Trump’s Government Is Purging Core Economic and Social Data

Bulwark Takes

The Bulwark

News, Politics, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After the shutdown froze key agencies, the U.S. is now stuck with permanent black holes in the economic record from missing jobs numbers, missing inflation data, and missing surveys that can never be recovered. But this crisis didn’t start with the shutdown. Andrew Egger talks to Catherine Rampell to get her take on the data series that have been deleted, defunded, or censored under Trump.

Read Catherine’s article here.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Get ready for hosting, gifting and all the trimmings at Denal, the home of every kind of Christmas.
0:08.0	Find perfect presies like our cosy hot water bottles, cushions or throws.
0:14.0	Discover hosting heroes, gifting grates and all the trimmings for however you like to celebrate at your local denalm or online at denalm.com
0:22.8	the home of every kind of Christmas denalm the home of homes get ready for hosting gifting and all the trimmings at denalm the home of every kind of Christmas
0:37.2	magic up more room with our range of sofa beds and storage and all the trimmings at Denalm, the home of every kind of Christmas.
0:44.1	Magic up, more room, with our range of sofa beds and storage solutions to make the most of your space.
0:49.4	Discover hosting heroes, gifting grates and all the trimmings for however you like to celebrate at your local Danelm, or online at Danalm.com.
0:54.7	The home of every kind of Christmas, Denalm or online at denalm.com. The home of every kind of Christmas.
0:57.5	Denalm.
0:58.1	The home of homes.
1:00.2	Hey guys, it's Andrew Eger with the bulwark, joined here today by our economics reporter,
1:04.3	Catherine Rampel.
1:05.6	To talk economic data, government data, all kinds of data, this has been in the news a little
1:10.4	bit, or a lot,
1:11.9	actually, over the last few days as the sort of great economic data collection machine of the
1:17.4	federal government sort of starts to come unstuck after being, after being frozen in place
1:22.3	during the government shutdown. So, Catherine, let's just start there real quick. What's going on
1:27.0	this week with us finally getting a little bit of some of the economic data we should have
1:32.1	had a month or so ago? Right. So when the government was shut down, it meant that the statistical
1:37.2	agencies that normally collect data on inflation, GDP, the jobs report, stuff like that, they
1:44.0	were shuttered to. And as a result, reports that
1:47.6	were supposed to have come out in October, early November didn't come out. And also,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Bulwark, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Bulwark and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.