RealClearInvestigations Original Articles

Topline: The word “conservation” usually applies to wildlife or the environment, but in 2011, the federal government spent $113,277 on a conservation survey of 6,900 video games. The grant to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games would be worth $161,573 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.  Waste of the Day 6.12.25 Open the Books Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from...

Topline: OpenTheBooks.com’s team of auditors has identified three professional societies whose taxpayer-funded grants and contracts should be reviewed from the Department of Government Efficiency for potential cuts. The groups have received at least $19.6 million from the federal government since 2020 while pushing controversial values on schoolchildren. Key facts: The Society of Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE) America represents 200,000 physical education teachers and was paid $82,245 to train teachers in the Department of Defense’s K-12 schools. They also received $2.5...

Topline: The Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Defense and Office of Personnel Management violated the Payment Integrity Information Act by publishing inaccurate estimates of their improper payments last year, according to recent federal audits. Key facts: Improper payments — sent to the wrong person, for the wrong amount or the wrong reason — cost the federal government $161.5 billion in fiscal year 2024, and nearly $1 trillion in the last four years.  Waste of the Day 6.10.25 Open the Books The DOD is only required to estimate improper payments for...

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...

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...

When Jeffrey Epstein purchased Little Saint James, the teardrop-shaped island south‑east of St. Thomas, in the late 1990s, he was seen as a mere oddity. A one-time math teacher who claimed to manage the fortunes of billionaires, he told U.S. Virgin Islands officials that he was seeking privacy. He also appears to have purchased impunity. The alleged crimes that Epstein committed on that emerald island reachable only by helicopter or ferry would explode into an international scandal. Investigators accuse him of raping and sexually abusing girls as young as eleven at his island compound where...

While green advocates commonly use the terms renewable, sustainable, and net zero to describe their efforts, the dirty little secret is that much of the waste from solar panels and wind turbines is ending up in landfills.  The current amounts of fiberglass, resins, aluminum and other chemicals – not to mention propeller blades from giant wind turbines – pose no threat current to local town dumps, but this largely ignored problem will become more of a challenge in the years ahead as the 500 million solar panels and the 73,000 wind turbines now operating in the U.S. are...

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...