With the internet, you should have a lot more opportunities to contract stuff out. I think that is generally good, and we should not have the federal government going about a lot of the day-to-day procedural things that don't require public input. What a lot of people didn't recognize is how much pressure that's going to put on government contracting officers at the federal level. Last time I checked there were 40,000 contracting officers. They have a lot of power. In the most recent year for which we have data, there were $750 billion in federal contracts. This is a substantial part of our economy. If you total state and local, we're talking almost 10% of our whole economy goes through government contracts. This is mind-boggling. In the public policy world, we should all be spending about 10% of our time thinking about contracting.One of the things I think everyone recognized is that contractors should have more authority. Some of the reform that happened with people like [Steven] Kelman — who was the Office of Federal Procurement Policy head in the ‘90s under Clinton — was, "We need to give these people more authority to just take a credit card and go buy a sheaf of paper if that's what they need. And we need more authority to get contract bids out appropriately.”The same message that animates civil service reform should animate these contracting discussions. The goal should be setting clear goals that you want — for either a civil servant or a contractor — and then giving that person the discretion to meet them. If you make the civil service more stultified, or make pay compression more extreme, you're going to have to contract more stuff out.People talk about the General Schedule [pay scale], but we haven't talked about the Federal Wage Schedule system at all, which is the blue-collar system that encompasses about 200,000 federal employees. Pay compression means those guys get paid really well. That means some managers rightfully think, "I'd like to have full-time supervision over some role, but I would rather contract it out, because I can get it a heck of a lot cheaper."There's a continuous relationship: If we make the civil service more stultified, we're going to push contracting out into more areas where maybe it wouldn't be appropriate. But a lot of things are always going to be appropriate to contract out. That means we need to give contracting officers and the people overseeing contracts a lot of discretion to carry out their missions, and not a lot of oversight from the Government Accountability Office or the courts about their bids, just like we shouldn't give OPM excess input into the civil service hiring process.This is a theme I keep harping on, on Statecraft. It's counterintuitive from a reformer's perspective, but it's true: if you want these processes to function better, you're going to have to stop nitpicking. You're going to have to ease up on the throttle and let people make their own decisions, even when sometimes you're not going to agree with them.This is a tension that's obviously happening in this administration. You've seen some clear interest in decentralization, and you've seen some centralization. In both the contract and the civil service sphere, the goal for the central agencies should be giving as many options as possible to the local managers, making sure they don't go extremely off the rails, but then giving those local managers and contracting officials the ability to make their own choices. The General Services Administration (GSA) under this administration is doing a lot of government-wide acquisition contracts. “We establish a contract for the whole government in the GSA. Usually you, the local manager, are not required to use that contract if you want computer services or whatever, but it's an option for you.”OPM should take a similar role. "Here's the system we have set up. You can take that and use it as you want. It's here for you, but it doesn't have to be used, because you might have some very particular hiring decisions to make.” Just like there shouldn't be one contracting decision that decides how we buy both a sheaf of computer paper and an aircraft carrier, there shouldn't be one hiring and firing process for a janitor and a nuclear physicist. That can't be a centralized process, because the very nature of human life is that there's an infinitude of possibilities that you need to allow for, and that means some amount of decentralization.I had an argument online recently about New York City's “buy local” requirement for certain procurement contracts. When they want to build these big public toilets in New York City, they have to source all the toilet parts from within the state, even if they're $200,000 cheaper in Portland, Oregon.I think it's crazy to ask procurement and contracting to solve all your policy problems. Procurement can't be about keeping a healthy local toilet parts industry. You just need to procure the toilet.This is another area where you see similar overlap in some of the civil service and contracting issues. A lot of cities have residency requirements for many of their positions. If you work for the city, you have to live inside the city. In New York, that means you've got a lot of police officers living on Staten Island, or right on the line of the north side of the Bronx, where they're inches away from Westchester. That drives up costs, and limits your population of potential employees.One of the most amazing things to me about the Biden Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was that it encouraged contracting officers to use residency requirements: “You should try to localize your hiring and contracting into certain areas.” On a national level, that cancels out. If both Wyoming and Wisconsin use residency requirements, the net effect is not more people hired from one of those states! So often, people expect the civil service and contracting to solve all of our ills and to point the way forward for the rest of the economy on discrimination, hiring, pay, et cetera. That just leads to, by definition, government being a lot more expensive than the private sector.Over the next three and a half years, what would you like to see the administration do on civil service reform that they haven't already taken up?I think some of the broad-scale layoffs, which seem to be slowing down, were counterproductive. I do think that their ability to achieve their ends was limited by the nature of the reduction-in-force regulations, which made them more counterproductive than they had to be. That's the situation they inherited. But that didn't mean you had to lay off a lot of people without considering the particular jobs they were doing now.And hiring quite a few of them back.Yeah. There are also debates obviously, within the administration, between DOGE and Russ Vought [director of the OMB] and some others on this. Some things, like the Schedule Policy/Career — which is the revival of Schedule F in the first Trump administration — are largely a step in the right direction. Counter to some of the critics, it says, “You can remove someone if they're in a policymaking position, just like if they were completely at-will. But you still have to hire from the typical civil service system.” So, for those concerned about politicization, that doesn't undermine that, because they can't just pick someone from the party system to put in there. I think that's good.They recently had a suitability requirement rule that I think moved in the right direction. That says, “If someone's not suitable for the workforce, there are other ways to remove them besides the typical procedures.” The ideal system is going to require some congressional input: it's to have a decentralization of hiring authority to individual managers. Which means the OPM — now under Scott Kupor, who has finally been confirmed — saying, "The OPM is here to assist you, federal managers. Make sure you stay within the broad lanes of what the administration's trying to accomplish. But once we give you your general goals, we're going to trust you to do that, including hiring.”I've mentioned it a few times, but part of the Chance to Compete Act — which was mentioned in one of Trump's Day One executive orders, people forget about this — was saying, “Implement the Chance to Compete Act to the maximum extent of the law.” Bring more subject-matter expertise into the hiring process, allow more discretion for managers and input into the hiring process. I think carrying that bipartisan reform out is going to be a big step, but it's going to take a lot more work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

The US is known for having the world's most respected, apolitical data systems. Trump's undermining of this system could jeopardize US policymaking for decades...Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/trump-wants-a-second-opinion-on-labor-statistics

This week on The Bulletin, Mike Cosper and Clarissa Moll discuss President Trump and Vladimir Putin's meeting in Alaska to talk about the war in Ukraine. Then, Mr. Trump chooses a new head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after firing the previous head for an unfavorable jobs report. Why should Christians care? Next, advances in genome sequencing allow those going through IVF to select embryos without specific disabilities or medical conditions. Finally, Steve Cuss from the CT Media podcast Being Human joins the show to talk about smart drugs in the workplace and better ways to deal with anxiety at work.   GO DEEPER WITH THE BULLETIN: - Join the conversation at our Substack. - Find us on YouTube. - Rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts. ABOUT THE GUESTS: Steve Cuss is a pastor, former chaplain, and founder of Capable Life which helps people lower internal and relational anxiety in the workplace and at home. He is the author of Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs and The Expectation Gap: The Tiny, Vast Space between Our Beliefs and Experience of God. Steve hosts the CT Media podcast, Being Human. ABOUT THE BULLETIN:The Bulletin is a twice-weekly politics and current events show from Christianity Today moderated by Clarissa Moll, with senior commentary from Russell Moore (Christianity Today's editor in chief) and Mike Cosper (director, CT Media). Each week, the show explores current events and breaking news and shares a Christian perspective on issues that are shaping our world. We also offer special one-on-one conversations with writers, artists, and thought leaders whose impact on the world brings important significance to a Christian worldview, like Bono, Sharon McMahon, Harrison Scott Key, Frank Bruni, and more.  The Bulletin listeners get 25 percent off CT. Go to https://orderct.com/THEBULLETIN to learn more. “The Bulletin” is a production of Christianity Today Producer: Clarissa Moll Associate Producer: Alexa Burke Editing and Mix: Kevin Morris Graphic Design: Rick Szuecs Music: Dan Phelps Executive Producers: Erik Petrik and Mike Cosper Senior Producer: Matt Stevens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Plus: Trump talks with Putin in Alaska, federal troops flood D.C., a controversial Bureau of Labor Statistics nominee, and a listener question about the hosts as a band

In the name of “fixing” the economy, this administration has its hands deep in the market. From firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner to inserting itself into corporate deals and demanding a cut of it to imposing tariffs on Americans, President Trump is disrupting vital market signals. That's no place for a president, especially in what should be a free-market capitalist system (it's not).There is a place for presidential leadership—urging fiscal discipline, lowering taxes, and cutting red tape. It's encouraging to hear the president express interest in these areas, but continued actions will speak louder than words.Meanwhile, Texas' first special legislative session called by Governor Abbott to revisit bills he vetoed ended on Friday. How much progress was made?You can catch the full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcast, or Spotify.Visit: VanceGinn.comSubscribe: VanceGinn.Substack.com

Can we rely on government statistics to help guide our investment decisions? Confluence Associate Market Strategist and Certified Business Economist Thomas Wash joins the podcast to discuss the recent revisions to Bureau of Labor Statistics data that raised doubts about the economy and prompted the president to fire a top official.

President Trump turned to the Heritage Foundation help pick his appointee to lead a traditionally non-partisan agency. NPR's Scott Detrow speaks with political science professor E.J. Fagan, author of “The Thinkers: The Rise of Partisan Think Tanks and the Polarization of American Politics” to understand why Trump's close relationship with the conservative think tank matters.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or atplus.npr.org. Email us at considerthis@npr.org.This episode was produced by Jordan-Marie Smith. It was edited by Tinbete Ermyas. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

EJ Antoni— Trump's embattled MAGA pick to cook the books for his once nonpartisan and reliable Bureau of Labor Statistics, who crank out the “jobs report” —was caught on tape as present and roaming around the entrance to the Capitol on Jan 6 with Jan6 insurrectionists. Michael Popok ties all the data points together, including addressing whether this is a final nail in the coffin of his candidacy. Go to http://mackweldon.com/?utm_source=streaming&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcastlaunch&utm_content=LEGALAFutm_term=LEGALAF and get 20% off your first order with promo code LEGALAF Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on The Necessary Conversation, the Kultgen family breaks down a wild stretch of politics at home and abroad—while celebrating three years of arguing, laughing, and surviving together.

What is going on with the economy right now?There are a lot of mixed signals. President Trump slashed taxes, but he's also bringing in a lot of money through tariffs. Inflation is creeping up, but the stock market keeps rising. Eye-wateringly large investments are flowing to A.I., which could lead to an explosion of productivity but also mass job loss. And then Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a disappointing jobs report, raising concerns that the government's data on the economy might get shakier.Natasha Sarin is the president and a founder of the Budget Lab at Yale. She has been tracking these trends and modeling the potential economic effects of many of Trump's policies. I invited her on the show to walk through what she is thinking about the economy.Mentioned:“The Tariffs Kicked In. The Sky Didn't Fall. Were the Economists Wrong?” by Jason Furman“Does the Stock Market Know Something We Don't?” by Rogé KarmaBook Recommendations:Showdown at Gucci Gulch by Alan MurrayRemarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van PeltThe Undoing Project by Michael LewisThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.htmlThis episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Aman Sahota, Carole Sabouraud and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Katharine Abraham, Skanda Amarnath, Kimberly Clausing, Kathryn Anne Edwards, Matthew Klein, and Claudia Sahm. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Jonah Goldberg analyzes the strategic chess match between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin before diving into the federal takeover of D.C.'s streets and the president's takeover of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Show Notes:—Kevin Williamson's Wanderland on postmodernists—Jonah's G-File on postmodernists—Megan McArdle in the Washington Post on crime—Grayson Logue for The Dispatch: “What's Next for the Bureau of Labor Statistics?” The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch's offerings—including access to all of Jonah's G-File newsletters—click here. If you'd like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member by clicking here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ralph devotes the entire program to challenging the “official” count of 60 thousand fatalities reported so far in the genocide Israel, aided and abetted by the United States, has perpetrated on the Palestinians in Gaza. First, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who volunteered twice in Gaza hospitals, presents the various studies that revise estimates into the hundreds of thousands. Then weapons expert, Professor Theodore Postol, backs that up with his knowledge of the destructive power of the weapons being used and the photographic evidence of the rubble.Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a trauma, general, and critical care surgeon. He has volunteered twice in Gaza since 2024 and three times in Ukraine since 2022. He has published on humanitarian surgical work in the New York Times, Politico, and the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.I've made my point clear month after month that I believe the death toll is now well over 500,000. And it's important to have an accurate death toll to respect the Palestinian dead and to intensify diplomatic, political, and civic pressures from around the world (and particularly from the White House and Congress) to cease fire, to let the humanitarian trucks that are already at the border in (with food, medicine, water, hospital supplies), and to make sure that this conflict is resolved safely.Ralph NaderIt certainly seems that every single international expert on the topic does think that this is a genocidal attack, so I don't see any reason to disbelieve what they're saying. But that doesn't have to do with how many people are killed. So what I'm just trying to point out is that even if the numbers of people that we talk about here today are (like Ralph said) half a million, or whatever number of people have been killed, nobody disputes that huge numbers of mass killings have taken place. And it doesn't seem that anybody who knows what they're talking about disputes that it's genocidal at this point.Dr. Feroze SidhwaIt's been very widely understood by lots and lots of people, of a huge variety of political leanings, a huge variety of life experiences, of professions, et cetera, that this is the image that springs to mind when they go to the Gaza Strip—it's something like a gigantic concentration camp.Dr. Feroze SidhwaIf the U.S. or Israel cared at all about how many people (including, remember, this is a territory that is half children) —if we cared how many people, including children, we have starved to death, have shot dead, have blown up, et cetera, we could figure it out in two weeks and with 10 grand. The Israelis wouldn't even have to stop their assault. They could keep doing it. They could just agree to de-conflict this group of a few people. But they won't do it for obvious reasons. And I shouldn't say “they” —we won't do it for obvious reasons.Dr. Feroze SidhwaTheodore Postol is Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy Emeritus in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. His expertise is in nuclear weapon systems, including submarine warfare, applications of nuclear weapons, ballistic missile defense, and ballistic missiles more generally.When you have a large building collapse, everyone is going to be dead unless they're out of the building. It's just that simple. And even when you have large buildings collapse and you have people coming in to search for people, you typically only find a few people who happen to have been lucky enough to be trapped in a cavity that's near a surface area of the rubble heap. If you're deep in the rubble heap, your chances of surviving are near zero.Professor Theodore PostolNews 8/15/25* New Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index data shows Trump's new tariff regime has resulted in significant increases in tariff-sensitive staple consumer goods. Some startling price spikes include a 38.9% rise in the price of vegetables, 14.5% increase in the price of coffee and an 11.3% increase in the price of beef and veal. Beyond food, electricity is up 5.5%, rent and shelter is up 3.6%, and health insurance is up 4.4%. These increases are sure to be politically unpopular, as Trump campaigned on bringing down inflation and the price of groceries. The reporting of this data also raises questions about Trump's response, given his response to the recent negative BLS data reporting on new job creation.* Speaking of job creation data, while the U.S. only reported the creation of 73,000 new jobs in July, Mexico, under left-wing economic nationalist president and AMLO successor Claudia Scheinbaum, created over 1.26 million new jobs in the same month, according to Mexico News Daily. Furious about the jobs report, Trump forced out the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and is now seeking to install right-wing economist EJ Antoni. According to the BBC, economists have said his “economic commentary [is] rife with basic mistakes.” Antoni, kowtowing to Trump, ​​has proposed ending the monthly jobs report. Antoni would need to be confirmed by Senate Republicans, who have expressed some trepidation about his appointment, but whether that will be enough for them to stand up to Trump on this appointment seems unlikely.* In more domestic economic news, Jacobin reports corporations are experimenting with a new method of worker exploitation – so-called “stay-or-pay” contracts. According to this article, millions of employees – from nurses to pilots to fast food workers – are, often unwittingly, being “inserted into…restrictive labor covenants [which] turn employer-sponsored job training and education programs into conditional loans that must be paid back — sometimes at a premium — if employees leave before a set date.” These contracts, known as Training Repayment Agreement Provisions, or their acronym TRAPs, have become a major new battleground between corporate interests and groups fighting for labor rights, including unions and regulators. However, with Trump administration efforts to rollback even the modest labor protections promulgated under the Biden administration, the possibility of any federal intervention on behalf of workers seems remote.* In more Trump-related news, the occupation of Washington, D.C. has commenced. Trump has deployed federal agents, including officers with the Department of Homeland Security and Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as National Guard troops, to patrol the streets of the capital. Some of these deployments seem to be mostly for media spectacle; feds have been seen patrolling tourist areas like the National Mall, Union Station and Georgetown, but others have been going into District neighborhoods and harassing District residents for smoking on their own property. Moreover, while Trump has said "Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people," the Justice Department has in fact announced that this year violent crime in Washington has hit a 30-year low, per NPR. Trump is restricted to a 30 day takeover of the District by law, but is seeking to extend this window through Congress.* As usual, even as Trump claims to be cracking down on crime, his administration treats corporate crime with kid gloves. Despite major news of corporate misconduct this week – including the reopening of a Boar's Head facility shut down earlier this year due to a listeria outbreak despite ongoing sanitation issues and an explosion at the Clairton Coke Works in Pittsburgh that left at least two dead and ten injured – a new Public Citizen report shows the extent of the administration's soft-on-corporate-crime approach. According to this report, “the Trump administration has already withdrawn or halted enforcement actions against 165 corporations of all types – and one in four of the corporations benefiting from halted or dropped enforcement is from the technology sector, which has spent $1.2 billion on political influence during and since the 2024 elections.”* Turning to Gaza, the Financial Times reports, “Israel has killed…prominent Al Jazeera correspondent [Anas Al-Sharif] in Gaza and four of his colleagues…in an air strike targeting them in a media tent.” This report notes the Israeli military “took credit” for the strike after “months of threats and unproven allegations that [the journalist] was the head of a Hamas cell.” The Committee to Protect Journalists called these claims an attempt to “manufacture consent for his killing.” The network called this move a “desperate attempt to silence voices in anticipation of the occupation of Gaza.” Anas Al-Sharif was a prominent journalist in the Arab world and was part of a Reuters photo team who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2024. Israel has already killed six Al Jazeera reporters in Gaza prior to this strike.* Meanwhile, in Egypt, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi last Tuesday issued his harshest criticism of Israel thus far, accusing the nation of prosecuting “a war for starvation, genocide, and the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.” Yet, according to Drop Site News, Sisi's comments came just days before an announcement that an Israeli company will begin supplying Egypt with vast amounts of gas. This $35 billion deal between Egypt, neighbor to Israel and Palestine and the largest Arab nation, and Israeli energy company NewMed is the largest export agreement in Israel's history. This deal adds a new dimension to other comments Sisi made in those same remarks, wherein he defended Egypt against criticism for “not opening the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing to allow in aid.” It remains to be seen whether the genocide comments represent a new chapter of Egypt-Israel relations, or whether they are just a smokescreen to cover Egypt and Israel's increasing economic interdependence.* In Palestine news from the homefront, Semafor reports the Democratic National Committee will consider two dueling resolutions on Gaza at their meeting this month. According to Dave Weigel, one, introduced by DNC Chair Ken Martin would “[urge] a ceasefire and a return of hostages held by Hamas,” along with a reaffirmation of the increasingly far-fetched two-state solution. The other, introduced by a DNC member on the progressive flank of the party, calls for “suspension of military aid to Israel” and recognition of a Palestinian state. The latter resolution has drawn the ire of Democratic Majority for Israel, a political organization that aims to keep the Democratic Party firmly in the pro-Israel camp. DMFI's president, Brian Romick, is quoted saying that resolution would be a “gift to Republicans” and would “embolden Israel's adversaries.”* In more positive foreign affairs news, Jeremy Corbyn's new party in the United Kingdom appears to be gaining steam. A string of polls indicate the party could win the seats currently held by several high-profile Labour Party MPs, including Health Secretary Wes Streeting and now-resigned Homelessness Secretary Rushanara Ali. Most shockingly, it seems they could even win Holborn and St. Pancras, the seat currently held by Labour Party Prime Minister Keir Starmer. If this Corbynite wave does ultimately crest, it would be a stunning reversal of fortune after the Starmerite Labour Party expelled the former Labour leader in 2023.* Finally, AOL announced this week that they will end their Dial-up internet service in September, Ars Technica reports. AOL launched their Dial-up service in 1991, helping to usher in the era of widespread internet adoption. While this may seem like a natural step in terms of technological advancement, US Census data from 2022 shows that approximately 175,000 American households still connect to the Internet through dial-up services. As this article notes, “These users typically live in rural areas where broadband infrastructure doesn't exist or remains prohibitively expensive to install.” In effect, this move could leave these rural communities completely without internet, a problem compounded by the Trump administration's decision earlier this year to “abandon key elements of a $42.45bn Biden-era plan to connect rural communities to high-speed internet,” per the Guardian. It should be considered a national disgrace if both the private sector and the government leave these rural communities behind.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

In response to Trump and Texas Republicans' attempt to rig the 2026 midterm elections, Governor Gavin Newsom calls a special election to redraw California's congressional map. The governor stops by the show to talk to Dan about why California Democrats decided to strike first—and what it will take for the ballot proposal to become law. But first, Jon and Dan discuss Trump's authoritarian power grab in the nation's capital, the January 6th attendee he appointed to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the President's negotiations in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

Hi. Parker Molloy is back to chat with Katy, Cody, and Jonathan about Trump taking down the deep state (guy with sandwich) in D.C., Benny Johnson's embarrassing turn in the "new media" seat in the White House briefing room, the threat to Obergefell v. Hodges, and the deeply unqualified Heritage Foundation Jan. 6 weirdo nominated by Trump to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics.PATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/join#EvenMoreNews #DonaldTrump #BennyJohnsonPluto TV. Stream Now. Pay Never.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jason Kander and Ravi Gupta break down the deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., as Trump launches a federal crackdown on crime in the capital. They analyze the administration's show of force, the sharp pushback from Mayor Bowser, and what this unprecedented federal intervention means for local autonomy. Kander and Gupta also dive into Trump's escalating economic nationalism, from bizarre tariff proposals to his plan to take a cut of Nvidia's China sales, and the growing alarm over his appointment of a partisan loyalist to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Plus, they discuss Trump's latest mixed signals on Ukraine, the political theater surrounding the manufactured Sydney Sweeney controversy, and they are joined by Arkansas farmer Hallie Shoffner to talk about her run for U.S. Senate against Tom Cotton. This and more on the podcast that helps you, the majority of Americans who believe in progress, convince your conservative friends and family to join us—this is Majority 54! Nutrafol: Get results you can run your fingers through! For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners ten dollars off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you go to https://Nutrafol.com and enter the promo code MAJORITY. Hiya Health: Go to https://HiyaHealth.com/MAJORITY and get your kids the full-body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at https://SHOPIFY.com/majority Majority 54 is a MeidasTouch Network production. Theme music provided by Kemet Coleman. Special thanks to Diana Kander. Majority 54 on Twitter: https://twitter.com/majority54 Jason on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JasonKander Jason on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonkander/ Ravi on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RaviMGupta Ravi on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ravimgupta Ravi on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LostDebate Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three out of 10 people have trouble falling and staying asleep. Jennifer Senior, staff writer for The Atlantic, explains why many commonly recommended solutions can only go so far. The Wall Street Journal’s Matt Grossman lays out why some economists are concerned about Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Rachel Uranga with the Los Angeles Times discusses the administration’s aggressive immigration raids in L.A., and how they may have violated the Fourth Amendment. Plus, Trump prepares for his meeting with Putin, why Americans are drinking less, and Taylor Swift releases details of her upcoming album, ‘The Life of a Showgirl.’ Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.

President Donald Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics earlier this month, claiming that the monthly jobs numbers — which were revised downward — were “rigged” to make him look bad. Plenty of companies use BLS data to make business decisions. With questions raised about the quality and regularity of that data now, how do alternate data sources compare? Also: a flare of inflation at the wholesale level and a comeback for adjustable-rate mortgages.

President Trump nominates economist E.J. Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics after record jobs data revisions spark calls for an overhaul of outdated data collection methods. A softer-than-expected inflation report fuels investor optimism, with markets hitting record highs and traders betting heavily on a September Fed rate cut. A Texas map fight escalates into a national gerrymandering war, with blue state governors threatening retaliatory redraws, as President Trump orders a mid-decade census excluding illegal immigrants. Hans Von Spakovsky from the Heritage Foundation breaks out the redistricting drama. Lean: Visit https://TakeLean.com & use code MK20 for 20% offRiverbend Ranch: Visit https://riverbendranch.com/ | Use promo code MEGYN for $20 off your first order. 

National Guard troops began showing up on the streets of the nation's capital overnight, a little more than a day after President Donald Trump announced plans to deploy hundreds of them to Washington, D.C., and federalize the city's police department. But during his press conference Monday, the president suggested more cities could be next. He specifically called out Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore and Oakland. All of these cities have declining crime rates – as does the United States as a whole. All of them also happen to be majority-minority cities run by Black Democratic mayors in Democratic-run states. Baltimore Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott joins us to talk about the president's ' racist talking points' and how Democratic mayors like him can't let Trump distract them from running their cities.And in headlines: Trump announced his new pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White said UFC will host a first-ever White House fight next year to celebrate the country's 250th birthday, and YouTube will test a new AI feature to determine the age of its users.Show Notes:Call Congress – 202-224-3121Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

Since President Trump's firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner over a weak jobs report, we've been thinking a lot about the trustworthiness of U.S. economic data. Other countries like China can offer a glimpse of what happens when that trust erodes. On the show today, Marketplace's China correspondent Jennifer Pak explains how she works around unreliable data when reporting on the Chinese economy. Plus, could the United States be headed in the same direction?Here's everything we talked about today:"12 million students in China will graduate this year into a shaky job market" from Marketplace"China says its unemployment rate is “stable,” but job seekers remain gloomy" from Marketplace "Is GDP still a useful gauge of China's economy?" from Marketplace"How Bad Is China's Economy? The Data Needed to Answer Is Vanishing" from The Wall Street Journal  "How to deal with untrustworthy government economic data? Look to China" from Marketplace"Trump taps Heritage economist to lead BLS" from PoliticoWe love hearing from you. Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email makemesmart@marketplace.org.

It's Hump Day on the Majority Report Today is Michael Brooks birthday and we are celebrating him by bringing on two of his favorite guests. But first the Trump administration is nominating EJ Antoni for the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics despite a deluge of conservative economists labeling him incompetent. Not to mention that he has made several media appearances while using a Nazi battleship as his Zoom background. An incompetent Nazi in the Trump administration?   Author and co-founder of Black Star News, Milton Allimadi joins us to discuss Frances retreat from West Africa. Here are some links to Milton's appearances on The Michael Brooks Show: First Wave Of African Liberation & Neo-Colonization ft. Milton Allimadi (TMBS 92) The US Neocolonial Role In Africa ft. Milton Allimadi TMBS - 116 - Beating The Global Right ft. Nina Turner & Milton Allimadi   Historian and Professor Emeritus of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Harvey J. Kaye joins us to discuss Trump's authoritarianism and it's place in American history. Check out some of Harvey J. Kaye's appearances on The Michael Brooks Show Harvey Kaye Discusses Make America Radical Again (TMBS 112) A Secret Organizations Decades Long War On The Left ft. Harvey Kaye & Daniel Bessner (TMBS 82) TMBS - 82 - Winning The Future With History ft. Harvey Kaye & Daniel Bessner We are thrilled to have Michael's sister, Lisha Brooks join us to discuss his legacy and how to honor Michael's legacy. Matt Lech's Left Reckoning co-host and former TMBS producer David Griscom joins the show to discuss Texas politics and working with Michael.   In the Fun Half: James Talrico appears on the Will Cain's show and owns him so much that Cain has to fake an ad break to get out of the segment. Rep Tim Burchett (R-TN) is so scared of crime in DC, also has been attacked by colleagues in the halls of Congress and kicked in the ribs by a horse on his farm. This poor guy has to live in office to avoid all the crime. All that and more plus your IMs. Happy Birthday Michael Brooks.   The Congress switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors TRUST & WILL: Get 20% off trustandwill.com/MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE: Head on over to Sunset LakeCBD.com and remember to use code BIRTHDAY for 25% off sitewide. This sale ends at midnight on August 17th. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder – https://majorityreportradio.com

Due to our August break next week, I though we'd bring back Driftglass and Blue Gal a little earlier than their usual every-three-weeks schedule -- because they're awesome and smart and we have great talks every time they're here. Be sure to support the Professional Left podcast everywhere you get your pods, and at proleftpod.com. Today we talked a little Star Trek, we talked a little history, we talked about the Trump-Epstein story, we talked about our roles as podcasters in the political debate, plus what's next for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and more. Meantime, make sure to support this podcast by subscribing at patreon.com/bobcescashow. Music by Luke LeBlanc.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

President Trump chooses Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni to lead the BLS, the federal agency that collects data on inflation and the nation's jobs numbers. What is Antoni's public record? Does he have concrete plans to improve the statistics? Can he win Senate confirmation? And what about public trust, given how Trump fired former BLS director Erika McEntarfer? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Headlines: The Supreme Court is taking up a case that could overturn its 2015 Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage — courtesy of Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk jailed for refusing gay marriage licenses. She's appealing a $360K judgment, claiming First Amendment protection and arguing marriage equality was wrongly decided. Meanwhile, the White House plans to audit the Smithsonian to make sure exhibits fit Trump's “unifying” version of American history — which critics say means erasing inconvenient facts. Harvard is reportedly near a $500M settlement with the Trump administration to end multiple investigations, restore research funding, and avoid federal oversight — while maintaining its admissions independence. Trump mocked Goldman Sachs' chief economist after tariff warnings, telling the CEO (a hobbyist DJ) to “focus on being a DJ.” He also nominated Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics after firing the last commissioner over jobs numbers. An Israeli strike killed Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, four colleagues, and two others; Israel claims he was a Hamas operative. And convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has been moved to a cushier prison with possible work release. Resources/Articles mentioned in this episode: ABC News: Supreme Court formally asked to overturn landmark same-sex marriage ruling WSJ: White House to Vet Smithsonian Museums to Fit Trump's Historical Vision NYT: Harvard Nears a Deal With the Trump Administration to Restore Funding  CNBC: Trump tells Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon to replace bank's economist over tariff predictions NYT: Trump Names EJ Antoni New BLS Commissioner AP News: Israel targets and kills Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif in Gaza as journalist toll grows Yahoo: Trump's Child Sex Trafficker Friend Ghislaine Maxwell May Be Eligible For Work Release Morning Announcements is produced by Sami Sage and edited by Grace Hernandez-Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

August 12th, 2025: As boots hit the ground in Washington D.C., Nicolle Wallace turns to military leaders to help understand what this executive action means for the people of the city and the U.S. military more broadly. Plus she discusses Trump's pick to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Republican who got a tongue lashing from his constituents, and more.For more, follow us on Instagram @deadlinewhTo listen to this show and other MSNBC podcasts without ads, sign up for MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts. 

Trump deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C. Brian Mann from NPR explains how the president is using emergency powers to take control of the city's police force. Elizabeth Findell from the Wall Street Journal reports on the growing number of ICE detainees being flown from state to state so often that lawyers are losing them in the system. Mothers are leaving the workforce in greater numbers. Abha Bhattarai from the Washington Post has been looking into why. Plus, Trump picked a conservative economist and Project 2025 contributor to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics, what we know about a steel-plant explosion in Pennsylvania, and the towns and cities offering big checks to tempt you into moving. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.

August 12, 2025; 6pm: MSNBC's Jason Johnson reports on a stunning new report from The Washington Post about Pentagon plans to create a "domestic civil disturbance quick reaction force" in cities facing protests and other unrest. Plus, critics are warning President Trump is crossing a red line as he taps a MAGA loyalist for the top job at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Justin Wolfers, Rick Wilson, Joyce Vance and others join "The Beat" to break it all down. 

Zoom out from continuing tariff turmoil and Trump's recent attacks on the Fed and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and you'll see a broader new economic order is forming. Political economist and Brown University professor Mark Blyth joins Rapid Response to reveal why outdated models still underpin much of our economic understanding, and what we still misunderstand – and underestimate – about China. Blyth also shares why the Democrats struggle to craft an engaging story about the economy, why it's so hard to predict a recession, and what Brown's recent settlement with the Trump Administration tells us about higher education's need to pivot from its reliance on federal funding.Visit the Rapid Response website here: https://www.rapidresponseshow.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A.M. Edition for Aug 12. After firing its former head, Trump says the Heritage Foundation's current chief economist, E.J. Antoni, will ensure accuracy in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' data. Plus, ahead of Friday's summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, WSJ correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov explains why peace in Ukraine doesn't seem to be a priority for Moscow. And WSJ reporter Clarence Leong details China's massive new shipbuilding plans. Azhar Sukri hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

-- On the Show: -- Inflation rose sharply in July under Trump's economy, driven by tariffs causing prices to increase above the Fed's ideal range -- Trump's firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics head raises questions about the credibility and political influence on inflation and jobs data -- Layoffs in the US surged to the highest level since the COVID pandemic, fueled by federal job cuts, tariffs, AI automation, and private sector downsizing -- Trump's takeover of DC police and deployment of National Guard troops sparked protests and potential resistance from the Guard -- Trump's strange remarks about sidewalk scrubbing during a speech leave his staff bewildered -- Trump's FBI Director Kash Patel publicly contradicted MAGA narratives by reporting record low murder rates, enraging Trump -- Donald Trump confused Alaska with Russia during a speech, exposing incoherence and hypocrisy in right-wing media responses -- Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt had a visible meltdown on camera when asked a simple question about the Epstein scandal -- Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly attacks other MAGA figures, exposing internal conflict and power struggles within the movement -- Jeanine Pirro struggled when confronted with real crime data showing declines, undermining the MAGA narrative -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dodged questions about the fate of homeless people after Trump's plans to clear homeless encampments -- On the Bonus Show: Pete Hegseth retweets Christian nationalist pastor, Project 2025 guy picked for BLS leader, MTG accused of sketchy stock trading, and much more...

The Rich Zeoli Show- Hour 4: 6:05pm- In a post to Truth Social, President Donald Trump announced that he would be nominating Dr. EJ Antoni to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Rich jokes that Trump is selecting all of our regular guests to serve in positions within the federal government—Dr. Marty Makary, Tulsi Gabbard, and now EJ! 6:15pm- In a video that has gone viral on TikTok, a woman who graduated with a bachelor's degree in “women and gender studies” conceded that her college major was a mistake. 6:20pm- The National Democratic Socialists of America held a panel discussion where members advocated for the abolition of families—idiotically arguing “the only real difference between marriage and prostitution is the price and the duration of the contract.” 6:30pm- While speaking with reporters, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro was asked if she would investigate the “root causes of crime in D.C.” Pirro made clear that her job is to hold criminals accountable for their actions and attain justice for victims. 6:40pm- Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) regularly consults a Long Island couple named Joe and Eileen Bailey—however, they're not real! He made them up! 6:50pm- Is A.I. really blackmailing people out of self-preservation? Anthropic's study might be a bit misleading.

The Rich Zeoli Show- Full Episode (08/12/2025): 3:05pm- In a post to Truth Social, President Donald Trump announced that he would be nominating Dr. EJ Antoni to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Rich jokes that Trump is selecting all of our regular guests to serve in positions within the federal government—Dr. Marty Makary, Tulsi Gabbard, and now EJ! 3:10pm- According to a Democratic whistleblower, Senator Adam Schiff authorized the leak of classified information related to the Russian collusion hoax in 2017 as part of an effort to destroy President Donald Trump's credibility. The whistleblower worked for the House Intelligence Committee which, at the time, was led by Schiff. 3:15pm- On Monday, President Donald Trump announced a 30-day federal takeover of Washington D.C.'s police department—while simultaneously deploying 800 National Guard troops—to fight violent crime in the nation's capital. At the White House press briefing, Trump announced Attorney General Pam Bondi will oversee the federal takeover—while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will provide military support “if needed.” Additionally, the administration will assign 120 F.B.I. agents to conduct nighttime patrols throughout Washington D.C. 3:40pm- While appearing on Newsmax, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said former President Bill Clinton is a “prime suspect” in the Jeffrey Epstein case. The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed Bill and Hillary Clinton—seeking testimony for the committee's Epstein investigation. Hillary has been asked to appear for testimony on October 9th, while Bill has been asked to appear on October 14th. 4:05pm- According to a new report from The New York Post, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett “terrorizes” her staff—even making them rent Cadillac Escalades to drive her around in because she refuses to be seen in less expensive vehicles. 4:15pm- Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) reacted to the Trump Administration's attempt to crackdown on crime in Washington D.C. explaining that this could lead to a second Civil War! Ironically, as Rep. Waters claimed the nation's capital was perfectly safe without federal assistance, she was drowned out by police sirens blaring in the background! 4:25pm- While speaking with reporters, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro was asked if she would investigate the “root causes of crime in D.C.” Pirro made clear that her job is to hold criminals accountable for their actions and attain justice for victims. 4:30pm- Brett Eagleson—President of 9/11 Justice, he lost his father in the terrorist attacks on September 11th—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss being featured in a recent Wall Street Journal article: “9/11 Families See Lutnick, Who Lost Brother in Attack, as Last Hope for Justice.” You can read the full article here: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/howard-lutnick-9-11-saudi-arabia-lawsuit-a384b9c6. 5:00pm- During Monday's briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt revealed that in Washington D.C. last night “approximately 850 officers and agents were surged across the city. They made a total of 23 arrests.” 5:15pm- According to a Democratic whistleblower, Senator Adam Schiff authorized the leak of classified information related to the Russian collusion hoax in 2017 as part of an effort to destroy President Donald Trump's credibility. The whistleblower worked for the House Intelligence Committee which, at the time, was led by Schiff. 5:20pm- Speaking of leaks, Matt finds exclusive audio of Rep. Eric Swalwell “leaking”… 5:40pm- Did Rich mention he was on Fox News with Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer earlier today? 6:05pm- In a post to Truth Social, President Donald Trump announced that he would be nominating Dr. EJ Antoni to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Rich jokes that Trump is selecting all of our regular guests to serve in positions within the federal government—Dr. Marty Makary, Tulsi Gabbard, and now EJ! 6:15pm- In a ...

The Rich Zeoli Show- Hour 1: 3:05pm- In a post to Truth Social, President Donald Trump announced that he would be nominating Dr. EJ Antoni to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Rich jokes that Trump is selecting all of our regular guests to serve in positions within the federal government—Dr. Marty Makary, Tulsi Gabbard, and now EJ! 3:10pm- According to a Democratic whistleblower, Senator Adam Schiff authorized the leak of classified information related to the Russian collusion hoax in 2017 as part of an effort to destroy President Donald Trump's credibility. The whistleblower worked for the House Intelligence Committee which, at the time, was led by Schiff. 3:15pm- On Monday, President Donald Trump announced a 30-day federal takeover of Washington D.C.'s police department—while simultaneously deploying 800 National Guard troops—to fight violent crime in the nation's capital. At the White House press briefing, Trump announced Attorney General Pam Bondi will oversee the federal takeover—while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will provide military support “if needed.” Additionally, the administration will assign 120 F.B.I. agents to conduct nighttime patrols throughout Washington D.C. 3:40pm- While appearing on Newsmax, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said former President Bill Clinton is a “prime suspect” in the Jeffrey Epstein case. The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed Bill and Hillary Clinton—seeking testimony for the committee's Epstein investigation. Hillary has been asked to appear for testimony on October 9th, while Bill has been asked to appear on October 14th.

After President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, economists and statisticians across the board were horrified. Because the firing raises the spectre of potential manipulation – and it raises the worry that, in the future, the numbers won't be as trustworthy.So: we looked at two countries that have some experience with data manipulation. To ask what happens when governments get tempted to cook the books. And...once they cook the books... how hard is it to UN-cook them?It's two statistical historical cautionary tales. First, we learn how Argentina tried to mask its true inflation rate, and how that effort backfired. Then, we hear about the difficult process of cleaning up the post-cooked-book mess, in Greece. For more: - Can we just change how we measure GDP? - The price of lettuce in Brooklyn - What really goes on at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Update) - Can we still trust the monthly jobs report? (Update) - How office politics could take down Europe - The amazing shrinking economy might stop shrinkingListen free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.Support Planet Money, get bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening and now Summer School episodes one week early by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This week, Ron Steslow and Mike Madrid (Author of The Latino Century) talk about the threats of the escalating, mid-decade redistricting war that Texas and California are kicking off. Later, they discuss some of the shocking, but not surprising, news on the Epstein scandal. Then, in Politicology+ they discuss the major jobs number revision from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Trump firing the agency's head, and what the erosion of trust in economic data means—especially for government institutions. Not yet a Politicology+ member? Don't miss all the extra episodes on the private, ad-free version of this podcast. Upgrade now at politicology.com/plus. Contribute to Politicology at politicology.com/donate Find our sponsor links and promo codes here: https://bit.ly/44uAGZ8 Send your questions and ideas to podcast@politicology.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(703) 239-3068‬ Follow this week's panel on X (formerly Twitter): https:/x.com/RonSteslow https://x.com/madrid_mike Related Reading:  The Great Transformation - Will Redistricting Become the Trigger for National Breakdown Chuck Todd - Stop Fearing the Voters: The Lazy Death Spiral of American Representation Politico - ‘If this fails, he'll have egg on his face': Gavin Newsom bets political future on redistricting power play WP - Ghislaine Maxwell's move to ‘country club' prison smacks of special treatment, experts say - The Washington Post ABC News - Ghislaine Maxwell told DOJ Trump never did anything concerning around her: Sources - ABC News CNN - Top Trump officials will discuss Epstein strategy at Wednesday dinner hosted by Vance | CNN Politics NYT - Inside Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan Townhouse: Birthday Letters, First Edition ‘Lolita' and More - The New York Times NPR - House Oversight Committee subpoenas the Justice Department for Epstein files Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For many Americans, the government's monthly jobs number was a pretty dull statistic — until a few days ago, when President Trump angrily fired the person responsible for producing it, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.Now, from Washington to Wall Street, many people are wondering whether you can still trust federal statistics if the president is willing to just get rid of people who give him facts he doesn't like.On this episode, Ben Casselman joins The Daily to discuss how the government's economic data suddenly turned into a national drama.Guest: Ben Casselman, the chief economics correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: President Trump fired America's economic data collector. History shows the perils of such a move.Until the president fired her, Erika McEntarfer was an economist with bipartisan support.For more information on today's episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Texas Democrats, in an attempt to block Trump's redistricting effort, shut down a special legislative session by fleeing the state. Texas State Rep. James Talarico joins the show to explain what happens now and why he and his Democratic colleagues believe that getting out of town is the best way to serve their constituents in this moment. Then, Jon, Lovett, and Tommy discuss Trump's decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Ghislaine Maxwell's transfer to a cushy minimum-security prison, new reporting about who's sending all those annoying fundraising texts, and, of course, Trump's comments on the most important story of the moment: Sydney Sweeney's jeans.

Texas Democrats run away from the state to avoid a redistricting fight; Hamas releases a video of a starved hostage digging his own grave, even as Hamas claims PR victory; and President Trump fires the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a bad jobs report. Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/3WDjgHE Ep.2252 - - - Facts Don't Care About Your Feelings - - - DailyWire+: Join millions of people who still believe in truth, courage, and common sense at https://DailyWirePlus.com. Get new episodes of Answer the Call—every Monday—on The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. Get your Ben Shapiro merch here: https://bit.ly/3TAu2cw - - - Today's Sponsors: PureTalk - Switch to PureTalk and start saving today! Visit https://PureTalk.com/SHAPIRO ZipRecruiter - Go to this exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter FOR FREE: https://ZipRecruiter.com/DAILYWIRE Shopify - Sign up for your $1-per-month trial and start selling today at https://Shopify.com/shapiro Balance of Nature - Go to https://balanceofnature.com and use promo code SHAPIRO for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer, PLUS get a free bottle of Fiber and Spice - - - Socials: Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3cXUn53  Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3QtuibJ  Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3TTirqd  Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPyBiB - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices