When the letter came to me this week from The Corvallis Clinic (“Part of Optum”), I had a pretty good feel for what it was about: My primary care doctor is leaving the clinic. Of course, I had a little bit of a head start: Ashli Blow, one of my colleagues at the online news operation Lookout Eugene-Springfield, recently filed a story about physicians leaving the Oregon Medical Group, the Eugene clinic that also is owned by Optum. I call that story to your attention in part because it includes Benton County’s Bruce Thomson warning that the same thing that happened to the Oregon Medical Group is happening now to The Corvallis Clinic. (By the way, if you’re so inclined, consider telling me if you receive one of these letters; while Lookout Eugene-Springfield obviously focuses primarily on Lane County news, we continue to keep an eye on Optum and what’s happening in Benton County. Leave a comment below or email me at [email protected].)

For months, economists have marveled that the U.S. economy seemed to be chugging right along, despite President Trump’s “now you see them, now you don’t” tariff strategy adding a big layer of uncertainty. Well, Friday’s release of jobs data may help solve the puzzle: Although nothing is certain, it could very well be that the economy was not exactly chugging right along. The Atlantic helps shed some light on the mystery.

The revised jobs numbers — even though they rocked the stock market — weren’t the most troubling thing about that story. That was Trump’s reaction, even though it was completely predictable: He fired the head of the agency, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that produces these reports. Trump and other Republicans have for years argued that the bureau rigs these numbers to make Democrats look better. But as Jonathan Chait points out in The Atlantic, the argument falls apart on the slightest examination. It’s another demonstration of Trump’s desire to control the flow of information and to suppress whatever doesn’t fit his world view.

Alexandra Petri, writing in her most recent humor column in The Atlantic, sees where all of this is going: “Soon we will all be helplessly bumping around in the dark.”

Speaking of the dark, Alex Baumhardt of the Oregon Capital Chronicle has a story about a new study by Portland State University and the nonprofit Northwest Environmental Justice Center. The study analyzed federal spending under a Biden-era program that sought to ensure that 40% of new federal spending for climate, housing, clean energy and clean water projects went to historically underserved communities. The study found that the program resulted in major investments in rural Oregon and to tribes. But you probably can guess how the story ends: The Trump administration has terminated the program, called the Justice40 Initiative. And, to add insult to injury, the cutbacks included funding to the organizations that did the study. Officials said the work was “inconsistent with federal administration priorities.” Well, sure: One of the organizations doing the work has the words “environmental” and “justice” in its title. The other one has the words “Portland” and “university.”

Congressional measures to stop U.S. arms sales to Israel have caused a rare split between Oregon’s two Democratic senators. Baumhardt explains why in this Capital Chronicle story — and also notes that one of the senators, Ron Wyden, is increasingly attracting criticism for his continued support of Israel.

You probably have heard that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down, another result of Trump administration cutbacks. Public radio and TV stations that serve rural parts of the United States likely will be most affected and some will have to shut down. It seems like a pretty fair bet that most Weekend Reader readers have heard about this, but my guess is this Associated Press primer on the corporation features at least some tidbits that you didn’t know.

Here’s some good news about newspaper journalism — rare good news, I might add, but that probably goes without saying. Last week’s Reader included an item about Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund operation that buys up newspapers and then guts their newsrooms, trying to buy The Dallas Morning News. Since then, the key shareholder of the paper, Robert Decherd, has made it clear that there are “no circumstances” in which he would accept Alden’s offer. In response, Alden Global Capital fired off … well, I guess you could call it a strongly worded letter. Joshua Benton of Harvard’s Nieman Lab has the latest.

The Nieman Lab also reports on a new “Media Capitulation Index,” started by the media advocacy group Free Press. The index seeks to rate “the degree … to which each media company has compromised its commitment to independent news and information in exchange for political favors and higher profits, or simply to get the Trump administration off its back.” A one-star rating means the company is independent. Just two of the 35 rated companies — Bloomberg and Netflix — earned that rating. On the “compromised” side of the scale, the index rates companies on a scale of one to five chickens. A one-chicken rating means the business is vulnerable. A five-chicken rating means the business pushes propaganda. (X and Trump Media earned five chickens, if “earned” is the right word.) Free Press rated The New York Times with one chicken, but mainly for “one consistent failing at the massively influential newspaper: those damn headlines,” which the organization says “routinely normalize the most extreme elements of Trumpism” in an effort to appear objective.

Speaking of the Times: Firefighters in British Columbia this week responded to and extinguished a small brush fire and then got around to determining the cause. In general, 70% of these fires are man-caused and lightning strikes spark most of the rest. This one goes into a new category: An osprey grew weary of carrying its latest meal and dropped the fish — which then landed on power lines, creating sparks that started the blaze. One theory about why the bird dropped the meal is that the it was weary on a hot day. You can guess the other theory: The bird was tired of eating raw fish. The Times was on the story in a flash.

That’s it for this weekend. I won’t tell you how to spend the rest of your weekend, but I’m planning to see “The Naked Gun” reboot with Liam Neeson (if it’s 60% as much fun as the original, it’ll be time well-spent). Maybe I’ll grab a few moments on the deck to keep reading Max Boot’s clear-eyed biography “Reagan: His Life and Legend.” If you’re plowing through a book that seems to you to be a good fit for August, leave a comment below — and we’ll compare notes here next weekend.