If President Trump had his way, mask-wearing would play a crucial role in whatever us-versus-them narrative he attempts to spin for his reelection.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Not All Fall In Line Behind The Next Great Political Divide”
Obits Spiked Around Country With COVID Onslaught
Don’t just take it from the CDC.
Continue reading “Obits Spiked Around Country With COVID Onslaught”
Moscow Easing Some COVID Lockdown Measures On June 1
MOSCOW — Moscow’s mayor announced easing lockdown restrictions in the city on June 1, сiting the slowing of the coronavirus outbreak in Russia’s capital.
Speaking at a teleconference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin says people can take walks at designated times after remaining under a stay-at-home order since March 31. He also announced plans to reopen non-food stores and services such as laundries, dry cleaners, and repair shops.
Continue reading “Moscow Easing Some COVID Lockdown Measures On June 1”
What’s the Allure of Hydroxychloroquine?
There’s a growing body of clinical evidence that hydroxychloroquine (alone or with an accompanying antibiotic) not only has no therapeutic effect for COVID but can increase substantially the risk of death for those with advanced disease. President Trump has been pushing it for months, for reasons which are not altogether clear. What is weird and fascinating in its own right, however, is that what we might call hydroxy-mania seems to be a common feature of right-wing nationalism across the globe. The biggest example beside President Trump is his ally President Bolsonaro of Brazil, who similarly is presiding over an out-of-control epidemic with an extreme scarcity of testing.
But what could possibly be the connection between rightist-populist nationalism and this until-recently relatively obscure anti-malarial drug? Does the drug itself have some ideological valence? That can’t be the case.
As Trump Smears Masks As ‘Politically Correct,’ Hannity Emphasizes Their Importance
Conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity, usually a reliable mouthpiece for President Donald Trump, took a rare stance at odds with Trump on the issue of wearing masks amid COVID-19 on Tuesday night.
Fauci Wants To Make Masks A ‘Symbol’ Of What The Public Should Be Doing
The country’s top infectious disease expert on Wednesday urged the public to comply with mask-wearing requirements as the easing of coronavirus-related restrictions trickles across the country in coming weeks. Continue reading “Fauci Wants To Make Masks A ‘Symbol’ Of What The Public Should Be Doing”
CDC Cautions Against Using Antibody Tests For Decisions On Schools, Workplaces
Antibody tests often deliver false positives and shouldn’t be used as the basis for decision-making about returning to school or work, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a recent update.
Continue reading “CDC Cautions Against Using Antibody Tests For Decisions On Schools, Workplaces”
Grassley Says White House ‘Failed’ To Give Good Reason For IG Firings
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said Tuesday that the White House “failed” to provide a “good reason” for President Donald Trump’s firing of two inspectors general he had inquired about.
Continue reading “Grassley Says White House ‘Failed’ To Give Good Reason For IG Firings”
Police Fire Tear Gas At Crowd Protesting Against Killing Of George Floyd
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — To the general public, the video of a white police officer pressing his knee into the neck of a black man prone on the street, crying out for help until he finally stopped moving, was horrifying.
Four officers were fired a day after George Floyd’s death, a stunning and swift move by the Minneapolis chief with the mayor’s full backing. But despite their dismissal, whether the incident will be considered criminal, or even excessive force, is a more complicated question that will likely take months to investigate.
Continue reading “Police Fire Tear Gas At Crowd Protesting Against Killing Of George Floyd”
Trump Tower’s 2010 Profits Magically Grew By $3 Million In New Loan Filings
This story first appeared at ProPublica and WNYC.
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Stay up to date with email updates about WNYC and ProPublica’s investigations into the president’s business practices.
A decade ago, loan filings showed Trump Tower in New York City had a reported profit of about $13.3 million. But when the tower refinanced its debt soon after, the profits for the same year — 2010 — somehow appeared higher. A new lender listed the profits as $16.1 million, or 21% more than they had been recorded previously.
The next year’s earnings for the building also “improved” between the two filings. Profits for 2011 were listed as 12% higher under the new loan than the old, according to reports by loan servicers and data provider Trepp.
ProPublica uncovered the Trump Tower discrepancies by examining publicly available data for mortgages that are packaged into securities known as commercial mortgage-backed securities, comparing the same years in reports for different CMBS. If a bank had held onto the loan, instead of selling it to investors, such information would have been kept private. No evidence has emerged that the Trump Organization was involved in changing the profit figures.
Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, said: “Not only were the numbers provided to the servicer accurate, but Trump Tower is considered one of the most underleveraged commercial buildings around.”
The discrepancies in the tower profits match a pattern described in a whistleblower complaint filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which ProPublica revealed this month. The complaint accuses commercial lenders of fraudulently inflating the income numbers underlying loans in many CMBS.
The complaint named seven servicers and 14 lenders, including two of the country’s biggest issuers of CMBS — Ladder Capital and Wells Fargo. Both were involved in the more recent Trump Tower loan, one as the lender, the second as the financial institution that packaged the loan into a CMBS. The complaint does not say which entities altered specific numbers and does not address whether borrowers were involved in, or knew about, the alleged fraud.
Wells Fargo declined to comment. Ladder Capital did not respond to questions about Trump’s signature Fifth Avenue tower. Ladder did respond to questions for ProPublica’s earlier article; it acknowledged it had altered historical numbers for two other loans ProPublica asked about, to remove expenses that were not recurring in the future. The lender said its actions were appropriate. (Ladder is a publicly traded commercial real estate investment trust with more than $6 billion in assets. It employs Jack Weisselberg, the son of the Trump Organization’s longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg, as an executive director whose job is to make loans. Jack Weisselberg declined to comment.)
When the Trump Organization refinanced its loan for Trump Tower in 2012, it increased the size of its loan from $27.5 million to $100 million, extracting $67.9 million in cash. The interest-only loan originally represented about 8% of the more than $1 billion in mortgages assembled into the CMBS. (Only the commercial part of the tower — with retail tenants such as Gucci and offices, including for the Trump Organization — served as collateral for the loan.)
For both 2010 and 2011, data shows the discrepancies in net operating income between the old and new loans for Trump Tower were largely due to the new loan reporting lower expenses. The prospectus for the more recent loan stated that “the historical expenses exclude security associated with Donald J. Trump’s personal services” — though it did not specify dollar amounts for the change. Greater revenues were cited for both years under the new loan, too, but the prospectus did not explain why.
The whistleblower complaint, filed by a CMBS-industry insider named John Flynn, concerns the nearly $600 billion CMBS market. It accuses lenders and servicers of manipulating historical cash flows, failing to report misrepresentations, changing names and addresses of properties, and “deceptively and inaccurately” describing loan representations. The complaint asserts that Flynn has found overstatements in $150 billion worth of CMBS since 2013.
The misrepresentations allowed properties to qualify for loans they wouldn’t have otherwise, Flynn asserts, while leaving investors in the dark.
The SEC has not taken any public action in response to Flynn’s complaint; the agency declined to comment.
Altering past profits without providing an explanation is “highly questionable,” John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert in securities regulation, told ProPublica for its earlier article on CMBS.
As hotels, retail and office properties face unprecedented difficulties due to the virus that has shuttered much of the country, Flynn says the manipulations have increased the likelihood and potential severity of a crash.
Last year, ProPublica revealed another set of income discrepancies at Trump Tower and other company-owned buildings, ones that seemed to hark to the testimony of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who testified that Trump would inflate income figures when seeking a loan and deflate the figures when filing taxes. Other Trump Organization properties investigated by ProPublica reported higher profits in the CMBS filings than they did in tax filings. A Trump Organization spokesperson said at the time that “comparing the various reports is comparing apples to oranges” because reporting requirements differ.
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