RealClearInvestigations Original Articles

Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to serve as President Trump’s director of national intelligence hinges on questions about the judgment and patriotism of the former congresswoman and Army veteran, doubts that are expected to take center stage at her Senate confirmation hearing Thursday. Echoing a charge first lodged by Hillary Clinton, Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Elizabeth Warren have spread innuendo that Gabbard is a “compromised” “Russian asset” who has been “in Putin’s pocket.” Former CIA Director John Brennan has speculated that Gabbard may...

By Ben Weingarten, RealClearInvestigationsJanuary 28, 2025 Flanked by some of the Big Tech executives whose companies had suppressed the views of his supporters throughout his predecessor’s term, President Trump on Jan. 20 declared the days of such speech policing over. President Trump's executive order. whitehouse.gov Hours later, the president put action behind his words, signing an executive order prohibiting the federal government from engaging in, facilitating, or funding “any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American...

Update, Jan. 27, 2025: Trump Fires Many IGs By Bob Ivry, RealClearInvestigationsJanuary 23, 2025 COVID-19 emergency relief money, which began to flow soon after President Donald Trump signed the CARES Act in March 2020, united Americans from different walks of life, no matter their race, religion, or political affiliation, in the dogged pursuit of fraud. The federal government lost enormous amounts in COVID-19 economic relief begun hastily in the first Trump administration. AP To distribute financial help quickly as lockdowns spread, the Small Business Administration and the lenders...

President Biden’s pardon of Dr. Anthony Fauci may protect the former National Institutes of Health official from immediate criminal prosecution, but some critics say he is not completely out of legal jeopardy and that public sentiment might still condemn the man who became known during the COVID-19 pandemic as “Mr. Science.” In the days before Biden offered the pardon to Fauci, along with other critics of Donald Trump, some experts who have followed Fauci’s career and handling of the pandemic, as well as members of the Trump transition team, reiterated their assertion...

The energy policy of the incoming Trump administration seems as concise as it is clear: Slash domestic energy costs under the mantra, popularized in 2008 by GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, of “Drill, baby, drill!” While a RealClearInvestigations canvass of energy experts suggests many of them foresee long-term benefits in that approach, it’s less clear to them that consumers will see immediate change. In other words, Trump may not deliver in 2025 on his campaign pledge to “cut energy prices in half within 12 months.” On the other hand, given...

The Biden administration is formally considering commuting the sentence of the convicted felon who stole and leaked incoming President Trump's tax records along with those of thousands of other taxpayers, in the biggest tax data heist in U.S. history. Littlejohn (top photo) leaked Trump's and Elon Musk's taxes ... Pool Getty Images North America ... and those of Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos too. AP A search of the Justice Department's pardon database reveals Charles Edward Littlejohn -- who just began his five-year sentence in May -- has been assigned a clemency case...

The incoming Trump administration scored an early but possibly illusory victory last month in its effort to reform government overreach when it successfully pressured Congress to eliminate what it termed “sweetheart provisions for government censors” from a measure to stave off a government shutdown. Funding for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center – which Republicans had attacked as a tool of domestic censorship – was stripped from the final bill, and the center announced that it was closed for good on Dec. 23. Days later, however, reporting emerged...

As Donald Trump re-enters the White House on a pledge to end national security state overreach, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is still hiding critical details on the Russia conspiracy investigation that engulfed his first term. In response to a Freedom of Information request filed by RealClearInvestigations in August 2022, the FBI on Dec. 31, more than two years later, released a heavily redacted copy of the document that opened an explosive and unprecedented counterintelligence probe of the sitting president as an agent of the Russian government.  The newly disclosed Trump probe...

Private school choice advocates expect that 2025 will be the year that they finally bring the last big red state, Texas, into the fold. The likely victory would, in turn, pose the next big challenge for the controversial movement: Can it win in enemy territory -- that is, blue states -- too? Randi Weingarten, right, with First Lady Jill Biden, warns school choice will "defund public schools." Top photo: Texas's long campaign for choice appears to be finally won. AP Inspired by free-market ideology and Christian faith, advocates aim to give families more educational choices by...

By James Varney, RealClearInvestigationsDecember 26, 2024 For four years, President Joe Biden has described climate change as an existential threat requiring a whole lot of government response and trillions of dollars in new spending to force America off fossil fuels. President-elect Donald Trump, on the other hand, opts for a three-word approach: “Drill, baby, drill.” Biden, above and at top: Not in the driver's seat anymore. Or so it seems. YouTube/Jay Leno's Garage Energy is just one of the areas – from foreign policy and law enforcement to taxes, immigration,...

The Auberge du Soleil, a five-star hillside hotel and spa with a panoramic view overlooking the vineyards of Napa Valley, appears to be first-rate in all ways but one. While the glamorous resort, an hour’s drive from San Francisco, fills rooms that routinely go for $2,000 a night with A-list celebrities and tech titans, financial records suggest it did not provide much of a return to at least two of its investors – Rep. Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul. That changed when it received millions in congressionally authorized COVID-19 relief in 2020 and 2021. Nancy and Paul...

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...