LogGrad98
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Contributor
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Who are you, Donald Cline?
Well my normal shtick is that "I WANT UTERUSES!!!! UTERUES!!!!", however there isn't much of a market in uteruses, eggs on the other hand are booming!!! EGGS!!!! I WANT EGGS!!!
Red
Well-Known Member
Well, he usually replied to myself in a manner that might go up your butt, but in a more subtle manner than simply openly angry. I was clearly only speaking of my interactions with the man, not anyone else’s interactions, nor was I talking about how often women, racism, Trump, and Project 2025 are discussed in GD…..
PJF
Well-Known Member
Lefty economics always fail.
View: https://x.com/CollinsforTX/status/1955727202747617403?t=2UmoyUFjYVqg8Cz5ZeDMsg&s=19
View: https://x.com/CollinsforTX/status/1955727202747617403?t=2UmoyUFjYVqg8Cz5ZeDMsg&s=19
"Canary in the coal mine"
• 11h•
7 min read
"In the 20 years that Erika Swanton has worked in retail on the Las Vegas Strip, she has never known summer business to be so slow.
The number of customers visiting the skincare shop she works in has halved. “I’ve never seen the economy like this, not even in 2008,” she says.
“People used to come to Las Vegas and spend money. Now they’re scared to spend.”
Vegas has always been a place of extravagance, a luxury destination where tourists can embrace the carefree hedonism of gambling, boozing and spending.
But now Sin City tourism is in a slump.
Visitor numbers fell by 11.3pc year-on-year in June and were down by 7.3pc across the first six months of the year. In percentage terms, that is equivalent to the drop recorded over the entirety of the two-year period during the global recession.
As hotel revenues fall, restaurant workers get their hours cut and tattoo artists report huge falls in their income, the city is fast becoming the canary in the coal mine for the wider US economy.
Las Vegas’s tourism industry is American consumerism in its purest form. Its decline is a clear warning sign that Donald Trump’s “economic revolution” of a global trade war and an immigration crackdown is now hitting the ultimate engine of American GDP – consumer spending.
The Las Vegas Strip feels nowhere near as busy
“There were so many machines open in the casino last night,” says Heather Harter, 54, who is staying at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino. “I’ve never seen it this empty and I’ve been coming here since my kids were little.”
Tom Connolly, 70, another Las Vegas regular who is staying at the New York-New York Hotel and Casino says: “The reason we came was my wife got offered four free nights, $125 (£92) in food and beverage credit and $150 in casino credit.
“The hotel solicited us to come out here. To me, that suggests they need the business.”
Figures from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) show hotel occupancy was down by nearly a tenth year-on-year in June. As hotels cut prices, revenues per room fell by an even steeper 13.8pc.
Even the city’s biggest hotel brands are taking a hit. Caesars Entertainment, which runs nine properties in Las Vegas, including Caesars Palace, reported an 8pc drop in its Las Vegas earnings between April and June.
MGM Resorts, which operates 12 hotels on the Strip, similarly reported a 9pc fall in second quarter Las Vegas earnings.
Bill Hornbuckle, its chief executive, said this was primarily because of room remodelling at the flagship MGM Grand hotel, but it also reflected lower midweek bookings at its cheaper properties, the Excalibur and the Luxor.
Part of the decline in visitors is because of a fall in international numbers. Canadians, for one, are increasingly steering clear of the US in the wake of Trump’s tariffs and his message that Canada should become America’s 51st state.
But international visitors make up only 12pc of Las Vegas’ visitors. Steve Hill, chief executive of the LVCVA, says this is primarily a story about Americans.
“The reduction that we’ve seen is largely domestic, and at its core is a concern that consumers have about the economy, about their financial situation and their jobs,” says Hill.
Mike PeQueen, managing director at Hightower Las Vegas, a wealth management firm, says: “Las Vegas has a fair reputation as a canary in the coal mine for greater US discretionary spending.”
Trump’s radical economic agenda, which has included raising tariffs on imports to their highest level since the 1930s and widespread immigrant deportations, has triggered major downgrades in growth forecasts, sent consumer confidence plunging and raised new fears about inflation.
Yssa Dror, who works in the skincare shop with Swanton, said: “People are afraid to spend because they don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
A massive downward revision in national jobs statistics earlier this month was one of the first signs that cracks are emerging in the economy for everyday Americans.
In Vegas, the storm has already hit. In the first six months of the year, Las Vegas had 1.5 million fewer visitors compared to the same period last year.
Vegas is often characterised as a boom and bust town, but the reality is that in the five decades since LVCVA data began in 1970, its visitor numbers have been on a steady upward trajectory. During this time, the annual total has multiplied more than six times over.
Ominously, there have only been three years when Las Vegas has seen visitor numbers drop by more than a million, or by more than 3pc, in a single year: the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, and the 2020 pandemic.
In other words, for half a century, the only major drops that Las Vegas has seen in visitor numbers have been driven by national crises. But that was until President Trump came to power.
“This theme of an economic slowdown permeates, frankly, almost every discussion that we have with clients,” says Jeremy Aguero, of Applied Analysis, a research firm in Las Vegas.
The drop-off in visitors is concentrated at the lower end of the price scale, says Hill, from the LVCVA.
“The core of the concern here is with folks who have to live on a budget. They need disposable income in order to be able to come,” he added.
Those who are still coming also seem to have less spare cash. The share of visitors staying with friends and family instead of hotels has nearly doubled from 7pc to 13pc, according to preliminary data from Hill’s outfit.
There are signs investors have become more cautious, too.
The billionaire Tilman Fertitta, now Trump’s ambassador to Italy, last month confirmed that he had shelved plans to develop a new Las Vegas hotel-casino project, tentatively called Centre Strip, which would have boasted 2,400 rooms. For now, the site is a parking lot.
“You used to see the tables full of appetisers, salads, drinks, a lot of extras because people wanted to try all of the food,” she says. “Now you see a couple sharing one meal.”
Earlier this year, Valdez’s hours were cut from five days per week to four. “I’m a single mom, I have two kids. I’m so worried about losing my job.”
Hostess Gloria Valdez saw her work cut from five days a week to four
Vegas customers are not just concerned about money they are also concerned about Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Trump was elected on a promise to make mass deportations. He has directed Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) to make a wave of immigration raids across the country, a policy that has hit Nevada’s neighbour California particularly hard.
America’s 12 million or so undocumented immigrants – a substantial part of the population – are now living in fear.
“We’ve heard anecdotally that some of our customers are concerned about staying in hotels,” says Hill. “They’re worried about raids, frankly.”
Valdez notes a particularly large drop-off in Latino customers. “They’re scared to get on planes.”
Whatever the causes, the downturn in Las Vegas tourism will have ripple effects across the city’s economy.
Workers like Valdez are the lifeblood of the local economy, with thousands of workers employed to serve tourists in the regional diners, bars and casinos. Even tattoo parlours are suffering.
Wayne Fields, 47, a tattoo artist at Vegas Ink, said: “Las Vegas has always been good until this year. In the last couple of months, my pay has dropped by 70pc.”
Normally, Fields would earn between $8,000 and $15,000 per month. In July, he earned just $4,000. “I’m starting to dip into investments to pay bills to stay above water. I’m even contemplating taking a second job,” he says.
This may all be concerning news for the president who Fields voted for and Las Vegas itself, which matters to deeply to Trump.
Trump-voting tattoo artist Wayne Fields is considering taking a second job after a substantial hit to earnings
The president and his family have a stake here in the form of the golden Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, which towers above the Strip.
But more importantly, Nevada, which voted for Joe Biden in 2020, swung red in 2024 by a slim margin.
The state was a clear priority for Trump on his election campaign, when he repeated a story about how a Nevada waitress gave him the idea to scrap tax on tips.
Within days of his inauguration as president, Trump visited Las Vegas for the first rally of his second term to reiterate his promise. “We’re going to get it for you — no tax on tips.” He signed the policy into law in July as part of his One Big Beautiful Bill.
But now Trump could be undoing his own efforts to woo the state’s hospitality workers.
Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of Las Vegas’s 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union, says: “If you don’t have those tips, if your tips are reduced, then the tax credit doesn’t matter.
“Unless there’s a course correction here, we could be in for some significant lay-offs. The Trump slump is here in Vegas.”
Trump chaos triggers decline of Las Vegas
Story by Melissa Lawford• 11h•
7 min read
"In the 20 years that Erika Swanton has worked in retail on the Las Vegas Strip, she has never known summer business to be so slow.
The number of customers visiting the skincare shop she works in has halved. “I’ve never seen the economy like this, not even in 2008,” she says.
“People used to come to Las Vegas and spend money. Now they’re scared to spend.”
Vegas has always been a place of extravagance, a luxury destination where tourists can embrace the carefree hedonism of gambling, boozing and spending.
But now Sin City tourism is in a slump.
Visitor numbers fell by 11.3pc year-on-year in June and were down by 7.3pc across the first six months of the year. In percentage terms, that is equivalent to the drop recorded over the entirety of the two-year period during the global recession.
As hotel revenues fall, restaurant workers get their hours cut and tattoo artists report huge falls in their income, the city is fast becoming the canary in the coal mine for the wider US economy.
Las Vegas’s tourism industry is American consumerism in its purest form. Its decline is a clear warning sign that Donald Trump’s “economic revolution” of a global trade war and an immigration crackdown is now hitting the ultimate engine of American GDP – consumer spending.
‘I’ve never seen it this empty’
Midweek on the Las Vegas Strip, nowhere feels busy. Just a third of the blackjack tables at the Flamingo, one of the city’s famous hotel casinos, are occupied. Outside, there is barely any traffic. Swanton says her drive to work used to take 20 minutes. Now it takes nine.
The Las Vegas Strip feels nowhere near as busy
“There were so many machines open in the casino last night,” says Heather Harter, 54, who is staying at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino. “I’ve never seen it this empty and I’ve been coming here since my kids were little.”
Tom Connolly, 70, another Las Vegas regular who is staying at the New York-New York Hotel and Casino says: “The reason we came was my wife got offered four free nights, $125 (£92) in food and beverage credit and $150 in casino credit.
“The hotel solicited us to come out here. To me, that suggests they need the business.”
Figures from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) show hotel occupancy was down by nearly a tenth year-on-year in June. As hotels cut prices, revenues per room fell by an even steeper 13.8pc.
Even the city’s biggest hotel brands are taking a hit. Caesars Entertainment, which runs nine properties in Las Vegas, including Caesars Palace, reported an 8pc drop in its Las Vegas earnings between April and June.
MGM Resorts, which operates 12 hotels on the Strip, similarly reported a 9pc fall in second quarter Las Vegas earnings.
Bill Hornbuckle, its chief executive, said this was primarily because of room remodelling at the flagship MGM Grand hotel, but it also reflected lower midweek bookings at its cheaper properties, the Excalibur and the Luxor.
Part of the decline in visitors is because of a fall in international numbers. Canadians, for one, are increasingly steering clear of the US in the wake of Trump’s tariffs and his message that Canada should become America’s 51st state.
But international visitors make up only 12pc of Las Vegas’ visitors. Steve Hill, chief executive of the LVCVA, says this is primarily a story about Americans.
“The reduction that we’ve seen is largely domestic, and at its core is a concern that consumers have about the economy, about their financial situation and their jobs,” says Hill.
Canary in the coal mine
The Vegas downturn is a hint of what is really going on under the surface of the wider US economy.Mike PeQueen, managing director at Hightower Las Vegas, a wealth management firm, says: “Las Vegas has a fair reputation as a canary in the coal mine for greater US discretionary spending.”
Trump’s radical economic agenda, which has included raising tariffs on imports to their highest level since the 1930s and widespread immigrant deportations, has triggered major downgrades in growth forecasts, sent consumer confidence plunging and raised new fears about inflation.
Yssa Dror, who works in the skincare shop with Swanton, said: “People are afraid to spend because they don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
A massive downward revision in national jobs statistics earlier this month was one of the first signs that cracks are emerging in the economy for everyday Americans.
In Vegas, the storm has already hit. In the first six months of the year, Las Vegas had 1.5 million fewer visitors compared to the same period last year.
Vegas is often characterised as a boom and bust town, but the reality is that in the five decades since LVCVA data began in 1970, its visitor numbers have been on a steady upward trajectory. During this time, the annual total has multiplied more than six times over.
Ominously, there have only been three years when Las Vegas has seen visitor numbers drop by more than a million, or by more than 3pc, in a single year: the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, and the 2020 pandemic.
In other words, for half a century, the only major drops that Las Vegas has seen in visitor numbers have been driven by national crises. But that was until President Trump came to power.
“This theme of an economic slowdown permeates, frankly, almost every discussion that we have with clients,” says Jeremy Aguero, of Applied Analysis, a research firm in Las Vegas.
The drop-off in visitors is concentrated at the lower end of the price scale, says Hill, from the LVCVA.
“The core of the concern here is with folks who have to live on a budget. They need disposable income in order to be able to come,” he added.
Those who are still coming also seem to have less spare cash. The share of visitors staying with friends and family instead of hotels has nearly doubled from 7pc to 13pc, according to preliminary data from Hill’s outfit.
There are signs investors have become more cautious, too.
The billionaire Tilman Fertitta, now Trump’s ambassador to Italy, last month confirmed that he had shelved plans to develop a new Las Vegas hotel-casino project, tentatively called Centre Strip, which would have boasted 2,400 rooms. For now, the site is a parking lot.
Too scared to visit
Gloria Valdez, 38, who works as a hostess at The D, a downtown hotel-casino, says restaurant reservations where she works have plunged by two thirds and customers are becoming far more frugal.“You used to see the tables full of appetisers, salads, drinks, a lot of extras because people wanted to try all of the food,” she says. “Now you see a couple sharing one meal.”
Earlier this year, Valdez’s hours were cut from five days per week to four. “I’m a single mom, I have two kids. I’m so worried about losing my job.”
Hostess Gloria Valdez saw her work cut from five days a week to four
Vegas customers are not just concerned about money they are also concerned about Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Trump was elected on a promise to make mass deportations. He has directed Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) to make a wave of immigration raids across the country, a policy that has hit Nevada’s neighbour California particularly hard.
America’s 12 million or so undocumented immigrants – a substantial part of the population – are now living in fear.
“We’ve heard anecdotally that some of our customers are concerned about staying in hotels,” says Hill. “They’re worried about raids, frankly.”
Valdez notes a particularly large drop-off in Latino customers. “They’re scared to get on planes.”
Whatever the causes, the downturn in Las Vegas tourism will have ripple effects across the city’s economy.
Workers like Valdez are the lifeblood of the local economy, with thousands of workers employed to serve tourists in the regional diners, bars and casinos. Even tattoo parlours are suffering.
Wayne Fields, 47, a tattoo artist at Vegas Ink, said: “Las Vegas has always been good until this year. In the last couple of months, my pay has dropped by 70pc.”
Normally, Fields would earn between $8,000 and $15,000 per month. In July, he earned just $4,000. “I’m starting to dip into investments to pay bills to stay above water. I’m even contemplating taking a second job,” he says.
This may all be concerning news for the president who Fields voted for and Las Vegas itself, which matters to deeply to Trump.
Trump-voting tattoo artist Wayne Fields is considering taking a second job after a substantial hit to earnings
The president and his family have a stake here in the form of the golden Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, which towers above the Strip.
But more importantly, Nevada, which voted for Joe Biden in 2020, swung red in 2024 by a slim margin.
The state was a clear priority for Trump on his election campaign, when he repeated a story about how a Nevada waitress gave him the idea to scrap tax on tips.
Within days of his inauguration as president, Trump visited Las Vegas for the first rally of his second term to reiterate his promise. “We’re going to get it for you — no tax on tips.” He signed the policy into law in July as part of his One Big Beautiful Bill.
But now Trump could be undoing his own efforts to woo the state’s hospitality workers.
Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of Las Vegas’s 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union, says: “If you don’t have those tips, if your tips are reduced, then the tax credit doesn’t matter.
“Unless there’s a course correction here, we could be in for some significant lay-offs. The Trump slump is here in Vegas.”
Red
Well-Known Member
Even if you can’t trust the data, these 13 warning signs will tell you the economy is in trouble | Fortune
The telltale signs are rarely hidden.
Beyond the numbers: Recognizing economic distress
1. Labor market conditions
- More visibly unemployed people: Lines lengthening at job centers, more “help wanted” signs vanishing, and rising rates of layoffs reported by major companies.
- Wage stagnation: If you and those around you are not receiving raises, or if companies pull back on hiring bonuses and perks, it often reflects broader malaise.
- Surge in part-time or gig work: In downturns, full-time jobs often give way to part-time or contract gigs, sometimes observable through employer and media reports.
2. Consumer behavior and social signals
- Reduced spending: Noticeable drops in traffic at restaurants, shops, and malls; fewer people traveling or eating out; increased coupon clipping and price sensitivity.
- Rising defaults: More “for sale” and “foreclosure” signs, growing anecdotes of evictions or missed payments, and upticks in bankruptcies reported by courts and real estate boards.
- Charity demand: Food banks, shelters, and local charities may report higher demand, sometimes before the effects register in official figures.
3. Business activity
- Layoff announcements: Corporate press releases, layoff tracker websites, and industry newsletters provide early warnings about sectors in distress.
- Inventory and discounting: Retailers stuck with excess unsold goods may start offering steeper discounts or holding clearance sales.
- Small-business closures: More empty storefronts, business liquidations, or community announcements about long-standing establishments shutting their doors.
4. Alternative and composite data
- ADP private payroll data: While not always fully aligned with BLS figures, private payroll processors like ADP provide independent snapshots of employment trends.
- Human Development Index (HDI) and Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI): These composite measures integrate health, education, and income measures to provide a broader sense of economic well-being. States such as Maryland and Vermont have implemented GPI to supplement GDP, for example, to offer more nuanced local insights.
- Well-being indexes and social metrics: Life expectancy, educational attainment, and even poll-based “happiness” measures often capture public sentiment and living standards in ways GDP and job tallies alone cannot.
5. Public mood and media reporting
- Media and social media can be canaries in the coal mine: When headlines become dominated by stories of job losses, business failures, or personal financial hardship, it usually signals real underlying distress, even if official data has not yet caught up.
PJF
Well-Known Member
"Canary in the coal mine"
Trump chaos triggers decline of Las Vegas
Story by Melissa Lawford
• 11h•
7 min read
"In the 20 years that Erika Swanton has worked in retail on the Las Vegas Strip, she has never known summer business to be so slow.
The number of customers visiting the skincare shop she works in has halved. “I’ve never seen the economy like this, not even in 2008,” she says.
“People used to come to Las Vegas and spend money. Now they’re scared to spend.”
Vegas has always been a place of extravagance, a luxury destination where tourists can embrace the carefree hedonism of gambling, boozing and spending.
But now Sin City tourism is in a slump.
Visitor numbers fell by 11.3pc year-on-year in June and were down by 7.3pc across the first six months of the year. In percentage terms, that is equivalent to the drop recorded over the entirety of the two-year period during the global recession.
As hotel revenues fall, restaurant workers get their hours cut and tattoo artists report huge falls in their income, the city is fast becoming the canary in the coal mine for the wider US economy.
Las Vegas’s tourism industry is American consumerism in its purest form. Its decline is a clear warning sign that Donald Trump’s “economic revolution” of a global trade war and an immigration crackdown is now hitting the ultimate engine of American GDP – consumer spending.
‘I’ve never seen it this empty’
Midweek on the Las Vegas Strip, nowhere feels busy. Just a third of the blackjack tables at the Flamingo, one of the city’s famous hotel casinos, are occupied. Outside, there is barely any traffic. Swanton says her drive to work used to take 20 minutes. Now it takes nine.
The Las Vegas Strip feels nowhere near as busy
“There were so many machines open in the casino last night,” says Heather Harter, 54, who is staying at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino. “I’ve never seen it this empty and I’ve been coming here since my kids were little.”
Tom Connolly, 70, another Las Vegas regular who is staying at the New York-New York Hotel and Casino says: “The reason we came was my wife got offered four free nights, $125 (£92) in food and beverage credit and $150 in casino credit.
“The hotel solicited us to come out here. To me, that suggests they need the business.”
Figures from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) show hotel occupancy was down by nearly a tenth year-on-year in June. As hotels cut prices, revenues per room fell by an even steeper 13.8pc.
Even the city’s biggest hotel brands are taking a hit. Caesars Entertainment, which runs nine properties in Las Vegas, including Caesars Palace, reported an 8pc drop in its Las Vegas earnings between April and June.
MGM Resorts, which operates 12 hotels on the Strip, similarly reported a 9pc fall in second quarter Las Vegas earnings.
Bill Hornbuckle, its chief executive, said this was primarily because of room remodelling at the flagship MGM Grand hotel, but it also reflected lower midweek bookings at its cheaper properties, the Excalibur and the Luxor.
Part of the decline in visitors is because of a fall in international numbers. Canadians, for one, are increasingly steering clear of the US in the wake of Trump’s tariffs and his message that Canada should become America’s 51st state.
But international visitors make up only 12pc of Las Vegas’ visitors. Steve Hill, chief executive of the LVCVA, says this is primarily a story about Americans.
“The reduction that we’ve seen is largely domestic, and at its core is a concern that consumers have about the economy, about their financial situation and their jobs,” says Hill.
Canary in the coal mine
The Vegas downturn is a hint of what is really going on under the surface of the wider US economy.
Mike PeQueen, managing director at Hightower Las Vegas, a wealth management firm, says: “Las Vegas has a fair reputation as a canary in the coal mine for greater US discretionary spending.”
Trump’s radical economic agenda, which has included raising tariffs on imports to their highest level since the 1930s and widespread immigrant deportations, has triggered major downgrades in growth forecasts, sent consumer confidence plunging and raised new fears about inflation.
Yssa Dror, who works in the skincare shop with Swanton, said: “People are afraid to spend because they don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
A massive downward revision in national jobs statistics earlier this month was one of the first signs that cracks are emerging in the economy for everyday Americans.
In Vegas, the storm has already hit. In the first six months of the year, Las Vegas had 1.5 million fewer visitors compared to the same period last year.
Vegas is often characterised as a boom and bust town, but the reality is that in the five decades since LVCVA data began in 1970, its visitor numbers have been on a steady upward trajectory. During this time, the annual total has multiplied more than six times over.
Ominously, there have only been three years when Las Vegas has seen visitor numbers drop by more than a million, or by more than 3pc, in a single year: the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, and the 2020 pandemic.
In other words, for half a century, the only major drops that Las Vegas has seen in visitor numbers have been driven by national crises. But that was until President Trump came to power.
“This theme of an economic slowdown permeates, frankly, almost every discussion that we have with clients,” says Jeremy Aguero, of Applied Analysis, a research firm in Las Vegas.
The drop-off in visitors is concentrated at the lower end of the price scale, says Hill, from the LVCVA.
“The core of the concern here is with folks who have to live on a budget. They need disposable income in order to be able to come,” he added.
Those who are still coming also seem to have less spare cash. The share of visitors staying with friends and family instead of hotels has nearly doubled from 7pc to 13pc, according to preliminary data from Hill’s outfit.
There are signs investors have become more cautious, too.
The billionaire Tilman Fertitta, now Trump’s ambassador to Italy, last month confirmed that he had shelved plans to develop a new Las Vegas hotel-casino project, tentatively called Centre Strip, which would have boasted 2,400 rooms. For now, the site is a parking lot.
Too scared to visit
Gloria Valdez, 38, who works as a hostess at The D, a downtown hotel-casino, says restaurant reservations where she works have plunged by two thirds and customers are becoming far more frugal.
“You used to see the tables full of appetisers, salads, drinks, a lot of extras because people wanted to try all of the food,” she says. “Now you see a couple sharing one meal.”
Earlier this year, Valdez’s hours were cut from five days per week to four. “I’m a single mom, I have two kids. I’m so worried about losing my job.”
Hostess Gloria Valdez saw her work cut from five days a week to four
Vegas customers are not just concerned about money they are also concerned about Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Trump was elected on a promise to make mass deportations. He has directed Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) to make a wave of immigration raids across the country, a policy that has hit Nevada’s neighbour California particularly hard.
America’s 12 million or so undocumented immigrants – a substantial part of the population – are now living in fear.
“We’ve heard anecdotally that some of our customers are concerned about staying in hotels,” says Hill. “They’re worried about raids, frankly.”
Valdez notes a particularly large drop-off in Latino customers. “They’re scared to get on planes.”
Whatever the causes, the downturn in Las Vegas tourism will have ripple effects across the city’s economy.
Workers like Valdez are the lifeblood of the local economy, with thousands of workers employed to serve tourists in the regional diners, bars and casinos. Even tattoo parlours are suffering.
Wayne Fields, 47, a tattoo artist at Vegas Ink, said: “Las Vegas has always been good until this year. In the last couple of months, my pay has dropped by 70pc.”
Normally, Fields would earn between $8,000 and $15,000 per month. In July, he earned just $4,000. “I’m starting to dip into investments to pay bills to stay above water. I’m even contemplating taking a second job,” he says.
This may all be concerning news for the president who Fields voted for and Las Vegas itself, which matters to deeply to Trump.
Trump-voting tattoo artist Wayne Fields is considering taking a second job after a substantial hit to earnings
The president and his family have a stake here in the form of the golden Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, which towers above the Strip.
But more importantly, Nevada, which voted for Joe Biden in 2020, swung red in 2024 by a slim margin.
The state was a clear priority for Trump on his election campaign, when he repeated a story about how a Nevada waitress gave him the idea to scrap tax on tips.
Within days of his inauguration as president, Trump visited Las Vegas for the first rally of his second term to reiterate his promise. “We’re going to get it for you — no tax on tips.” He signed the policy into law in July as part of his One Big Beautiful Bill.
But now Trump could be undoing his own efforts to woo the state’s hospitality workers.
Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of Las Vegas’s 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union, says: “If you don’t have those tips, if your tips are reduced, then the tax credit doesn’t matter.
“Unless there’s a course correction here, we could be in for some significant lay-offs. The Trump slump is here in Vegas.”
Why would I get on a ****ing plane for 22 hours and fly into LA to be told by some ****** at customs that he doesn't like my beard so I can fly back to Australia? The arbitrary reasons US border officers have been using to refuse people entry are disgusting, another Aussie was refused entry because he flew to Canada first and not the US, he explained that he got a cheaper flight going through Canada but that was not acceptable. Then there's the stuff you post online, fortunately this is as close to social media as i get but the authoritarianism is out of control.
A friend of mine was recently refused a US visa because he attended a family wedding in the Lebanontm 4 years age.