Promise Made

... promise abandoned. Color me unsurprised.



White House has no plan to mandate IVF care, despite campaign pledge

President Donald Trump has said he wants a “baby boom,” but critics say his administration has yet to make significant family policy changes — and that Medicaid cuts will hurt.

The White House does not plan to require health insurers to provide coverage for in vitro fertilization services, two people with knowledge of internal discussions said, even though the idea was one of President Donald Trump’s key campaign pledges.

Last year, Trump said that if he returned to office, the government would either pay for IVF services or issue rules requiring insurance companies to cover treatment for it. The pledge came as Trump faced political blowback over abortion rights after his appointees to the Supreme Court helped overturn Roe v. Wade.

“The government is going to pay for it, or we’re going to get — we’ll mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We’re going to do that,” Trump said in August 2024. “We want to produce babies in this country, right?”

More than six months into his second term, however, the Trump administration has not publicly proposed new federal subsidies to make IVF free or more affordable. In addition, White House officials are backing away from proposals discussed internally to mandate IVF coverage for the roughly 50 million people on the Obamacare exchanges, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

A senior administration official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal talks, said that while expanding IVF access remains a “huge priority” for Trump, the president can’t legally make IVF an essential health benefit without Congress first approving legislation to do so. It is unclear whether the administration plans to ask lawmakers to take up a bill, but the two people said that forcing insurance companies to cover IVF is not currently on the table.

Kaylen Silverberg, an outside adviser to the administration who has been pushing for more IVF access, also said in an interview that the White House has most recently asked him about a fertility approach that prioritizes holistic health over tools like IVF. Implementing that alone would fall “very short” of Trump’s initial promises, Silverberg said.

A White House spokeswoman also said Trump is still working to fulfill his commitment to expand IVF.

“President Trump pledged to expand access to fertility treatments for Americans who are struggling to start families,” spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “The Administration is committed like none before it to using its authorities to deliver on this pledge.”

The situation reflects the GOP’s internal divisions on both IVF coverage and federal policy for families.

Social conservatives alarmed by the nation’s falling birth rates have called for more aggressive government intervention to support mothers and childbirth, including new federal funding and other protections. But their efforts have faced objections from traditional free-market voices in the party, who are wary of federal mandates or new spending initiatives.

Requiring the Affordable Care Act exchanges to cover IVF, for instance, would lead insurance companies to raise premium costs, which could prove politically damaging for the GOP ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

“How do you do this without burdening health insurers? That’s the key question they’ve been wrestling with,” one of the people familiar with the discussions said. “It appears for now that they’re not going to go there.”

Shortly after taking office, Trump signed an executive order giving the White House Domestic Policy Council 90 days to present a list of policy recommendations for protecting IVF access and “aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment.” The order stated that IVF treatments can cost $12,000 to $25,000 per cycle.

Officials at the White House have weighed requiring IVF to be considered an “essential health benefit” under the Affordable Care Act, which would require insurers in the marketplace to cover it. That policy has been supported by a group called Americans for IVF, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and Democratic lawmakers such as Sen. Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey.

But numerous other conservative policy experts have expressed objections. Avik Roy, founder of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a think tank that promotes free markets, said the move could increase premiums by several percentage points for tens of millions of Americans on the exchanges, as insurers absorb higher costs.

“Anytime you layer on something as an essential health benefit, it increases premiums,” Roy said. “To whatever degree people are pushing back for that reason as a policy matter, that’s always been the debate.”

Patrick T. Brown, a conservative who supports pro-family policy at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, also pointed out that it’s not clear whether IVF could legally count as an essential health benefit, which typically only applies to services broadly offered by insurers.

“It’s more uncommon than not for IVF to be currently covered,” Brown said. “So it’d be a pretty elastic ruling.”

Roughly 24 million people are enrolled in the ACA’s individual plans, while another 22 million are in small business plans for fewer than 100 employees. That represents fewer than 20 percent of the total population — far short of Trump’s suggestion that the government or insurers would cover IVF for all Americans — though private insurers typically cover essential health benefits voluntarily.

“There were no details provided by Trump during the campaign as to how this would work, who would be eligible and how it would relate to health insurance coverage,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF.

Silverberg, chair of Americans for IVF’s advisory board, has been advising the White House Domestic Policy Council on potential ways to increase access to IVF and lower costs. He said administration officials have called him repeatedly with questions, and he met with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley at the White House in April.

He said he’s been impressed by their questions and attention to the subject: “I get the impression they’re very serious.”

During his most recent conversation with the White House about two weeks ago, officials also asked him about “restorative reproductive medicine.”

Restorative reproductive medicine suggests women should treat infertility by attempting to improve their overall health and has been promoted by the Heritage Foundation. When used as the only or primary method to treat infertility, RRM can unnecessarily delay access to IVF because lifestyle changes are already a part of most fertility treatment plans, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

“We’re fine and dandy with that being part of what the ultimate solution is,” Silverberg said, adding that “every responsible fertility physician” already asks patients to make lifestyle changes before advancing to IVF. “But we don’t want to be forced to ignore 40 years of scientific research that has resulted in the development of all these new technologies that not only can help people conceive, but conceive quicker and conceive healthier babies.”

Liberal critics point out that Trump’s tax legislation included approximately $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and hundreds of billions of additional cuts to food stamps relied on by millions of low-income families.

“You can’t seriously claim you’re pursuing pro-natalist policy when you’re kicking moms off Medicaid and when you’re leaving kids with less food,” said Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank.

But Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Alabama), who last year introduced legislation to withhold Medicaid funding to any state that bars IVF, argued that the GOP law included several provisions that can help families have children.

The law increased the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,200 and ties it to inflation, expanded the child and dependent care tax credit, and increased incentives for employers to cover child care expenses.

“You think about how long Democrats have talked about affordability and accessibility of child care — they had two bites at the apple through reconciliation and did not touch the child care provision,” Britt said. “When Republicans did, the very first thing we did was put families and hardworking Americans first by updating these provisions.”

One Big Butt-ugly Bamboozle

Democrats exaggerate

Republicans lie

One is not like the other

Fact-checking Trump and Democratic claims about tax and spending bill

President falsely claims ‘biggest tax cuts ever’ while Democrats add in the impact of a Biden-era policy

President Donald Trump signed into law last week a sweeping package of tax cuts and spending cuts, which passed the Senate and House with narrow majorities and no Democratic support. As is his practice, Trump keeps making false or misleading claims about the law. Democrats, too, exaggerated the impact. Below is a quick roundup.

“It includes the largest tax cut in American history.”

-- Trump, remarks at July Fourth celebration, July 4

“All they [Republicans] have to do now is talk about how good it is, the biggest tax cuts ever.”

-- Trump, remarks at dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, July 7

False. During his first term, Trump often claimed his 2017 tax cut was the biggest tax cut in history, when in reality it ranked eighth over the last century, when measured as a percentage of the overall economy. Now, he’s playing the same game again — and ignoring a legislative maneuver used by Senate Republicans to ensure passage.

To advance the bill, Republicans deemed that extending Trump’s 2017 tax cut would result in no revenue loss as that reflected current policy (even though the tax cuts were due to expire). Over ten years, this math would suggest the tax cut is just 0.2 percent of gross domestic product. That would make it among the smaller tax cuts enacted in the last century.

If one assumes all temporary tax provisions stay in place for ten years, that gets you to 0.5 percent of GDP. That’s still relatively small.

On the other hand, if the 2017 tax-cut extension is considered a revenue loser, then the overall bill amounts to 1.25 percent of GDP, making it the seventh largest since 1918. If all expiring provisions are counted, then the bill would be 1.8 percent of GDP, tying it for fourth place with a Barack Obama tax cut in 2013.

“Measured appropriately, it is a historically large tax cut,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “Measured the way they prefer, it is not. You can’t have it both ways.”

In any case, the record holder is still Ronald Reagan, whose 1981 tax cut amounted to 2.9 percent of GDP. But federal deficits increased so much that a year later Reagan signed into a law a tax increase amounting to almost one percent of GDP, according to a Treasury Department analysis.

“They're voting for no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime and many, many other things.”

-- Trump, at a Cabinet meeting, July 8

Exaggerated. Trump suggests he fulfilled several of his 2024 campaign promises, but fails to mention the fine print, including that these tax cuts expire after 2028 — conveniently, when he is no longer president.

The law does not eliminate all taxes on Social Security, as Trump had pledged; instead, it offers a temporary $6,000 deduction for seniors who earn as much as $75,000 a year, or $12,000 for joint filers earning as much as $150,000. This change will modestly reduce the number of seniors who pay taxes on Social Security benefits, but it won’t eliminate all taxes on Social Security. (Before 1983, Social Security benefits were not taxed.)

The “no taxes on tips” is also temporary and is limited to $25,000 a year in cash (noncash tips like gift baskets are still taxable). The types of jobs that would be covered still must be determined. Workers also will still need to pay payroll taxes (for Social Security and Medicare, totaling 7.65 percent) on tips.

Finally, the temporary “no tax on overtime” is capped at $12,500 (or $25,000 for a joint return).

“We’re cutting $1.7 trillion in this bill. And you're not going to feel any of it, and your Medicaid is left alone; it's left the same.”

-- Trump, remarks at the White House, June 26

“The largest spending cut — $1.7 trillion and yet you won't even notice it, just waste, fraud and abuse — in American history.”

-- Trump, remarks at July Fourth celebration, July 4

False. Trump displays magical thinking. How can he enact the biggest spending cut in history and no one feel it? And, contrary to his claim that “Medicaid is left alone,” the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that new work requirements and other changes in the health care program for the poor will cause 7.8 million people to lose their coverage. CBO added that changes in the Affordable Care Act and a cutoff of aid to undocumented immigrants will mean a total of 11.8 million people will lose their health coverage under the law.

As for this being the biggest spending cut in history, that’s false. A glance at the historical budget tables shows that after the end of World War II, federal spending was cut from 41 percent of gross domestic product in 1945 to 24.2 percent in 1946 — and then to 14.4 percent of GDP in 1947. Trump’s cuts will take place over ten years and will amount to about one half of one percent of projected GDP. (The law also contained big boosts in spending on immigration enforcement that further reduce the cut in spending.)

“We really were very, very cognizant of three things: Social Security, we're going to take care of it beautifully; Medicare; and Medicaid. And we are going to save it whereas the Democrats are going to — you won't have it, they will destroy Medicare and Medicaid, and they have to because their numbers don't work …. But now we'll be in charge, so we're going to have no problem with Medicaid or Medicare or Social Security.”

-- Trump, remarks in Ochopee, Florida, July 1

False. We’ve addressed Trump’s claims about Medicaid, but his tax deduction for Social Security will weaken the program’s finances, though not as much as the complete elimination of Social security taxes. Social Security benefits began to be taxed when the program was facing insolvency in the early 1980s — and that moment is approaching again in the next decade.

“Whether you're military or anybody else, this is the most single, most popular bill ever signed.”

-- Trump, remarks at July Fourth celebration, July 4

False. Poll after poll show most Americans dislike the law. An Economist/YouGov poll conducted July 4-7 found that 53 percent of Americans strongly or somewhat oppose the law, while just 35 percent support it. (We could not find a breakdown for military support.)

The bill will “increase take home pay for the normal family of four, by at least $13,000.”

-- Trump, remarks in Ochopee, Florida, July 1

False. Trump cited the White House Council of Economic Advisers, but that was for the House version (which had a range of between $7,800 to $13,300, so “at least” would have been $7,800). By the time Trump spoke, the CEA had reduced its estimate to between $7,600 and $10,900 because of changes made by the Senate.

But caveat emptor — the CEA, Trump’s in-house economists, used growth assumptions that were much higher than independent modelers, some of whom said the bill would negatively impact growth. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said the CEA used “fantasy growth assumptions” that were 2.5 times as large as the next highest estimate and more than 50 times as high as the average of outside models.

And now for the Democrats

“This bill will kick about 16 million Americans off of health care.”

-- standard Democratic talking point, used by Sens. Mark R. Warner (Virginia), Chris Murphy (Connecticut) and others

Exaggerated. The CBO’s estimate of the House bill was that 10.9 million would lose insurance from changes to Medicaid and the ACA. Democrats are including about 5 million people who would lose health insurance because of the impact of a related health care policy (enhanced ACA premium tax credits) that are due to expire at the end of the year. Republicans chose not to extend the credits, but that’s how it was designed by Democrats during the Biden administration.

“51,000 Americans will die each year so that the top 1% can get a $1 trillion tax break. This bill is a death sentence.”

-- Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont), in an X post, July 3

Exaggerated. Sanders is referring to an estimate made of the House bill by the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and the Yale School of Public Health’s Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis. Eric T. Roberts, a UPenn professor who co-authored the report, confirmed that nearly 9,000 deaths would be from the expiration of the ACA premium credits. He said the forecast has not yet been updated for the law as passed but he did not think the forecast would change much. The estimates largely are based on past research on the impact of people being disenrolled from Medicaid. Rachel M. Werner, another co-author and executive director of Penn LDI, said she was “pretty confident that we are at the low end of the right ballpark.”

Get Along, Little DOGEy

Governments lie, and corporations lie, and douche nozzles like Musk and Trump lie.

DOGE is a complete bust for everybody except Elmo and a few of his pals, but there may be a reckoning for that asshole coming soon.

And the kicker: Elon spent $44B on a social media platform that was worth less than $10B, and proceeded to turn it into a playground for the worst of the worst bigots, bots, and bandits - as revenue continues to decrease, producing operating losses ever since.

The Gish Gallop

I'm never going to let up on the Press Poodles for not fact-checking.

They may not be able to do it on the fly because 1) Trump slings the bullshit fast and furious, and 2) as we see in this mess about tattoos, he'll spend 3 minutes arguing against reality every time you stop him, so you're never going to get thru it.

The problem is that I'm hard-pressed to find any kind of post-mortem or followup on what he did or didn't lie about once they put the story to bed.

Joints like Meidas Touch do a decent job dissecting Trump's maniacal Gish Gallops.

Press Poodles, take note.

And Counting

HOURS SINCE TRUMP DIDN'T

END THE WAR IN UKRAINE

IN HIS FIRST 24 HOURS

528

"I'll Stop Inflation On Day One"

US consumer prices post largest increase in nearly 1-1/2 years in January

Summary

• Consumer prices increase 0.5% in January
• Shelter, food, gasoline lead broad rise in prices
• Consumer price index rises 3.0% year-on-year
• Core CPI gains 0.4%; advances 3.3% year-on-year

WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - U.S. consumer prices increased by the most in nearly 1-1/2 years in January, with Americans facing higher costs for housing and food, reinforcing the Federal Reserve's message that it was in no rush to resume cutting interest rates amid growing uncertainty over the economy.

The hotter-than-expected inflation reported by the Labor Department on Wednesday was likely partly due to businesses raising prices at the start of the year. However, the surge in prices offered a cautionary note to President Donald Trump's push for tariffs on imported goods, which have been panned by economists as inflationary.

Trump was elected on promises to lower prices for inflation-weary consumers. High inflation could imperil the Trump administration's agenda, including tax cuts, which could overstimulate a healthy economy, and mass deportations of undocumented immigrants that are seen causing labor shortages and raising costs such as wages for businesses.

"With President Trump threatening to impose wide-ranging inflationary tariffs, the Fed won't resume cutting interest rates this year," said Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist at Capital Economics.

The consumer price index jumped 0.5% last month, the biggest gain since August 2023, after rising 0.4% in December, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said. Shelter, which includes rents, increased 0.4% and accounted for nearly 30% of the rise in the CPI. That followed two straight monthly gains of 0.3%.

Food prices rose 0.4% after increasing 0.3% in December. Grocery store prices surged 0.5%, with the cost of eggs soaring 15.2%, the largest increase since June 2015. That accounted for about two-thirds of the rise in prices at the supermarket. An avian flu outbreak has caused a shortage of eggs, driving up prices.

The details are still vague, but corporate America is nervous about who's next after duties on steel and aluminium

Prices also rose for meats, poultry and fish as well as for nonalcoholic beverages and dairy products. Gasoline prices rose 1.8% while natural gas cost 1.8% more, but electricity prices were unchanged.

In the 12 months through January, the CPI increased 3.0% after advancing 2.9% in December. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the CPI gaining 0.3% and rising 2.9% year-on-year.

The BLS updated weights and seasonal adjustment factors, the model that the government uses to strip out seasonal fluctuations from the data to reflect price movements in 2024.

Some of the rise in the CPI last month probably reflected businesses pushing through price increases at the start of the year. Businesses could also have preemptively raised prices in anticipation of higher and broad tariffs on imported goods.

Trump early this month suspended a highly telegraphed 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico until March. But a 10% additional tariff on Chinese goods went into effect this month. Economists expect that those tariffs, when they are eventually enforced, will lift inflation.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers on Tuesday that "inflation moderated a little further last year," adding that "recent progress has been bumpy."

Inflation remains above the U.S. central bank's 2% target.

The dollar gained versus a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury yields rose.
A line chart titled "Annual change in US Consumer Price Index" that compares two key inflation metrics over the past five years.

A line chart titled "Annual change in US Consumer Price Index" that compares two key inflation metrics over the past five years.

RATE CUT HOPES DIMINISHING

Chances of a rate cut this year are diminishing amid rising uncertainty over the economic impact of the Trump administration's trade, immigration and fiscal policies.

Consumers' one-year inflation expectations surged to a 15-month high in early February as households perceived that "it may be too late to avoid the negative impact of tariff policy," a University of Michigan survey of consumers showed last week.

Combined with a stable labor market, Bank of America Securities continues to believe that the Fed policy easing cycle is over. The central bank left its benchmark overnight interest rate unchanged in the 4.25%-4.50% range in January, having reduced it by 100 basis points since September, when it embarked on its policy easing cycle.

The policy rate was hiked by 5.25 percentage points in 2022 and 2023 to tame inflation.
Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the CPI climbed 0.4% in January. The so-called core CPI increased 0.2% in December. The core CPI has tended to print higher in January, which economists said suggested that seasonal effects lingered in the data even after seasonal adjustment.

• Shelter costs increased 0.4%, with owners' equivalent rent rising 0.3% as did rents.
• Healthcare costs climbed 0.2%, while prescription medication prices jumped 2.5% and hospital services increased 0.9%.
• The cost of motor vehicle insurance soared 2.0%.
• There were also increases in the prices of recreation, used cars and trucks, communication, airline fares and education.
• But apparel prices dropped 1.4%.
• In the 12 months through January, the core CPI rose 3.3% after advancing 3.2% in December.

The Circle Game

Lie

Deny

Lie some more

Deny some more

Debunkment Redux

Over the last 20 years, the odds of an American being killed by

an undocumented immigrant or a foreign-born terrorist:

about 1 in 3 billion

Americans killed every year by lawn mowers:

about 1 in 4 million

You're almost 1000 times more likely to be killed by your lawn mower than you are by an undocumented immigrant or refugee terrorist.

 

If you really feel like banning something, ban gardening equipment.

Fact Check: No evidence 4,000 people are killed yearly by undocumented immigrants

There is no evidence to suggest undocumented immigrants are responsible for 4,000 U.S. deaths every year, contrary to social media posts sharing the unsubstantiated statistic.
The social media graphic, opens new tab contains statistics comparing the alleged deaths by undocumented immigrants to the number of people killed by rifles.

“Less than 500 people a year are killed by rifles… let’s ban them! Over 4,000 people a year are killed by illegals... let’s give them $2,200 a month taxpayer assistance, register them to vote in our elections and keep the border wide open to invite more of them into our country,” reads the graphic.

The rifle figure is somewhat true, as fewer than 500 murders were committed yearly with rifles from 2019 to 2021 according to the FBI’s latest annual figures, opens new tab, but the figure rose to 556 in 2022 and 511 in 2023 (See “Crime in the United States Annual Reports,” click “Expanded Homicide Tables” and open “Table 8”). The number of homicides committed using all types of firearms was 13,529 in 2023, according to the report.

There is no evidence for the “4,000” figure, however. Studies and estimates by academics and think tanks show undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than U.S.-born individuals.

NO NATIONAL STATISTIC

There is no nationwide data on crimes committed specifically by undocumented immigrants, but research shows they do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.
“We know of no national statistics on the numbers of deaths committed by unauthorized immigrants,” Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director of the Migration Policy Institute think tank, said in an email.

Despite the lack of official data, there is significant research demonstrating “unauthorized immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than the U.S. born,” Mittelstadt said.

Texas is the only state that logs immigration status in its arrest records, and several studies use data from the Texas Department of Public Safety to examine criminality among immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

TEXAS DATA

Two studies found that undocumented immigrants in Texas commit homicide at significantly lower rates than their U.S.-born counterparts.

Authoritarian governments are doomed to fail because they all have a fatal flaw: They insist on not releasing much information in general, but especially not damning information, while also insisting on very thorough record-keeping. Those records are meticulous because eventually the ability to show how shitty your behavior has been is what gets you ahead - documenting your shittiness gets you that promotion you want.

We know all about Pol Pot, and Sadam, and Stalin, and the Nazis because the bureaucrats and underlings were very good at showing the boss how bad they were making things for "the enemy within."

And that shit always gets out. Always.

A June 2024 analysis, opens new tab by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh found that, for the years 2013-2022, the homicide conviction rate in Texas for “illegal immigrants” was 2.2 per 100,000, while that of native-born Americans was 3.0 per 100,000.

• For example, in 2022, undocumented immigrants made up about 7.1% of the Texas population and accounted for 67, or 5%, of the 1,336 people, opens new tab convicted of homicide.
• That same year, 1,209, or 90.5%, of people convicted of homicide were native-born Americans, who made up 82.5% of the population, the analysis said.
• “I’ve seen zero evidence for illegal immigrants killing 4,000 people a year,” Nowrasteh said in an email. “I've never seen that number defended by anybody spreading it.”
• Similarly, a 2020 study, published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal found that undocumented immigrants were less than half as likely to be arrested for homicide than U.S.-born citizens, based on Texas data.
• The study, by Michael Light, sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and two other researchers, found the arrest rate, opens new tab for homicide was 1.9 per 100,000 people among undocumented immigrants and 4.8 per 100,000 among U.S.-born citizens from 2012 to 2018.

IMPLAUSIBLE STATISTIC

The social media graphic’s assertion that undocumented immigrants kill 4,000 people per year is unlikely even when taken at face value, Light said in an email.
“Put simply, the 4000 figure is implausibly large given what we currently know,” he said.
When applying the figure by using the Pew Research Center’s latest estimates of 11 million, opens new tab “unauthorized immigrants” in the U.S. in 2022, the homicide rate would be 36.4 per 100,000 people.

“This would be greater than a six-fold higher homicide rate than the overall homicide rate,” Light said. The murder rate in the U.S. in 2023 was 5.7 per 100,000 people in 2023, according to the FBI’s annual report on crime statistics released on Monday.

VERDICT

No evidence. There is no evidence that 4,000 people are killed by undocumented immigrants every year.

Just Makin' It Up

FactCheck.org: President Trump said his administration blocked $50 million for condoms to be sent to Gaza through its pause on foreign aid. But it has provided no evidence that $50 million was ever directed toward condoms for Gaza.

The contractor identified by the State Department said it has not used U.S. aid “to procure or distribute condoms.”

Aurora's OK - Shut Up

Opinion

Venezuelan gangs terrorizing my hometown? This I had to see.

I looked all over for the “armed illegal alien gang members” — but nada.

AURORA, Colo. — Evidently, Venezuelan gangsters are good at blending in. I looked all over for them. At the apartment building where they supposedly terrorize the residents — no sign. Just a couple of little kids playing on a piece of exercise equipment and two neighbors walking their big, friendly dog.

At the nearby Fox movie theater, now the Aurora Fox Arts Center, where my sisters and I watched double features and ate Milk Duds on hot summer days because it had the best air conditioning in town — nada. At the blood plasma donation center that used to be our bowling alley — not a single armed thug in sight.

It caught my attention, believe me, when once and would-be president Donald Trump visited my hometown and pronounced it “a war zone” occupied by “the most violent people on Earth.” He told a crowd of supporters that his opponent deliberately placed hardened killers in this Denver suburb for the express purpose of victimizing Aurorans.

“Kamala [Harris] has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the Third World,” said Trump. “And she has had them resettled, beautifully, into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens, that’s what they’re doing. And no place is it more evident than right here.” His mass deportation plan now has a name: “Operation Aurora.”

When I learned that a supposed epicenter of the “war zone” was right across the street from the largest research hospital complex in the Rocky Mountain West, I hurried over. Some 1.5 million patient visits per year take place in those gleaming Aurora buildings. I could only imagine all the preying that must go on.

Yet, though I saw plenty of people coming and going along unguarded sidewalks, not one of them acted even a little bit scared.

Evidently, when Trump said the menace was “evident,” he didn’t exactly know — or much care — what he was talking about. According to the Aurora Police Department, in this city of some 400,000 people, there are 10 known or suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua accused of crimes. Ten. And six of them are in custody. No wonder I couldn’t find the “army of illegal alien gang members.”

That this all started with a bit of social media flotsam and was hyped for purposes of political propaganda is no surprise. A surveillance camera in an Aurora apartment building captured images of a group of armed thugs banging on doorways in August. Police have identified the men, and to date, no connection has been drawn between them and any Venezuelan gang. But for rage-baiters on the right, it was off to the races.

For Mayor Mike Coffman, a Republican and former member of Congress, the reckless hype of his party’s presidential candidate has been an uncomfortable problem to deal with. Coffman declined to talk with me and instead had a spokesman point me to a prepared statement. “I am disappointed that the former president did not get to experience more of our city for himself,” the statement said. “The reality is that the concerns about Venezuelan gang activity in our city — and our state — have been grossly exaggerated and have unfairly hurt the city’s identity and sense of safety. The city and state have not been ‘taken over’ or ‘invaded’ or ‘occupied’ by migrant gangs.”

Su Ryden, a Democrat and former majority whip of the Colorado General Assembly who now lives in Aurora, told me how discouraging it is to see the city slandered by someone with such a powerful megaphone and so little concern for the city’s reality. “For years, we’ve made such an effort to be a welcoming place for people trying to better themselves,” Ryden said. “There are children from 130 different countries in the Aurora Public Schools.”

I’m not going to sugarcoat my hometown, which until now was best known as the scene of a 2012 massacre at a cinema near my high school. It’s not the part of the Denver metro where the rich people live. It is mostly starter homes for working people, and always has been. My family’s first neighborhood, Hoffman Heights, was Colorado’s version of Levittown, the quintessential cookie-cutter suburb built in response to the post-World War II housing crisis. It’s just a few blocks from the part of town where the invading army is supposedly headquartered — which has been a little sketchy for nearly as long as I can remember, and I remember the Johnson administration.

But just because we don’t have country clubs and gold-plated toilets like the places Trump hangs around in doesn’t mean Aurorans aren’t proud to be a community where American dreams get started. The world comes here, to the rough edge of the dusty prairie, and tries with varied success to get along together and get ahead in life. They need encouragement more than they need demagoguery; they need celebration, not inflammation.

In that sense, the motto on Aurora’s street signs is perfectly apt. This truly is The All-American City.

Jeezus, MAGA

What will these jagoffs not do to weasel their way in?

Support Gene Vindman - D

for VA-07

What's New, MAGA?

Nothing. Not one fuckin' thing.

Because they never come up with anything new. It's always cycled and recycled.

I remember rumors from back in the 70s and 80s about immigrant populations - back then it was almost exclusively SE Asian - prowling the suburbs looking for white people's family pets to serve up as the latest delicacy to all the unwitting Americans.

It was bullshit then and it's bullshit now, and JD Vance keeps showing us he's exactly the kind of asshole who's willing to do anything to find a wedge "issue" so he can use it to pit one American against the other.

One thing I'd like to see:

Let's stop spending time debunking this bullshit, and concentrate on calling out the racist assholes who put it out.

Vance pushes false accusations of Haitians eating pets

GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (Ohio) on Monday amplified a false claim that Haitian immigrants are abducting and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, despite the city’s police department denying any such incidents.

In a post on the social platform X, Vance published a video of him at a July Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing, reading a letter from Springfield city manager Bryan Heck detailing the city’s challenges in keeping up with housing for a growing Haitian immigrant population.

Vance added a reference to a now-debunked social media post.

“Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” he wrote.

Those reports are largely based on social media postings that were picked up by national figures including Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk over the weekend.

But Heck, whose letter Vance read in the committee room, said false allegations against immigrants were distracting from the real issues faced by Springfield.

“In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community. Additionally, there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaging in illegal activities such as squatting or littering in front of residents’ homes. Furthermore, no reports have been made regarding members of the immigrant community deliberately disrupting traffic,” Heck told The Hill in an email.

“Yes this clearly takes away from the letter’s point that we are struggling with housing, resources for our schools, and an overwhelmed healthcare system.”

The Springfield Police Division told the Springfield News-Sun on Monday that it has received no reports about anyone stealing or eating pets.

At an Aug. 27 Springfield City Commission meeting, local resident Anthony Harris alleged, among other things, that Haitian immigrants were slaughtering park ducks for food. Video of his speech has been widely shared on social media.

“Senator Vance has received a high volume of calls and emails over the past several weeks from concerned citizens in Springfield: his tweet is based on what he is hearing from them. The city has faced an influx of 15,000-20,000 Haitian migrants over the past four years, stressing public resources and leading to housing shortages, all thanks to Kamala Harris’s policy of extending temporary protected status designations,” a Vance spokesperson said.

“Many residents have contacted Senator Vance to share their concerns over crime and traffic accidents, and to express that they no longer feel safe in their own homes. Unlike the liberal media, JD takes his constituents’ concerns seriously.”

According to a frequently asked questions page managed by the Springfield police, between 12,000 and 15,000 Haitians live in the midwestern city legally, under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. Heck’s letter estimated that population to be between 15,000 and 20,000.

“This is the same old anti-Black playbook that we’ve seen for hundreds of years in Ohio being rolled out to divide and create hate, especially around election times,” said Erik Crew, staff attorney at the Haitian Bridge Alliance and a Cincinnati native with Springfield roots.

“White supremacist and antidemocratic movements have always used the claim that so-called Black savages are coming to destroy, especially when political power is up for grabs. This is no different. This time they are saying it is Haitians, and this time it is being used to try to score political points around immigration as well.”

In June, the Biden administration expanded the TPS designation for Haiti, allowing an estimated 309,000 Haitians to live and work in the United States without fear of deportation.

“The fact is Haitian immigrants have been coming to Springfield seeking to come and contribute to U.S. democracy and the economy, and Springfield and Ohio will benefit from that like U.S. communities have benefited in the past from Black immigrants contributions,” Crew said.

“The fact is the rumors about Haitians in Springfield and pets have already been debunked, but we won’t stop hearing them because certain people will want to keep spreading them as the election nears.”

The accusations were widely picked up on right-wing social media on both personal and official channels.

The House Judiciary Committee Republicans X account on Monday posted an AI image of former President Trump hugging a duck and a cat — animals at the center of the social media allegations — with the caption “protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio!”

Vance has recent experience in cat-related controversies since becoming the GOP vice presidential nominee.

He has been widely criticized for unearthed old comments and postings criticizing “cat ladies” and childless people, though he has since tried to downplay those remarks as remarks as sarcasm.

Representative Government

Jaimie Raskin nails it perfectly - starting at about 11:05.

The people in DC have petitioned for statehood so they can have equal and adequate representation because they don't want to be kicked around by other people's representatives - representatives from far away places - telling them what they can and can't do in their own city.

And there's a lot more, but let's be clear - Republicans have no intention of allowing autonomy of any kind anywhere at any time. They're in the process of strangling democracy little by little.

The Kamala-McDonald's Crisis

MAGA spares no effort to manufacture controversy.

"Kamala Failed To Include McDonald's On Her Resumé: What Is She Hiding!?!"

"McDonald's Records Show No Trace Of Kamala Harris Being Employed There"

Corporate records of employees and franchisees are kept for the requisite period (3 - 7 years, depending on the state regs).

There are no records of franchise employees retained at the corporate level - that's up to the individual restaurant to comply with their resident state's law.

And I can't fucking believe:

1. Anybody would spend any time cooking this shit up
2. The rubes are still so fucking gullible they're willing to think this nonsense is a real issue

And that points up the problem. All they have to do is to keep throwing as much shit in the air as possible, and we have to address it or risk the probability that people will assume, "Well the Dems aren't doing anything to disprove it, so I guess there must be something to it."

It's like we go out of our way to be The Stupid Country.

Let Us Now Debunk

The default setting hasn't changed: It's safe to assume Trump is lying no matter what he has to say. And that includes everybody in any way connected with his campaign, and all of his supporters who post on social media, and every Republican.

All of them.

Trump baselessly charges Harris Michigan rally crowd ‘didn’t exist,’ was generated with AI

Former President Donald Trump took to social media on Sunday to falsely claim that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign faked photos of the crowd at her Detroit-area rally last week using artificial intelligence.

The Republican presidential nominee claimed the crowd at the airport hangar “DIDN’T EXIST” and that “nobody was there” in multiple posts to his Truth Social platform, sharing a post from a right-wing former congressional candidate known for spreading misinformation.

What You Need To Know

• Former President Donald Trump took to social media on Sunday to falsely claim that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign faked photos of the crowd at her Detroit-area rally last week using artificial intelligence
• The Republican presidential nominee claimed the crowd at the airport hangar “DIDN’T EXIST” and that “nobody was there” in multiple posts to his Truth Social platform, sharing a post from a right-wing former congressional candidate known for spreading misinformation
• The crowd did in fact exist and the rally was attended by thousands of people, many of whom posted their own pictures and videos of the event, which was also live streamed by dozens of news channels and attended by a slew of prominent politicians
• While some AI-generated photos and videos have been circulated in right-wing corners of social media, it appears the photo Trump posted was in fact real, though it’s possible it was digitally edited
• The crowd did in fact exist and the rally was attended by thousands of people, many of whom posted their own pictures and videos of the event, which was also live streamed by dozens of news channels and attended by a slew of prominent politicians.

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST! She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane,” Trump wrote. “She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING.”

According to local news outlet MLive, “about 15,000 people filled the hangar, the crowd spilling out onto the tarmac.”

While some AI-generated photos and videos have been circulated in right-wing corners of social media, it appears the photo Trump posted was in fact real, though it’s possible it was digitally edited. Other photos and videos from the event depict a similar scene and the fact-checking organization Snopes used AI-detection tools and determined it was “likely photographed by someone and not created using an AI-generation tool.”

Chris Strider, a video editor with the major Democratic super PAC Priorities USA and a former Biden campaign official, appears to be among the first people to have shared the photo on Wednesday Aug. 7, the day of the rally, at 10:01 p.m. EST. Strider did not immediately respond to questions from Spectrum News about whether he took the photo or found it elsewhere online.

“Look, we caught her with a fake ‘crowd.’ There was nobody there!” Trump wrote alongside the picture, adding in another post that “EVERYTHING ABOUT KAMALA IS FAKE!”

Trump went on an extended tirade about crowd sizes at a press conference on Thursday, complaining about media coverage of Harris’ rallies across the country alongside her new running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Trump claimed his 2017 inaugural address was attended by the “same number of people, if not, we had more” than Martin Luther King Jr. did during his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

“Donald Trump is definitely not mad. Do not say Donald Trump is mad,” Harris campaign director of rapid response Ammar Moussa wrote on Sunday, responding to Trump’s posts.

2cm

2cm

From here⇥_________⇤to here measures out at 2 centimeters (on my desktop iMac).

Does any of this look like a 2cm bullet wound?

I know - I sound like a nutball conspiracy fantasist. I'm not. I am a skeptic, and I'm saying in spite of some pretty good analysis, there's still plenty reason to question the whole bullet wound story. Especially when the only medico we've heard from is Ronnie Jackson - a guy who's not even licensed anymore, and the same guy who told us Trump was 6' 3", 239 pounds, and just might live another 140 years on a diet of junk food and soda pop. I think there's more than enough room for doubt.

And this is Donald Trump - practically the patron saint of lyin' sacks of shit.

Blast From The Past

I just finished Profiles In Ignorance --Andy Borowitz

He mentions this from 1990, and points out the interesting pairing of Trump with Jack Kevorkian (Dr Death):

Trump: The Fall

Once a symbol of cocky '80s wealth, Donald Trump is now tarnished by marital scandal, mired in debt and negotiating with banks to retain control of his empire. Even if he succeeds, the Trump "mystique' may never recover.

You live by the glitz, you die by the glitz -A former banker and friend of DONALD TRUMP'S who approved some of his early loans.

For a high-rolling decade, Donald Trump was the King of Glitz. He built sumptuous casinos and gleaming apartment buildings, bought world-famous hotels and a fleet of planes--and plastered his name over everything. He presumed to lecture America on "The Art of the Deal"--and the book became a best seller. Like a modern-day Gatsby, he lived as lavishly as he spent: the 10-acre weekend escape, the 110-room mansion in Florida, the $29 million yacht, not to mention the jet-black helicopter. He reveled in celebrity, chumming it up with Frank Sinatra and Mike Tyson, schmoozing courtside at the U.S. Open, even buying a football team. And all the time he was mouthing off, picking fights with New York Mayor Ed Koch, telling people how he'd deal with the Japanese. "There is no one my age who has accomplished more," he bragged at 41. "Everyone can't be the best."

It's hard to believe that was only three years ago, just as Trump was becoming a national emblem of cocky'80s wealth. Now just as suddenly, he's become a national object lesson in how fast those heavily borrowed fortunes and the fame that came with them can fade. "The 1990s sure aren't anything like the 1980s," Trump said recently--and he should know. In just a few months, he's watched his marriage break up in the pages of the tabloid press. He's had to manage without two top executives who died in a helicopter crash last fall. There have been intensifying rumors about his business troubles: contractors who haven't been paid; stories of Trump nervously prowling the tables at his Atlantic City casinos to see how the high rollers were doing. Last month Forbes magazine, which for a decade has charted Trump's rise in its annual list of richest Americans, estimated that increased debt and a drop in real-estate values caused him to lose more than two thirds of his net worth last year--a nose dive from $1.7 billion to $500 million (page 40).

For months Trump denied that anything was wrong, and even boasted that the divorce headlines were good for business. Then last week came hard evidence that his financial woes are much more severe than he had let on. For several weeks, sources from several New York City banks confirmed, Trump and advisers have been meeting daily in Trump Tower with about 25 bankers and their lawyers to figure out how to renegotiate much of his hefty $3.2 billion debt. At least some of the lawyers are specialists in bankruptcy and corporate restructuring, according to banking sources. Some sources called the atmosphere cordial and said Trump had asked for the meetings; other reports had the two sides growling at each other. In either case, the talks conjured up a truly startling image: Trump, the self-proclaimed master of the deal, negotiating the terms of his financial survival with, as one observer put it, "stranger in business suits."

While the New York tabloids had their usual field day with the stories (UH-OWE! read the Post), Trump was uncharacteristically mum, declining to talk to NEWSWEEK. Only a day before The Wall Street Journal first reported on the meetings with bankers, Trump did attend a session of the American Booksellers Association in Las Vegas to promote his new book, called "Trump: Surviving at the Top," a title that provoked a few chuckles. The book is scheduled to be published in October but may be rushed out earlier now. Trump joked at a breakfast: "We may have to end certain chapters with a question mark. We may have to end the whole book with a question mark."

Few are predicting that the last chapter will be Chapter 11. Unless the talks break down completely, Trump seems likely to avoid the worst-case scenario: failure to make his next payment on bank loans and junk-bond interest this week, which could allow his creditors to force him into bankruptcy protection. Although he had already put the Trump Shuttle, his East Coast air service, and his yacht, the Trump Princess, up for sale, his spokesmen insist he will not have to sell other prized properties like The Plaza hotel to cover his debts (page 43). As the week ended, sources said, the talks were narrowing in a deal in which Trump could give the banks more collateral or a stake in many of his properties--an outcome that could cut down on his interest payments and perhaps even allow him to borrow more, but could significantly diminish his control over the empire. Banking sources also reported that Trump's lifestyle was on the table. "The boat, the mansions, the planes-they may all have to go," said one banker.

Yet even if Trump negotiates his way out of this immediate financial squeeze, his name will never carry the same mystique. Much of his success has been built on convincing lenders--and the public--that simply putting the word "Trump" on a building or an airplane would immediately increase its value. Now the name isn't just associated with "quality" (Trump's favorite word) but also with the whiff of marital scandal and the growing scent of financial distress. A real-estate broker, who says Japanese investors once called only to ask for "a Trump apartment," says some are now turned off by the divorce. Smelling blood, potential buyers for Trump's properties are sure to drive hard bargains.

Fickle as ever, the public is now just as hungry for tidbits about Trump's fall from grace as they once were for his pearls of wisdom (page 44). Raye Nelson, a retired teacher in Houston, says she used to admire Trump. "I read his book and I thought, 'What a wonderful young man to have done all he's done'." Now, she says, "it seems like he built his empire on sand rather than rock. I believe he just got greedy and needs to go back and acquire some more character somewhere." Even business associates are coming out of the woodwork to say, "I told you so." One lawyer and professed friend who has worked with him over the years insists Trump's troubles reveal what was behind the emperor's clothing. "Donald has never had the net worth he claimed," he says. "What he did have was trophy properties, brass balls and a big mouth. "

Ultimate humiliation: That people are now making fun of Trump's financial acumen may be the ultimate humiliation. After all, Trump was the self-proclaimed dealmeister himself, the man who built a reputation starting in the mid-1970s as a smart, risk-taking developer who could turn a seeming dog of a property into gold. His first big project, and the cornerstone of his New York empire, was the rebuilding of a dilapidated old hotel next to Grand Central Terminal. The city gave him a $120 million tax break and he got the banks to lend him $70 million. Up went the Grand Hyatt Hotel, which today is among his few properties showing a profit after paying interest costs.

Trump later erected Trump Tower, the Fifth Avenue building that pushed him into national attention with its marble lobby and impressive waterfall. A mixture of stores and million-dollar apartments, it became an attraction that drew hordes of tourists-and became a resounding financial success.

The first signs that something might be awry in Trump's empire started surfacing, ironically, as the press started reporting on his personal problems earlier this year. His breakup with his wife, Ivana, and his reported affair with model Marla Maples attracted a blizzard of publicity, distracting him at a time when his newest, most expensive Atlantic City casino, the Taj Mahal, was due to open. Says a friend, "As he found out, this kind of publicity can come back and bite you in the rear end." While Marla went into hiding, the spouses skirmished through dueling press releases and the public argued over whether their nuptial agreement was fair. (It gave Ivana $25 million, which according to almost any estimate was only a small fraction of Trump's assets.) Forbes magazine soon weighed in with its cover story putting his assets at only $500 million, and calculated that he was some $40 million short of paying his creditors each year.

Trump called those figures nonsense. Yet the impression that something was amiss grew stronger when he disclosed that he was considering selling the Shuttle, which he bought from Eastern only one year ago. The reason. he insisted: cash is king. He said he wasn't hurting for money but merely wanted to be ready to seize new opportunities as property values fell. He even insisted the marital publicity was actually helping his businesses by attracting curiosity seekers.

In some cases, it had the opposite effect, claims one banker. Japanese buyers, a mainstay of some Trump properties, appeared to shy away from some of his residential buildings. The Japanese, the banker says, "would tell us, 'We want something in a Trump building. We don't care what it costs.' Now, forget it. They don't like the publicity."

The roots of Trump's cash crunch go far deeper than a scarcity of Japanese apartment buyers. In his heyday, Trump's projects were largely in-and-out deals: he erected apartment buildings and sold units as condominiums, charging the premium prices his name allowed, and walked away with hefty profits. "He wasn't a cash-flow builder," says one of his former bankers. That changed when he bought such properties as the casinos, The Plaza hotel and the Shuttle airline. These were operations that required skillful management on a daily basis to produce profits. More crucially, Trump needed to generate huge cash flows to pay the enormous interest costs he incurred in borrowing to buy the properties.

Track record: Based on his track record, the banks opened their wallets to Trump, seemingly without undertaking the normal financial analysis. A lawyer who has worked with Trump says, "Donald Trump could have walked into any bank and said, "I want $25 million,' and nobody would ask for a financial statement. They'd say, "Donald Trump, $25 million? Done!'" James Grant, a business observer and editor, says the banks were feeding Trump's speculative purchases. "All this occurred," he says, "three, four or five years after it was clear to anyone that this same style of lending had brought ruin to the big Texas banks." Trump's major banks, Chase Manhattan, Citibank, Bankers Trust and Manufacturers Hanover, declined to comment.

Not only was it the magical Trump the banks were lending on; it was a time when market values had been rising almost non-stop since the late 1970s. If the cash flow from the various properties didn't cover the debt payments, it didn't really matter. Like a homeowner, Trump could mark up the value of a building on paper and borrow against it through second mortgages. Trump also took out personal lines of credit that were unsecured and sometimes used them to make interest payments. "The banks," says a lawyer who has known Trump since his first project, "created their own monster."

The monster got bogged down when Trump miscalculated on a number of things--some none of his own doing. The real-estate market flattened, making lenders less willing to refinance properties based on speculative values. In April Trump reportedly tried to refinance his stake in the Grand Hyatt and a Chase Mahattan mortgage on Trump Tower, but deals went nowhere. By now, even banks that might have wanted to give Trump more money had become constrained; the savings and loan crisis had caused federal regulators to monitor bank ending practices more closely. Says one real-estate lawyer, "You can't do the 'wink and keep on lending' routine."Meanwhile, the Japanese stock market had plunged, drying up potential sources of financing there. Trump even tried raising money by selling his Princess yacht in a $511.5 million deal to Japanese investors that, too, fell apart.

Suddenly Trump found himself walled in by looming interest payments and a bunch of properties with large cash-flow demands. Chief among them are his three Atlantic City casinos, on which Trump had counted to support his other enterprises. Trump moved aggressively into Atlantic City in the mid-1980s, first with the Trump Plaza and then Trump's Castle. His biggest gamble came in 1988 when he engineered the purchase of the unfinished Taj Mahal from former talk-show host Merv Griffin. At the time itseemed like another brilliant Trump stroke. He paid a low-ball $278 million, leaving Griffin with the Resorts Internaional casino, which eventually ended up under bankruptcy protection. The Taj finally opened in April, adding about 20 percent capacity to the city's gaming business at a time when growth in the market was slowing considerably.

Despite the immense ballyhoo surrounding its opening, the prospects for the Taj's profitability remain unclear. In May it grossed $36 million, but analysts question whether the casino can maintain that level after the initial excitement subsides. It needs to rake in roughly $1.3 million a day to break even,analysts say. Trump has a more immediate concern on June 15, when he's due to make a $42 million payment to Castle bondholders. While he is likely to make that payment, some of his banks are described as worried. They are concerned that paying the bondholders might stretch too tight to make payments on their bank loans.

Underlying the casinos' problems is a management team in turmoil. Last October two of Trump's most respected casino managers, Stephen Hyde and Mark Etess, died in a tragic helicopter crash. Last month Jack O'Donnell quit as president of the Trump Plaza, Trump's most profitable casino, complaining that he didn't want to work for Trump anymore. O'Donnell didn't say much more until this week, when he learned of recent disparaging remarks Trump had made about the effectiveness of the two deceased executives. In an interview with NEWSWEEK, an embittered O'Donnell criticized Trump, saying he used the customer lists of the Plaza to feed the Taj Mahal. "Even if there hasn't been a violation of the law, and I think there has been, Donald is totally void of morals in business," he said.

As O'Donnell painted it, Trump sometimes makes decisions about his casinos on personal whims. In one case, Trump insisted on constructing a $1 million oyster bar in the Trump Plaza, despite his managers' contention that a retail store was far more profitable. The managers think they know why. Marla Maples had been known to order lots of seafood from room service, they said. Trump has said the oyster bar better complemented a nearby ice-cream parlor.

Trump's intense push for casino profits was never clearer than on one weekend in May. A Japanese high roller who had won $6.2 million in February was back playing at the baccarat pit at the Plaza casino. O'Donnell said an employee told him, " "Donald's in the pit carrying on. He's going to drive the guy out of here'." Trump was pacing near the gambler, who was winning at the time. It was a violation of an old gambling rule. Says O'Donnell, "When the customer is beating you, you never sweat it out, you never let on that it bothers you." As it turned out, the gambler eventually lost $10.3 million, but Trump cut him off before he had a chance to recover. Furious, the gambler left, O'Donnell says, in a limousine driven by executives of the competing Caesars casino.

Late paying: Trump has still more problems in Atlantic City. The construction manager who helped build the Taj contends he is late in paying more than $50 million to subcontractors. Trump's troubles have caught the attention of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. A spokesman said the division of gaming enforcement is examining his financial wherewithal on a day-by-day basis.

Trump casino officials hastily arranged a press conference at the end of the week to try to paint a different picture. Edward Tracy, who oversees all three casinos, insisted business was "fabulous." He confirmed that about 120 Taj Mahal employees had been laid off but denied reports that an additional 2,500 of the 6,500 Taj's workers would soon lose their jobs. Tracy also acknowledged that payments to vendors were knowingly delayed at times but attributed it to a cash-management strategy. As for Trump's money problems, Tracy stoutly denied that any of the three casinos are up for sale.

That's not the case for the Trump Shuttle, another disappointing acquisition. Trump bought the Shuttle from strikebound Eastern Air Lines for $365 million--with its market share less than 30 percent. Trump refurbished the planes and managed to bring the market share up to about 50 percent. But even then he couldn't turn a profit. The Shuttle, Trump executives realized, is extremely expensive to operate--thanks to standby planes and crews--and as a result is not throwing off enough cash to meet interest payments. After Trump announced he was thinking about selling the service (he even did away with free coffee), Pan Am said it was putting up its East Coast shuttle for sale. Analysts now think Trump would be lucky to get back the $365 million he paid.

Trump's experience with his "ultimate trophy," The Plaza hotel, is much the same. He paid a price, about $400 million, that analysts think was too high; then he spent even more bringing the property up to its former glory--all with borrowed money. The hotel now looks great, and revenues are up, but not enough to cover the interest payments of about $40 million a year. Earlier this year a confident Trump contended he had turned down an offer from the Sultan of Brunei for about twice what he had paid.

Trump's biggest frustration lies in a large, undeveloped tract on Manhattan's West Side along the Hudson River. After paying $115 million for it in 1985, Trump unveiled a massive development plan that would include the world's tallest building (150 stories) and residential housing. But West Side community activists, never appreciative of Trump's taste anyway, have tied up the project in a tangle of environmental protests. Meanwhile, Trump is incurring about $12 million a year in interest costs.

Long term: As his friends view it, Trump simply got caught in a economic downturn at a time when his wallet was stretched. His most recent projects, like The Plaza and the West Side development, all require substantial upfront spending--and time--for their value to improve. One builder portrays Trump as a Japaneselike businessman who was developing projects for the long term-only to be cut down by shortsighted bankers. As one executive close to Trump put it, "If we had two more years of the 1980s he'd have been OK."

Maybe so, but to others Trump is not a magician but a speculator who was bound eventually to get knocked down by debt and normal business cycles. Irving Fischer, chairman of HRH Construction, which has built Trump developments from the start, hails Trump's brilliance but also points out, "He took a 10-year run and rode the crest of the wave."

Of course, many Trump properties are valuable trophies--once you take away the debt he poured on them. If Trump is able to get fresh capital from the banks, he could use that money to buy back--on the cheap--some of the now deflated bonds he issued to build his casinos. That could save him millions in interest costs. Some properties, like the vacant West Side lot, he may want to sell outright; he may want partners for others. His problem now is that potential buyers know all this. "What Donald has to do," a friend says hopefully, "is to find people not out to screw him."

As for Trump himself, associates say he's holding up well under the strain and actually looks as r up as they've seen him in a long time. Says an executive, "He feels that anyone can be a hero when things are good. The test of a person's mettle is when things aren't so rosy. He's a good c, and this is the toughest deal of his life." Others say the diminution of his empire is bound to change him, perhaps even transforming him into a humbler, less publicity-hungry conservative businessman. One acquaintance suggests with tongue in cheek that Trump could surface from his bankers' meetings "with Billy Graham on his arm proclaiming he doesn't need fast cars, yachts, big houses, and announce he will build housing for the poor in the Bronx." If that happens, you'll know the 1980s are really over.