RealClearInvestigations Articles

Topline: A night at the movies turned into a national scandal in 2012 when Dallas Independent School District spent $57,000 on a boys-only trip to see Red Tails, a World War II film directed by George Lucas of Star Wars fame. Female students were forced to stay at school and watch a movie about a spelling bee, prompting a federal Title IX investigation for gender-based discrimination. Ironically, no one made out better than the administrator who planned the field trip. She resigned with a $142,000 payout and became a private consultant. Waste of the Day 5.14.26 Open the Books The...

Topline: North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University awarded $5 million in scholarships “without evidence of merit or need,” some of which were “deliberately funneled” to school employees and their relatives, according to a report by State Auditor Dave Boliek released on April 23. Key facts: The university collects fees from students for housing, dining and parking. They are supposed to fund administrative costs like facilities and human resources, not scholarships. But $73,063 was used to help a board member’s nephew cover tuition, the audit...

BLUE MOUNDS, Wisc. – Ridglan Farms, a breeder of beagles for scientific experiments, has withstood attacks from the animal rights movement for years. Activists have broken into its buildings to document the conditions inside them, rescued some dogs, and pushed Wisconsin authorities to cite the company for animal abuse.  On April 30, Ridglan finally buckled to the public pressure, handing the movement against animal testing one of its biggest triumphs. Big Dog Rescue and the Center for a Humane Economy announced that the groups reached an agreement to purchase 1,500 beagles for...

Topline: The federal office overseeing Medicare hearings and appeals was significantly overstaffed, leading to $30 million in wasted resources in 2023 and 2024, according to a whistleblower complaint substantiated by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. The Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals has since laid off 185 employees. Key facts: In 2018, the office had 672 employees making $62.6 million, according to data obtained from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. That was not enough to deal with a massive backlog of claims from seniors arguing Medicare had wrongfully denied them...

Topline: Every taxpayer in North Dakota is losing money gambling on horse races, even those who never placed a bet. The state’s Racing Commission, a five-member board that ensures horse racing is fair and profitable, has awarded ill-advised grants and spent too much money on its own operation, according to a state audit released in April. Key facts: The Commission awarded 349 grants worth $2.9 million from 2021 to 2025, and the audit randomly reviewed 25 of them. Three of the grants went to racetracks that never applied for them, totaling $25,500. Another three went to recipients who...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week May 3 to May 9   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 Gary Saul Morson, a scholar of Russian literature at Northwestern University, about what Dostoevsky and Russian history can teach us about modern progressives.   Featured Investigation: Super Power To Spare: How Battery Tech Illuminates Competition Between U.S. & China James Varney reports for RealClearInvestigations that China's dramatic recent advances...

Topline: The Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general identified $200 million in improper payments that Medicaid made for autism services between 2019 and 2024 in Maine, Indiana, Colorado and Wisconsin. Until now, the four states had never audited the payments. Key facts: Improper payments are not necessarily criminal fraud, but they do mean the government sent money to the wrong person or for the wrong reason.   Medicaid as a whole made $37.4 billion worth of improper payments in 2025. But the ongoing audit of autism services, which began in 2022, found that...

Topline: Most football fans are likely jealous of anyone who can afford tickets to the Super Bowl, which typically cost thousands of dollars. But in 2012, fans watching at home were forced to cover the transportation costs of those with tickets to the big game.  The U.S. Department of Transportation gave the City of Indianapolis $142,419 in taxpayer money to offer free bus rides to Lucas Oil Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday and the three days leading up to it. The money would be worth $206,571 today. That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S....

The most familiar races between superpowers are those involving dreaded killer weapons, but today the U.S. and China are engaged in another one involving a centuries-old invention that also improves life: batteries. One year ago, the Chinese battery giant CATL announced that it had redefined the limits of electric cars by creating a battery that could power a vehicle for 320 miles on a 5-minute charge. And in March, the world’s largest EV maker, China’s BYD Auto, unveiled a car that could also be charged in less time than it takes to fill a traditional car with...

Topline: The Army and Navy found 14 weapons systems that had “critical cost growth” in 2023 and 2024, meaning it will cost at least 25% more than expected to maintain them until they are defunct. The cost overruns total $695.2 billion, according to data in an April report by the Government Accountability Office. Key facts: The weapons are already built, but repairing and operating them is typically expensive, according to the GAO. Not all of the cost overruns are an issue, because some of the weapons will last longer than initially expected, thus justifying the added cost. A fleet...

Topline: The Los Angeles Police Department spent $315.5 million on overtime last year, and the fire department spent $283.4 million, leading to inflated take-home pay, according to payroll records obtained by Open the Books. Both were the highest amounts in city history as the departments continue to be grossly understaffed. Key facts: California Gov. Gavin Newsom had a salary of $242,295 last year. There were 89 fire and police employees in Los Angeles who made more than that in overtime alone. Fire battalion chief Nicholas Ferrrari made $653,484 in overtime. It was the highest ever for a...

One of the beneficiaries of Virginia’s aggressive attempt to gerrymander the state for Democratic advantage could be a former federal prosecutor whose campaign for Congress hinges on his efforts to use the law to target President Trump and his supporters. When a slim majority of Virginia voters gave the legislature authority last month to create congressional districts that could give Democrats a 10-1 advantage, J.P. Cooney cheered the  outcome in a message on social media, boasting that the new district he was running in had been drawn “expressly for the...

Topline: The Department of the Interior spent $2.6 billion to help state and local governments and nonprofits manage drought conditions in the Colorado River Basin, but it’s almost impossible for taxpayers to track where the money went. Federal officials classified the spending as “miscellaneous obligations” to avoid the requirement that all grants be posted online at USAspending.gov, according to an April inspector general report. Public oversight would have been vital. The Department of the Interior never checked if the recipients were barred from doing business with the...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week April 26 to May 2   RCI Podcasts & Videos On this week’s episode of the RealClearInvestigations Podcast, RCI Editor J. Peder Zane and RCI Senior Reporter James Varney speak about his RCI article which details the central yet largely hidden role played University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric in both the risky scientific work that may have created the virus that causes COVID-19 and the subsequent campaign to suppress public debate about its origins.   On The Miller Report: Real Clear Journalism, Maggie Miller speaks with...

Topline: The fox is guarding the henhouse at Montclair Public Schools in New Jersey. After the district’s annual audit uncovered seven “deficiencies” with its financial records, school officials slashed the budget for a follow-up investigation into “potential irregularities such as fraud, waste, and abuse,” according to Montclair Local. Key facts: The annual audit found that the district overspent its budget by $13.6 million across 39 different spending categories last year. Auditors identified duplicate expenses, missing invoices, contradictory account balances...

Topline: In 2012, researchers at Purdue University used optical illusions to show that making a golf hole appear larger helps golfers improve their performance. The $350,000 hole in the federal budget was sadly no magic trick. The National Science Foundation funded the project with a grant that would be worth $510,000 today, even after the National Institutes of Health funded a similar Purdue study in 2008. 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 on federal frauds...

Topline: President Donald Trump made it a priority to downsize the federal workforce last year, but the top-paid employees are making more money than previously. There were 1,540 federal workers who outearned the president’s salary of $400,000 last year, breaking the previous record of 956 workers. The employees collectively earned $632.3 million. An additional 189 employees made exactly $400,000. Key facts: The eight highest-paid federal employees all work for the National Institutes of Health. Gary Gibbons, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, made $547,285. It...

Topline: Aretha Ferrell-Benavides — the disgraced former city manager of Martinsville, Va. — spent $96,613 on her city credit card without proper approval, according to an independent audit released this April. Several purchases ignored city spending limits on meals and hotels. The City Manager’s Office also took money from another department to fund Ferrell-Benades' travel and a pay raise without approval from the city council, according to the audit. Key facts: Ferrell-Benavides made 307 purchases on her credit card from February 2024 to June 2025. Sixty-eight of them were...

In March 2020, a couple of months after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States, editors at the journal Nature Medicine appended a note to a coronavirus study it had published five years prior. “We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered,” the journal editors wrote. “There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.” The...