The Most Closely Watched Trump Firing in Washington

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Daily – "The Most Closely Watched Trump Firing in Washington"

Introduction to the Firing In the August 5, 2025 episode of The Daily, host Natalie Kitroeff delves into a dramatic political event: President Donald Trump's decision to fire Dr. Erica McIntarfer, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This unprecedented move has sparked a nationwide debate about the integrity of federal economic data under the current administration.

The Importance of Jobs Numbers Natalie Kitroeff introduces her guest, Ben Castleman, a seasoned labor market expert, highlighting the critical role of the BLS jobs report. Castleman emphasizes, “This is the most important single number or single set of numbers that we get about the economy each month” (02:11). The monthly jobs report influences policymakers at the Federal Reserve, affects investor confidence on Wall Street, and serves as a barometer for the president's economic management.

Initial Report and Revisions In July, the BLS reported the addition of 73,000 jobs, a figure weaker than expected but initially not alarming. However, subsequent revisions for May and June decreased job additions by a combined quarter-million, signaling potential fragility in the labor market. Castleman explains, “We thought we had added around 150,000 jobs a month in May and in June... those got revised down to more like 15,000 jobs” (04:04). This significant downward adjustment raised concerns about the underlying strength of the economy.

Trump's Accusations Reacting to the disappointing jobs numbers, President Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, accusing Dr. McIntarfer of manipulating the data to favor Vice President Kamala Harris's election prospects. Trump stated, “I was just informed that our country's jobs numbers are being produced by a Biden appointee... who faked the jobs numbers before the election” (05:49). This accusation laid the groundwork for his subsequent decision to remove McIntarfer from her position.

White House Response In response to Trump's claims, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett clarified that the revisions were part of the normal data refinement process and not indicative of any misconduct. Hassett questioned, “Is the President prepared to fire anyone who reports data that he disagrees with?” (07:55). The administration maintained that the integrity of the BLS would remain intact, despite the high-profile firing.

Historical Context and Implications Castleman draws parallels to historical instances where governments undermined statistical agencies, such as Argentina’s manipulation of inflation data and Greece’s falsification of deficit figures. He warns, “This gets to the real core of how we understand our economy and to the credibility of the US Government” (16:55). Castleman expresses concerns that Trump's actions could erode trust in U.S. economic data, potentially leading to repercussions in international markets and investor confidence.

The Data Collection Process To provide clarity, Castleman outlines the BLS's methodology for compiling jobs data, which involves surveying over 100,000 businesses across 600,000 work sites. He notes, “The monthly jobs numbers are based on a survey... and those numbers get aggregated together to come up with a jobs number” (10:42). While initial estimates are subject to revisions as more complete data becomes available, such significant adjustments are atypical and have raised alarms about data reliability.

Economic Analysis and Current State Despite the controversy, Castleman reassures listeners that the U.S. economy remains resilient. He states, “We are not in a recession. And very few forecasters... think that we're headed for one anytime imminently” (23:27). While acknowledging some economic slowdown due to tariffs and policy uncertainties, Castleman maintains that major economic indicators like unemployment remain strong. He concludes, “The economy in stasis... is still relatively okay” (26:49), suggesting that the reaction to the jobs report may be more politically motivated than reflective of true economic distress.

Conclusion The episode underscores the tension between political leadership and the integrity of economic data. While the immediate impact on the job market appears limited, the broader implications for governmental transparency and trust in public institutions are profound. As the situation evolves, the credibility of the BLS and the administration's handling of economic data will remain closely scrutinized by both national and international observers.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Castleman on the importance of job numbers: “This is the most important single number or single set of numbers that we get about the economy each month” (02:11)
• Trump accusing the BLS commissioner: “I was just informed that our country's jobs numbers are being produced by a Biden appointee... who faked the jobs numbers before the election” (05:49)
• Kevin Hassett questioning Presidential motives: “Is the President prepared to fire anyone who reports data that he disagrees with?” (07:55)
• Castleman warning about historical parallels: “This gets to the real core of how we understand our economy and to the credibility of the US Government” (16:55)
• Economic resilience assessment: “We are not in a recession. And very few forecasters... think that we're headed for one anytime imminently” (23:27)

This comprehensive summary captures the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode, providing a clear understanding for those who have not listened to it.

Transcript

[Capital One Ad]

Brought to you by the Capital One Venture X card. If you love to travel, Capital One has a rewards credit card that's perfect for you. With Venture X, earn unlimited double miles on everything you buy and turn all of your purchases into extraordinary travel. And you get premium benefits at a collection of luxury hotels when you book through Capital One Travel. Plus, you'll get access to over 1,000 airport lounges worldwide. Capital One what's in your wallet? Terms apply seecapitalone.com for details.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroweff. This is the daily for most 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, everyone's 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. Today I speak with my colleague Ben Castleman about how the government's economic data suddenly turned into a national It's Tuesday, August 5th. Ben, I just want to start by acknowledging that we may be on the brink of the nerdiest daily episode ever, but I am really excited to have you on for this because honestly, this is kind of your Super Bowl. I mean, you have made a career of labor numbers. And this time we didn't just get job numbers. There was extreme drama around these job numbers. So I want to get into it. How did this whole fight start?

[Ben Castleman]

So every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the bls, puts out this big report on jobs, hiring, employment, unemployment from the previous month. And it is my Super Bowl 12 times a year. Lucky for you, it's my Super Bowl. It's a Super bowl for a lot of econ nerds around the country. And that's because this is in some ways the most important single number or single set of numbers that we get about the economy each month. It matters to regular people, right? This is about whether people have jobs and can find jobs. It's important to think policymakers at the Federal Reserve who are trying to decide whether they should raise or lower interest rates. It's a hugely important political number that tells us, as well as any other set of numbers, whether the president is succeeding or failing in his management of the economy. And so this is a set of numbers that we all sort of drill down on the moment they come out. They hit the website at 8:30 and we're all sort of frantically refreshing to see what these Numbers show. And this time we refresh the website, and it says 73,000 jobs were added in July, which is not great. It was weaker than forecasters had anticipated, but it was not a crushing blow.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

The numbers are not catastrophic, but they're not great either.

[Ben Castleman]

That's right, but with one big caveat, which is that they also revised the. The jobs for May and for June, the last two months, and they revised those down by a quarter million jobs.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Hmm.

[Ben Castleman]

So we thought we had added around 150,000 jobs a month in May and in June, which would have been solid numbers. We had reacted to them and said, these are great numbers.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Right.

[Ben Castleman]

Those got revised down to more like 15,000 jobs in each of those two months.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Wow.

[Ben Castleman]

So all of a sudden, this picture that we had of the labor market, this labor market that was chugging along, that was resilient, that had shown sort of no signs of cracking, despite tariffs and uncertainty and all the other stuff that we've been talking about, all of a sudden it looks like, well, maybe there were deeper cracks than we had realized.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Yeah. The last time that you were on the show, you said, this is Trump's economy. Right. He's put his stamp on it with tariffs, with immigration policy. He owns it if it soars or if it tanks. And you're saying this is the first sign we're maybe getting now that the economy might be wobbling.

[Ben Castleman]

Yeah, that's right. And so these numbers come out. Rick Santella here with the big breaking news of the morning. The big July job job jobs report. Non farm payrolls up 73,000. Definitely a bit light, but everybody sort of reacts to them, starts to try to figure out what they mean. Look, I think this is all a result, this disappointing number as a result of all the turmoil over tariffs and trade wars. I think this is more about the Federal Reserve again. We've got a bifurcated economy. And then a few Hours later, around 2 o' clock in the afternoon, the President puts out this post on Truth Social, his social media site. It's this long post, Natalie. It's like taking up, like, my full screen here.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Okay, let's hear it.

[Ben Castleman]

In which he says, quote, I was just informed that our country's, quote, 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's chances of victory.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

This is where the drama comes in.

[Ben Castleman]

This is the drama. He goes on in this to basically accuse Dr. McInterfer of rigging the numbers for political reasons and says that he has directed his team to fire her, which they promptly do.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So it basically looks like he's saying he didn't like the numbers and so he's firing the person responsible for them.

[Ben Castleman]

That's certainly what it looked like to me and I think to most people who were watching this. But that's not the story that his advisors told when they came out and started giving interviews later on Friday and on the Sunday shows over the weekend.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

And joining me now is the director.

[Kevin Hassett]

Of the White House National Economic council, Kevin Hassett.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Mr. Hassett.

[Kevin Hassett]

Welco.

[Ben Castleman]

We saw Kevin Hassett, who's one of his top economic advisers, came out and said, no, no, this isn't that the President didn't like the numbers. It's that there have been these big revisions.

[Rick Santelli]

Well, what we've seen over the last few years is massive revisions to the jobs numbers.

[Ben Castleman]

In fact, the numbers that are being put out by the BLS are unreliable. And this commissioner was clearly not doing a good job.

[Kevin Hassett]

Isn't this the very definition of shooting the messenger?

[Rick Santelli]

No, absolutely not. I mean, the bottom line is that there were people involved in creating these numbers. And if I were running the BLS and I had a number that was a huge politically important revision, the biggest since 1968, actually. Revisions should be smaller, right? Because computers are better and so on, then I would have a really long report explaining exactly what happened and we didn't get that.

[Ben Castleman]

He says at one point, to make sure that the data are transparent and as reliable as possible, we're going to get highly qualified in there that have a fresh start and a fresh set of eyes on the problem.

[Kevin Hassett]

So is the President prepared to fire anyone who reports data that he disagrees with?

[Rick Santelli]

No, absolutely not. The President wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they're more transparent and more reliable. And if there are big changes and big revisions, we expect more big revisions for the jobs data in September, for example. Then we want to know why. We want people to explain it to us.

[Ben Castleman]

So their version of it is, look, there were these big revisions. Clearly we've gotten the numbers wrong. And so we're gonna bring in our own people who are gonna do a better job of getting these numbers right.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

How unprecedented is this? Like, has it happened before?

[Ben Castleman]

It's really unprecedented in the century long history of the U.S. economic statistics system. There are some earlier examples along the way that have some parallels here. If you go back, President Hoover sort of pushed out or retired the equivalent of the BLS commissioner at the time. Nixon did a version of this as well, but we've never seen anything like this where there's a bad jobs report. The President is mad about it, he fires the head of the statistical agency. I mean, I don't know, Natalie, you used to be an economics reporter.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Sure did.

[Ben Castleman]

You've been in this world for a while, but I suspect you can't name a whole lot of commissioners of labor statistics.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Not a one.

[Ben Castleman]

And most people couldn't either. This is not a high profile job.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Sure.

[Ben Castleman]

Dr. McIntar was a longtime civil servant at the Census Bureau and in other agencies. She's sort of known as a, you know, data nerds. Data nerd. She's not somebody I think you would have ever expected to be the subject of a president's social media post.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

And is she crunching the numbers herself? I mean, I understand you're saying Trump is kind of laying the blame at her feet in a really pointed way.

[Ben Castleman]

No, very much not. The commissioner is the only political appointee at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Everybody else is a career employee, most of whom are there for many years across multiple administrations. These are the people who collect the data, who crunch the data, who put it together. And the commissioner doesn't even see the numbers until they are finalized. And numerous people at the bureau and who have been at the bureau in the past have told me there's just no way that a commissioner could futz with these numbers without a whole host of people knowing about it, many of whom would raise heaven and earth to stop them from doing that.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Okay, so I want to actually hear how the numbers are put together. What's the actual process?

[Ben Castleman]

So the monthly jobs numbers are based on a survey of more than 100,000 businesses and other employers across some 600,000 work sites in the country. So, I mean, this can be on the phone, it can be online. There are various methods, but they're asking employers, how many people did you have on payroll during this period and how many hours did they work and how much money were they paid? And those numbers get aggregated together and add it up to come up with a jobs number. But we're trying to measure a enormous $30 trillion economy with 160 million employees. There's a lot that goes into trying to tabulate those numbers, to try to fill in the missing blanks. And that first number that comes out that we all pay so much attention to is an estimate. It's a preliminary estimate.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Right, right.

[Ben Castleman]

And we update it over time as we get more complete numbers, and sometimes those updates can be pretty substantial.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

These are the revisions, right?

[Ben Castleman]

These are the revisions.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

How should we think about those, Ben? Because I'm just wondering, for people who are not intimately familiar with this data set, it may seem odd that there are really dramatic changes to data that is, I mean, you've been saying, so important.

[Ben Castleman]

Yeah, I think that's completely understandable. I think if you hear, we thought there were 150,000 jobs in June, and now we say there are 15,000 jobs added, that you say, well, what good is any of this anyway? But it's important to understand that there are some reasons for these big revisions.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Like what?

[Ben Castleman]

As I said, big survey. Not everybody responds to the survey right away. Over the course of the next two months, more data becomes available, and so we get a more complete read. And in normal times, this really works pretty well. You miss a little bit up one month, you miss a little bit down one month, but over time, it pretty much smooths out. The trick is that at times when the economy is changing a lot, it can be difficult to get a clear read. Right. It may be that those people who didn't respond to the survey the first time don't look like the people who did respond. Maybe the reason they didn't respond to the survey was that they were scrambling to keep the lights on, and, and so they were cutting jobs, and they can't even deal with the survey. Maybe those businesses shut down altogether. And the reason they didn't respond was not that they hadn't gotten around to it yet, but that they don't exist anymore. And so once we get all of the information in, we learn, ooh, actually we did not add as many jobs as we thought. And so we know that we have a harder time picking up what's happening at turning points of the economy, which is part of why, when these numbers came out on Friday, a lot of people said, oh, oh, maybe this suggests that we are at one of these turning points. Maybe this suggests that the economy is really taking a turn for the worse.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So you have these Trump aides pointing to the revision, saying, look, why are these so big? And what you're saying is one of the reasons they may be so big is that things have just been really volatile recently. I assume we've seen things that are creating a lot of noise.

[Ben Castleman]

They're creating a lot of noise. And anything that creates a lot of noise just makes it more difficult to measure the economy in real time.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

But just to be clear, is there anything to suggest that these numbers themselves are wrong.

[Ben Castleman]

It depends what you mean by wrong. If what you mean is that these numbers are not a perfect reflection of the actual number of jobs in this country, then yes, because all of these numbers are wrong when they first come out. They're estimates, but they are the best estimates using the best methods that we have available to us. But remember, the president didn't just say wrong, he said rigged. He said these numbers were rigged out of political bias against him. And there's absolutely no evidence for that. But I think that that suggestion by the president is what has so many people so alarmed. Right.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

We'll be right back.

[Capital One Ad]

This podcast is supported by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Kathy Jones, Schwab's chief fixed income strategist, along with their guests, analyze economic developments and bring context to conversations around stocks, fixed income, the economy and more. Download the latest episode and [e-mail] oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Emily Badger]

Don't just imagine a better future. Start investing in one with betterment. Whether it's saving for today or building wealth for tomorrow. We help people in small businesses put their money to work. We automate to make saving simpler. We optimize to make investing smarter. We build innovative technology backed by financial experts. For anyone who's ever said, I think I can do better, so be invested in yourself, be invested in your business. Be invested in better with betterment. Get [e-mail] Investing involves risk, performance not guaranteed.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So you said, Ben, that this has a lot of people alarmed. Just explain to me why this matters so much to so many people.

[Ben Castleman]

It matters because it gets to the real core of how we understand our economy and to the credibility of the US Government. And I think we have seen in history what happens when that confidence is eroded not so much in this country, but in other countries. You know, the canonical example of this, I think, is Argentina, where in the earlier part of this century, they fired the people responsible for putting out their inflation numbers when the inflation numbers were higher than they wanted, which certainly sounds a little bit familiar right in this moment, and then kept putting out low inflation numbers that were just not credible to anyone. They were not credible to anyone in the country, and they were not credible to anybody outside of the country, to the point that the international community basically stopped paying any attention to Argentina's official inflation numbers altogether. And that had real consequences in Argentina. You know, they were borrowing money internationally and investors basically started charging a higher premium to lend them money because they didn't trust the inflation numbers and they didn't trust the government. And that contributed to a really crippling debt crisis and default in Argentina.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Investors were basically saying, we don't trust that you have a handle on this. There's no yardstick that we can really point to and know that it's real.

[Ben Castleman]

If you lie to your bank about your income, they're probably not going to give you a very good rate on your mortgage. What we're talking about here, we saw this in Greece as well, where the government fudged the numbers on their deficit for years to try to meet certain European Union targets, which eventually led to a massive debt crisis there. And what's worse, when they brought in an economist to run their statistical agency to kind of clean things up, and he told the truth about what the numbers were that ran afoul of the authorities there, and they criminally prosecuted him for years, he's still fighting those cases.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Okay, you've given us these two examples, Ben, where it seems pretty clear that the governments in these two cases were deliberately obscuring a very bad economic reality. But is that happening here? Like, is that what we're headed for?

[Ben Castleman]

Well, so it's certainly not where we are now. All of our evidence is that the data that's been put out by the administration so far is as trustworthy as ever. And the person who's in charge of the BLS now, who took over on an acting basis after the commissioner was pushed out, he's a longtime civil servant. He's very widely and well regarded. I don't think there's any suggestion that he would cook the books. And as we discussed before. Right. The numbers are actually produced by this legion of civil servants beneath the surface. And there's no reason to think that any of them are gonna change the way they do things either. I think the concern is the president's gonna name a new commissioner. We don't know who that is yet. Maybe it will be somebody extremely qualified. I will say that the person who ran the BLS in Trump's first term, a man named Bill beach, was very widely regarded. He has come out and condemned this firing. But if somebody like him is put into place again, I think that a lot of these concerns will be mitigated to a degree. But I think the idea is out there now, and the concern is that if the president can fire one person for putting out numbers he doesn't like, maybe he fires another, and maybe we end up in a situation where this keeps going until he gets numbers that he likes.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

You're saying basically that either way, Trump has at the very least created the impression that he's willing to fire you if you produce numbers that are not what he wants to see. I guess my question has been, should we really expect, you know, him to appoint somebody who comes in and then just kind of revises the numbers way upward? Like, wouldn't that be extremely obvious? No one would trust that.

[Ben Castleman]

Yeah, I mean, look, in theory, right, he could appoint some longtime loyalist to come in who just says, like, from now on, we added 250,000 jobs a month. I mean, something sort of very Soviet. Right. And I don't think that's likely. It would be extremely obvious.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Sure.

[Ben Castleman]

I'm not predicting anything. You and I may be sitting here in six weeks time talking about that scenario, but I'm not predicting that you're not there yet. I'm not there. I think there's another version of this, though, that is a little bit softer, but I think is in some ways just as concerning where the President brings in somebody who maybe isn't an obvious yes man, but who doesn't uphold the traditions of these agencies and that that leads over time to a diminishment of staff morale to increase turnover. You know, a lot of these people who work in these places have been there for a long time. They don't necessarily make that much money. We've already seen a lot of turnover and that it just eats away at the expertise and ultimately at the quality of these numbers to a point that people just sort of lose faith in them as being useful gauges of the economy anymore. And, you know, I don't think it's lost on anybody that this is a pattern that has played out in a lot of places within the federal government under this president. You know, we've seen this in the sciences and in health in the epa, and we haven't seen that in this way at the statistical agencies yet. But it doesn't take that much to imagine it happening. Happening.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Okay, Ben, we've been talking about the rhetoric about the battle over this data, but I want to now just turn back to the data itself, give me a really clear eyed analysis of what these numbers say about where we are economically right now. Give us our bearings.

[Ben Castleman]

So I think you alluded at the beginning of the episode here, right to the last time we talked and we talked about how this was Trump's economy now, but there really wasn't much evidence that these policies Tariffs and immigration and uncertainty and all of this were really hurting the economy in a significant way. I think we can't say that anymore. That's not just because of the jobs numbers. It's also because of some of the numbers that we got on consumer spending last week that we've gotten on business investment. We started to see some signs that various policies that the President has adopted are starting to sort of eat away at the momentum in the economy. But we also still are in a place where we are not seeing sort of deep chasms forming in the economy. The unemployment rate is still low. We are not in a recession. And very few forecasters that I talk to think that we're headed for one anytime imminently. And so although the data that we got last week suggests that the economy is in worse shape than we had known going into it, I don't know that it changes the sort of fundamental story of an economy that has proved pretty resilient but faces a lot of challenges.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Huh. That is so interesting and honestly quite surprising given that we've just spent all this time talking about the intense backlash from Trump that these numbers elicited.

[Ben Castleman]

Yeah. In some ways this is why the President's reaction on Friday was so surprising. Beyond the shock of what he was doing, it just seems sort of disproportionate to the actual reality of the news.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Let's just start with these numbers because the figure that we got that was below all estimates in the Bloomberg survey.

[Ben Castleman]

Of, you know, in the initial hours after the report came out, we've seen.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Positive job growth for sure. And they've been for the American workforce, native born workers, I mean, with a.

[Ben Castleman]

Lot of the President's aides were, you know, out on TV and they were doing their usual thing, they were doing their usual sort of spin about how these numbers weren't really so bad.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

You know, a lot of that data comes pre one big beautiful bill. Now that we have one big beautiful bill and we have a better sense of where the taxes are going, I think we're going to see a much, we're going to see more investment. And like you said, it's a relatively small number. So I don't read terribly.

[Ben Castleman]

And you know, they were making a pretty good case. There was certainly a lot of softness in these numbers. There's no getting around that these were not the numbers the White House was hoping for. But we've been hearing a lot about.

[Rick Santelli]

Uncertainty over the last few months.

[Ben Castleman]

But that's all resolved now. So it's all gonna get much, much better from here. There were plenty of arguments you could make for why they weren't really so terrible. And I think on some basic level, what we're left with here is this economy in stasis, where companies aren't really firing workers, but they're not really hiring them yet either, where consumers are still spending and sales are still there, but companies are reluctant to make big investments, big bets that that's going to continue going forward. Some of that may be because of tariffs, some of that may be because of immigration. Some of that may be because of just sort of the general chaos of the first six months, months of the year.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Right.

[Ben Castleman]

There's clearly some real uncertainty about where the economy goes from here. But beneath all of the noise, beneath all of the drama, as you put it, from Friday, we have an economy that, based on the numbers, is still relatively okay. And if we were just talking about the numbers instead of the people responsible for producing them, Natalie, I'm not sure we would be having this conversation today.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Well, Ben, that said, it was great to have you on the show.

[Ben Castleman]

Thanks for having me. Foreign.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

We'Ll be right back.

[Capital One Ad]

This podcast is supported by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Kathy Jones, Schwab's chief fixed income strategist, along with their guests, analyze economic developments and bring context to conversations around stocks, fixed income, the economy and more. Download the latest episode and [e-mail] oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kevin Hassett]

I'm Emily Badger. I'm a reporter with the New York Times. Since the pandemic, empty office buildings have become much more common in many cities. Why can't we just turn them into housing? It's actually a really complicated question. To answer this question, you have to find a developer trying to turn an office building into apartments. Ride a rickety elevator to the 30th floor of a construction site to see the interior guts of a building finds an expert in incandescent light bulbs who can explain to you how they fundamentally change office buildings. And that's just the beginning of what you have to do. When you subscribe to the New York Times, you are sending reporters like me out into the world to ask questions of dozens of different experts to go and visit places most people don't get to go to, try to come back with answers and then turn all of that into something that anyone can understand. If you'd like to become a subscriber, head to nytimes.com subscribe you need to see the animated floor plans in this piece.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Here's what else you need to know today. While Texas are waiting for relief, Republican leaders are redrawing maps to silence voters Hijack our democracy the Democratic lawmakers who fled Texas on Sunday achieved their goal of preventing a major redesign of congressional maps in the state. For now, without a two thirds quorum, the Texas Legislature could not hold a vote on the new maps, which Republicans hope will flip five seats from Democrats to GOP control. President Trump had called for the redrawing of the districts in order to lock lock in Republican control over the House in the next midterm elections. But the Texas statehouse speaker said that the vote was just on hold and wouldn't be prevented from going through.

[Ben Castleman]

I will immediately sign the warrants for the civil arrest of the members who have said they will not be here.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

He also issued civil arrest warrants for Democrats who left the state. Governor Greg Abbott of Texas said on Monday that he ordered state law enforcement to detain and return any member who, quote, abandoned their duty to Texans. He also threatened to try to remove the missing Democrats from their posts.

[Ben Castleman]

I believe they have forfeited their seats in the state legislature because they are not doing the job they were elected to do.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

And in what officials are calling the largest environmental settlement ever won by a US State, three major chemical companies agreed on Monday to pay New Jersey $875 million to settle claims linked to pollution from so called forever chemicals. There are nearly 15,000 of those chemicals in existence and they're found in things like nonstick cookware, water repellent clothing and stain resistant carpets. And they've been linked to low birth weight, birth defects and increased risk of some cancer. The New Jersey Attorney General said the state had some of the highest levels of those chemicals in the country. Under the deal, the companies Chemours, dupont and Corteva have to fund the cleanup of four former industrial sites which were once used to manufacture components for explosives as well as dyes and refrigerants. Today's episode was produced by Ricky Novetsky, Claire Tennisketter and Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by MJ Davis, Lynn and Liz o' Ballin with help from Mike Benoit. Research help by Susan Lee contains original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano and Rowan Nimisto and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily I'm Natalie Kitroweff. See you tomorrow.

[Emily Badger]

This podcast is supported by BetterHelp. Cold plunges gratitude Journals Screen Detoxes how do you know what actually works? With a 4.9 rating from 1.7 million client reviews, you're in good hands with BetterHelp, where you can talk with real licensed therapists, not AI. Wellness shouldn't be overwhelming, and therapists can help figure out what's best for you. And yeah, it might involve a screen detox. Visit betterhelp.com thedaily for 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com thedaily.