RealClearInvestigations Original Articles

The Obama intelligence community’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized dirty tricks to try and help Donald Trump win the 2016 election was based on "one scant, unclear and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard [intelligence] reports," according to a just-declassified report that had been locked away in a CIA vault. Nevertheless, former CIA Director John Brennan ordered agency analysts to use the claim in the Intelligence Community Assessment issued during the Obama administration’s final days – even though the ICA itself noted...

Although Robert Mueller failed to find an election conspiracy between Donald Trump and Moscow, the former Special Counsel threw a lifeline to the Russiagate narrative by alleging that the Kremlin had engaged in a “sweeping and systematic” effort to get Trump elected and “sow discord” among Americans.  Six years later, that questionable but enduring claim continues to unravel. According to newly declassified documents, U.S. intelligence leaders concealed high-level doubts about one of Russiagate’s foundational allegations: that Russia stole and leaked...

The floodgates holding back long-buried classified documents exposing government efforts to claim Donald Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin to manipulate the 2016 U.S. presidential election might finally be opening.  Trump administration officials held an urgent meeting Sunday to discuss “new information on Russiagate,” which they might use to build a criminal conspiracy case against Obama and Biden administration political appointees who allegedly weaponized the government against Trump, two Trump administration officials told RealClearInvestigations. The documents are said...

Following a years-long surge in illegal immigration, the Trump administration is poised to challenge a longstanding but legally fraught practice: counting illegal aliens in the U.S. census. President Trump tried to end the practice during his first term, but President Biden overturned his predecessor’s policy before it was implemented. Now, buoyed by red state attorneys general and Republican legislators, the second Trump administration is determined “to clean up the census and make sure that illegal aliens are not counted,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy...

With donuts now over $20 a dozen and a cup of coffee topping $3, working a shift for the Los Angeles Police Department isn’t what it once was. But with overtime pay at 1.5 times the regular hourly rate,  LAPD officers aren’t having trouble footing the bill at Randy’s or Starbucks. Indeed, overtime pay has now grown so much that some detectives earn more money than the city’s mayor and the state’s governor.  Thanks to overtime, many Los Angeles police officers earn more than Mayor Karen Bass.   Invision In 2023, the last year for which...

Explosive new evidence suggests that some of the highest-ranking officials in the Obama-era CIA and FBI perjured themselves regarding their claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin helped Donald Trump secure his victory in 2016. A newly released CIA review challenges their sworn denials to Congress that the Steele dossier – a discredited set of allegations about Trump funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign – was used as the basis for the years-long Russiagate probe that hamstrung President Trump’s first term. The eight-page review conducted by career CIA...

A high-stakes battle over the future of education is playing out in the state that has long had the best public schools in the nation – Massachusetts. The likely overhaul of high school education and graduation requirements in Massachusetts is mostly aimed at lifting the academic performance of low-income black and Latino students who have been left behind in the state’s rise to the top. Leading the charge are progressive teachers’ unions and school administrations that want to broaden the scope of high school to include soft skills like teamwork and cultural awareness, as...

Buried in the 940-page “big, beautiful” budget blueprint is an unprecedented tax credit that, if approved, will be a long-sought victory for the private school choice movement in its drive to expand and break into Democratic states that for decades have blocked its path. The tax credit program, which would provide scholarships to K-12 students to pay for private schooling, would mark a significant shift in federal education policy. The scholarships would be the first major federal initiative designed to propel the nationwide growth of private school choice, a largely conservative...

The far-left activist who murdered two people outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. last month, and the Egyptian illegal immigrant who hurled Molotov cocktails at pro-Israel demonstrators in Boulder this month shouted the same slogan: Free Palestine. In a troubling twist, their anti-Israel messages are being echoed by hatemongers at the opposite end of the political spectrum: white supremacists, fascists, and neo-Nazis who have seen the proliferation of anger against the Jewish state as an opportunity to broaden and advance their own cause. Just six days after the Oct. 7, 2023,...

In its last two working days, the Biden administration’s Energy Department signed off on nearly $42 billion for green energy projects – a sum that exceeded the total amount its Loan Programs Office (LPO) had put out in the past decade. The frenzied activity on Jan. 16 and 17, 2025, capped a spending binge that saw the LPO approve at least $93 billion in current and future disbursements after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election in November, according to documents provided by the department to RealClearInvestigations. It appears that Biden officials were rushing...

Wikipedia, the world’s go-to site for information that professes to take a neutral point of view, is coming under fire for alleged anti-Israel bias in the sources it favors and content it delivers to millions of readers.  The criticism is coming from several quarters, including a bipartisan group of 23 members of Congress who, in an April letter, expressed “deep concern regarding antisemitism” found in the online encyclopedia. The entries routinely highlight the work of anti-Zionist scholars and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), according to a...

This article contains graphic descriptions that may not be suitable for all readers. Parental discretion is advised. RALEIGH, N.C. – Like public libraries across the country, branches in North Carolina’s capital city turn rainbow-hued each June in celebration of Pride Month. Festive book displays featuring “queer-themed” titles written for all ages – from toddlers to teens and adults – are set out for the public as innocently as if the subject in question were cooking, gardening, or personal finance.  The colorful Pride books set out by Wake County...

The first in a two-part series on the global housing crisis. Next to inflation, Americans ranked housing as their top financial worry in a Gallup survey last May. It’s only gotten worse. January home sales were down 5% from last year’s dismal numbers. Record numbers of first-time buyers are stuck on the sidelines as housing affordability stands at the lowest level ever recorded, while one in three Americans now spend over 30% of their income on mortgage or rent.  The housing crisis is not just an American problem, but a global phenomenon that hits the...

As the Trump administration faces substantial pushback in the courts, including an unprecedented wave of nationwide injunctions halting its policies, some are claiming that his opponents are tilting the scales of justice by selectively bringing their lawsuits before sympathetic courts in a practice called “forum shopping.” They note that three-quarters of the lower court justices who have blocked Trump policies were appointed by Democrats. Gaming the federal justice system, however, is harder than it sounds because plaintiffs bring cases before courts rather than judges. Most...

NEW ORLEANS—In drab, windowless rooms strung along a tight corridor, migrants who have flooded into the United States in recent years trickle before immigration judges each weekday morning.  These makeshift courtrooms are a far cry from the scorched border with Mexico and busy ports and airports through which these millions of immigrants have entered the U.S., almost all illegally. But despite the differences in miles, atmosphere, and often language, the people appearing in U.S. immigration court (“alien respondents,” in legal terms) know what is afoot. In many cases,...

A nonprofit founded by Georgia Democratic politician Stacey Abrams to protect voting rights paid more than $20 million to a lawyer who is a close friend and helped set up two of her private businesses, according to tax and state incorporation filings and other records obtained by RealClearInvestigations. Abrams’ Fair Fight Action redirected the tax-exempt donations and government grants to Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, her former campaign chair between 2019 and 2023. Most of the funds covered legal expenses charged by the boutique law firm Lawrence-Hardy co-founded, for a...

This is the second of a two-part series on the global housing crisis. Read the first installment here. The affordable housing crisis in America and many other advanced countries keeps getting worse because it is largely dominated by the wrong voices talking about the wrong places. For years the YIMBYs and NIMBYs have debated development in urban centers: While “Yes in My Back Yard” advocates seek to “build, build, build” ever more density in urban centers for environmental reasons, the “Not In My Back Yard” forces want to limit development often to...

This is the second of a two-part series on the global housing crisis. Read the first installment here. The affordable housing crisis in America and many other advanced countries keeps getting worse because it is largely dominated by the wrong voices talking about the wrong places. For years the YIMBYs and NIMBYs have debated development in urban centers: While “Yes in My Back Yard” advocates seek to “build, build, build” ever more density in urban centers for environmental reasons, the “Not In My Back Yard” forces want to limit development often to...

The first in a two-part series on the global housing crisis. Next to inflation, Americans ranked housing as their top financial worry in a Gallup survey last May. It’s only gotten worse. January home sales were down 5% from last year’s dismal numbers. Record numbers of first-time buyers are stuck on the sidelines as housing affordability stands at the lowest level ever recorded, while one in three Americans now spend over 30% of their income on mortgage or rent.  The housing crisis is not just an American problem, but a global phenomenon that hits the...