Health
White House defends Ivanka Trump’s personal travel amid lockdown
The president’s eldest daughter and her family traveled from Washington DC to the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster to celebrate Passover.
“Her travel was not commercial,” the White House said. “She chose to spend a holiday in private with her family.”
Both the nation’s capital and New Jersey are under stay-at-home orders.
Ms. Trump, her husband and fellow administration adviser Jared Kushner, and their three children went to “a closed-down facility considered to be a family home”, the statement to US media said.
The White House added that the “travel was no different than had she been traveling to/from work”, and “the location was less populated than the surrounding area near her home” in Washington.
According to current federal coronavirus guidelines, people should “avoid discretionary travel, shopping trips, and social visits”.
There are currently 653,825 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the nation, with nearly 31,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Washington DC has been under a stay-at-home order since 1 April, with residents told to leave home for “essential” travel only.
New Jersey has been a hotspot for the outbreak, with over 71,000 confirmed cases and more than 3,100 deaths – second to its neighbor, New York, which is the epicenter of the pandemic in the US.
Source: BBC News