RealClearInvestigations Articles

Topline: West Virginia government officials spent $24 million in 2010 on expensive, high-capacity internet routers that could handle tens of thousands of users at once. Then, they placed them in libraries and schools that only had one computer in the entire building. 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 and taxpayer abuses.  Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname "Dr. No" by stopping thousands of pork-barrel...

Topline: The City of Boston’s soccer stadium renovation was supposed to cost taxpayers $50 million when it was announced in March 2024. The cost is now up to $135 million — a fact that Mayor Michelle Wu knew for a month before informing the public, according to the Boston Herald. Key facts: White Stadium has been used by student-athletes at Boston Public Schools since it was built in 1949. After the renovation, it will also house the Boston Legacy FC women’s soccer team. Wu announced the ballooning price in a Feb. 6 press conference, but a public records request filed by the...

Half a century after the book “Why Johnny Can’t Read” sounded an alarm about the rise of illiteracy in the U.S., it has only gotten worse: A quarter of all young adults, many of them high school graduates, are now functionally illiterate. Unable to read more than basic, short sentences, their prospects in today’s information economy are bleak.  Half a century ago, this book raised the alarm about illiteracy in the U.S. Amazon This crisis gave rise to a movement that embraced the science of reading and produced a surprising success story in the Deep South,...

Topline: The Congressional Budget Office’s annual 10-year economic forecast warns that, by 2030, the federal debt held by the public will be $40.3 trillion, or 108% of the country’s gross domestic product — an amount never before seen in American history. Key facts: The federal debt held by the public differs slightly from the overall federal debt because it excludes money that government agencies owe to each other. Most economists consider it a more meaningful statistic. It reached $30.2 trillion in 2025, the CBO notes. By 2036, it will be even higher: the debt held by the...

Topline: The Rhode Island Department of Corrections spent a record $38.9 million on overtime in 2025, nearly a quarter of its total payroll expense, according to records obtained by Open the Books. Key facts: Director Wayne Salisbury made $177,420 last year, but 117 of his employees outearned him because of massive overtime payments.  Of the 1,512 people who earned a paycheck from the Corrections Department last year, including part-time employees, 811 earned at least $10,000 in overtime. There were 65 employees who made more than $100,000 of overtime, including eight who made more than...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week March 1 to March 7   Featured Investigation: Transparency: Suing Schools That Hide Trans Kids’ Identities From Parents John Murawski reports for RealClearInvestigations on the intensifying national debate over whether public schools can secretly support students' gender transitions without notifying parents. Roughly 40 lawsuits have been filed challenging these policies, several of which have reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Courts remain divided, states are passing competing legislation, and the Trump administration has launched federal...

Topline: Controversial education firms that helped embed diversity, equity and inclusion principles in K-12 military schools during President Joe Biden’s administration are still working with the Department of Defense Education Activity, or DoDEA, and received a total of $171,175 in 2025. Key facts: Thomas M. Brady, the director of DoDEA from 2014 to 2024, announced in 2020 that DEI “must be a foundational premise in every aspect of our organization.” Changes to that affect were quickly made to the curriculum of DoDEA, which runs 161 schools for the children of...

A few weeks before Christmas in 2022, Amber Lavigne was cleaning her 13-year-old’s bedroom when she stumbled upon her daughter’s secret: a chest binder. She learned that Autumn had been wearing the garment, which girls use to flatten their breasts to achieve a masculine appearance, for about two months at school in Maine, where she had adopted a boy’s name, Leo, and was using he/him pronouns.  It was the first of two chest binders Lavigne found that had been provided to her eighth-grade daughter by a social worker at the Great Salt Bay Community School, according to a...

Topline: The federal government paid $2 million in service fees for bank accounts with a balance of $0 in 2011, many of which had been empty for over three years, according to a Government Accountability Office report from April 2012. The money would be worth $2.9 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 on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.  Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname "Dr. No" by stopping thousands of...

Topline: The 2026 federal budget contains $15.8 billion in earmark funding for 8,475 local projects in lawmakers’ home districts, but the money was not distributed equitably. Senators who are Republicans or have been in Congress for decades were far more likely to receive money than their colleagues. Key facts: Senators filed their earmark requests in May 2025, but the majority were removed from the draft budget before it was signed into law this February. Those cuts were made partially along party lines. The average Republican senator got 47% of the money they asked for, while the...

California’s $200 billion-a-year Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, is one of the largest public healthcare systems in the nation. Behind the staggering price tag lies a program repeatedly flagged for waste, mismanagement, and fraud, raising fresh doubts as state leaders propose taxing billionaires to keep it afloat. For years, audits and federal investigations have documented everything from improper payments to large-scale fraud schemes. State officials have acknowledged that fraud has reached alarming levels in some sectors, including hospice services and in-home...

Topline: Florida spent $405 million in emergency funding on its immigration crackdown in the last six months, with nearly a quarter paying for porta-potties and millions going to companies whose executives have donated to Republican political action committees linked to Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida Phoenix reported. Key facts: Florida’s $2.7 billion Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund was created in 2022 to be used by the governor “for purposes of preparing or responding to a disaster declared by the Governor as a state of emergency.” DeSantis declared illegal...

Topline: One doesn’t associate luxury with being in the military, but Pentagon personnel spent record amounts of money dining on seafood in 2025, according to federal spending records reviewed by Open the Books. Key facts: From March to November 2025, the military spent $15.9 million on 524 orders of Alaskan king crab and $66.7 million on 1,359 orders of lobster. There have only been seven times in history where the Pentagon spent at least $2 million on Alaskan king crab in a single month. Donald Trump has been president for six of them. It happened in July 2019, October 2020 and four...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week February 22 to February 28   Featured Investigation: Bad Bets: Massive EV Subsidies Not Paying Off James Varney reports for RealClearInvestigations that federal and state governments have committed at least $100 billion to electric vehicle subsidies, loans, and mandates over the past decade, even as consumer demand softens and major automakers report mounting losses. Supporters say the spending is vital to fight climate change and compete with China. Critics warn taxpayers may be left holding the bag if heavily subsidized projects falter. In...

Topline: The federal government lost $186 billion to improper payments in fiscal year 2025, according to newly released data from the Office of Management and Budget. That’s more than $350,000 in taxpayer money every minute, all sent to the wrong person, for the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason. Key facts: Medicare was responsible for $56.7 billion of the improper payments, and Medicaid lost $37.4 billion.  The other biggest offenders included the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Agriculture, and the Small Business Administration. The $186 billion total is almost...

The future was supposed to have arrived this year in a cluster of counties just east of Atlanta in the form of a state-of-the-art factory that would churn out 400,000 electric vehicles a year. But when JoEllen Artz looks about her lifetime neighborhood, all she sees are holes. “Those shovel holes they made in the ground? That’s it,” she said of the planned site of a Rivian manufacturing plant. “It’s awful, awful.” The problem is not a lack of funds. On the promise of thousands of jobs, elected officials in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta have pledged some $8...

Topline: There is one major reason why most Americans do not regularly buy caviar: the price. Publicity is not the issue. The Department of Agriculture ignored that fact in 2012, when it handed out $300,000 for an Idaho fish company to print flyers and create a website advertising its caviar. The money would be worth $565,000 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 on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.  Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from...

Topline: At each of the eight public universities in Utah, a volunteer Board of Trustees is responsible for evaluating the school’s president, among other things. But according to a state audit released Jan. 30, multiple trustees are “confused” by the evaluation process. In fact, only 26% of trustees are aware that it’s their job to evaluate the president. Key facts: The trustees must create Key Performance Indicator criteria every year to review their school’s president. Yet when surveyed by the state auditor, 37% of trustees said the Utah System of Higher...

The push to “protect” children from cell phones and social media is gaining momentum worldwide. As EU and Asian countries consider legal limits on minors’ access to social media, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled in a Los Angeles courtroom last week about whether his company’s popular apps, which include Facebook and Instagram, are addictive. That question already seems to have been resolved in the public mind. Pennsylvania now seems poised to become the 32nd state to ban or limit cell phones in its public schools. A parent leader who...