Today on the Playbook podcast, new jobs numbers this morning are expected to show a

weakening labor market. How will the Trump administration respond? The Defense Department

gets a Trumpy rebranding, and the DOJ makes a dramatic escalation in what critics call lawfare.

Hello, I'm Zach Stanton.

And I'm Megan Messerly. It's Friday, September 5th.

And this is the Playbook podcast. Good morning, Megan. How are you doing?

Good morning, Zach. I'm fantastic. Happy to be here with you.

I'm glad to have you. It's been a long week, and I'm glad to have you as company here as we bring it to a close.

100% where we're going to chat through it and finish the week out strong.

Exactly. So let's get right to what's driving the day. The big thing that folks in Washington will be watching today is the August jobs report, which drops at 8.30 this morning.

And the expectation is that the numbers

could offer something of a warning sign that the private sector jobs boom that Donald Trump

pledged to deliver in his second term is starting to look maybe a little shaky. If there are

mounting signs of deterioration in the jobs market, as Politico Sam Sutton wrote in to Playbook this

morning. He noted that the processing firm ADPs closely watched update on private sector employment

reported tepid growth in August that the outplacement firm Challenger Gray in Christmas

reported on Thursday that employers have announced more layoffs so far in 2025 than in any

year since COVID-19 briefly shut down the global economy, and that for the first time since

2021, there are now more unemployed Americans than there are available jobs. And Megan, that adds up to

a potentially politically precarious situation for the White House.

A weak report or substantial revisions to previously reported jobs gains could blow a hole

in Trump's claims that he's unleashed a new golden age for American workers.

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