RealClearInvestigations Original Articles

Like the weather, everyone complains about Pentagon spending and mismanagement, but no one does anything about it. Leaders of the world’s most expensive military have refused to conduct or failed to complete every internal financial audit since Congress first demanded such accountability in the 1990s. The Department of Defense owns over 70% of the nation’s assets and can’t account for half of them. In fairness, military brass has had plenty of enablers in its failures to tame wild and sometimes blindfolded spending, with a special boost from political...

By John Murawski, RealClearInvestigationsMay 7, 2025 AUSTIN, Texas — Lacking three crucial components – students, faculty, and facilities – the two educational experiments proposed in this state capital sounded like moonshots just a few years ago.  Pano Kanelos, University of Austin president: “We’re growing a university that’ll be around for centuries.” University of Austin Today, the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas and a feisty startup calling itself the University of Austin are not just up and running, but...

Increasingly banned at school. Photo By: Kaboompics.com Cellphone bans in schools are all the rage. Recently, New York became the fourth state to embark on one, as part of a budget deal for the coming school year. For many adults, the bans make intuitive sense: Who wants kids distracted on their phones while the teacher is teaching? Maybe getting rid of them could even reduce bullying or improve youth mental health? Phone Free New York founder Raj Goyle, while speaking of New York’s prospective ban, claimed, “If you look at the data in schools that have one ... test...

By Ana Kasparian, RealClearInvestigationsMay 1, 2025 Smiley Martin should have been behind bars.  A career criminal with a long rap sheet involving firearms, he was given a 10-year sentence in 2018 for punching, dragging and severely beating his girlfriend with a belt. In prison, Martin was found guilty of beating another inmate and engaging in other criminal activity. Nevertheless, he was freed just four years later, thanks to a plea deal that categorized him as a “nonviolent offender” and a California ballot measure that sharply reduced sentences for “good...

The Anti-Defamation League recently asked people in 103 countries whether they agreed with 11 antisemitic statements including: “Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars,” “Jews have a lot of irritating faults,” “Jews have too much control over the media,” and “Jews’ loyalty is only to Israel.”  The ADL Global 100 survey for 2024 classified almost half of respondents as “possessing antisemitic attitudes” because they agreed with at least six of the 11 statements. Of course, an average that high means that in...

Against fierce resistance, the Trump administration is enlisting the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration in its crackdown on illegal immigration. A hunt out on the streets – and deep into government records. AP On April 7, the IRS signed an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that alarmed progressive pro-immigration groups and like-minded advocates – and reportedly prompted the tax bureau’s acting chief to resign in protest.  The deal allows ICE to request the tax return information of migrants who are not...

By Vince Bielski, RealClearInvestigationsApril 22, 2025 GEO Prep Mid-City Academy, located in one of the poorest sections of Louisiana, did something almost unheard of in public education – it went from dying to thriving in just a few years.   Kevin Teasley, GEO Academies: “We don’t chase fads." geoacademies.org The Baton Rouge K-8 school, which is almost entirely filled with disadvantaged black students drawn from a lottery, repeatedly received a failing grade until new leadership took over in 2017. It steadily improved and landed in the top third...

By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigationsApril 16, 2025 As a Democratic politician, civil-rights activist, tax attorney and serial entrepreneur, Stacey Abrams has founded or co-founded a dizzying array of nonprofits and LLCs, some of which co-mingle funds.Records show many of her start-ups have no office or staff and are based out of Abrams’ home in Atlanta. A number of them have failed, dissolved or have fallen into debt and had tax liens attached, and some are under state or federal investigation. A list:Fair Fight Inc.Fair Fight ActionFair Fight PACFair Fight GeorgiaFair CountNew...

By her own admission, Stacey Abrams has made a number of "personal financial missteps” in her career. Despite a history marked by bill collectors, tax liens, and ethics investigations, the Georgia politician and Democratic Party activist has managed to amass a small fortune – while working most of her career in the not-for-profit sector.  Flush with government largesse: $1.9 billion from the Biden EPA. Rewiring America Financial records show that when she first entered statewide politics in 2018, she reported a net worth of less than $109,000. By 2022, the...

Last month, President Trump singled out Georgia activist Stacey Abrams as someone who helped orchestrate a controversial $2 billion deal between left-wing nonprofit groups and the Environmental Protection Agency during the Biden administration.  She was involved. powerforwardcommunities.org “We know she’s involved,” Trump told Congress.  He was right. But after his statement, the Washington media went into overdrive to pooh-pooh her role in a frenzy of “fact-checking.”  The Washington Post, for one, claimed Abrams’ role in the Biden...

While limiting strings-attached grants and curbing federal regulation, President Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education also take aim at a key tool bureaucrats use to oversee schools in all 50 states: civil rights investigations. Selene Almazan, advocate for the disabled:  Trump  administration changes have left clients "in limbo, or distraught, thinking there will be no accountability,” inclusionlaw.com Probes handled by the department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against public schools, colleges and universities roughly doubled...

By Nancy Rommelmann, RealClearInvestigationsApril 10, 2025 Joe Ziegler is not a beaten man – not for his antagonists’ lack of trying. Across his seven-year pursuit of Hunter Biden’s unpaid taxes, Ziegler, a special agent in the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigative division, and his colleague Gary Shapley were shunned, threatened, and lied to. Ziegler was doxed. Shapley was told to accept a demotion or resign. Convinced the IRS and Department of Justice were stonewalling their efforts to bring charges against a sitting president’s son, the agents went...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Like the other programs launched at universities around the country to revive the classical liberal arts and America’s founding principles, the University of North Carolina’s School of Civic Life and Leadership has faced fierce antagonism from entrenched faculty and administrators. Mostly, the opposition comes from academics on the left who typically demean the push for traditional civics education as a rightwing enterprise. J. Christopher Clemens: Quit as provost after months of acrimonious infighting. UNC School of Civic Life and Leadership But here...

California’s wide range of problems – including declining schools, widening inequality, rising housing prices, and a weak job market – show the urgent need for reform. The larger question is whether there is the will to change. Although the state’s remarkable entrepreneurial economy has kept it afloat, a growing number of residents are concluding that the progressive agenda, pushed by public unions and their well-heeled allies, is failing. Most Californians have an exceptional lack of faith in the state’s direction. Only 40% of California...

California’s economic, academic, media, and political establishment still embraces the notion of the state’s inevitable supremacy. “The future depends on us,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at his first inauguration, “and we will seize this moment.” Others see California as deserving and capable of nationhood, a topic that has resurfaced with Trump’s presidency as it reflects, as a New York Times column put it, “the shared values of our increasingly tolerant and pluralistic society.” Critics say this vision is at...

By Lee Fang, RealClearInvestigations and LeeFang.comMarch 31, 2025 The abrupt withdrawal last year of President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, followed rapidly by his replacement with Vice President Kamala Harris, irked many voters left out by the process. Yet social media seemed to ooze with enthusiasm and Gen Z-friendly hipster appeal.  Charli XCX: Now that was brat ... instagram.com/charli_xcx  Influencers flooded the web with neon-matcha green pro-Harris videos synced to beats from singer Charli XCX's album “Brat” released last year. The poppy...

By Bob Ivry and Jeremy Portnoy, RealClearInvestigationsMarch 25, 2025 In 1974, Congress created the Legal Services Corporation to connect lower-income Americans involved in civil disputes with free legal help. The law that established the agency stipulated that authorization for its funding would expire in 1980, when lawmakers were required to vote on whether to keep it alive. Unauthorized since 1980. lsc.gov They never did. Still, Congress has funded LSC every year since. In fiscal 2025, its 51st year, LSC’s 135 employees will spend 95% of its now $560 million annual...

Just eight days before the 2024 election, a lawyer claiming to represent an anonymous FBI whistleblower sent a politically explosive letter to Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee alleging former FBI Director James Comey first began investigating Donald Trump shortly after he announced his run for president in June 2015, and did so without foundation. James Comey, former FBI director: Accused of running a “honeypot” sting operation against Trump in 2015. AP Donald Trump: He was the target of one FBI probe in 2016, so a probe the year before has the ring of...

Fresh off its decision to claw back $20 billion in “greenhouse gas reduction” money the Biden Environmental Protection Agency parked at Citibank, the Trump administration is setting its sights on another massive chunk of planned green spending receiving less attention. Environmental Protection Agency The $7 billion Solar for All program – part of the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund -- is meant to “enable over 900,000 households in low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from distributed solar energy,” according to the EPA’s...