RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'
Picks of the Week
April 13 to April 19, 2025

Featured Investigation:
The Remarkable Rags-to-Riches Story
of Stacey Abrams 

In RearClearInvestigations, Paul Sperry examines how Democratic activist Stacey Abrams has managed to amass a small fortune while working most of her career in the not-for-profit sector – despite a checkered past of bill collectors, tax liens and ethics investigations:

• Abrams has never been charged with a crime. Instead, her career appears to illustrate the often cozy and remunerative relationship between political insiders and government entities that discharge public dollars.

• When she first entered Georgia politics in 2018, Abrams reported a net worth of less than $109,000. By 2022, it had grown to more than $3.2 million. 

• She resides in her 4,100-square-foot home in the desirable Emory University neighborhood of Atlanta, valued at over $1.4 million.

• Abrams is probably even better off lately thanks to money she’s made from her recent venture: Rewiring America, which won grants totaling $1.9 billion late in the Biden administration to provide low-income people with free electric appliances. 

• Those funds were frozen last month by the Trump administration while it investigates the grant. 

• It’s just the latest in a string of investigations involving Abrams and numerous nonprofits she’s launched. Last month, Georgia lawmakers announced a special probe into her New Georgia Project and its fundraising arm, which failed to report millions tied to Abrams’ first gubernatorial bid. 

• Veteran Georgia ethics watchdog: “I’ve always been concerned about her leveraging public service to enrich herself.”

• Sidebars: EPA Mega-Grant Has Abrams' Fingerprints All Over It  and The Many Startups of Stacey 

Featured Investigation
Multiplication, Biden-Style:
School Bias Cases Doubled

In RealClearInvestigations, James Varney reports that costly, labor-intensive investigations by the Department of Education, ranging from allegations of sexual violence to disability accommodations, roughly doubled during the Biden administration, topping 20,000 last year:

• Defenders of the department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) see it as an invaluable protector of liberties for America’s nearly 70 million K-12 and college students. But Trump officials moving to return control of education to the states call it a symbol of how the feds have needlessly expanded their reach.

• A complainant need not have a personal connection to a school. Petitioners don’t even have to live in the same state, and legal standing is not a factor. They do not even need to identify themselves. 

• The number of cases also can be inflated through duplication, serial filers and ambitious bureaucrats. In other words, a critic says, the OCR can boost its argument for more funding by boosting the cases on its books.

• Totals can be swollen by one unnamed individual, as in 2022 when 7,339 of the OCR’s 9,948 complaints of Title IX (sex discrimination) violations – nearly three out of four – came from one person. 

• RealClearInvestigations found unresolved, active investigations into alleged incidents that occurred in 2016 or 2017, long after any students at the schools in question would have departed. 

• Through President Obama’s two terms and Trump’s first term, the OCR received just under 10,000 complaints annually. In 2022, that figure shot up to a record 18,804 and topped 20,000 complaints for the first time in 2024, according to OCR.

Waste of the Day
by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

California’s $20 Billion Water Tunnel, RCI
Pricey Cars for Indiana Officials, RCI
'Ziggurat' Building Zags Into Major Loss, RCI
Former House Speakers Enjoy House Money, RCI
States Don't Recover COVID Overpayments, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

Trump's Sweeping Job Cuts at Consumer Protection Bureau, Fox Business
Top Pentagon Officials Put on Leave in Leak Probe, Epoch Times
Trump Retreats From White-Collar Crime Enforcement, Wall St Journal
Whistleblower’s Harrowing Experience With Biden’s DOJ, Daily Signal
New Evidence Connects Joe Biden to Burisma, Just the News
The $600 Billion Medicaid Maneuver on the Chopping Block, WSJ 
Trump Nemesis Letitia James Flagged for Home, Phony Homes, Just/News
DOGE Collecting Federal Data to Uproot Migrants, Washington Post
Kristi Noem’s Made-for-TV Approach to Homeland Security, WSJ
Anti-Gun Biden ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Files Declassified, Daily Caller
Hunter Biden Whistleblower Named Acting IRS Chief, National Review
RCI Last Week: In IRS, Paying a Cost for Pursuing Hunter, RCI

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

The Little-Known Bureaucrats
Tearing Through Universities
Wall Street Journal

While President Trump’s sanctions and threats against some of America’s most prestigious universities draw headlines, this article reports on the foot soldiers pushing his higher education reforms. Members of the Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism have used the leverage provided by the tens of billions of dollars the federal government provides to “shake elite American universities to their core in recent weeks”:

It has targeted billions of dollars in federal funding at premiere institutions such as Columbia and Harvard, with cascading effects on campuses nationwide. Now it is pressing to put Columbia under a form of federal oversight known as a consent decree. … the group’s stated goal is to “root out antisemitic harassment in schools and on college campuses” … But along the way, the task force is taking on university culture more broadly in ways that echo the MAGA dreams for remaking higher education – including ending racial preferences in admissions and hiring. … In letters to universities, including Columbia and Harvard, the task force has cited civil-rights laws that encompass antisemitism, including Title VI and Title VII. But its tactic of targeting funding first and then beginning conversations is unprecedented, education lawyers say.

Typically, this article reports, the Education Department’s civil-rights arm handles such investigations – which can take months or even years – and they hardly ever end with federal funds being cut. Instead, the investigations often result in voluntary settlements that some attorneys consider toothless. “Cutting off the funding spigot is a nuclear-type weapon of enforcement,” said Scott Schneider, an education lawyer in Austin. “It’s outside the legal system and is a remarkable exercise of executive authority.”

In a separate article for City Journal, Heather Mac Donald describes the White House’s actions against Harvard as “clumsy.” She writes that “the Trump administration’s crusade against the university is unquestionably justified, but its methods may not pass muster in court.”  \

How North Korea Gives
Putin Edge in Ukraine
Reuters

North Korea has sent an estimated total of 14,000 troops in support of Russia, including 3,000 reinforcements to replace some of those killed. Even more significant for Russia’s effort, this article reports, are the millions of North Korean shells that have made their way to the frontlines in massive shipments by sea and then by train:

North Korea has also dispatched ballistic missiles as well as long-range artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems. Its deliveries represent the most significant direct military aid to Russia’s war effort, which has also benefited from Iranian long-range drone technology and close economic support from China. … Ukrainian officials, including the military intelligence chief, have said North Korea is supplying half the munitions Russia needs at the front.

“North Korea’s contribution has been strategically vital,” said Hugh Griffiths, who from 2014 to 2019 was coordinator of the U.N. panel of experts that monitored sanctions on North Korea. “Without Chairman Kim Jong Un’s support, President Vladimir Putin wouldn’t really be able to prosecute his war in Ukraine.”

It Is Way More Expensive
to Build in California
Pacific Legal Foundation

It is customary for building permits to come with impact fees, which are meant to cover the strain additional buildings have on public resources like roads, sewers, schools, and parks. Not surprisingly, some local governments set impact fees that are excessively high or that aren’t related to the actual impact of construction projects. This article, which summarizes a new Pacific Legal Fund report, found:

While this is a problem across the United States, California’s impact fees are much higher than anywhere else. Our report found that the average total impact fees for a typical U.S. home grew from almost $5,000 in 2004 to more than $9,000 in 2019. However, California’s average impact fee in 2019 was more than triple the national average, at almost $30,000. And it was much higher than the next-two-highest states: Maryland and Oregon charged the third- and second-highest exactions on average in 2019 – nearly $13,000 and $17,000, respectively. … The five cities with the largest average total impact fees in 2019 were all in California, and all exceeded $50,000. Ironically, the smallest exactions were found in California’s next-door neighbor, Nevada. Las Vegas and Mesquite had average total impact fees of $165 and $43, respectively.

This article reports that impact fees have an outsized effect on housing costs. “While these fees end up being passed to the final homebuyer, the sticker shock is much worse than the fee itself. Research has found that impact fees raise the cost of construction by a multiple of the impact fee because there are administrative costs of compliance."

In two separate articles for RealClearInvestigations, Joel Kotkin detailed how rising housing prices are just one of the issues facing California.

How a Secretive Gambler
Took Down the Texas Lottery
Wall Street Journal

Gambling is never a sure thing, but this article reports that a few sophisticated groups of analysts have won hundreds of millions of dollars by applying Wall Street-style analytics to betting opportunities around the world. Like card counters at a blackjack table, they use data and math to hunt for situations ripe for flipping the house edge in their favor. Then they throw piles of money at it, betting an estimated $10 billion annually:

In the spring of 2023, a London banker-turned-bookmaker reached out to a few contacts with an audacious request: Can you help me take down the Texas lottery? Bernard Marantelli had a plan in mind. He and his partners would buy nearly every possible number in a coming drawing. There were 25.8 million potential number combinations. The tickets were $1 apiece. The jackpot was heading to $95 million. If nobody else also picked the winning numbers, the profit would be nearly $60 million. Marantelli flew to the U.S. with a few trusted lieutenants. They set up shop in a defunct dentist’s office, a warehouse and two other spots in Texas. The crew worked out a way to get official ticket-printing terminals. Trucks hauled in dozens of them and reams of paper.

Over three days, the machines—manned by a disparate bunch of associates and some of their children—screeched away nearly around the clock, spitting out 100 or more tickets every second. Texas politicians later likened the operation to a sweatshop. … The Texas lottery play, one of their most ambitious operations ever, paid off spectacularly with a $57.8 million jackpot win. 

The article reports another group has figured out how to use analytics to making a killing scratch-off tickets. Officials in Texas and other states have expressed outrage but it all appears to be legal.