President Trump says he doesn't have time to undergo a physical, telling reporters on Monday that his hectic schedule is keeping him from getting checked out.
"I'm going probably over the next 90 days," Trump said. "I'm so busy I can't do it." Typically, presidential physicals are conducted in the beginning of the year; Trump's last planned physical was in February 2019. At the time, Dr. Sean Conley said Trump was in "very good health overall," but had gained four pounds since February 2018 and was taking a higher dosage of medication used to treat high cholesterol.
In November, Trump made an unscheduled trip to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where the 73-year-old underwent what was later described as an "interim checkup." Conley called the visit "routine" and said it was only kept highly secretive due to "scheduling uncertainties." White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham claimed Trump had a "free weekend" and decided to "begin portions of his routine annual physical exam." Presidents do not normally break their physicals up into segments several months apart. Catherine Garcia
A multiracial family looking to get away for the weekend were allegedly stalked, and subsequently trapped, by locals who mistook them for being bussed-in members of antifa, Washington state's Peninsula Daily News reports.
The family of four — a husband, wife, their 16-year-old daughter, and the husband's mother — were visiting Forks, Washington, from Spokane, Washington, and had driven the seven-and-a-half-hour distance in a full-sized school bus they planned to use to camp off a logging road near Olympic National Park. The family stopped at Forks Outfitters to get supplies, and were confronted by "seven or eight carloads of people in the grocery store parking lot" who "repeatedly asked them if they were antifa protesters," according to a press release by Sgt. Ed Anderson. "The family told the people they weren't associated with any such group and were just camping."
When the family left the parking lot, they were trailed by "at least four vehicles," the Peninsula Daily News reports. The family said that "two of the vehicles had people in them carrying what appeared to be semi-automatic rifles."
The family reached their camp site, but the sound of gunshots and power saws down the road made them decide to leave. As they were trying to drive away, they found that someone had sawed down trees in order to trap them in the site so that they couldn't get out.
Local high schoolers helped clear the roadway for the family and the Clallam County Sheriff's Office is reportedly investigating the incident. Heavy reports that posts had been made in local Facebook groups referencing the event, including boasts of "protect your town!" and "u think they realized they [came] to the wrong place yet?" You can read more at Peninsula Daily News, and learn more about the spread of false rumors about antifa agitators here at The Week. Jeva Lange
Friday morning's stunning job report is already being celebrated by the White House as unemployment unexpectedly fell to 13.3 percent in May. But even as forecasters have scrambled to understand how their predictions were so far off, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman stressed on Twitter that "whatever happened, these numbers should make you more, not less, pessimistic about the economic outlook."
Huh? As Krugman goes on to explain, the seemingly encouraging job report could actually "reinforce the White House inclination to do nothing and let emergency aid expire."
That's alarming to Krugman and other analysts because what May's job numbers do seem to prove is that the Payroll Protection Program, which encouraged small businesses to keep workers on payroll during the pandemic, was instrumental in helping bring back workers in May. "U.S. unemployment [is] at 13 percent [with] trillions in government aids," wrote The Washington Post's Jeffrey Stein. "What happens when huge infusion runs dry in July?"
But as of Thursday night, the Post was reporting that President Trump's recovery plan "largely amounts to optimism that as pandemic restrictions are loosened, the nation's economy will turn the lights back on by itself." As the Post goes on to explain, Trump is hesitant to offer states further aid, and opposes extending the soon-to-expire $600 unemployment bonus for laid-off workers.
White House economic adviser Stephen Moore seemed to confirm Krugman's fears. "There's no reason to have a major spending bill," he said in response to Friday's job numbers. "The sense of urgent crisis is very greatly dissipated by the report."
Not everyone shares the opinion that the job report lets the federal government off the hook. "The jobless rate, even if it declines, I believe is going to stay extremely high through the end of the year," former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen told the Post. "It's absolutely essential to have another package that will extend unemployment benefits beyond the summer. That's going to be tremendously needed." Jeva Lange