RealClearInvestigations Original Articles

Logansport, Indiana, seems like the perfect place to test Donald Trump’s claim that an influx of migrants is a major reason housing prices and rents are soaring in America. The heartland town with a population of 18,200 has seen an influx of between 2,000 and 5,000 Haitian immigrants during the last few years, all of whom need a place to lay their heads. While home prices in Logansport have increased 41% since 2019 — compared with 35% nationally – it’s difficult to find an elected official or real estate professional who faults the newcomers for the...

Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias had a rough election. Several of his clients, notably Kamala Harris and Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, fell to defeat. But instead of accepting their losses, Elias disputed the presidential and senatorial results in Pennsylvania, leading to charges that Elias, a self-advertised "democracy defender," is what he's accused Donald Trump of being: an "election denier." Senator Bob Casey: Represented by Elias, the Pennsylvania Democrat refused to concede. AP With the races now settled – and many of his skeptical posts on X deleted – Elias is...

Even as President-elect Donald Trump promised on Sunday to act “very quickly” on pardons for many of the protesters involved in the events of January 6, the Biden administration’s Justice Department is continuing to arrest and try people for actions that occurred almost four years ago while opposing motions to delay trials because of the need for “the prompt and efficient administration of justice.” Attorney General Merrick Garland: The biggest criminal investigation in Justice Department history. AP If the defeat of Kamala Harris constituted at least...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – As the autumn sun warms the historic campus outside, a professor specializing in ancient and modern political philosophy guides undergraduate students through the seemingly ruthless nuances of Machiavelli’s 16th-century philosophy of morals.  In another class, a professor specializing in political theory offers students a guided tour of the early American republic, as seen through the enlightened eyes of French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville.  And a professor of rhetoric, who moonlights as a...

In June, Victor Martinez-Hernandez was charged with the murder of Rachel Morin, a mother of five in Maryland. Police in Oklahoma tracked the accused repeat offender down with a sample of his DNA recovered from a Los Angeles home invasion in which a nine-year-old girl and her mother were assaulted. Police say he came to the U.S. illegally to escape prosecution for at least one other murder in his native El Salvador in December 2022.  “That should never have been allowed to happen,” said Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler, referring to the numerous missed red flags the case...

By Lee Fang, RealClearInvestigations and LeeFang.comNovember 20, 2024 America’s most famous fast-food fan may be an unlikely candidate to make America healthy again, but Donald Trump seems willing to tackle the eating habits that have led to skyrocketing rates of obesity. The junk food industry is not lovin’ it. RealClearInvestigations has learned that representatives of companies that make snack foods, sugary beverages, and cooking oils are already meeting to discuss how to thwart the reform agenda of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former consumer rights attorney Trump has said he...

It wasn’t as if the Tar Heel state didn’t see Hurricane Helene coming. On Sept. 25, one day before Helene stormed ashore, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency as the storm’s path showed it churning northward toward Appalachia after making landfall in Florida. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, right, and Deanne Criswell, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, brief Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Hurricane Helene in early October. AP Yet that advance declaration was not followed by any state evacuation orders, and the...

Maryland’s new education chief, Carey Wright, an old-school champion of rigorous standards, is pushing back against efforts in other states to boost test scores by essentially lowering their expectations of students. States, including Oklahoma and Wisconsin, are making it easier for students to demonstrate on annual assessments that they are proficient in math and English after a decade of declining test scores nationwide. By redesigning the assessments and lowering the so-called “cut scores” that separate achievement levels such as basic, proficient, and advanced, several...

“If there is any virtue in the writing of this book, it springs from the sacrifices knowingly or unknowingly made by my two daughters, Kamala and Maya,” Donald J. Harris wrote in 1977 when he was an economics professor at Stanford University. “In return, it is dedicated to them.” The book, “Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution,” is a 313-page critique of capitalism and its allegedly inherent flaws, including “income inequality,” “cyclical disturbances,” and “exploitation” of...

Liz Cheney, a staunch “Never Trump” former Republican representative, has joined Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in key swing states in the final days of the campaign to warn voters that Donald Trump does not respect the “rule of law” or the U.S. Constitution. “[When] you think about, what are you looking for in somebody you hire, you're looking for somebody that you can trust, you're looking for somebody who's going to be responsible, who's going to operate in good faith,” Cheney told the Detroit Economic Club on Oct. 22. But new...

ASHEVILLE, North Carolina — At 7:30 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 27, Chris Trusz was standing on one of the bridges spanning the Broad River in Chimney Rock. He wanted to get a photo. It had been raining steadily for 36 hours and the river was running 10 inches above normal. Trusz, who’d moved to the western North Carolina mountain town 18 months earlier, wasn’t worried; residents had been warned there might be a bit of flooding. He got his picture and walked up the hill to his home. “Normally I have a sliver of a view of the river,” he said. “Now I’m...

In 2021, near the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, investigators tailed a Jeep Cherokee stolen from an airport Avis to a New York City apartment they called a “fraud factory” – no furniture, just an air mattress, a computer, stacks of loan and tax forms, and a shredder.  Two men who had first met in prison – Adedayo Ilori, 43, and Chris Recamier, 59 – were using stolen identities and fake paperwork to falsely claim they employed 200 people, bilking the federal government’s pandemic-relief programs of more than $1 million, according to federal...

When the FBI originally released the “final” crime data for 2022 in September 2023, it reported that the nation’s violent crime rate fell by 2.1%. This quickly became, and remains, a Democratic Party talking point to counter Donald Trump’s claims of soaring crime. But the FBI has quietly revised those numbers, releasing new data that shows violent crime increased in 2022 by 4.5%. The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults. The Bureau – which has been at the center of partisan storms – made no mention of these...

American journalism has experienced a spectacular collapse in the last 25 years – daily newspaper circulation has declined from over 60 million subscribers to just over 20 million. And the trend is accelerating: According to the Pew Research Organization, the average monthly number of unique visitors to the websites of the country’s top 50 newspapers plummeted 20% in one year from 2021 to 2022. At the same time, the remaining readership expresses a historically low level of faith that the news they are getting is accurate. Just 32% of Americans say they have a...

If Donald Trump gets past Kamala Harris on Nov. 5, he’ll likely face a fiercer opponent in court – her campaign attorney, Marc Elias. The longtime Democratic Party lawyer has already filed more than 60 preelection lawsuits to stop Trump from becoming president again by combatting what he calls Republican “voter suppression” efforts such as requiring voters to provide identification at the polls. Echoing a standard Democratic talking point, Elias maintains that such requirements are “racist” strategies designed to make it harder for minorities to...

On the eve of a highly-anticipated live X “Spaces” conversation between Elon Musk and former president Donald Trump, the powerful European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton warned in August that authorities would be “monitoring” the conversation for “content that may incite violence, hate, and racism.”  While reminding Musk that the EU was already investigating X for alleged failures “to combat disinformation,” Breton said he and his colleagues “will not hesitate to make full use of our toolbox … to protect EU citizens from...

Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency told Congress last month that it had $4 billion in its Disaster Relief Fund, officials also warned that the Fund could have a shortfall of $6 billion by year’s end, a situation FEMA says could deteriorate in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. While FEMA is expected to ask Congress for new money, budget experts note a surprising fact: FEMA is currently sitting on untapped reserves appropriated for past disasters stretching back decades.  An August report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of...

RealClearInvestigations’ Picks of the WeekSeptember 29 to October 5   Featured Investigation: Nondisclosure: Vaccine Ad Blitz Sidestepped Transparency Rules Ads urging Americans to get the newly minted vaccines for COVID-19 in 2021 looked like most other pharmaceutical spots except for one glaring omission: disclosure that the medicine was experimental and might lead to side effects. Lee Fang reports for RealClearInvestigations that this omission appears at odds with the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), which allowed the drug companies to sell their COVID vaccines without...

By Lee Fang, RealClearInvestigationsOctober 3, 2024 “A bun in the toaster oven,” a woman exclaims off-camera, handing an ultrasound image to family members who erupt into tearful emotion over the news. “Oh my God!”  The touching baby announcement video then gets down to business as text appears on the screen amidst the ongoing celebration, suggesting the best way to stay alive for this joyous birth is by becoming vaccinated against COVID-19. “Why will you get vaccinated? …  Because some people you just want to meet in...