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- [00:00]
Ari Weitzman
Why choose a sleep number Smart bed. Can I make my site softer?
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Audrey Moorhead
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Isaac Saul
Can we sleep cooler?
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Ari Weitzman
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Audrey Moorhead
have to tell you, I was just
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Ari Weitzman
looking on ebay where I go for all kinds of things I love.
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Isaac Saul
And there it was. That hologram trading card.
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Audrey Moorhead
One of the rarest. The last one I needed for my set. Shiny like the designer handbag of my dreams. One of a kind. Ebay had it. And now everyone's asking, ooh, where'd you
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Isaac Saul
get your windshield wipers? Ebay has all the parts that fit my car.
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Audrey Moorhead
No more annoying, just beautiful. Millions of fines, each with a story. EBay, things people love.
- [01:00]
Isaac Saul
Well, the holidays have come and gone once again. But if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift. Well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time,
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Ari Weitzman
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- [01:29]
Audrey Moorhead
See terms.
- [01:36]
Ari Weitzman
From executive producer Isaac Saul.
- [01:39]
Audrey Moorhead
This is Tangle.
- [01:51]
Isaac Saul
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening and welcome to the Tango podcast. The place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of our take. I'm your host again for TODAY Tango's managing editor, Ari Weitzman, and we're talking about the latest jobs report out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics as well as the revisions that they had to past jobs reports over the course of 2025. Before we get started on all of that, just wanted to let you know that if you're sick of hearing from me, as I've been a little bit busier with Will and Isaac traveling. Don't worry, you're going to hear from Isaac again tomorrow. He's been writing a piece for our Friday edition about artificial intelligence, specifically the mania that artificial intelligence seems to be hitting in the last couple weeks and why he's still skeptical about the displacement AI might bring. We're mostly aligned on that. I've started editing the piece. It's pretty good. I think you guys are going to like it. He's sharing some interesting experiments he's done about how well ChatGPT and other LLMs can mimic his own writing. And it's, it's going to be interesting, so make sure you tune in for that one. Without further ado, though, I'm going to pass it off to Audrey to give us the intro and the summaries from the left and right on today's topic. Then I'll be right back for my take.
- [03:16]
Audrey Moorhead
This is Associate Editor Audrey Moorhead. And before we get into today's topic, let's start with some quick hits. Number one, the United States military has continued to build up forces near Iran. Trump and national security officials reportedly met in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday to discuss the recent developments. Reports indicate a strike could come as soon as this weekend, though Trump has yet to make a final decision. Number two, police in the UK Arrested Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, in relation to his mentions in the Jeffrey Epstein files. Mountbatten Windsor is being investigated for allegedly sharing confidential information with Epstein while serving as a British trade envoy. Number three, President Trump will name National Institutes of Health Director J. Bhattacharya to serve as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until he nominates a permanent replacement. Number four, Washington, D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser declared a local public emergency after more than 240 million gallons of wastewater spilled into the Potomac river due to a pipe collapse. Officials say the spill poses a risk to public health and the environment but will not affect drinking water. Number five, Eight skiers were found dead and one more is still missing after an avalanche occurred in the backcountry near Lake Tahoe, California. Six other skiers were found and rescued.
- [04:46]
Ari Weitzman
We're back with some breaking news now. The first US jobs report of 2026 just came came out moments ago, and the data shows 130,000 jobs were added in January and the unemployment rate remains mostly steady at 4.3%. But the big story here is revisions. It comes during a concerning economic moment where inflation is still high and the job market has been weakening.
- [05:10]
Audrey Moorhead
Last Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, reported that nonfarm payroll employment increased by 130,000 in January, its strongest monthly growth in over a year, while the unemployment rate fell from 4.4% to 4.3%. The healthcare sector accounted for most of the growth with 82,000 new jobs. But declining employment in state and federal governments, finance and the information sector offset some of those gains. The release was delayed five days due to the partial government shutdown, which ended on February 3rd. For some more context, the BLS is the agency within the Labor Department responsible for measuring market activity, working conditions and price changes and productivity in the US Economy. Every month, the bureau compiles an employment report from a monthly survey of about 631,000 worksites selected to represent all US employers. The BLS consistently revised jobs reports downward after their publication throughout 2025, resulting in a net negative revision of 1,029,000 non farm jobs over the course of the year. After a lower than expected jobs report in July and another significant revision in August, President Donald Trump fired then BLS commissioner Erica McIntarfer. Weeks later, Trump nominated Heritage foundation economist E.J. antony to replace McIntarfer, then withdrew his nomination in September. William Watrowski is currently serving as acting BLS commissioner. In its annual benchmark revision that accompanies each January jobs report, the BLS revised the March 2025 seasonally adjusted employment level down by 898,000, similar to economists expectations Overall, the BLS reported that 181,000 jobs were added in 2025, compared to its estimated 584,000, the lowest growth since 2020. The 130,000 jobs added in January were more than double economists expectations of 55,000, according to a Dow Jones survey. Many economists said the latest employment numbers signal a stabilizing job market and decrease the likelihood of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates at its. Diane Swonk, chief economist for kpmg, said it does look like the labor market is beginning to heal from the trauma we saw it go through last year. Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, called the improved numbers a January job surge, adding that this is still a largely frozen job market, but it is stabilizing. That's an encouraging sign to start the year, especially after the hiring recession in 2025. Trump administration officials celebrated the latest jobs numbers and repeated calls for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. Following the release, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social great jobs numbers far greater than expected. And he added that the United States of America should be paying much less on its borrowings its bonds. Today we'll explore reactions from the left and the right to the latest employment numbers, followed by Managing editor Ari Weitzman's Take. Foreign.
- [08:21]
Isaac Sowell
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Isaac Saul
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Ari Weitzman
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- [10:04]
Audrey Moorhead
See terms. First. Here's what the left is saying. The left says the jobs report isn't as strong as it seems. Some point out that gains mostly came from one specific sector, while other parts of the economy didn't show much growth. Others believe this creates conflicting pressures for Federal Reserve monetary policy. In Ms. Now, Philip Bump said. Old people are the story of the Trump economy, he wrote. Data released last week shows that the country has added about 359,000 jobs since January 2025, the month Donald Trump returned to the White House. That's close to the average number of jobs added per month during Joe Biden's presidency. Trump has celebrated the fact that this change in employment has come at the expense of government workers looking only at private sector jobs. More than 600,000 were added. You would be forgiven for assuming, based on Trump's rhetoric, that those increases came in things such as manufacturing. All of the growth instead was in the service sector. The biggest growth, anomalous growth really, was in private education and health services. So what's going on? Well, one central factor here is that Americans keep getting older. The baby boom extended from 1946 to 1964. In 2011, the oldest boomers began hitting age 65. The density of elderly people in the population began to skyrocket, pushing demand for health care, aids and, though it lagged a bit, nursing home and retirement care. In counterpunch, Dean Baker offered further thoughts on the January jobs report. He said many folks have lost their bearings in looking at the January jobs numbers. It was much better than expected. My own monthly prediction to my wife just before the report was 40,000. So in that sense it was good. But we created an average of 103,000 jobs a month in 2024 and 188,000 in 2023. The January figure was hardly something to brag about, which, of course, the Trump administration did. The category healthcare and social assistance accounted for 123,500 of the job growth, 95% of the total. If we add in the 27,800 jobs in restaurants, we're up to 151,300 jobs. That means, on net, everything else lost jobs. There is nothing in principle wrong with jobs in healthcare and social assistance, but this is a very narrow base for the economy. It certainly is not the manufacturing renaissance Donald Trump has promised. In Bloomberg, Jonathan Levin said kevin Warsh's Fed job already looks impossible. The latest BLS report showed that the unemployment rate slipped to 4.3% in January from a prior 4.4% as U.S. payrolls expanded at twice the rate that economists had been expecting. While that's great news for workers, it will make life a lot more challenging for Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump's pick to become the next chair of the Federal Reserve. Trump wants his nominee to slash interest rates, but Warsh's Fed colleagues are likely to balk if the labor market continues to hold up this well. Prior to Wednesday, concerns about the labor market had offered the clearest path to easier monetary policy, and an ebbing in those risks could foreclose on the possibility of additional cuts in 2026. Labor market resilience is never a bad thing for the American people, but Trump has been banging the drum for rate cuts since the start of his presidency. No sooner had he announced Warsh's nomination than he was cracking jokes about suing him if he doesn't cut rates. On Wednesday, Trump celebrated the positive jobs numbers in a post on Truth Social and yet confusingly seemed to imply that they provided justification for lower rates, which is either ignorant or willfully deceptive. Now for what the right is saying. The right said Trump should get more credit for overseeing a strong economy. Some celebrated the job market as expanding and others said the Fed should be cautious not to overheat the market. In USA Today, Tim Swearin's asked why Trump doesn't get more credit for the economy. In April 2025, as US stock markets were melting down in reaction to Donald Trump's so called liberation Day edicts, the president's top advisor on tariffs, Peter Navarro, proclaimed that not only would markets rebound, but that the Dow Jones Industrial average also would soar past 50,000 points. Listening to Navarro at the time, I resisted the urge to roll my eyes like a 12 year old. It turns out I was happily wrong and Navarro was right, much to the relief of the 62% of American adults who own stocks. Other data released in recent days also reflect the overall strength of the US Economy. Analysts painted the job market as stable after The BLS reported Feb. 11 that employers added 130,000 jobs in January and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.3%. So why don't more Americans feel bullish about the economy? And why doesn't Trump get more credit for the almost impossible to stick soft landing that the US Economy is gliding toward as recession fears wane and inflation is tamed? Trump himself is a big part of the problem. But as with nearly every other facet of American life these days, the partisan divide also is at work on opinions about the economy. Hold on to all the bad vibes you want about Trump. He may well deserve them. But let's not mislead people into thinking the economy is awful when it's actually quite strong in real clear markets. US Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing Peter Navarro told the real story in January's jobs data. Navarro said, we are not watching a debt financed government hiring binge. We are watching a private sector expansion paired with a rightsizing of Washington. Federal employment has fallen to its lowest level since 2014 and to one of the lowest shares of total non farm employment on record. That is not austerity, that is productivity. Washington shrinking while Main street produces and resources shifting from administrative overhead into competitive markets where innovation, capital investment and efficiency drive real output growth. With this release, the BLS published its annual benchmark revision payroll employment between March 2024, and March 2025 was revised down by 898,000 jobs, the largest downward revision since 2009. The labor market many analysts celebrated was materially weaker than advertised. This point is not partisan, it's empirical. When benchmark revisions wipe out nearly a million jobs in a single annual adjustment, the baseline changes measured honestly, the economy is expanding from a weaker starting point, but expanding nonetheless. Finally, in Financial Times, Michael R. Strain argued. Everything you thought about the labor market is wrong, strain wrote. Markets Economists and Federal Reserve officials seem to believe that the US labor market spent most of last year weakening, that inflation is trending back to the Fed's inflation target, and that the central bank will continue cutting interest rates in 2026. On each of these three points, the conventional view is probably wrong. The holes in the consensus narrative were clear before last week's jobs report, which surprised many analysts on the upside. To be sure, the conventional view of the job market has some empirical support. The rate at which employers are hiring workers is lower than it has been since 2013. Still, the risk of inflation accelerating this year is greater than the risk of a spike in the unemployment rate. It would be a mistake for the Fed to cut rates again in 2026. Though the Fed thinks it has its foot on the economy's brake pedal, it's actually hitting the gas. That's it for what the left and right are saying. Now here's Managing editor Ari Weitzman with his take.
- [17:52]
Isaac Saul
Alright, that is it for what the left and right are saying. Which leads me to my take. Now that the 2025 revisions are all out, we have a pretty clear picture of what's driven the past few years of inaccurate job reports. It's been mostly two things. First, declining survey responses. Fewer businesses are filling out BLS surveys in time for the monthly job reports, which means the BLS's initial estimates are relying less on empirical payroll reports and more on their models. When more complete data eventually comes in through the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which is based on unemployment insurance records and is far more comprehensive, that often tells us a much different story. Second, the statistical method called the birth death model that BLS uses to estimate new business creation and businesses closing is the main driver of these changes. For three years, up until former Commissioner of Labor Statistics Erica McIntarfer's firing, the model had been routinely overestimating job creation, accounting for the bulk of the BLS's reporting errors. And because of the underreporting problem, BLS ended up relying on its faulty predictive model even more making those errors even larger. BLS knew about these problems, and it had begun fixing the model during macintar for his tenure. And then her successor, Acting Commissioner William Viatrovsky, has continued that work. Coming into the second Trump administration, we expected a bit of melodrama out of the federal government. We know Donald Trump likes to lead by splashy fiat and bombastic pronouncements, and he came out of the gate swinging. Budget cuts, tariffs and Justice Department investigations were on the political menu for most of the year. But of all the departments in the federal government, perhaps the positions least likely to provide the settings for musical chair melodramas from Trump 1.0 have delivered them in Trump 2.0, the Federal Reserve and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, usually sleepy departments, but in this case, a little bit more action. Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who will be gone when his term ends in May, has been under constant fire, while former commissioner Erica McIntarfer has already gotten the dreaded past tense honorific prefix to her title. As we've said the last few times we've covered the bls, the jobs reports had missed the mark for a while before McIntarfer's firing last year. We've also said that they didn't seem to justify the decision to fire her, especially when a side effect of that decision was is degrading confidence in the institution that provides much of the data economists and business leaders rely on. To be blunt, the BLS absolutely had an issue with its reporting, and it took an inexcusably long time to fix it. Those routine mistakes led to increased public scrutiny and decreased trust in the institution's monthly numbers. I've read a good deal of apologia for this anemic pace of adjustment. Business creation being slow is a sign of a coming recession. Revisions are just part of a normal process, and revisions have actually been improving when you zoom out far enough. Well, in the last few years, the BLS had been repeatedly and predictably failing, so its model just needed to be updated. Even people in the private sector knew it, and they expected the jobs data to be wrong when they got it. That consistent incorrectness can lead to persistently false beliefs, like that rumored recession we've been waiting for since Biden was in office. Office as president, Trump would have been right to point these issues out. He could have focused scrutiny on the BLS model, set hard deadlines for improvements, or done anything that showed he'd taken the time to understand the issue, to communicate it properly to the public. Instead, this was Trump's response, and I'M quoting here. I was just informed that our country's jobs numbers are being produced by a Biden appointee, Dr. Erica McIntarfer, the commissioner of Labor Statistics, who faked the jobs numbers before the election to try and boost Kamala Harris's chances of victory. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Trump not so subtly implied the BLS commissioner position was political, even after Biden had his appointee stay on for years, as Trump had previously done with Obama's. Trump smeared McIntofer's ample qualifications. Then he tried to replace her with a, let's face it, a sycophantic stooge. He accused McIntofer of concocting fake numbers to help Democrats, even though the last report before the election made Biden and Harris look pretty bad. And then he pinned the whole issue on McIntar, even though she inherited the problem and she'd overseen the beginning of its solution. Trump's response did more to inject partisanship into and foment distrust of the BLS than it did to fix the underlying problem itself. And if we're honest and made him appear to have a pretty unsophisticated understanding of the economic reporting system he oversees, that's especially frustrating because it produces a subtle negative polarization effect, whereby people who don't like the president's assault on his economic advisors are influenced toward interpreting the economy as worse than it actually is. Some pundits almost seem eager to discount the good news and root for economic failure. But actually, the economy's doing pretty well. The jobs data from January was solid, even if we do expect another, much smaller revision to this month's numbers. Unemployment is low, GDP growth is up, and the US Economy has avoided most, though not all, of the worst effects economists feared would result from Trump's tariffs. Wages are ticking up, and as Pam Bondi was so keen to tell us last week during an Epstein hearing, the stock market has been incredibly robust. At the same time, not everything is rosy with the economy. Job growth is up, yeah, but it's pretty flat. All in all, consumer confidence lives on the floor, and inflation, though not elevated, is still over the Fed's target of 2%. And even though jobs increased in January, a lot of that growth was concentrated in two sectors, healthcare and social services. Other key sectors, like manufacturing and hospitality are essentially flat. In response, the Fed will probably hold rates steady next month, a proper decision that would reflect the mostly good judgment we've come to expect from its chairman, judgment for which the president wishes to Fire him. I mentioned how negative polarization affects pundits above. It affects nobody more than the President of the United States. And can we just say how much that sucks? It just sucks. The economy is mostly good, and I, like most people, hope it continues to get healthier. And the BLS did need reform, but it just drags our entire discourse down when the president goes after the people who bring him news he doesn't like, while anyone in his administration getting criticized by his enemies gets a pass. I'm optimistic about the jobs data. I'm optimistic that DLS reports will continue to improve, and I'm even optimistic that the bottom won't drop out of the economy anytime soon. But to be totally honest, what stands out to me most clearly when I examine this issue is that I'm incredibly pessimistic about the style of President Trump's leadership. The Paul he's cast on something as simple and usually dry as economic reporting is going to infect all of these conversations within victim for the remainder of his term. That's it for my take. I think Isaac has a little bit to say to disagree with me on somehow, so I'll just let him give it a shot and then I'll be back for the reader question.
- [25:29]
Isaac Sowell
Hey, guys, Isaac here. Funnily enough, I think Ari's development of his argument today actually convinced me to disagree with his conclusion. Far from being a negative story about Trump, the latest job numbers and revisions and our new understanding of the BLS's consistent mistakes strike me as an almost explicitly positive story about Trump. The constant revisions represent exactly the kind of institutional complacency that voters expected Trump to root out. Well, the jobs numbers are a great sign that the economy isn't as bad as many have feared. When Ari says that the BLS mistakes were inexcusable, that the problems were known, and that they went unfixed for years, I think, okay, then Trump was justified in firing McIntarfer and resetting the agency's leadership. I'm exhausted by the acceptance of mediocrity at agencies like bls. And while I came into Ari's piece very critical of Trump's handling of the issue, I left feeling like McIntarver's bombastic firing was more necessary than I initially believed. All right, that is it for my dissent. I'm going to send it back to Ari for the rest of the pod and I'll see you guys tomorrow.
- [26:36]
Isaac Saul
Peace.
- [26:42]
Isaac Sowell
We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [26:48]
Ari Weitzman
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- [28:06]
Isaac Saul
Thank you I think Isaac that brings us to today's reader question, which comes from Richard in Warsaw, Indiana. Richard asks yesterday's quick hits mentioned quote A man was arrested after allegedly running toward the US Capitol with a loaded shotgun. End quote. Given that the shotgun falls under the second Amendment and running is not illegal, may I assume there is more to the story or more context and ask what it is? We don't know a lot of information about this arrest yet, but from what Capitol Police have told us, the suspect, 18 year old Carter Camacho of Smyrna, Georgia was arrested for unlawful activities, carrying a rifle without a license, having an unregistered firearm, and having unregistered ammunition. This part is speculation, but it seems to us that Camacho's running towards the Capitol with a weapon provided police with reasonable suspicion to detain him, at which point they found he had been carrying a shotgun and ammunition without a license. Also, when they searched this vehicle, they found a gas mask and helmet inside. You're right, running and carrying a weapon are both legal activities. However, carrying a weapon on the National Mall is not legal. Even licensed gun owners are prohibited from bringing guns into public areas in the Capitol District. But let's say that wasn't the case. Even if Camacho had been running with a shotgun down a public street, you can probably easily see how combining those two legal activities would create the appearance of threatening behavior. As another example, I'm legally allowed to hold a knife, I'm legally allowed to wear a mask, and I'm legally allowed to scream as loudly as I can. But if I do all of that at the same time at an Arby's, I'm giving authorities probable suspicion to detain me. There's a difference between overtly breaking the law and providing probable suspicion to be detained and questioned, which is known as a Terry stop. That term comes from the 1968 Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio, in which the court held that police can briefly detain someone based on reasonable suspicion, a lower bar than probable cause for arrest. Reasonable suspicion can be built from a totality of circumstances, meaning individually innocent behaviors can be aggregated to justify a stop. Then, after performing a Terry stop, if police find evidence that a suspect is breaking the law, in Camarcha's case carrying a firearm without a license, they can arrest that person under suspicion of committing a crime. All right, that's it for today's reader question. I'm going to send it back over to Audrey for the rest of the pod.
- [30:39]
Audrey Moorhead
Thanks, Ari. Now for our under the radar story. A Feb. 5 analysis from Health news site STAT found that more than 40 hospitals or health systems have stopped providing gender transition hormones and puberty blockers for minors since Trump took office, including nine confirmed pauses since the start of 2026. In December, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service, or cms, proposed two rules to withhold federal funding from clinics that continue to provide what CMS termed sex rejecting procedures for minors. The period for public comment on those rules closed on Tuesday, moving them into the final rulemaking stage. Though the proposed rule's effect on hospitals decisions to pause their transgender healthcare offerings is unclear, at least one cited a Health and Human Services investigation into its services as a potential risk to federal funding. STAT has the story, and you can find the link in our show notes. Finally, here's our have a nice day story. On February 2, for the first time in 25 years, the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, or NZCBI, welcomed a newborn Asian elephant calf. NZCBI director Brandy Smith said, After waiting nearly 25 years for an Asian elephant calf, this birth fills us with profound joy. What we learn from our elephants in D.C. directly strengthens our work to protect wild Asian elephants across Southeast Asia. To commemorate her birth, the zoo is inviting anyone who provides a donation the opportunity to vote on the baby elephant's name. The National Zoo has the story and pictures, and you can find the link in our show notes.
- [32:16]
Isaac Saul
All right, everybody, that's it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, just head over to retangle.com and sign up for a membership. Most of what we do is supported by listeners, readers and just subscribers of all strengths, so we really appreciate it if you just took the moment to subscribe, if you hadn't already. Remember, we'll be back in your ear tomorrow with a special Friday edition from Isaac and then you'll hear from me some later time in the future. But until then, take care and we'll talk to you soon.
- [32:46]
Isaac Sowell
Our Executive Editor and Founder is me, Isaac Sowell, and our Executive Producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. I read the the editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will K. Back and Associate Editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsey Knuth and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tango and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@readtangle.com.
- [33:26]
Ari Weitzman
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