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Because in the US, no amount of money could ever do what was done in China. Both Americans and Chinese have naïve assumptions about how the American health care system works. One of the most naïve assumptions is that the US has a robust system of public health. It doesn’t. It has a for-profit system of personal healthcare for individuals. Never the twain shall meet.More money put into a fundamentally dysfunctional system doesn’t necessarily lead to better outcomes. It can even be part of the process of worsening the problem.America’s private healthcare system doesn’t simply mean private doctors as opposed to state-owned clinics, hospitals, and provider services. It means that the mission of American health care is to tend to private individual’s personal emergencies and healthcare needs. In what may be called ordinary times, the medical difference between a personal emergency and a public health crisis may seem purely abstract, to some. Events like the pandemic of 2019/20 show that the distinction has a direct bearing on costs and outcomes, and even the functioning of society itself. America lacks a system of public health, and many Americans don’t even know that a system of public health and a system of personal health treatment are distinct things, let alone understanding their intersection.America’s private system is costly to the point of exclusion by design. Despite having a generalist to specialist ratio not very different from other industrialized countries, the US relies on more costly specialists for treatments far more often. The system is organized to serve providers, not the patients.American professionalization is based on complicating treatment for its own sake, as can be seen from comparing certification regimes on reiki and other remedies. Parallel with this, maximum profit comes from using the most expensive options to charge each patient the most, while providing limited services and service categories to individual patients. This also reduces costs to the provider and healthcare system, but not the costs of treatment.Less inclusive of the overall population, but requiring a greater part of national wealth.For instance, in pretty much any other country but the US, not only would a tooth crown be cheaper than in the US, but there would be a choice of materials and procedures from bare-bones cheap to very expensive, including shorter-term solutions. In the US, only the most expensive option is considered —which is usually more invasive and dangerous to boot. So, in this example of a tooth crown, given any excuse a crown will be discouraged. Instead, much more expensive implants will be preferred, and even the crown will only be available in the most expensive materials.This is pitched as saving the patient money by making a more long-term investment, but this also ignores that it is unaffordable for many. This forces many to forego otherwise accessible treatment altogether. Misleadingly, the health care industry will often justify lack of choice and access as a cost containment measure they are helpless to control, rather than the monopolistic practice to inflate prices that it is.Like the US, China’s pandemic response has been constrained and determined by the bureaucratic/ organizational processes and interests. For China, this means those who came to full hegemonic ascendancy in the suppression of the anarcho-communist uprising of 1989. Nothing that could even vaguely resemble a gong dong, a grass-roots mass campaign, is tolerated. This has institutionalized an organizational logic and structural framework of highly imperfect, sometimes contradictory, rigid top-down public emergency response mechanisms. These mechanisms are actively hostile to the transparency and independent state health authority that its public health campaign needed against this unforeseen outbreak. They are better suited to respond to outbreaks of political and material brush-fires. This led to China’s slow and counter-productive initial response.On the other hand, China, despite sharing many of the systemic dysfunctions as the US, has preserved a medical professionalization based on simplicity, fluid protocols, patent-free treatments and medicines, and popular accessibility, as well as potentially backed up by a material command structure that can be coherently mobilized for the national interest. They also could mobilize local party members as a ready-reserve for popular enforcement once initial reactions and political confusion were overcome. That allowed them to organize treatment and containment responses whose effectiveness the United States would be horrified to achieve, even if it could.China’s leadership is engrossed with maintaining social stability through active social and economic management. The goal is adequate employment and a rising standard of living to promote stability, and stability to promote economic growth. On the other hand, the US leadership deliberately promotes social insecurity as a means of labor discipline and social control, resulting in a polarized society.Thus, in contrast to the universal social mobilization necessary in the US, we see exclusion and selective concentration. With the Covid-19 epidemic, ventilators could be produced more cheaply and in greater quantities, but preference is given to the most expensive, patented-feature-rich, deluxe-models. Use of these expensive ventilators is for patients that have deteriorated to the point where many won’t survive, even if they are cured of the virus. Lengthy use of ventilators for advanced Covid-19 is physically traumatic, potentially bearing complications that can be debilitating or fatal.Less invasive, traumatic, and expensive treatments at less severe levels of Covid-19, such as intravenous vitamin C and holistic medicine, are dismissed in favor of promises of time-consuming development of expensive and scarce patent medicines. Delays in diagnosis and treatment is early treatment itself, also called “letting nature take its course”, as if nothing can be done until the patient gets worse.Likewise, some evidence shows that masks may not prevent contracting Covid-19, but may at least reduce the load of exposure, which may reduce the severity of illness. Added to this, more severe infections are more likely to lead to long-term health problems, particularly inflammatory and auto-immune reactions. Those reactions can even include provoking allergic reactions to the expensive pharmaceuticals necessary to save the patient. The American system systematically increases costs, and reduces effectiveness and efficiency through restricting and delaying accessibility as a design choice.The lack of public regulation leaves no other standard than the complicity between commercial and political interests, including insurance, pharmaceutical, and provider industries. Patients are reduced to objectified consumers based on where they fit in this model. If a patient can’t afford something, doctors will conclude there is something wrong with the patient, not with the options given to the patient. After all, the doctor is making a fortune off of the patient and assumes the patient has a sheep to fleece, too. Smaller charges, and cheaper procedures, are refused because given the same profit margin, the more expensive option is more profitable. An individual patient wanting a lower-profit procedure is not worth their valuable time, nor is a lower-profit population segment. The medical gaze and the vast gulf of social inequality means that many doctors are completely disconnected from their patients’ realities. Deeper pocket institutions dominate the process and determine the provider’s perspective.Scarcity is built not only into the provision of services, but into the corporate buy-outs of smaller clinics and hospitals to concentrate services in vast expensive, centrally-located campuses that monopolize the medical market in order to set prices at will. Increased money to for-profit health providers, like in the cases of banks bailed out in 2008, would be most profitably used by healthcare companies to buy out rivals and consolidate the market, not to increase beds and services, or to decrease wait times.What public clinics exist are often adjuncts of the private system, mostly careful not to offer competing services, supporting the for-profit sector by providing limited services to low-income people. They are often operated by the local public health departments, confusing that agency’s role. Treatments often consist of giving patients referrals to private providers that they know those patients can’t afford. While some public health officials are adamant about performing their public duty, pressure to under-report pandemic infections has resulted firing and public discrediting of whistle-blowers. Meanwhile, hospitals have accepted that they can only prioritize but not meet public needs, and they depend upon public health officials to help manage public perception of this.Pandemic response #1, recommended by public health authorities: One hand washing the other.The subordination of public health to personal providers presents a fundamental structural contradiction to pandemic control. Pandemic control requires testing that is uniform, systematic, and comprehensive. When public health authorities refer the public to private healthcare providers, who test for individualized treatment according to the providers’ interests, an ineffective and profiteering response is hard to avoid. When public health authorities subordinate themselves to the needs of business “flexibility”, even those who test positive are brought back to the workplace. When data and public information is fetishized as private property, there can be no rational coordination, such as between hospitals, nursing homes, or other providers: Nor importantly, among employees or citizens.CDC regulations state that someone who is positive can return to work after being positive for 30 days. Meanwhile, a plethora of agencies with particular jurisdictions and mandates set contradictory standards. Many healthcare workers are not tested because positive tests could lead to staff shortages. And since health is a strictly private matter, outbreaks can be covered up under the guise of protecting personal information.Since the US lacks a structure to provide universal healthcare access, one must ask what the financial arrangements for universal testing would look like. In many cases, even free testing requires a doctor’s order, which can be costly, especially if it requires an ER visit. Meanwhile, testing would remain voluntary, which means the most irresponsible and selfish people, who are most likely to do stupid things, are most likely to not be tested.And even when the state provides health insurance, there is no legal requirement that it be accepted, and no mechanism to regulate fees. There is only participation in the market. Since the state’s insurance pays less, and there is no legal obligation to accept it, providers who accept it subsidize the excessive profits of those who refuse it. The market does not regulate but deranges economy by redistributing wealth upward to the most predatory.Ron Paul, doctor and perennial presidential candidate of the libertarian right in the US. As a doctor, he refused to accept patients with state health insurance on the principled grounds that it was paid for with “stolen money”. A personally convenient principle and definition of theft. Paul called the Covid-19 pandemic a ‘hoax’, and called for Anthony Fauci to be dismissed from the White House Coronavirus Task Force to stop him from hurting the stock market and grabbing power for big government; After all, power is currently in the right hands, where God’s wisdom put it: Those of the Wall Street barons who finance his presidential bids.Since the for-profit healthcare industry has such monopolistic powers, and those profits work in parallel with those of the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies, the more money put into this system, the higher the profits and less the service. In answer to one reader who doubts this, I would add that according to David Belk, author of The Great American Healthcare Scam: How Kickbacks, Collusion and Propaganda have Exploded Healthcare Costs in the United States: “The revenue for any health insurance company is tied directly to its expenses. In other words, the more a health insurance company spends each year, the more revenue they can earn (through premium increases the next year). Therefore, the last thing any health insurance company would want is for their overall expenses to drop.”This is not simply a racket or scam, however, but an integrated system of vertical and horizontal monopoly. It is deliberately structured for absence of substitutes, many buyers but most lacking negotiating leverage, price discrimination, and legal protection. And despite the ideological pretense of economic liberalism, since this is a monopoly, participation is by definition not voluntary, nor is exclusion.The private insurance system is the tip of an ice-burg of a system not only of collusion for inflated price-fixing, but parallel strategies from patent monopolization, price kickbacks, and corporate buy-outs. Monopolistic practices reduce treatment options through service rationing and market exclusion. The 2012 buy-out of ventilator manufacturer Newport Medical Instruments by Covidien to remove their simpler and less expensive rival ventilator from the market is a case in point. This is a system that doesn’t necessarily respond to increased investment the way free-market ideology teaches us it does.US HOSPITAL CONSTRUCTION SPENDINGThis enormous increase in debt-financed hospital construction has been paralleled by the closing of small cash-starved rural hospitals with lower profit margins and smaller urban hospitals to engage in real estate speculation. This trend continues to accelerate, even during the Covid outbreak, as shown for the first quarter of 2020 alone.Wait times for service have increased at a time when increased money has gone into hospital and clinic construction, mostly financed on debt that includes junk bonds.During the Covid-19 response in the US, the Trump administration announced that environmental regulations would not be enforced during the crisis. What could that possibly have to do with the pandemic, besides the chronic excuse that ‘business’ needs more money? Answer: The same thing as the country’s weak food safety regulations and weak work safety regulations. In response to the pandemic, the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation has also removed limits on the hours many truck drivers can (be forced to) work. Or as they put it, they would, “provide hours-of-service regulatory relief to commercial vehicle drivers.”What a relief! Clearly, America is over-protected.Those regulations exist within a legal system dependent on civil litigation to enforce the laws that do exist, rather than direct enforcement by the state, as exists in Europe. This creates a legal system subordinated to powerful individuals and entities who can purchase the law and suppress its enforcement, as enforcement is tied to a weak and politically complicit public authority.What this has to do with an effective epidemic response is that, as I said, for most intents and purposes the US does not have a genuine and coherent public health system. It simply isn’t anyone’s job. It is not the private providers’ job and isn’t supposed to be. It isn’t the public authorities’ job, as they are tasked with defending private interests. It is then left to ‘personal responsibility’ and ‘choice’. Choice is a word that neoliberals chant like a mantra, but more perceptive people understand that what is called ‘exercise of choice’ usually is just a right-wing double-talk for exercise of privilege. Even elections are not really choices but exercises in privilege by the most powerful.Times like the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 reveal how deeply and fundamentally divided and contradictory our societies are, but liberal ideologues can say that looked at from a certain perspective events like these affect us all equally and bring us all together as one. We can choose to rely on our neighbors and families and come together in a common effort. The virus doesn’t discriminate and we’re all in this together. Were it only so, as it is the sentimental imaginations of these people.Yes, looked at from a certain perspective, the perspective of someone privileged. Yes, we are all coming together to funnel trillions to corporations, speculators, and capital markets. Yes, those who have the money and security to prepare for events like this, as they can prepare for major medical events of other kinds, or even retirement, do have a choice and do come together to secure their private, personal interests. Yes, the virus doesn’t discriminate, but people do, and they do in their use and abuse of the pandemic, and in who receives testing and treatment, who gets protected and exposed, and who dies abandoned in their homes.No matter how much is funneled into private interests, aspects of the public interest will be left unattended, or even worsened, by all matters being decided by a competition of winners and losers. Regardless of what course is taken, no universal solution will be implemented, because anything universal would be a right rather than a privilege. Americans never even speak of their social rights, only obliquely of a social “safety net”, for a reason. Unequal and inconsistent treatment and prices seen in American healthcare reflect the parallel lack of equal educational advantages, livable wage job opportunities, affordable housing options, environmental and work safety standards, and legal protection.The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates despite market saturation in many specialties under current conditions in the industry, an overall shortage of over 20,000 doctors in the US in 2017. In addition to that number, there is an added shortfall of 30,000- 95,000 doctors that would be needed immediately in order to equalize healthcare use patterns across race, income and social demographics, insurance coverage, and geography, “in addition to the policy changes and economic considerations needed to improve equity.” Lack of medical insurance was described as a relatively lesser issue among these. https://aamc-black.global.ssl.fastly.net/production/media/filer_public/31/13/3113ee5c-a038-4c16-89af-294a69826650/2019_update_-_the_complexities_of_physician_supply_and_demand_-_projections_from_2017-2032.pdfThe Covid-19 pandemic has brought out the deep and fundamental structural divisions and inequalities determining national responses to the crisis, and demonstrates the misanthropy of the ruling ideology that justifies it.Aside from the fundamental structural change that the US would need to undergo to do what the more advanced countries like China and Korea are doing, Americans would have to undergo an equally fundamental change in their fanatical neoliberal ideology. There is a reason that communist governments have been popular and successful in countries with high rates of infectious diseases that have long gone unattended by their predecessor regimes.Public health, however, is not a communist idea, but a small “d” democratic one, a popular institution. It is therefore an idea opposed by fanatical anti-communists, and by stubborn regimes of entrenched interests, like the current American one, which has proven systematically incapable of improving the lives of the bulk of its own people for more than half a century now despite extreme need.The principle upon which the fight against disease should be based is the creation of a robust body; but not the creation of a robust body by the artistic work of a doctor upon a weak organism; rather, the creation of a robust body with the work of the whole collectivity, upon the entire social collectivity.Someday, therefore, medicine will have to convert itself into a science that serves to prevent disease and orients the public toward carrying out its medical duties. Medicine should only intervene in cases of extreme urgency, to perform surgery or something else which lies outside the skills of the people of the new society we are creating.The work that today is entrusted to the Ministry of Health and similar organizations is to provide public health services for the greatest possible number of persons, institute a program of preventive medicine, and orient the public to the performance of hygienic practices.From: On Revolutionary Medicine, Ernesto Che GuevaraEven if I were to accept the fantasy that the US has the best health care in the world—a laughably ignorant and subjective claim—that best treatment could only apply to a small group of winners. In American thinking, that is the “best” outcome.In Chinese thinking, the “best” solution may not be the best treatment for a minority of the population that looks like something from a science fiction movie. The solution is important, but access to the solution is important too. The best solution is the one that balances the best outcome with benefit reaching the most people. A solution that is a less Buck Rogers, but still an effective treatment that applies to 99% of the population, is seen as better.Western allopathic medicine objectifies the patient and projects the doctor’s interests and views onto the patient, as a number of studies of racism in western medicine has shown, referring to the abuses of the “medical gaze”. Health care providers in both countries treat patients according to their own treatment goals, not the patients’ goals or any “objective” need. This cultural tendency as to what constitutes the ‘best’ solution will color what subjective judgment providers make.Let the Market sort ’em out.Someone who hasn’t worked in the US healthcare system, let alone during this pandemic as I have (though in my case I am an active observer rather than an interested one), might naively think that American doctors would like to do a more comprehensive job of infection control, but they are victims of the larger healthcare system. This vastly underestimates the violent hostility many doctors and nurses have to administering any tests ‘unnecessary’ to their own needs as healthcare providers, and takes certain reassurances from them too much at face-value. This naivete misunderstands their role integral with an entire system. It also assumes that public health authorities in the US don’t have interests parallel with the dominant social interests, often deferring to the private system.The spiral of infection this anti-testing attitude provokes can lead to misleading complaints by the medical profession. Though doctors may complain that the healthcare system in the US isn’t supporting them as they would like it to, don’t assume you know what they mean by that, or it is necessarily in your interest.And while the liberal mantra of individual choice is invoked whenever the broader interest rears its devil-spawned head crowned with hissing snakes, it is these same people, as Margaret Thatcher famously did, who say, ‘TINA’, There Is No Alternative. Tax cuts starve public services. Regulatory agencies are often administered by the corporate lawyers and executives whom they are supposed to be regulating but instead protect. This means that structures that could provide public interest have been subordinated to a system of specific private interests.Legal roles supporting Dr. ZaiusConsolidation of regulatory agencies in the name of ‘efficiency’ means that agencies have such a broad and disparate set of missions that they can’t effectively perform all the many functions they are assigned; Their broad mission scope creates a vague and complex mechanism for enforcement where regulation is undertaken. And while these choice-loving people hate ‘big government’, they ignore that corporations only exist at all by virtue of charters granted by governments. They say that those governments who abrogate that part of their power to those companies should demand nothing in return, even that those companies pursue their private profit in the broad public interest. Instead, they say, these companies should be left to their ‘choices’. They tell us that where regulation is in order, it should be “self-regulation”.For the American private healthcare system, there is nothing it can do with “mild” cases of Covid-19. “Mild” does not describe the experience of the person with the illness, but the requirements for healthcare provider treatment.Treatment in early stages and while symptoms are less severe, as China did along with quarantine dormitories to deliver that treatment while controlling contagion, simply can’t be translated into American private care terms. In the US, most of these people would fall under the category of, DENIED, not worth the system’s valuable time. Meanwhile, there is simply no institutional place for them to exist in the American neo-liberal ideological and economic structure.This kind of treatment in Wuhan is deemed worthwhile because of a broader concept of value, not strictly a private one.What the American system did instead is to promise to send checks to ‘everybody’ and tell them to stay home for an indeterminate time. It was a questionable promise, already disproven by those who have been excluded from payment, but for the sake of argument: That money could go to certain private individuals to help with their choices, and to provide private treatment, which may include testing IF it is relevant to that personal treatment. But the distribution of cash simply evades the question of the contradiction of a personal strategy against a social problem, such as a public health crisis.Some think that such spending makes us all a closer and healthier big family with common interests. But most of the bailout money will be spent to privilege maintenance of business as usual and the status quo everywhere, including in the healthcare system. So, how can anyone seriously believe that any amount of such money could change anything when that’s what it is prioritized to prevent?Personal emergencies and circumstances will take precedent over public prevention, because that is not a private service. This will inevitably lead to infecting others. No personal treatment regime will be tailored to preventing progression of the illness once, let alone before, it is contracted, unless it relates to that individual’s treatment begun after they became seriously ill.Putting more money into a system that prefers high-cost treatments of serious illness over treatment of a multitude of lower-cost, less-serious early stages of the illness, doesn’t necessarily mean improved outcome. It does, however, while reducing the total number of patients, carry the highest cost per patient treated, obviously by more exclusively and more often treating more highest-cost patients. This is the definition by which many claim that the US has the ‘best’ healthcare in the world.Compare this mapWith this mapThe American system has a toolbox of hammers, which is why it has “wars” over social issues, such as poverty and drugs; It has no such scalpels as a universal system of testing, universal data collection and sharing, comprehensive safety regulation, and targeted isolation that are the cornerstones of an effective contagion response. Where it has such tools, such as the NSA’s data collection, re-purposing them for public access contradicts why they exist. Blunt instruments ensure that the system’s fundamental details are not altered or eliminated.“War Is a Racket. It always has been…one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives”—Smedley Butler. Fitting caption to Trump, acting as self-proclaimed “war president”, invoking Defense Production Act and authorizing trillions to the oligarchy.Wars are logically fought to defend the existing society, the status quo. War is a means of addressing a question by mobilizing a society rather than by changing a society in any fundamental way. The endless social “wars” are fought as a defense of privilege against whatever that privilege feels may be challenging it. The War on Poverty at the height of the cold war was fought against the threat of a rival system emerging.Just as testing is subordinated to private treatment, so is protective gear. In the US, masks have also been privileged to healthcare professionals, though not to say necessarily available to them. Their public at first was actively discouraged from wanting, much less using, them systematically. American authorities then moved on to encouraging DIY solutions that ignore standardized quality and effectiveness, coordination, and the reason that disposable PPE is disposable. Rather than reducing exposure, or taking responsibility, the American system thinks mostly of reducing liability.By contrast, in China, people in public places wear face masks so they won’t infect others. Americans are acting in ways that do not care about infecting others, as there is no shame in it and little profit in infection control. In fact, a display of defiance is a rejection of potential liability—a cornerstone of business. The western ideal of freedom gives a false sense of liberty that the objective reality of the virus has made impossible, not “big government”; This is something that only privilege can ignore.Thatcherism #1: A person’s first duty is to themselves.Rather than being a problem of individual or collective psychology, this is a matter of a particular psychology, championed by powerful, interested narcissists, that imposes itself onto policy, even in collectivist shame cultures, like Japan.Whatever is going on in society is somehow not real to people with this ideology. Society is something that happens to somebody else, often beneath them, if at all. Hence, they view the pandemic as a hoax or those with public space concerns as paranoid meddlers.We see the sobering implications of this extreme ideology at work in the Covid pandemic. Despite the British NHS being state-operated, it exists within the same ideological and financialized regime. NHS’s public efforts are contradicted and sabotaged by a society where public health emergencies and private emergencies are distinct and separate, and one is exclusively privileged over the other. Predictably, the UK’s response to the pandemic has been among the worst in Europe in terms of infection and mortality rates, as the crisis has been left to be solved by individuals and families in the scope of their private lives, and by statistics.Americans can treat infection as a public order question, but not as a public health issue. That’s because the public is a threat hanging over the privileged, not something they share in.They can lock down the country, but they can’t universally distribute effective face masks, because that is an individual matter to be solved by uncoordinated individuals with unequal standards, no particular professional training, and disparate intentions.Contrast American DIY this with the kind of comprehensive public health crisis response in by Taiwan:Deutsche Welle (DW) English language report on Taiwan’s face-mask strategy.In the American cultural ecology, there simply isn’t any central agency to administer the tests on a massive scale, even on autopsies, and no systemic logic for one to exist or be organized for public use. Even the CDC lacks such a mandate, deferring to local authorities that may not even exist in some places, much less cooperate with other jurisdictions. There would be nothing for a central authority to do with the information, even if they had it.Where data is even collected, there is no comprehensive standard or systematic process that enables data to be combined from local health authorities in a way that we can even get an entirely coherent national picture. ProPublica reports, “the quality and speed of the data coming in varies so much that it can feel like wrangling reports from more than 50 countries.” There’s Been a Spike in People Dying at Home in Several Cities. That…The same ProPublica article says American public health authorities can not even give real time Covid-19 data to the public in April 2020 because of, “thin staffing or antiquated computer systems”. If this is war, America is going to war with the military it has, not the one it needs.What does exist within the American healthcare system is an ecology of service providers and vendors, and an infrastructure that supports that system. To understand that ecology, let’s take a look at the supply chains that support the American healthcare system.Service provider supply-chains can be vague, mysterious, and complicated. That is even more true for health service providers because of safety concerns, standards that can be subjective, a decentralized market, and multiple people within an organization who can be responsible for ordering supplies. Healthcare supply chains contrast with traditionally more integrated and centralized manufacturer supply chains.Manufacturer supply chains tend to be throughput-oriented, while healthcare supply chains tend to lack standardized processes that help overcome bottlenecks and systematically address quality control issues. American private health care systems center on individual doctors, even in large groups, who may have unique preferences in terms of quality and quantity assessed per appointment or procedure.The US is geographically diverse and spread-out. Given that most US healthcare is provided by disparate providers and non-acute centers rather than hospitals, there are few centralized inventories, and no large public stockpile. Disparate providers have different needs based on staffing and local circumstances and infrastructure. There is no standard distribution, quantity, price, or availability, and a plethora of parallel markets.Despite some particularities, this is not entirely unique to the American healthcare system; However, in the US, this highly imperfect, slow responding, and inefficient supply chain system exists in an economic and political regime hostile to regulation, long-term planning, or overall economic coordination. Coordination would smooth out supply, but it would also have the unwanted effect of reducing speculative and market profits from imperfect information, local imbalances and supplier availability, bulk and limited purchase, and market swings. This means that, in the US, there is no structure or motive to meaningfully coordinate and track all raw and finished materials in that supply chain. Materials may be hoarded or encounter production or distribution bottlenecks, but there is no recognized process for resolution or command.On the contrary, the Defense Production Act invoked by President Trump to coordinate the public response has been interpreted to turn this problem on its ear. It was iconically used to attack the site of the first work and food safety regulatory reforms of the 20th century in the US, the meat packing industry. The Trump administration identified supply chain “bottlenecks” as regulatory closing of unsafe work environments in the meat packing industry by state and local authorities. Meanwhile, rather than enforcing high uniform quality control, such as in use of PPE by health workers, policy has been to allow relaxation in standards, resulting in elimination or a multiplication of particular workplace protection regimes, further complicating the market. Complication also enhances profits.The freedom of speculative and other capital to circulate, and prices and supplies to fluctuate unhindered, is a priority to those with commanding positions in the intangible goods economy, which the United States dominates. Bottlenecks in the flow and leveraging of capital, not in production or delivery, are the issue. Or, to be more explicit in what I am saying, there is a direct connection between deregulation, which has been done for reasons of speculative profit, and the demotion or absence of public health and other infrastructures necessary to mount an effective pandemic response.Due to commodities being rapidly resold and arbitrarily repackaged on an international scale countless times a minute, horse meat ended up shuffled into IKEA’s beef lasagna like financial packages were turned into toxic assets in the financial crisis of 2008. Enron made billions before going bankrupt by profiting from the change in value of oil and gas, not the price itself. Such crises only attract lawmaker interest when it threatens to provoke unwanted regulation, which it’s their job to prevent, rather than protecting public health and interest.In the case of surgical masks, the Covid-19 panic led to some withholding of materials and supplies, including finished products. 3M, which manufactures some N95 masks, does not sell them directly to health care providers. Instead, they use distributors who are free to charge whatever they see fit and withhold supplies themselves, or to sell them to other middle-men. This also gives an example of the unnecessarily complicated and vague supply chain management that reduces quality at point of service, and makes supply chains, and products and services, mysterious.To further inflate prices, companies have resisted converting production to much needed medical supplies, such as PPE, because that would reduce their rate of profit on existing stock, which is the reason for hoarding, and reduce profit margins on future sales in an monopoly-established market demand. Any expansion of production must happen within that system of monopoly. What is produced is diverted to the highest profit markets, not the place of greatest need. That includes primary resources, such as cotton used to make masks, that speculators withheld from manufacturers to raise the price. The US Pentagon, with its revolving career door to its contractors, has not had the world’s best record of being an institution that suppresses the corruption and delays that a mysterious and complex process can elicit.Once the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in medical supply shortages, American lawmakers responded with protectionist legislation to protect American medical supply chain vendors from Chinese competition against what they weren’t making and selling. This is the precise opposite of the Chinese response, which was to ease import taxes on pandemic essential supplies for epidemic preventative public health measures until domestic production could catch up.This is based on two distinct ideas of economy. The Chinese idea of economy, having been influenced by socialism and their specific culture, sees economy as a collective body as well as an arena of personal profit. The American idea of economy is strictly one of personal profit, dismissing all else as “inefficiency”.The American president delegated policy-setting for invocation of the Defense Production Act to people like his chief China advisor, trade-warrior Peter Navarro—a man without expertise either about China nor in public health and infectious disease control. The intersection of the US pandemic response with the trade war against China is not arbitrary nor the result of what Chinese responsibility for this pandemic may or may not exist.Monopolies rely on controlled production and closed markets. Markets are controlled through some level of production as well as exclusion. The “liberation movement” pushing to maintain production, even in the face of drastically reduced demand and rising inventories, has no better example than the Covid-induced oil glut. That came about as a result of nations refusing to reduce production in order to maintain their existing market share at a time of plummeting consumption.Oil tanker waiting off-shore with nowhere to put its cargo. Crude oil prices temporarily entered negative territory in 2020, when inventories from over-production was set to exceed storage capacity. Though exacerbated by the Covid-19 panic, over-production of oil is a long-standing issue.Under supply-side economics, production and consumption have lost any direct connection, with production for its own sake and for market dominance, unrelated to economic coherency. Instead, production is finance capital-driven and directed toward wealth concentration and cost reduction. Ideally, the suppression of wages is compensated with exports expanding markets by undercutting rival nations’ wage costs. Under pandemic conditions, this model is in chaos. The auto industry is pushing for an unregulated return to work and unregulated market, in order to maximize profits, despite rounds of factory start-up and shut-down from outbreaks, supplier bottlenecks causing backlogs alongside excess inventories, and lack of available stock of specific options in a production model based on high consumer-specific variants.While war-time production commands were invoked by President Trump, there was no public health authority to participate in prioritization and standards to direct and coordinate production. Instead of a public health or infectious disease experts, efforts are overseen by interested parties and political appointees. Those officials act in continuation of overriding policies and existing business relationships, not necessarily in the interest of fighting the pandemic itself.This kind of direction of efforts, where the pandemic itself was a secondary consideration, has even meant forced prioritization of some things, such as chloroquine, that has no proven value against Covid-19; That is according to President Trump’s own scientific experts on his pandemic task force and a director of the agency overseeing vaccine development efforts.The arbitrary privileging of chloroquine purchases, production, and even export for Covid-19 treatment has diverted supplies of the drug away from patients with conditions the drug is proven to help. What this can be thought to have accomplished would only occur to a “businessman”, like Trump or Navarro: They are fulfilling the needs of a targeted market demand that they have themselves created or that may not even objectively exist, regardless of the broader implications or its impact on overall human needs.Why specifically chloroquine as the arbitrary choice of expensive patent snake-oil cures for Covid-19? According to one article, The Covid-19 "Manhattan Project" and its Ties to the CIA : “Novartis, working on a hydroxychloroquine treatment for the virus, paid (Donald Trump’s recently convicted lawyer Michael) Cohen more than $1 million for “policy insights” after Trump’s election in 2016. After their relationship was leaked, Novartis apologized. Later, a congressional investigation revealed the real objective of Novartis, the company: “explicitly sought to hire Michael Cohen to provide the company ‘access to key policymakers’ in the Trump administration…”Policy in implementing the DPA is to “negotiate” price and quality through the market, not to regulate it; The complex decentralized medical supply chain in the US makes such command implementation both legally and technically more complicated, and all the more in need of coordination on the highest level, including international.It has been said that the cure is worse than the Covid-19 disease. Perhaps they are, but this is only said to evade that prevention, through a rapid, coherent, regulated public health response would have avoided both, as it has in Taiwan. There, the regulatory infrastructure was already in place, and will remain so.Safe work, production, and product regulations would require vastly increased staffing, specialization, and litigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, among others. Instead, a regulatory regime is being negotiated by public pressure and market operations, including illegal reopening. It is being negotiated by lawyers and business people rather than set by public health experts.Pandemic-response regulation would strengthen the role of unions, who have a leading role in complaint-driven investigations. It would strengthen direct spot policing authority to inspect businesses for violations, such as exists in Taiwan. It would be:Leaving regulation of the pandemic to private companies, and their own profit and security driven priorities, has demonstrated itself to result in companies hiding outbreaks and whitewashing compliance through their control of information. This is done to evade employee opposition and imposition of public regulation. Only that kind of enforced state regulation would provide effective and supply-chain consistent measures to better ensure consumer and employee safety, as well as integrate into a coherent social response necessary to contain contagion.Employee temperature check at Amazon, which has not prevented infectious outbreaks at their facilities, nor has it contributed to coordinated efforts to control the pandemic. It has fragmented them. Policy under the Trump Administration has been toward systematic fragmentation of response to evade blame, and to disorient public response.Placing testing in the hands of private doctors and hospitals is just as fundamental a conflict of interests. American private care is about doctors rationing services to individuals to contain costs and maximize profits, while providing testing to serve their treatment regimes and profits. The public interest is not in their scope. Asking hospitals and doctors to implement a regime of universal testing doesn’t actually make any sense in the context of their logic and role. There is nothing THEY can do with the data from those results, because they don’t test for data points.Test results would need to be managed by a public health system that doesn’t exist in America, that nobody is responsible for creating, and that the existing system will continue fighting furiously to block, sabotage, undermine, prevent, and exploit any opportunity to achieve its opposite.That isn’t to say the American system can’t respond at all to infectious outbreaks. The response to hepatitis shows it can, but only within existing frameworks. In the case of hepatitis, success in reducing the overall incidence of the disease in the US, even while local outbreaks continue, has come from public vaccination campaigns. This means individuals receive injections, even provided by public nurses and clinics.In the case of an infectious disease that doesn’t have the private treatment option of vaccination, the system doesn’t have many effective solution options. Despite success with reducing hepatitis, the increases in lyme and other vector-borne diseases in the US demonstrates the systemic indifference or hostility to anything that doesn’t fall within the treatment goals and methods of the existing healthcare infrastructure.Even in the case of vaccination, vaccination records are often discarded, though some states have recently been developing a limited registry. However, since the providers have no obligation to keep the records, and public authorities have no mandate to keep records either, responses tend to be incidental and uncoordinated. The lack of organization, as well as a lack of international coordination, make it difficult to martial a response when there isn’t a vaccine manufacturer and/or major stake-holder to lobby for it.President Trump has pursued a deliberate policy of local entities creating their own infection control regimes rather than the federal government, including establishing a presidential task force that severed and further fragmented existing national emergency response networks. Ineffective, but in-line with pre-existing policy and resistance to taking any action that would harm corporate profits and deregulation. One of Trump’s first actions was to initiate a travel ban, which many experts contend is an ineffective strategy, but aligned with his existing hermetic and xenophobic policies.His America-first policies see everyone as a competitor. In April, 2020, he moved to cut off the World Health Organization’s funding in a competition with its authority, calling its response too, “Chinese”. Ironically, WHO’s failings in the Covid-19 crisis, which are real, may be the product of WHO’s lack of independent enforcement authority over governments and lack of American interest in such institutions. This made WHO weak to Chinese pressure and influence, as they tried to coax more information from China without alienating them. In another irony, equally in line with American de-regulatory policy, cutting WHO funding will do nothing to alter Chinese policy, but it will hinder efforts by poorer, smaller nations, estimated to be half of 182 countries surveyed by the IMF, who lack their own resources that can as effectively oversee pandemic efforts. Meanwhile, lack of complete information sharing mean that every interested party must endlessly duplicate each other’s research efforts if only just to insure having all the relevant detail, costing time and wasting limited resources on counter-productive competition.Of course, sidelining WHO also supports American efforts to control market concentration. One example is how this serves US attempts at domination of vaccine development, which is subordinated to the American healthcare monopoly system. WHO’s organizational logic would potentially support vaccine development and administration outside this closed system. That has the potential to allow outside interests to invade the American market by diversifying sources. Such a development would potentially abrogate intended American domination of global markets.Apparently, those supporting this course of action against the Chinese virus would like a more American response; As if this is a national, rather than a human, problem, or as if the problem is governmental and foreign“interference” rather than the objective reality making state intervention and international coordination necessary.Listening to the experts is never enough and isn’t a solution in itself. As with Global Warming, some have advocated “listening to the science”; However, science can only tell us about the disease, not how to implement a response to it. That’s a political rather than a purely technical decision that can be left to engineers and markets to sort out. When left to the experts, those decisions and strategies are left to the experts’ bureaucratic interests and social biases. A xenophobic nationalist course of action simply contributes to entrenched national interests dominating that nation’s response, and in doing so obstructs what may be the most appropriate response to the situation. One of the first principles of managing infectious disease is that they are specific, and have specific requirements.As Prof. Terry Lum told a committee of the UK parliament investigating that country’s high nursing home death rate compared to Hong Kong’s, the UK relied on its own past experience and the institutional logic that evolved from experience with flu epidemics, while also conforming to a strictly private solution within existing structural frameworks. In the UK, and in the US, nursing homes are vulnerable due to the casualization of health workers employed at multiple locations, and lack of community isolation facilities as a contagion firewall. Instead, every individual nursing home requires their own on-site containment wards, which is a practical impossibility.Countries that experienced the SARS and MERS outbreaks may have developed organizational processes and structures more appropriate to Covid-19. The American rejection of international expertise, in favor of its interested domestic experts, means America will not learn from foreign experience; Instead, as with each nursing home, Americans will be required to re-invent the wheel under conditions that resist change inconsistent with existing structures and practices, ensuring that responses permanently lag behind developments. Without structures for national and international coordination, lessons, when learned, are learned too late and when ignored, serve only the entrenched interests at the expense of the public. Meanwhile, the lack of shared resources results in weak links that promote outbreaks that will spread.One group of experts, Scientists to Stop Covid-19, is led by self-styled “venture capitalist” Dr. Tom Cahill, and includes such notables as biotech and pharmaceutical philanthropist Michael Milken, (pictured above as young hot-shot junk bond promoter) implicated by Ivan Boesky for racketeering and securities fraud and pardoned by Donald Trump on February 18, 2020. Another member of the group is Peter Thiel, whose philanthropy goes beyond medical solutions to include seasteading, literally creating off-shore private capital havens beyond the laws of any nation. He justifies himself through the intellectual pretensions of fascism expressed in the “theories” of Carl Schmitt. Thiel has also made news in threatening to move operations he controls out of California because of what he calls California’s over-regulation of the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal reported that “the FDA and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) have implemented some of their suggestions, namely relaxing drug manufacturer regulations and requirements for potential coronavirus treatment drugs.” Actions by the members of this group revealed a significant intersection of interests: Not only have they vastly profited by benefit from, and insider knowledge of, new laws, regulatory changes, government purchases, and treatments though; They also have also used advanced knowledge of, and participation in formulation of, trade war measures against China to reap stock and bond market windfalls.In the US, limited public health authorities, which are often local, also often have limited authority to direct jurisdictions as to what steps to take. Instead, it is often experts in non-public health related areas, under no central coordination or authority, to make decisions when and how it suits them. Agencies may purchase vaccines, but that doesn’t necessarily connect with IP, storage, distribution, and administration of the vaccines. Each step is uncoordinated and ad hoc, leaving no one watching the watchers. This not only causes slow and haphazard response, but quality control, corruption, and competition issues. During the Covid-19 crisis in the US, the price of ventilators has multiplied as different states, jurisdictions, and companies compete to purchase those available.New York Governor Cuomo speaks about ventilator purchase competition.I could go on about patents and patent monopolies, healthcare industry kickbacks to doctors, financing an entire economy or individual sectors such as healthcare through unsupportable debt bubbles, and tax policies that encourage charges so excessive that they can’t be paid, with the resulting secondary market of the selling of unpayable consumer debts being a leading source of hospital profits. I could also talk more about trade wars and tariffs, and data ownership issues in sharing pandemic related data with the public having implications that stretch to Google, Facebook, and other data barons. I could even go into tax regulations and subsidies that support existing manufactures and services (that is lobbyists for entrenched interests) over creating new ones, or measures that promote specific American colonization schemes, such as genetic engineering. This answer is only the tip of a very large and largely ignored, unexplained, or neoliberal-splained ice-burg.Administering and overseeing this glacier are public officials who live their lives in a bubble of lobbyists; They are protected by a public who, like their public officials, have their narcissism catered to, while they live in a self-absorbed bubble, indifferent or hostile to anything outside their private scope.It may even be claimed that if you don’t have a solution, then there isn’t a problem. Since the American pandemic response can not be repaired within the current parameters of its healthcare system, they tell us there is nothing to be done except continued expansion of deregulation, austerity, and liberal economics, while waiting for ‘herd immunity’ to kick in.However, to put it more succinctly, you just can’t get there from here.

Practical Answer. Insurance is unlike most purchases - a product that you should buy but should hope to never have to use. It could be a rip off if a) it doesn't adequately protect from financial risk, b) is over priced and c) is unusable as in refused authorization. In the US, commercial insurers also get discounts of up to 90% off fees charged by providers, so their customers are also going to be able to benefit from this drastic discount, even if the bill is paid by the patients under the deductible threshold.There are two separate issues: a) What is the underlying benefit of insurance? and b) Is the insurance offered in the US for health priced and configured in a fair manner?Health insurance is a financial product; it is not primarily to keep you healthy; it is to PREVENT FINANCIAL DISASTER from accident or illness.Insurance is an expression of solidarity, sharing risks across the entire population as an expression of a shared common destiny. Without it, only the very richest would weather out financial disasters, or, the most luck in life who never have any serious issues and get scholarships for all education.Women are at greater health risk than men during reproductive years purely by reason of their “propensity” to become pregnant, a very health-risky condition (1 in 40 pregnancies have serious medical complications). Should they pay more for health insurance than men, or should men bear part of the costs of pregnancy since children would pay for our future pensions? Should single people pay more to cover pregnancy for the same reason? If we didn’t share the risks and costs of pregnancy across the entire population, health insurance for reproductive age women would be astronomically-high.Older people are at greater risk of illness than younger people. However, younger people, brought into the world and raised by said older people, are they not thankful and morally obligated enough to share the costs of health risks with older generations? At an extreme, if the younger don’t help pay for the elders, then at what point does it become economically possible to decide if $xxx is worth to give granny yyy months of life or relief? Should we just leave the elderly to suffer in silence or even to be euthanized as in Solyent Green so as not to “burden” the younger?People with inborn genetic predisposition to illness are likely going to need more health care. Should their risk not be shared by the luckier, genetically-blessed population? If not, when does one decide who should live and die at birth? Should one simply terminate pregnancies if the DNA of the fetus indicates predisposition to zzz diseases?Victims of natural disasters usually have medical issues. Should the rest of the country not share in their risks? Should those who decided to rebuild in New Orleans on land that’s going to be sinking due to Man’s disturbance of the marshlands and in every more turbulent weather? There is so much land in the US, that it would have made more sense, from an economic generational viewpoint, to relocate to a new higher-ground place.Should Medicaid be abolished and the least economically fortunate populations go untreated? There is a “disproportionate” use of Medicaid those States where Mr. Trump was popular; I wonder how popular a policy of removing Medicaid would be for families.Should private insurers be allowed to “cherry pick” whom they insure? They do, on a county by county basis, even under Obamacare; that is an inherently antithetical behavior to the underling philosophy of insurance and solidarity. Essentially, it is simply money-grubbing, providing a financial product only to those who don’t use it!Insurance - WikipediaInsurance was born the moment that people formed large social groups. It essentially is a way to spread economic risk among a large group so that damage caused by a risk to individuals was attenuated by the collective. The bigger the group, the lower the risk of disaster to any member of the group.When there was little way to collect, analyze and attribute “risk factors”, insurance was purely an “after the fact” model. So, one simply tallied the total cost of all risks to a group of people in a given year, and then had each member of the group to bear his fraction of that total. That is called risk sharing.Today, once collects billions of data on individuals and risk assessments to an increasingly sophisticated level. Instead of “after the fact” sharing of risk, one is now increasingly able to “before the fact” (i.e. predict) risk down to an individual level in some cases.Insurance companies use such data to “individualize premiums” i.e. to charge higher premiums to people more at risk. It is inherently contrary to the philosophy of collectivism - the core rational for insurance, and has been usurped by the commercial goal of maximizing profits above all other considerations!The PACA (aka Obamacare) aimed to maximize risk sharing bya) getting all adults to pay into insurance pools andb) limiting premium variation to only 4 age bands (so the younger pay more but the older pay less);c) it also has a failsafe net for those who couldn’t afford the premium by a premium subsidy financed by a 2% tax on those earning >$200k per year (i.e. The wealthier pay more so that the poorer pay less).d) It also allows comparison of highly complex products by defining a standard configuration packages of core features, Bronze through Gold.e) Leveled the playing field in marketing by creating online marketplaces, so that smaller insurers could compete on equal footing with larger insurers.The Commercial Implementation of Health Insurance in the US - Anything BUT a free market.One would naively think that the huge population of the United States (360 million) would imply that risk sharing would be much more efficient than in a smaller nation like Ireland - and so that insurance premia would be lower.However, that is not the case, for several reasons, some legal but mostly commercial:There is NO national-level insurance market and no national-level insurer (except for the Federal Government). Each State is an independent insurance market. This means that:Insurers can pick and choose States to cover, instead of being forced to spread risk across the country as a whole. Worse yet, they are even allowed, within a State, to pick and choose counties!Administration, marketing and configuration of insurance products is rendered that much more costly and inefficient - as each has to be tailored at least by State.The largest State is California 38 million. That means that the population of largest insurance market in the US is smaller than that of Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil or dozens of nations with national insurance schemes. List of countries by population (United Nations) - WikipediaThere is no national provider of health services (again, except for the Federal Government such as the Veterans’ Administration), no national pricing for pharmaceuticals or health services, and, most importantly, no national payment processing system (i.e. no “Single payor”; NB single payor refers only to claims processing and is not the same as single insurer).This means that the commercial insurance industry, already rendered less efficient by State fragmentation, sits between health providers and healthcare consumers. The lack of streamlined payor processing hugely raised the cost and administration of health insurance claims; a clinical practice usually has to deal with HUNDREDS of policy-specific pre-authorization and claims processing protocols, which are extremely labor-intensive. Even if one cannot get a single payor, at least a streamlined payor processor (e.g. common web-based interface for all policies and insurers) could reduce health care administrative staffing by at least 60–80%.)There is opacity in pricing. Neither the provider (the doctors and health personnel) nor the patient (the consumers) ever can truly know what any health procedure actually costs. All the data are controlled jealously by the myriad of commercial insurers.Thus, the health insurance “industry’ is possibly the most uncapitalistically-organized of all industries in the USA. A “Free Market” means free access to product and price information.Doctors don’t know what drugs actually cost to make, nor what a patient would be charged by a hospital group, nor what are the unit costs of any tests.Patients, especially when disease is complex, cannot ever know what would be the costs to them (nor the costs to the providers) before the fact.Provider organization themselves usually do not truly know, through time-and-motion studies, what any specific procedure costs them; they simply tally up the annual expenditure and arbitrarity charge fees.Pricing is absurdly variable, varied and unfair to an obscene degree in the US health care market.When I look at my claims statements, there is a “claimed amount” (= list price) and and “allowed amount” (= discount price negotiated). The difference is striking and illogical from 10–35% is the usual ratio of allowed/claimed amount.That means that someone without insurance is faced with bills that can be 10x that actually paid out by insurance companies.

Our boy Trump has spent a lot of time and money in and out of court. The following very long and ongoing list of court cases won and lost, is compliments of Wikipedia:Trump and his businesses have been involved in 3,500 legal cases in U.S. federal courts and state court, an unprecedented number for a U.S. presidential candidate.[1]Of the 3,500 suits, Trump or one of his companies were plaintiffs in 1,900; defendants in 1,450; and bankruptcy, third party, or other in 150.[1]Trump was named in at least 169 suits in federal court.[2]Over 150 other cases were in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida (covering Broward County, Florida) since 1983.[3]In about 500 cases, judges dismissed plaintiffs' claims against Trump. In hundreds more, cases ended with the available public record unclear about the resolution.[1]Where there was a clear resolution, Trump won 451 times, and lost 38.[4]The topics of the legal cases include contract disputes, defamation claims, and allegations of sexual harassment. Trump's companies have been involved in more than 100 tax disputes, and on "at least three dozen" occasions the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has obtained tax liens against Trump properties for nonpayment of taxes.[1]On a number of occasions, Trump has threatened legal action but did not ultimately follow through.[5]Of Trump's involvement in the lawsuits, his lawyer Alan Garten said in 2015 that this was "a natural part of doing business in [the United States]",[5][6]and in the real estate industry, litigation to enforce contracts and resolve business disputes is indeed common.[5]Trump has, however, been involved in far more litigation than fellow real-estate magnates; the USA Today analysis in 2016 found that Trump had been involved in legal disputes more than Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., Donald Bren, Stephen M. Ross, Sam Zell, and Larry Silverstein combined.[1]The Trump lawsuits[5][6]have attracted criticism from Trump's opponents, who say that this is not a trait that conservatives should support.[5]James Copland, director of legal policy at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute, states that "Trump clearly has an affinity for filing lawsuits, partly because he owns a lot of businesses" and has sometimes used litigation as a "bullying tactic".[5]Although Trump has said that he "never" settles legal claims, Trump and his businesses have settled with plaintiffs in at least 100 cases (mostly involving personal injury claims arising from injuries at Trump properties), with settlements ranging as high as hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars[1]and recently as high as tens of millions of dollars.[7]Among the most well-known Trump legal cases was the Trump University litigation. Three legal actions were brought alleging fraud, one by the New York State Attorney General and the others by class action plaintiffs.[8]In November 2016, Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle the litigation.[7]In 1985, New York City brought a lawsuit against Trump for allegedly using tactics to force out tenants of 100 Central Park South,[17]which he intended to demolish together with the building next door. After ten years in court, the two sides negotiated a deal allowing the building to stand as condominiums.[18]In 1988, the Justice Department sued Trump for violating procedures related to public notifications when buying voting stock in a company related to his attempted takeovers of Holiday Corporation and Bally Manufacturing Corporation in 1986. On April 5, 1988, Trump agreed to pay $750,000 to settle the civil penalties of the antitrust lawsuit.[19]In late 1990, Trump was sued for $2 million by a business analyst for defamation, and Trump settled out of court.[20]Briefly before Trump's Taj Mahal opened in April 1990, the analyst had said that the project would fail by the end of that year. Trump threatened to sue the analyst's firm unless the analyst recanted or was fired. The analyst refused to retract the statements, and his firm fired him for ostensibly unrelated reasons.[21]Trump Taj Mahal declared bankruptcy in November 1990, the first of several such bankruptcies.[22]After, the NYSE ordered the firm to compensate the analyst $750,000; the analyst did not release the details of his settlement with Trump.[23]In 1991, Trump sued the manufacturers of a helicopter that crashed in 1989, killing three executives of his New Jersey hotel casino business.[24]The helicopter fell 2,800 feet after the main four-blade rotor and tail rotor broke off the craft, killing Jonathan Benanav, an executive of Trump Plaza, and two others: Mark Grossinger Etess, president of Trump Taj Mahal, and Stephen F. Hyde, chief executive of the Atlantic City casinos.[25][26][27]One of the defendants was owned by the Italian government, providing a basis for removing it to federal court, where the case was dismissed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld the dismissal in 1992, and the Supreme Court denied Trump's petition to hear the case in the same year.[28]In 1991, Trump Plaza was fined $200,000 by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission for moving African American and female employees from craps tables in order to accommodate high roller Robert LiButti, a mob figure and alleged John Gotti associate, who was said to fly into fits of racist rage when he was on losing streaks.[29]There is no indication that Trump was ever questioned in that investigation, he was not held personally liable, and Trump denies even knowing what LiButti looked like.[29]In 1991, one of Trump's casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was found guilty of circumventing state regulations about casino financing when Donald Trump's father bought $3.5 million in chips that he had no plans to gamble. Trump Castle was forced to pay a $30,000 fine under the settlement, according to New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement Director Jack Sweeney. Trump was not disciplined for the illegal advance on his inheritance, which was not confiscated.[30]In 1993, Donald Trump sued Jay Pritzker, a Chicago financier and Trump's business partner since 1979 on the Grand Hyatt hotel. Trump alleged that Pritzker overstated earnings in order to collect excessive management fees.[31]In 1994, Pritzker sued Trump for violating their agreement by, among other ways, failing to remain solvent.[32]The two parties ended the feud in 1995 in a sealed settlement, in which Trump retained some control of the hotel and Pritzker would receive reduced management fees and pay Trump's legal expenses.[33]In 1993, Vera Coking sued Trump and his demolition contractor for damage to her home during construction of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.[34]In 1997, she dropped the suit against Trump and settled with his contractor for $90,000.[35]Coking had refused to sell her home to Trump and ultimately won a 1998 Supreme Court decision that prevented Atlantic City from using eminent domain to condemn her property.[36][37]In 1996, Trump was sued by more than 20 African-American residents of Indiana who charged that Trump reneged on promises to hire 70% of his work force from the minority community for his riverboat casino on Lake Michigan. The suit also charged that he hadn't honored his commitments to steer sufficient contracts to minority-owned businesses in Gary, Indiana. The suit was eventually dismissed due to procedural and jurisdiction issues.[38][39]In the late 1990s, Donald Trump and rival Atlantic City casino owner Stephen Wynn engaged in an extended legal conflict during the planning phase of new casinos Wynn had proposed to build. Both owners filed lawsuits against one another and other parties, including the State of New Jersey, beginning with Wynn's antitrust accusation against Trump.[40][41]After two years in court, Wynn's Mirage casino sued Trump in 1999 alleging that his company had engaged in a conspiracy to harm Mirage and steal proprietary information, primarily lists of wealthy Korean gamblers. In response, Trump's attorneys claimed that Trump's private investigator dishonored his contract by working as a "double agent" for the Mirage casino by secretly taping conversations with Trump. All the cases were settled at the same time on the planned day of an evidentiary hearing in court in February 2000, which was never held.[42]Personal and sexualIn 1992, Trump sued ex-wife Ivana Trump for not honoring a gag clause in their divorce agreement by disclosing facts about him in her best-selling book. Trump won the gag order.[43][44][45]The divorce was granted on grounds that Ivana claimed Donald Trump's treatment of her was "cruel and inhuman treatment".[46][47]Years later, Ivana said that she and Donald "are the best of friends".[48]A sexual assault claim from 1994 for child rape was filed against Trump on October 14, 2016,[49]a case that was dropped and refiled, remaining in suspension as of November 4, 2016.[50]In April 1997, Jill Harth Houraney filed a $125,000,000 lawsuit against Trump for sexual harassment in 1993, claiming he "'groped' her under her dress and told her he wanted to make her his 'sex slave'". Harth voluntarily withdrew the suit when her husband settled a parallel case. Trump has called the allegations "meritless".[51][52]Lawsuits 2000–2009[edit]In 2000, Donald Trump paid $250,000 to settle fines related to charges brought by New York State Lobbying Commission director David Grandeau. Trump was charged with circumventing state law to spend $150,000 lobbying against government approval of plans to construct an Indian-run casino in the Catskills, which would have diminished casino traffic to Trump's casinos in Atlantic City.[53][54]From 2000 on, Trump tried to partner with a German venture in building a "Trump Tower Europe" in Germany. The company founded for this, "TD Trump Deutschland AG" was dissolved in 2003, several lawsuits following in the years thereafter.[55]In 2001, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought a financial-reporting case against Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc., alleging that the company had committed several "misleading statements in the company's third-quarter 1999 earnings release". Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. consented to the Commission's cease-and-desist order, said the culprit had been dismissed, and that Trump had personally been unaware of the matter.[56][57][58]Trump sued Leona Helmsley,[59]and Helmsley counter-sued Trump[60]due to contentions regarding ownership and operation of the Empire State Building. In 2002, Trump announced that he and his Japanese business partners, were selling the Empire State Building to partners of his rival Leona Helmsley.[61][62]In 2003, the city of Stuttgart denied TD Trump Deutschland AG, a Trump Organization subsidiary, the permission to build a planned tower due to questions over its financing. Trump Deutschland sued the city of Stuttgart, and lost. In 2004 Trump's German corporate partner brought suit against the Trump Organization for failure to pay back a EUR 200 million pre-payment as promised. In 2005, the German state attorney prosecuted Trump Deutschland and its partners for accounting fraud.[63][64][65]In 2004, Donald Trump sued Richard T. Fields in Broward County Circuit Court (in Florida); Fields was once Trump's business partner in the casino business, but had recently become a successful casino developer in Florida apart from Trump. Fields counter-sued Trump in Florida court. Trump alleged that Fields misled other parties into believing he still consulted for Trump, and Fields alleged improprieties in Trump's business.[66]The two businessmen agreed in 2008 to drop the lawsuits when Fields agreed to buy Trump Marina in Atlantic City, New Jersey, for $316 million,[67]but the deal was unsettled again in 2009 because Trump resigned his leadership of Trump Entertainment after Fields lowered his bid.[68]Fields never bought the company, which went into bankruptcy about the same time and was sold for $38 million.[69][70]Trump's lawsuit was dismissed after a hearing in 2010.[71]In 2004, the Trump Organization partnered with Bayrock Group on a $200 million hotel and condo project in Fort Lauderdale Beach, to be called Trump International Hotel & Tower. After proceeding for five years, real estate market devaluation stymied the project in 2009 and Trump dissolved his licensing deal, demanding that his name be removed from the building. Soon after this, the project defaulted on a $139 million loan in 2010.[72]Investors later sued the developers for fraud. Trump petitioned to have his name removed from the suit, saying he had only lent his name to the project. However his request was refused since he had participated in advertising for it.[73]The insolvent building project spawned over 10 lawsuits, some of which were still not settled in early 2016.[74]In 2006, the Town of Palm Beach began fining Trump $250 per day for ordinance violations related to his erection of an 80-foot-tall (24 m) flagpole flying a 15 by 25 feet (4.6 by 7.6 m) American flag on his property. Trump sued the town for $25 million, saying that they abridged his free speech, also disputing an ordinance that local businesses be "town-serving". The two parties settled as part of a court-ordered mediation, in which Trump was required to donate $100,000 to veterans' charities. At the same time, the town ordinance was modified allowing Trump to enroll out-of-town members in his Mar-a-Lago social club.[75]Trump International Hotel and Tower in ChicagoAfter the 2008 housing-market collapse, Deutsche Bank attempted to collect $40 million that Donald Trump personally guaranteed against their $640 million loan for Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. Rather than paying the debt, Trump sued Deutsche Bank for $3 billion for undermining the project and damage to his reputation.[76]Deutsche Bank then filed suit to obtain the $40 million. The two parties settled in 2010 with Deutsche Bank extending the loan term by five years.[77]In 2008, Trump filed a $100 million lawsuit for alleged fraud and civil rights violations[78]against the California city of Rancho Palos Verdes, over thwarted luxury home development and expansion plans upon part of a landslide-prone golf course in the area, which was purchased by Trump in 2002 for $27 million.[78]Trump had previously sued a local school district over land leased from them in the re-branded Trump National Golf Club, and had further angered some local residents by renaming a thoroughfare after himself.[78]The $100 million suit was ultimately withdrawn in 2012 with Trump and the city agreeing to modified geological surveys and permit extensions for some 20 proposed luxury homes (in addition to 36 homes previously approved).[79][80]Trump ultimately opted for a permanent conservation easement instead of expanded housing development on the course's driving range.[81]In 2009, Donald Trump sued a law firm he had used, Morrison Cohen, for $5 million for mentioning his name and providing links to related news articles on its website. This lawsuit followed a lawsuit by Trump alleging overcharging by the law firm, and a countersuit by Morrison Cohen seeking unpaid legal fees.[82]The suit was dismissed in a 15-page ruling by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Eileen Bransten, who ruled that the links to news articles concerned "matters of public interest."[83]In 2009, Trump was sued by investors who had made deposits for condos in the canceled Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico.[84]The investors said that Trump misrepresented his role in the project, stating after its failure that he had been little more than a spokesperson for the entire venture, disavowing any financial responsibility for the debacle.[85]Investors were informed that their investments would not be returned due to the cancellation of construction.[84]In 2013, Trump settled the lawsuit with more than one hundred prospective condo owners for an undisclosed amount.[86]Lawsuits 2010–presentConstruction and property law matters[edit]In 2011, Donald Trump sued Scotland, alleging that it built the Aberdeen Bay Wind Farm after assuring him it would not be built. He had recently built a golf course there and planned to build an adjacent hotel. Trump lost his suit, with the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom unanimously ruling in favor of the Scottish government in 2015.[87][88]In 2013, 87-year-old Jacqueline Goldberg alleged that Trump cheated her in a condominium sale by bait-and-switch when she was purchasing properties at the Trump International Hotel and Tower.[89]In 2015, Trump initiated a $100 million lawsuit against Palm Beach County claiming that officials, in a "deliberate and malicious" act, pressured the FAA to direct air traffic to the Palm Beach International Airport over his Mar-a-Lago estate, because he said the airplanes damaged the building and disrupted its ambiance.[90]Trump had previously sued the county twice over airport noise; the first lawsuit, in 1995, ended with an agreement between Trump and the county; Trump's second lawsuit, in 2010, was dismissed.[90]Trump is suing the town of Ossining, New York, over the property tax valuation on his 147-acre (59 ha) Trump National Golf Club Westchester, located in Briarcliff Manor's portion of the town, which Trump purchased for around $8 million at a foreclosure sale in the 1990s and to which he claimed, at the club's opening, to have added $45 million in facility improvements.[91]Although Trump stated in his 2015 FEC filing that the property was worth at least $50 million, his lawsuit seeks a $1.4 million valuation on the property, which includes a 75,000-square-foot clubhouse, five overnight suites, and permission to build 71 condominium units,[91]in an effort to shave $424,176 from his annual local property tax obligations.(91A) Trump had to pay nearly $300,000 in attorney’s fees in Doral painter’s lawsuit related to unpaid bills brought by a local paint store against the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort, ordered the billionaire politician’s company to pay the Doral-based mom-and-pop shop nearly $300,000 in attorney’s fees. All because, according to the lawsuit, Trump allegedly tried to stiff The Paint Spot on its last payment of $34,863 on a $200,000 contract for paint used in the renovation of the home of golf’s famed Blue Monster two years prior.[92]Trump filed the action after separately being sued by Briarcliff Manor for "intentional and illegal modifications" to a drainage system that caused more than $238,000 in damage to the village's library, public pool, and park facilities during a 2011 storm.[92]In October 2016, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that Trump, together with two principals of a connected developer, could be sued for various claims, including oppression, collusion and breach of fiduciary duties, in relation to his role in the marketing of units in the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto, Canada.[93]A subsequent application for leave to appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court of Canada in March 2017.[94]Also in October 2016, JCF Capital ULC (a private firm that had bought the construction loan on the building) announced that it was seeking court approval under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to have the building sold in order to recoup its debt, which then totaled $301 million.[95]The court allowed for its auction[96]which took place in March 2017, but no bidders, apart from one stalking horse offer, took part.[97]Defamation mattersAlso in 2011, an appellate court upheld a New Jersey Superior Court judge's decision dismissing Trump's $5 billion defamation lawsuit against author Timothy L. O'Brien, who had reported in his book, TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald (2005), that Trump's true net worth was really between $150 and $250 million. Trump had reportedly told O'Brien he was worth billions and, in 2005, had publicly stated such.[98]Trump said that the author's alleged underestimation of his net worth was motivated by malice and had cost him business deals and damage to his reputation.[99]The appellate court, however, ruled against Trump, citing the consistency of O'Brien's three confidential sources.[100]In 2014, the former Miss Pennsylvania Sheena Monnin ultimately settled a $5 million arbitration judgment against her, having been sued by Trump after alleging that the Miss USA 2012 pageant results were rigged. Monnin wrote on her Facebook page that another contestant told her during a rehearsal that she had seen a list of the top five finalists, and when those names were called in their precise order, Monnin realized the pageant election process was suspect, compelling Monnin to resign her Miss Pennsylvania title. The Trump Organization's lawyer said that Monnin's allegations had cost the pageant a lucrative British Petroleum sponsorship deal and threatened to discourage women from entering Miss USA contests in the future.[101]According to Monnin, testimony from the Miss Universe Organization and Ernst & Young revealed that the top 15 finalists were selected by pageant directors regardless of preliminary judges' scores.[102]As part of the settlement, Monnin was not required to retract her original statements.[101]On January 17, 2017, Summer Zervos, represented by attorney Gloria Allred, filed a defamation suit against President-Elect Donald Trump for claiming that she had lied in her public sexual assault allegations against him.[103]Financial mattersIn July 2011, New York firm ALM Unlimited filed a lawsuit against Trump, who ended payments to the company in 2008 after nearly three years. ALM was hired in 2003 to seek offers from clothing companies for a Trump fashion line, and had arranged a meeting between Trump and PVH, which licensed the Trump name for dress shirts and neckwear. ALM, which had received over $300,000, alleged in the lawsuit that Trump's discontinuation of payments was against their initial agreement. In pre-trial depositions, Trump and two of his business officials – attorney George H. Ross and executive vice president of global licensing Cathy Glosser – gave contradictory statements regarding whether ALM was entitled to payments. Trump, who felt that ALM had only a limited role in the deal between him and PVH, said "I have thousands of checks that I sign a week, and I don't look at very many of the checks; and eventually I did look, and when I saw them (ALM) I stopped paying them because I knew it was a mistake or somebody made a mistake."[104]In January 2013, a judge ordered that the case go to trial, after Trump and ALM failed to settle the lawsuit.[105]During the trial in April 2013, Trump said that ALM's role in the PVH agreement was insubstantial, stating that Regis Philbin was the one who recommended PVH to him. Trump's attorney, Alan Garten, said ALM was not legally entitled to any money.[105][106][107]The judge ruled in favor of Trump later that month because a valid contract between him and ALM was never created.[107]Trump University litigationMain article: Trump University § Allegations of impropriety and lawsuitsIn 2013, in a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Trump was accused of defrauding more than 5,000 people of $40 million for the opportunity to learn Trump's real estate investment techniques in a for-profit training program, Trump University, which operated from 2005 to 2011.[108][109][110]Trump ultimately stopped using the term "University" following a 2010 order from New York regulators, who called Trump's use of the word "misleading and even illegal"; the state had previously warned Trump in 2005 to drop the term or not offer seminars in New York.[111][112][113]Although Trump has claimed a 98% approval rating on course evaluations, former students recounted high-pressure tactics from instructors seeking the highest possible ratings, including threats of withholding graduation certificates,[114]and more than 2,000 students had sought and received course refunds before the end of their paid seminars.[114]In a separate class action civil suit against Trump University in mid-February 2014, a San Diego federal judge allowed claimants in California, Florida, and New York to proceed;[115]a Trump counterclaim, alleging that the state Attorney General's investigation was accompanied by a campaign donation shakedown, was investigated by a New York ethics board and dismissed in August 2015.[116]Trump filed a $1 million defamation suit against former Trump University student Tarla Makaeff, who had spent about $37,000 on seminars, after she joined the class action lawsuit and publicized her classroom experiences on social media.[85]Trump University was later ordered by a U.S. District Judge in April 2015 to pay Makaeff and her lawyers $798,774.24 in legal fees and costs.[85][117]Breach of contract matters2013]In 2013 Trump sued comedian Bill Maher for $5 million for breach of contract.[118]Maher had appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and had offered to pay $5 million to a charity if Trump produced his birth certificate to prove that Trump's mother had not mated with an orangutan. This was said by Maher in response to Trump having previously challenged Obama to produce his birth certificate, and offering $5 million payable to a charity of Obama's choice, if Obama produced his college applications, transcripts, and passport records.[119][120]Trump produced his birth certificate and filed a lawsuit after Maher was not forthcoming, claiming that Maher's $5 million offer was legally binding. "I don't think he was joking," Trump said. "He said it with venom."[119]Trump withdrew his lawsuit against the comedian after eight weeks.[121]2014[edit]In 2014, model Alexia Palmer filed a civil suit against Trump Model Management for promising a $75,000 annual salary but paying only $3,380.75 for three years' work. Palmer, who came to the US at age 17 from Jamaica under the H-1B visa program in 2011,[122]claimed to be owed more than $200,000. Palmer contended that Trump Model Management charged, in addition to a management fee, "obscure expenses" from postage to limousine rides that consumed the remainder of her compensation. Palmer alleged that Trump Model Management promised to withhold only 20% of her net pay as agency expenses, but after charging her for those "obscure expenses", ended up taking 80%.[123]Trump attorney Alan Garten claimed the lawsuit is "bogus and completely frivolous".[124][125]Palmer filed a class-action lawsuit against the modeling agency with similar allegations.[126]The case was dismissed from U.S. federal court in March 2016, in part because Palmer's immigration status, via H1-B visa sponsored by Trump, required labor complaints to be filed through a separate process.[123][127]2015[edit]In 2015, Trump sued Univision, demanding $500 million for breach of contract and defamation when they dropped their planned broadcast of the Miss USA pageant. The network said that the decision was made because of Trump's "insulting remarks about Mexican immigrants".[128]Trump settled the lawsuit with Univision CEO Randy Falco out of court.[129]In July 2015, Trump filed a $10 million lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court for breach of contract against Spanish celebrity chef José Andrés, claiming that he backed out of a deal to open the flagship restaurant at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.[130][131]Andrés replied that Trump's lawsuit was "both unsurprising and without merit"[132]and filed an $8 million counterclaim against a Trump Organization subsidiary.[131][133]Also in July 2015, Chef Geoffrey Zakarian also withdrew from the Washington, D.C., project with Andrés in the wake of Trump's comments on Mexican illegal immigrants, and is expected to lose his own $500,000 restaurant lease deposit as a result.[132]Trump denounced and then sued Zakarian in August 2015 for a sum "in excess of $10 million" for lost rent and other damages.[134]Trump's lawsuit called Zakarian's offense at his remarks "curious in light of the fact that Mr. Trump's publicly shared views on immigration have remained consistent for many years, and Mr. Trump's willingness to frankly share his opinions is widely known".[134][135]Disputes with both chefs were eventually settled in April 2017.[136]In 2015, restaurant workers at Trump SoHo filed a lawsuit that from 2009 to at least the time of the filing, gratuities added to customers' checks were illegally withheld from employees. The Trump Organization has responded that the dispute is between the employees and their employer, a third-party contractor. Donald Trump has been scheduled to testify in court on September 1, 2016.[137][138]2018[edit]In 2018, Noel Cintron, the personal driver for Donald Trump before he became the President of the United States, filed a lawsuit Cintron v Trump Organization LLC with the Supreme Court of the State of New York (Manhattan). The lawsuit claims that during his 25-year employment by Trump, he was not compensated for overtime and the second time his salary was raised he was induced to surrender his health insurance, an action which saved Trump approximately $17,866 per year.[139]The lawsuit seeks $178,200 of overtime back pay, plus $5,000 in penalties that are seen under the New York State Labor Law.[140]Assault claims[edit]In September 2015, five men who had demonstrated outside of a Trump presidential campaign event at Trump Tower in New York City sued Donald Trump, alleging that Trump's security staff punched one of them. They also allege that Trump's security guards had been advised by city police that they were permitted to protest there. Several people videotaped the incident.[141][142]In June 2015, the Culinary Workers Union filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), alleging that the owners of Trump Hotel Las Vegas "violated the federally protected rights of workers to participate in union activities" and engaged in "incidents of alleged physical assault, verbal abuse, intimidation, and threats by management".[143]In October 2015, the Trump Ruffin Commercial and Trump Ruffin Tower I, the owners of Trump Hotel Las Vegas, sued the Culinary Workers Union and another union, alleging that they had knowingly distributed flyers that falsely stated that Donald Trump had stayed at a rival unionized hotel, rather than his own non-unionized hotel, during a trip to Las Vegas.[5][143]Poll watching controversy[edit]On October 31, 2016, a New Jersey federal judge, John Michael Vazquez, ordered the Republican National Committee (RNC) to hand over all communications with the Trump campaign related to poll watching and voter fraud. He asked for testimony and documents relating to Kellyanne Conway, RNC officials Ronna Romney McDaniel of Michigan, and Rob Gleason from Pennsylvania.[144]It is claimed Gleason, McDaniel, and Roger Stone recruited poll watchers to check for voter fraud. The state Democratic parties of Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Ohio filed lawsuits against Trump for encouraging illegal voter intimidation. The states' Democratic parties are also suing their respective Republican party counterparts, along with Roger Stone, who is allegedly recruiting poll watchers and organizing ballot security efforts in a number of states. Stone runs the group "Stop the Steal." It claims Trump supporters yelled at voters outside Las Vegas area polling places when they said they weren't voting for the Republican nominee, and that Stone is asking supporters to conduct an illegitimate "exit polling" initiative aimed at intimidating voters of color.Pat McDonald, the director of Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in Ohio, reported that "Trump supporters have already visited the county elections board identifying themselves as poll observers, even though they did not appear to be credentialed as poll observers as required under Ohio law." Election officials have expressed concern about "instability on Election Day," one lawsuit claims, and discussed the possibility of bringing police to polling sites to address conflicts. In Clark County of Nevada, a lawsuit claims: "A Trump supporter harassed and intimidated multiple voters outside of the Albertson's supermarket early voting location on Lake Mead Boulevard, repeatedly asking voters for whom they were voting, and then yelling at them belligerently and attempting to keep them from entering the voting location when they stated they were not voting for Donald Trump." When poll staffers told the Trump supporters to stop harassing voters, "the Trump supporter told poll workers that he had 'a right to say anything he wanted to the voters.'" Poll staffers called police, and the Trump supporter left. The lawsuit also claims similar incidents took place in neighboring Nye County as well. In Pennsylvania, Murrysville City Councilman Josh Lorenz supposedly posted instructions for the way Clinton supporters could vote online, even though there is no online voting in Pennsylvania. Eight registered electors, mostly from the Philadelphia area, challenged the portion of the state Election Code that prevents poll watchers from observing elections outside of the counties where they live.[145][146][147]In Pompano Beach, Florida, police asked two poll watchers to leave a polling site. Two precinct clerks were also fired for not adhering to policy and training. No arrests were made. No other incidents were reported in South Florida.[148][149]Nevada early voting Latino turnout controversy[edit]On November 8, 2016, Trump filed a lawsuit claiming early voting polling places in Clark County, Nevada, were kept open too late. These precincts had high turnout of Latino voters. Nevada state law explicitly states that polls are to stay open to accommodate eligible voters in line at closing time. Hillary Clinton campaign advisor Neera Tanden says the Trump campaign is trying to suppress Latino voter turnout. A political analyst from Nevada, Jon Ralston tweeted that the Trump lawsuit is "insane" in a state that clearly allows the polls to remains open until everyone in line has voted. Former Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller, posted the statute that states "voting must continue until those voters have voted". Miller said: "If there are people in line waiting to vote at 7 pm, voting must continue until everyone votes.... We still live in America, right?"[150]A Nevada judge denied Trump's request to separate early voting ballots. Judge Gloria Sturman, of the District Court for Clark County Nevada, ruled that County Registrar of Voters Joe P. Gloria was already obligated by state law to maintain the records that the Trump campaign is seeking. Sturman said: "That is offensive to me because it seems to go against the very principle that a vote is secret."[151][152]Diana Orrock, the Republican National Committeewoman for Nevada and a vocal Trump ally, said she was unaware of the lawsuit before Politico contacted her. "I know that the [Clark County] registrar was on TV this morning saying that anybody who's in line was allowed to participate in the voting process until all of them came through," she said. "If that's what they did, I don't have a problem with that ... I don't know that filing a suit's going to accomplish anything." Orrock doubts the lawsuit will have any impact.[153]Lawsuit for inciting violence at March 2016 campaign rally[edit]During a campaign rally on March 1, 2016 in Louisville, Kentucky, Trump repeatedly said "get 'em out of here" while pointing at anti-Trump protesters as they were forcibly escorted out by his supporters. Three protesters say they were repeatedly shoved and punched while Trump pointed at them from the podium, citing widely shared video evidence of the events. They also cited previous statements by Trump about paying the legal bills of supporters who got violent, or suggesting a demonstrator deserved to be "roughed up."[154][155][156][157]The lawsuit accuses Donald Trump of inciting violence against protesters in Louisville, Kentucky. The plaintiffs are Kashiya Nwanguma (21), Molly Shah (36) and Henry Brousseau (17). The suit is against Trump, his campaign, and three Trump supporters (Matthew Heimbach, Alvin Bamberger and an unnamed defendant). One defendant, Bamburger, who was wearing a Veteran's uniform in the video, apologized to the Korean War Veterans Association immediately after the event, writing that he "physically pushed a young woman down the aisle toward the exit" after "Trump kept saying 'get them out, get them out."[154]Trump's attorneys requested to get the case dismissed, arguing he was protected by free speech laws, and wasn't trying to get his supporters to resort to violence.[156][158]They also stated that Trump had no duty to the protesters, and they had assumed the personal risk of injury by deciding to protest at the rally.[154]On Friday, April 1, 2017, Judge David J. Hale in Louisville ruled against the dismissal of a lawsuit, stating there was ample evidence to support that the injuries of the protesters were a "direct and proximate result" of Trump's words and actions. Hale wrote, "It is plausible that Trump's direction to 'get 'em out of here' advocated the use of force," and, "It was an order, an instruction, a command." Hale wrote that the Supreme Court has ruled out some protections for free speech when used to incite violence.[159]Defendant Heimbach requested to dismiss the discussion in the lawsuit about his association with a white nationalist group, and also requested to dismiss discussion of statements he made about how a President Trump would advance the interests of the group. The request was declined, with the judge saying the information could be important for determining punitive damages because they add context.[154]Hale also declined to remove the allegation that Plaintiff Nwanguma, who is African-American, was victim to ethnic, racial and sexist slurs at the rally from the crowd. The judge stated that this context may support claims by the plaintiffs' of incitement and negligence by Trump and the Trump campaign. The judge wrote, "While the words themselves are repulsive, they are relevant to show the atmosphere in which the alleged events occurred."[154]The judge stated that all people have a duty to use care to prevent foreseeable injury. "In sum, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have adequately alleged that their harm was foreseeable and that the Trump Defendants had a duty to prevent it." The case was referred a federal magistrate, Judge H. Brent Brennenstuhl, who will handle preliminary litigation, discovery and settlement efforts.[160]Heimbach filed a separate counterclaim in April 2017, arguing that Trump was "responsible for any injuries" he [Heimbach] "might have inflicted because Mr. Trump directed him and others to take action". Heimbach, "a self-employed landscaper", and a member of the Traditionalist Youth Network, "which advocates separate American 'ethno states', "spends much of his time" online writing "against Jews, gays and immigrants and urging whites to stand up for their race." He wrote his own lawsuit which requested that Trump pay Heimbach's "legal fees, citing a promise Mr. Trump made at an earlier rally to pay legal costs of anyone who removed protesters."[161]Heimbach's "counterclaim" against Trump has "probed the limits of free speech and public protest while confronting the courts with a unique legal argument".[161]On May 5, Trump's lawyers submitted legal filings that argue that Heimbach's "indemnity claim should be dismissed on the same grounds". According to a University of Virginia law professor, Leslie Kendrick, this indemnity or "impleader" case is "highly unusual."[161]New York University's Samuel Issacharoff, a professor of constitutional law, argued that care must be taken to not allow speech, in the "context of a political rally" to be "turned into something that is legally sanctionable."[161]Payments related to alleged affairs[edit]See also: Stormy Daniels–Donald Trump scandal and Karen McDougal § Alleged affair with Donald TrumpAdult film actress Stormy Daniels has alleged that she and Trump had an extramarital affair in 2006, months after the birth of his youngest child.[162]Just before the 2016 presidential election Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was paid $130,000 by Trump's attorney Michael Cohen as part of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), through an LLC set up by Cohen; he says he used his own money for the payment.[163]In February 2018, Daniels filed suit against the LLC asking to be released from the agreement so that she can tell her story. Cohen filed a private arbitration proceeding and obtained a restraining order to keep her from discussing the case.[164]According to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump has denied the allegations.[165]On March 6, 2018, Daniels sued Trump in California Superior Court, claiming among other things that the NDA never came into effect because Trump did not sign it personally.[166]On March 16 Cohen, with Trump's approval, asked for Daniels' suit to be moved from state to federal court, based on the criteria that the parties live in different places and the amount at stake is more than $75,000; Cohen asserted that Daniels could owe $20 million in liquidated damages for breaching the agreement.[167]The filing marked the first time that Trump himself, through his personal attorney, had taken part in the Daniels litigation.[168]In early April 2018, Trump said that he did not know about Cohen paying Daniels, why Cohen had made the payment or where Cohen got the money from.[169]On April 30, Daniels further sued Trump for defamation.[170]In May 2018, Trump's annual financial disclosure revealed that he reimbursed Cohen in 2017 for expenditures related to the Daniels case.[171]In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance laws, admitting paying hush money of $130,000 and $150,000 "at the direction of a candidate for federal office", to two women who alleged affairs with that candidate, "with the purpose of influencing the election". The figures match sums of payments made to Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal.[172][173]American Media, Inc. had reportedly in 2016 bought for $150,000 the rights to a story by McDougal alleging an affair with a married Trump from 2006 which lasted between nine months to a year.[174][175][176]David Pecker (AMI CEO/Chairman and friend of Trump), Dylan Howard (AMI chief content officer) and Allen Weisselberg (chief financial officer of The Trump Organization) were reportedly granted witness immunity in exchange for their testimony regarding the illegal payments.[177][178]In response, Trump said that he only knew about the payments "later on"; Trump also said regarding the payments: "They didn't come out of the campaign, they came from me."[179]The Wall Street Journal reported on November 9, 2018 that federal prosecutors have evidence of Trump’s "central role" in payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal that violated campaign-finance laws.[180][181]Special Counsel investigation[edit]Main article: Special Counsel investigation (2017–present)The Special Counsel investigation is a United States law enforcement investigation of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and any Russian (or other foreign) interference in the election, including exploring any possible links or coordination between Trump's campaign and the Russian government, "and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation."[182]Since May 2017, the investigation has been led by a United States Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, a former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI). Mueller's investigation took over several FBI investigations including those involving former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.It has been noted that Trump has experienced a high turnover with respect to the attorneys handling this matter, as well as a large number of prominent lawyers and law firms publicly declining offers to join Trump's legal team.[183][184]Attorneys known to have been approached include Robert S. Bennett of Hogan Lovells,[185]Paul Clement and Mark Filip, both with Kirkland & Ellis,[186][186]Robert Giuffra Jr. of Sullivan & Cromwell,[185]Theodore B. Olson of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher,[187]and Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. of Williams & Connolly.[186]Other firms with attorneys who have decided not to represent Trump include Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan,[188]Steptoe & Johnson,[188]and Winston & Strawn.[citation needed]Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing were briefly slated to join Trump's legal team, but withdrew their services from Trump in March 2018, citing conflicts of interest.[189]In an article describing the "unique circumstance" of Rudy Giuliani's unpaid leave of absence from Greenberg Traurig while representing Trump, possibly because of "potential conflicts", Christine Simmons said some other law firms may have turned down representing Trump in the Russia case due to "public relations headaches or business and recruitment concerns".[190]Trump has called such views a "Fake News narrative".[191][192]In a National Law Journal article, Ryan Lovelace described how white-collar lawyers must weigh the "risks" and "stigma" of joining the Trump team. He quoted a prominent defense attorney's concerns about "the constant shuffle of attorneys in and out of the president's legal team", and the possibility that an attorney could invest resources and reputation in such representation "only to find yourself on the sidelines a short time later because the president saw someone he liked better on Fox News".[192]The quoted attorney also noted "a stigma to being linked to this president" that might impact business with other clients.[192]A list of other reasons for not wanting to represent Trump is provided by Jill Abramson for The Guardian:The problem for the white-collar defense bar's crème de la crème is that Donald Trump is so blatantly the client from hell. He won't listen. He won't obey instructions. He is headstrong. He is a bully. Sometimes, he doesn't pay his bills. Most of all, it's possible that he isn't capable of discerning fact from fiction. This last foible could get any lawyer who represents him into very deep legal hot water. No one wants to get disbarred for the fame and fortune of representing President Trump. Then there's the justifiable concern over all the unforced legal errors that the defense side, led by Trump himself, has already committed.[193]An Above the Law article states that some law firms have refused to represent the President of the United States because "Donald Trump has somehow turned POTUS into a dog of a client self-respecting lawyers do not want to touch", expressing concern that "[i]f all the good attorneys — the ones with reputations to preserve and ethics to uphold — refuse to represent the president, what's left are the 'bad' attorneys. The ones who don't have the slightest idea what a moral and ethical principle is".[194]Allegations of business links to organized crime[edit]Journalists David Cay Johnston and Wayne Barrett, the latter of whom wrote an unauthorized 1992 Trump biography, have claimed that Trump and his companies did business with New York and Philadelphia families linked to the Italian-American Mafia.[195][196]A reporter for The Washington Post writes, "he was never accused of illegality, and observers of the time say that working with the mob-related figures and politicos came with the territory."[197]Trump helped a financier for the Scarfo family get a casino license, and constructed a casino using firms controlled by Nicodemo Scarfo.[198]Trump also bought real estate from Philadelphia crime family member Salvatore Testa, and bought concrete from companies associated with the Genovese crime family and the Gambino crime family.[195][196][197]Trump Plaza paid a $450,000 fine leveled by the Casino Gaming Commission for giving $1.6 million in rare automobiles to Robert LiButti, the acquaintance of John Gotti already mentioned.[29]Starting in 2003, the Trump Organization worked with Felix Sater, who had a 1998 racketeering conviction for a $40 million Mafia-linked stock fraud scheme, and who had then become an informant against the mafia.[199]Trump's attorney has said that Sater worked with Trump scouting real estate opportunities, but was never formally employed.[200]Use of bankruptcy laws[edit]Trump has never filed for personal bankruptcy, but hotel and casino businesses of his have been declared bankrupt four times between 1991 and 2009 to re-negotiate debt with banks and owners of stock and bonds.[201][202]Because the businesses used Chapter 11 bankruptcy, they were allowed to operate while negotiations proceeded. Trump was quoted by Newsweek in 2011 saying, "I do play with the bankruptcy laws – they're very good for me" as a tool for trimming debt.[82][203]According to a report by Forbes in 2011, the four bankruptcies were the result of over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City: Trump's Taj Mahal (1991), Trump Plaza Hotel (1992), Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts (2004), and Trump Entertainment Resorts (2009).[204][205]Trump said "I've used the laws of this country to pare debt.... We'll have the company. We'll throw it into a chapter. We'll negotiate with the banks. We'll make a fantastic deal. You know, it's like on The Apprentice. It's not personal. It's just business."[206]He indicated that many "great entrepreneurs" do the same.[204]1991[edit]In 1991, Trump Taj Mahal was unable to service its debt and filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.[206]Forbes indicated that this first bankruptcy was the only one where Trump's personal financial resources were involved. Time, however, maintains that $72 million of his personal money was also involved in a later 2004 bankruptcy.[207]1992[edit]On November 2, 1992, the Trump Plaza Hotel filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Trump lost his 49 percent stake in the luxury hotel to Citibank and five other lenders.[208]In return Trump received more favorable terms on the remaining $550+ million owed to the lenders, and retain his position as chief executive, though he would not be paid and would not have a role in day-to-day operations.[209]1994[edit]Trump Plaza Hotel and Casinoclosed in 2014By 1994, Trump had eliminated a large portion of his $900 million personal debt through sales of his Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Plazaassets,[210]and significantly reduced his nearly $3.5 billion in business debt. Although he lost the Trump Princess yacht and the Trump Shuttle (which he had bought in 1989), he did retain Trump Tower in New York City and control of three casinos in Atlantic City, including Trump's Castle. Trump sold his ownership of West Side Yards (now Riverside South, Manhattan) to Chinese developers including Hong Kong's New World Development, receiving a premium price in exchange for the use and display of the name "Trump" on the buildings.[211]2004[edit]Donald Trump's third corporate bankruptcy was on October 21, 2004, involving Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, the publicly-traded holding company for his three Atlantic City casinos and some others.[212]Trump lost over half of his 56% ownership and gave bondholders stock in exchange for surrendering part of the debt. No longer CEO, Trump retained a role as chairman of the board. In May 2005[213]the company emerged from bankruptcy as Trump Entertainment Resorts Holdings.[214]In his 2007 book, Think BIG and Kick Ass in Business and Life, Trump wrote: "I figured it was the bank's problem, not mine. What the hell did I care? I actually told one bank, 'I told you you shouldn't have loaned me that money. I told you the goddamn deal was no good.'"[215]2009[edit]Trump's fourth corporate bankruptcy occurred in 2009, when Trump and his daughter Ivanka resigned from the board of Trump Entertainment Resorts; four days later the company, which owed investors $1.74 billion against its $2.06 billion of assets, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. At that time, Trump Entertainment Resorts had three properties in Atlantic City: Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino (closed in 2014), and Trump Marina (formerly Trump's Castle, sold in 2011). Trump and some investors bought the company back that same year for $225 million. As part of the agreement, Trump withdrew a $100 million lawsuit he had filed against the casino's owners alleging damage to the Trump brand. Trump re-negotiated the debt, reducing by over $1 billion the repayments required to bondholders.[216][217]In 2014, Trump sued his former company to remove his name from the buildings since he no longer ran the company, having no more than a 10% stake; he lost the suit.[218]Trump Entertainment Resorts filed again for bankruptcy in 2014[219]and was purchased by billionaire philanthropist Carl Icahn in 2016, who acquired Trump Taj Mahal in the deal.[220]Campaign contributions[edit]According to a New York state report, Trump circumvented corporate and personal campaign donation limits in the 1980s – although he did not break any laws – by donating money to candidates from 18 different business subsidiaries, rather than giving primarily in his own name.[197][221]Trump told investigators he did so on the advice of his lawyers. He also said the contributions were not to curry favor with business-friendly candidates, but simply to satisfy requests from friends.[197][222]Donald J. Trump Foundation[edit]During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, media began reporting in detail on how the Donald J. Trump Foundation was funded and how Donald Trump used its funds. The Washington Post in particular reported several cases of possible mis-use, self-dealing and possible tax evasion.[18] [19] [20]Regarding the various irregularities in the Trump Foundation, former head of the Internal Revenue Service's Office of Exempt Organizations Division Marc Owens told The Washington Post: "This is so bizarre, this laundry list of issues.... It's the first time I've ever seen this, and I've been doing this for 25 years in the IRS, and 40 years total.[21]When interviewed for the Post's article, Trump spokesperson Boris Epshtein said that Trump did not knowingly violate any tax laws.[18]The office of New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman investigated the foundation "to make sure it's complying with the laws governing charities in New York."[22]Controversy over tax returns[edit]In October 2016, The New York Times published some tax documents from 1995. These documents indicate that Trump might have evaded paying taxes on as much as 916 million dollars in income at one time. Trump likely gave some of his creditors shares of his failing businesses to avoid taxes on hundreds of millions of dollars he was given in debt relief, which is illegal. Legal scholar Edward Kleinbard of the University of Southern California believes Trump forged tax documents. Trump claimed on his tax returns that he lost money, but did not recognize it in the form of canceled debts. He likely avoided paying 425 million dollars in taxes, says Steven M. Rosenthal, an attorney at the Tax Policy Center. Rosenthal claims he "borrowed other people's money and spent it in spectacular fashion." Trump might have performed a stock-for-debt swap. This would have allowed Trump to avoid paying income taxes for at least 18 years. An audit of Trump's tax returns for 2002 through 2008 was "closed administratively by agreement with the I.R.S. without assessment or payment, on a net basis, of any deficiency." Tax attorneys believe the government may have reduced what Trump was able to claim as a loss without requiring him to pay any additional taxes.[223][224]It is unknown whether the I.R.S. challenged Trump's use of the swaps because he has not released his tax returns. Trump's lawyers advised against Trump using the equity for debt swap, as they believed it to be potentially illegal.[225]Marc Kasowitz, name partner of the Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman firm, wrote a letter threatening The New York Times over publication of the 1995 documents. Kasowitz's action drew attention to the fact that the biglaw firm had done extensive legal work for Donald Trump and his businesses since at least 2001 including also bankrupt casino restructuring.[226]In early 2017, firm member and former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman introduced Pres.-elect Trump's nominee for Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension committee.[227]Destruction of documents[edit]In June 2016, a USA Today article reported that Donald Trump and his companies have been deleting emails and other documents on a large scale,[228]including evidence in lawsuits, sometimes in defiance of court orders and under subpoena since as early as 1973.[229][230][231]In October 2016, Kurt Eichenwald published new research findings in Newsweek. The findings were first published by Paul Singer[232]on June 13, 2016[233]and gained larger attention[234][235]after a new report in Newsweek on October 31, 2016. According to Newsweek, Trump and his companies "hid or destroyed thousands of documents" involving several court cases from as early as 1973."Over the course of decades, Donald Trump's companies have systematically destroyed or hidden thousands of emails, digital records and paper documents demanded in official proceedings, often in defiance of court orders.... In each instance, Trump and entities he controlled also erected numerous hurdles that made lawsuits drag on for years, forcing courtroom opponents to spend huge sums of money in legal fees as they struggled—sometimes in vain—to obtain records."— Kurt Eichenwald, Donald Trump's Companies Destroyed Emails in Defiance of Court Orders Newsweek, October 31, 2016In 1973 Trump, his father and their company were in court for civil charges for refusing to rent apartments to African Americans. After their lawyers had delayed court requests for documents for several months, Trump, then being under subpoena, said his company had destroyed corporate records of the past six months "for saving space". In a court case beginning in 2005 against Power Plant Entertainment, LLC, an affiliate of real estate developer Cordish Cos., it was revealed that Trump's companies had deleted the data requested by court.[236]Cordish Cos. had built two American Indian[237]casinos in Florida under the Hard Rock brand and Donald Trump accused them of cheating him out of that deal. Nonetheless, Trump's lawyers had refused to instruct workers to keep all records related to the case during litigation.[229]Trump had established a procedure to delete all data from their employees' computers every year at least since 2003,[234]despite knowing at least since 2001 that he might want to file a lawsuit. Even after the lawsuit was filed, Trump Hotelsdisposed of a computer of a key witness without having made a backup of the data. A former general counsel of the Trump casino unit confirmed that all data were deleted from nearly all companies' computers annually. Trump and his lawyers claimed they were not keeping records and digital data although it was revealed that Trump had launched his own high-speed internet provider in 1998 and an IBM Domino server had been installed for emails and digital files in 1999.[229][235]