RealClearInvestigations Articles

Topline: Plenty of Americans recharge their energy by curling up with a good book or watching reruns on television. But, in case anyone was unaware, the National Institutes of Health spent taxpayer dollars in 2012 to discover that very fact. A federally-funded study concluded that those who had to show “self-control” or “regulate their emotions” during the work day were more likely to seek “greater immersion in a familiar fictional world the next day.” The project received an undisclosed portion of a $667,000 grant, or $973,000 in today’s...

Topline: Police officers on Long Island are being fired for wrongdoing at a date most convenient for them. Seven cops at the Suffolk County Police Department admitted to fireable offenses like drunk driving or revealing the identity of an undercover colleague. Instead of being terminated immediately, they signed settlements allowing them to remain employed until their total length of service reached 20 years — letting them collect a pension on their way out. Newsday reported that the seven cops collected $7 million in salary after the county already determined they should be fired....

Topline: The El Paso Independent School District bought $3.1 million worth of touchscreen blackboards and computer servers that were not needed, and left them in storage for over a year because there was no use for them, according to a recent internal audit. Key facts: Federal Title I funds for low-income schools helped the district buy 3,000 Mimio Interactive Flat Panels — large computer screens for teachers to write on while presenting to a class. More than a year later, 929 of the panels worth $2.3 million were still in storage. They had been meant only for core classroom teachers,...

Just a few years ago, wearing a sombrero on Halloween could get you banished from polite society for the social crime of “cultural appropriation.” Nutrition experts argued that preventing obesity was a form of racialized “fatphobia,” even as scientific names of songbirds were purged in a moral campaign presumably aimed at white supremacy. Meanwhile, a slew of studies and papers and articles argued that punctuality, excellence, and other forms...

What is human sexuality? In Western societies, the traditional understanding long shared by religious authority, textbook biology, and public opinion is being replaced by the emerging expertocracy of professors, bureaucrats, and lawyers. Consider a federal lawsuit involving a transgender individual who identifies as a woman, but has fully intact male genitalia. This individual was keen on visiting a women’s-only Korean spa in Washington state where naked girls and women receive full-body scrubs from female staff in communal saunas.  In his dissent in the Olympus Spa case, Judge...

Topline: When President Donald Trump claimed that the new White House ballroom would be funded entirely by private donors, it appears he already knew that would not happen.  The Washington Post reported that a project estimate prepared for the White House in early March showed the ballroom would require $300 million of taxpayer funding. Yet Trump publicly announced on March 31, “This is taxpayer-free. We have no taxpayer putting up 10 cents.” Key facts: The idea of spending public money on a ballroom is highly subjective. Trump argues it will boost security and is necessary...

There’s hardly a ruler in the world who would identify as fascist, but if you trust the mainstream media, you will assume fascism is on the march. Mentions of the term have skyrocketed ever since Donald Trump emerged from the land of chandeliers; fascist mentions on cable reached unprecedented levels in the run-up to the 2024 election. Now, almost anything Trump does – from cracking down on illegal immigration to proposing construction of a victory arch – is seen by the Washington Post and others as fascist. Tellingly, the term has not just been...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week June 21 to June 27 RCI Podcasts & Videos On this week’s episode of the RealClearInvestigations Podcast, RCI Editor J. Peder Zane and RCI Senior Reporter James Varney speak with Dr. Kendall Conger who lost his job after challenging a 2021 statement issued by his employer – Duke Health – declaring racism a “public health crisis.” On The Miller Report: Real Clear Journalism, Maggie Miller speaks with one of the world's leading energy experts, Daniel Yergin, about how the global energy landscape is being transformed by...

Although Donald Trump’s defenders describe the Russia hoax and other efforts to frame the president as a "grand conspiracy," RealClearInvestigations has learned that the man now leading the probe of that scandal is pursuing multiple conspiracy prosecutions that are smaller and more manageable, according to several sources with direct knowledge of the probe.  Since taking over the Justice Department’s far-flung investigation in April, veteran prosecutor Joseph diGenova and his team quickly concluded that combining all of the alleged wrongdoing, which ranges from...

Topline: The military’s Foreign Comparative Testing program has partnered with other nations to create new body armor, rockets, ammunition and, in 2012, chipotle-flavored beef jerky. Pentagon officials spent $1.5 million meant “to improve the U.S. warfighter’s capabilities” on researching a “meat roll-up” for use as a “savory snack.” The money would be worth $2.2 million today. That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight...

Topline: A tiny contractor’s disastrous time running an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in El Paso came to an end this March. Now, a Government Accountability Office report has uncovered millions of dollars in wasted money and other issues that jeopardized detainees’ safety. Key facts: Camp East Montana opened in August 2025 as the nation’s largest ICE facility, with the capacity to hold 5,000 immigrant detainees. The Army gave the small firm Acquisition Logistics a $1.3 billion contract to run the camp. Acquisition Logistics had no experience running...

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 – with face masks, gloves, and other basic protections in high demand – Chinese leaders threatened to plunge America into the “mighty sea of coronavirus” by withholding essential medical supplies in retaliation for measures such as the U.S. travel ban on visitors from China. The threat, issued through a Chinese Communist Party organ, brought into stark relief China’s strategy to subdue would-be foes by rendering them reliant on its exports for life’s necessities – prompting a pledge from U.S....

Topline: A Missouri school superintendent made out with perhaps the best rate of pay in the history of public schooling. Salary: $249,167. Hours worked: Zero. The Francis Howell R-III School District asked Dr. Mike Dominguez to resign before his first day on the job, but paid him a full year of salary to avoid a potential lawsuit. A state audit concluded the district did not perform a proper background check before hiring Dominguez, which could have identified concerns about his “competency” and “ability to lead the district.” Key facts: Dominguez had previously been...

Topline: Poor oversight in Broome County, N.Y., allowed officials to take expensive international trips, spend thousands of dollars on alcohol and parties, and get reimbursed for expenses without receipts, according to a May 29 report from the New York Authorities Budget Office. Key facts: The problems came from within the county’s industrial development agency, which provides loans and tax breaks to small businesses to help create jobs. The agency’s employees spent $239,908 on their county credit cards from January 2022 to June 2025, according to the report. Almost all of the...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week June 14 to June 20   RCI Podcasts & Videos On this week’s episode of the RealClearInvestigations Podcast, RCI Editor J. Peder Zane and RCI Senior Reporter James Varney speak with Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, about the national civics education he has spearheaded and how to have conversations across the political divide.   On The Miller Report: Real Clear Journalism, Maggie Miller speaks with Jeremy...

Topline: The Department of Justice had $77.5 million worth of expired grant funds sitting in bank accounts and unavailable for use as of Sept. 30, 2025, according to two recent audits by the agency’s inspector general. Most of the money was from the Office on Violence Against Women, meant to support victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.  Key facts: When the federal government gives a grant to a nonprofit, it first “obligates” the money by setting it aside in a bank account. It often takes months or years for the nonprofit to actually spend the money. If the...

Topline: Tax delinquency among recipients of federal subsidies is an under-investigated source of fiscal waste, but the Government Accountability Office published a landmark study on the issue back in 2012. Medical providers in Florida, New York and Texas with unpaid taxes were found to have received $6.6 billion in Medicaid reimbursements during fiscal year 2009, or $10.3 billion in today’s money.  One couple that owned a nursing business was even able to buy a new home while their company owed $3 million in taxes. That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting...

Topline: Michael Boaz, the former town manager of Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, made hundreds of unauthorized purchases on his city credit card from 2022 to 2024, including bullets and a hotel for his family vacation, according to a state audit released in May. Boaz was fired in 2024 when the allegations first came to light. Now that a state audit confirmed the questionable purchases, he has been indicted for felony embezzlement.  Key facts: Boaz’ questionable purchases totaled $18,426, much of which was spent on food. He spent $12,897 at pizzerias, barbecue restaurants, an...

America’s largest cities are increasing their spending at almost unprecedented rates. A RealClearInvestigations analysis of cities with at least 500,000 residents found they cumulatively raised their per-person spending by 18% over the last 10 budget cycles, accounting for inflation. The only equivalents on record are the spending surges ignited by the Great Society programs of the 1960s and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal during the 1930s. But unlike those past eras, today’s cities do not have the revenue to support their heavy spending. State and federal funding have...