- Trump fires the messenger of bad news about his economy, while Paul Krugman anticipates cooked books;
- The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down;
- And Amanda Marcotte on the idea of religious proselytizing in the workplace.
Shooting the messenger.
CNN, 1 Aug 2025: Trump fires labor statistics chief over weak jobs numbers, subtitled “The president accused her, without evidence, of manipulating the numbers for ‘political purposes’”
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More from the totalitarian playbook.
A sardonic take:
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USA Today, 1 Aug 2025: Trump smartly responds to brutal jobs report by firing the job numbers person | Opinion, subtitled “Our bold president is changing that outdated form of thinking, instilling in all of us the belief that we can believe whatever we want to believe.”
In the wake of a brutal report showing U.S. job growth slowing and unemployment rising, President Donald Trump did what any sensible leader would do: He fired the person responsible for the report.
I applaud Trump’s decision, part of his ongoing war with numbers he doesn’t like. For far too long, Americans have allowed “low” or “bad” numbers – from grades to bank accounts to performance reviews – to dictate how they feel about themselves.
Our bold president is changing that outdated form of thinking, instilling in all of us the belief that we can believe whatever we want to believe, ignoring dumb liberal concepts like “facts,” “numbers” and “reality.”
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Paul Krugman, 1 Aug 2025: Caracas on the Potomac, subtitled “Goodbye, reliable economic data”
He begins by recalling a post he wrote in January, with the title “The Real Threat of Fake Numbers: Will Trump cook the books? Why assume he won’t?”
Today:
And now they’ve come for the economic data.
As I and many others have pointed out, this mornings jobs report was very bad:
It didn’t signal a recession — not yet — but it showed a rapidly slowing economy. And it was presumably especially disturbing for Trump and those around him, who have been boasting about how hot the economy is and sneering at critics pointing to the harm being done by chaotic policy. For this report seems to validate the critics.
So there was only one thing to do: Trump summarily fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, accusing her without evidence of manipulating the numbers for political purposes.
Who could have seen this coming? Anyone paying attention.
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The other big story today:
CNN, 1 Aug 2025: Corporation for Public Broadcasting will shut down after Trump funding cuts
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced on Friday that it will wind down its operations due to the successful Republican effort to defund local PBS and NPR stations across the country.
The announcement came just over a week after President Donald Trump enacted a rescissions bill clawing back congressionally approved federal funds for public media and foreign aid. Of the $9 billion in canceled funds, $1.1 billion was earmarked for the corporation for the next two years.
“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement. “CPB remains committed to fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities and supporting our partners through this transition with transparency and care.”
The piece goes on to explain that the lack of government support will affect stations in smaller town (and mostly red states) the most, while those in larger states depend mostly on viewer or listener support. (I donate $30/month to KQED in San Francisco.)
Once again, this is about a totalitarian central authority shutting down independent voices. They claim that this is because public media is “biased” against conservatives. But why would that be? Seriously, how could that have happened? If there were a fair range of liberal and conservative views in the nation, how did all the journalists become liberal? My take is that responsible journalism is about facts and truth, and not ideology. And facts and truth challenge and undermine conservative ideology.
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Here’s Amanda Marcotte on a story I linked earlier.
Look at the expressions of the crowd, and look at Trump’s.
Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 1 Aug 2025: Trump seems to want a tent revival — in the federal workplace, subtitled “New guidance allows proselytizing at work and the religious right to exploit their persecution complex”
For most Americans, it’s common sense: You don’t harangue your coworkers because of personal beliefs and behaviors, just because they’re different from yours. Depending on your workplace, lecturing your colleagues because they are or aren’t married, do or don’t have kids, or spend their weekends woodworking instead of surfing could be recorded as anything from a “basic etiquette violation” to an “H.R. matter.” Minding your own business is generally considered morally righteous, and also a best practice, to make life easier for everyone.
But to hear Republicans tell it, being required to leave people alone is the 21st century equivalent of feeding Christians to the lions.
