This is Planet Money from NPR.
Like many of us, Nate Singer spent the 4th of July at a barbecue in jeans and a t-shirt.
It was a decent day.
It wasn't too hot.
Red, white, and blue tablecloths.
Nate is a father of four,
and he's one of those dads who likes to hang out literally at the barbecue.
Flipping burgers for people.
Is that normally your job as the burger flipper?
It's a good thing to do.
You just hang around the grill, not so social.
It's strange that I work in human services.
Yeah, Nate is a big muckety muck at the Oregon Department of Human Services.
He runs the division that signs people up for programs like food stamps.
And Nate, he's like a bureaucrat's bureaucrat,
the type of person who carries around a pen and a high letter in case he needs to mark up a document.
My kids think that I have my own coloring books that are just really boring coloring books.
This July 4th barbecue was no exception.
Whenever Nate got a break from grilling, he'd pull out some folded up paper from his back pocket,
and he would read the text of President Donald Trump's signature bill,