RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

August 31 to September 6

Featured Investigation:

The Last Taboo: Acknowledging Violent Behavior in Women

Domestic violence is usually seen as a crime of men against women, but new research challenges this one-way narrative, Christopher J. Ferguson reports for RealClearInvestigations. Studies show women are just as likely to perpetrate domestic violence as men, though the impacts may differ. Despite this, social taboos, stereotypes, and academic resistance make the issue difficult to address.

• A Canadian study of nearly 36,000 teens found boys reported higher rates of dating violence than girls, echoing decades of research indicating women can be as violent toward men as men are toward women. Women’s share of arrests for violent crimes, including assault and even homicide, has also risen since the 1980s, while the number of incarcerated women has surged by 686% between 1980 and 2022.
• Societal and academic resistance to acknowledging female violence has been strong. Researchers such as Murray Straus and Suzanne Steinmetz, who documented female aggression, faced harassment, professional setbacks, and even threats. Public narratives, reinforced by media and film, continue to portray men as perpetrators and women as victims, while male victims are often ignored or dismissed.
• Evidence challenges the common belief that women’s violence is mostly self-defense. Studies suggest both men and women may act out of anger, retaliation, or control. Women may use weapons more frequently, and both sexes report motivations beyond self-protection. In relationships, boys and men are often reluctant to report abuse, less likely to be believed, and have fewer services available to them.
• The Depp–Heard trial in 2022, where credible evidence showed “mutual abuse,” highlighted public discomfort with recognizing female aggression. Similarly, recent studies from Canada and the UK found adolescent boys report higher rates of partner violence or controlling behaviors than girls, yet these findings struggle for public recognition.
• Domestic violence is equally common in same-sex relationships, suggesting the issue may be tied less to patriarchy and more to trauma histories, mental health, and the dynamics of intimate partnerships. Despite increasing awareness of men’s struggles, society remains hesitant to see them as victims, reinforcing stigma and limiting support.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

Stay at Hotel 11 Miles Away, RCI

Mass. Cops Visit Casinos, RealClearInvestigations

 California School Actually Baseball Stadium, RCI

Throwback Thursday - Costly Conferences, RCI

9/11 Memorial Salaries Approach $1 Million, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

Mortgage Fraud Issues in Trump's Cabinet, ProPublica

How Trump is Decimating Federal Employee Unions, NPR

Delete, Delete, Delete: FCC Killing Rules Faster Than Ever, Ars Technica

Trump’s ICE Crackdown Is Rattling the Hamptons, Vanity Fair

Trump Should Thank the Federalist Society, City Journal

Ilhan Omar's Husband Turned 51K into Millions in One Year, Washington Free Beacon

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

China's New High-Tech Weapons Send Message to World 

Wired

At a September 3 military parade whose guest list included the leaders of Russia and Iran, China showed off dazzling equipment that was intended to send a frightful message to the world. Based on leaked information, this article reports:

Among the most anticipated weapons are the new YJ (Ying Ji, "Eagle Shot") series anti-ship missiles, designated YJ-15, YJ-17, YJ-19, and YJ-20. These are systems designed for a specific mission: to neutralize large US naval units, particularly aircraft carriers, the heart of American supremacy in the Pacific. …. [Their speed, range, maneuverability, and satellite guidance systems] signal to the United States that aircraft carriers are no longer untouchable, and the Pacific is no longer an "American sea. … Also expected at the parade are new launchers capable of overcoming US missile defenses and providing Beijing with credible strategic deterrence. Rehearsal images show road-mobile ballistic missile systems, an ideal weapon to ensure so-called second strikes in the event of a nuclear conflict. China is developing and deploying a new generation of advanced mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), designed to ensure the survival of the nuclear deterrence force in the event of a preemptive strike.

This article reports that China will also become the first country to have a combat-ready “stealth drone” that is capable of operating in synergy with manned fighters, carrying out reconnaissance, attack and electronic jamming missions.

In a separate article, NBC News reports that Russia has begun hiring local criminals in the last year or two to carry out acts of sabotage across Europe. In one instance, local hires in London set fire to a storage facility belonged to a Ukrainian logistics company that was shipping humanitarian aid and Starlink satellite internet dishes to Ukraine did not initially raise any alarms.

In a separate article, the New York Times reports that Mexico’s most formidable cartels – which are battling each other for territory and a Mexican government coming under increasing pressure from the United States – no longer wield just handguns or automatic rifles but also the weapons of war. These include “Claymore land mines, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars built from gas-tank tubes and armored trucks mounted with heavy machine guns. They are burying improvised explosive devices to kill their rivals and modifying drones bought online to make attack drones, loaded with toxic chemicals and bombs.”

For Chicago Lawyers, Suits Against Cops Are Cash Cow 

City Journal

Chicago law firms have found a new way to get paid at taxpayers’ expense: suing the city for alleged police misconduct. This article reports that the suits are draining hundreds of millions from Chicago’s coffers at a time when the city can’t afford to lose a dime.

For years, Chicago has led the nation in overturning supposedly wrongful convictions. This has resulted in a windfall for law firms – both those suing the city and those hired by the city to settle cases. Since 2000, Chicago has paid over $700 million in settlements to criminal defendants who claim to have been framed by police, at least $138 million of which has gone to the city’s outside counsel. Chicago alone was responsible for more than half of the nation’s exonerations in 2022. … These big-money settlements have prompted some Chicago law firms to specialize in city claims. In 2022, just one firm settled cases totaling $42 million of the $117 million that the city paid out that year. Based on a standard one-third contingency fee, the lawyers likely reaped a handsome $14 million.

New Twitter Files Expose French Censorship 

Public

Previous releases of files from Twitter (now X) showed how the social media company often bowed to pressure from U.S. officials to censor speech. This article reports that a new batch of files from the company dating to the period before Elon Musk bought it, “show a coordinated effort by France’s President Emmanuel Macron, legislators, and state-affiliated NGOs working together to force the world’s most influential social media platform to censor users for legal speech and influence Twitter’s worldwide ‘content moderation’ for narrative control.”

What’s more, Twitter Files – France reveals the birth of the censorship-by-NGO proxy strategy at the heart of the Censorship Industrial Complex:

• President Macron personally reached out to then-CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey;

• The timing of Macron’s action strongly suggests coordination with NGOs on a pressure campaign to win more censorship and demand sensitive user data from Twitter;

• The pattern of events indicates potentially illegal activity by various actors.

This article reports that any analysts believe the massive size of the EU will lead US social media firms to impose European rules regarding speech – which do not offer the First Amendment’s robust protections – on Americans. Last year, the EU’s then-top digital censor, Thierry Breton, threatened action against Elon Musk after he announced a conversation on X with Donald Trump.

In a separate article in the Free Press, Irish comedian Graham Linehan, who has been targeted by transgender activists because of comments they consider “transphobic,” recounts his recent arrest at London’s Heathrow Airport because of three posts on X he made in April.

The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three posts on X. … [During the police interview] I explained that the post about punching a trans-identified man in a female-only space was a serious point made with a joke. Men who enter women’s spaces are abusers, and they need to be challenged every time. The officer mentioned the term trans people. I asked him what he meant by the phrase. “People who feel their gender is different than what was assigned at birth,” he said. “Assigned at birth?” I responded. “Our sex isn’t assigned.” He called it semantics. I told him he was using activist language.

Linehan says he was offered bail, on one condition: “I am not to go on X. That’s it. No threats, no speeches about the seriousness of my crimes – just a legal gag order designed to shut me up while I’m in the UK, and a demand I face another police interview in October.”

Minneapolis Shooter and the Rise of American Nihilism 

Free Press

After Robert “Robin” Westerman murdered two children and wounded 17 others at a Catholic school in Minneapolis, people rushed to assign motive and blame. This article reports that the answer may be far more troubling than guns, bigotry or mental illness.

Westman seems to have been driven by an all-consuming, destructive force, a nihilism—the conviction that life is meaningless; that words like truth, justice and God are empty slogans; that everything must be razed. … Today, you can feel the nihilist impulse coursing through America, which has been mostly stripped of its faith and a shared national culture and has seen once-great institutions—universities, corporations, churches, nonprofit organizations, the media, the military—become engulfed in scandal and politicization. … Earlier this year, the FBI introduced a new category of criminal: the Nihilistic Violent Extremist, or NVE. If jihadis kill for Allah, and anti-government extremists like Timothy McVeigh killed in the name of some demented notion of freedom, then NVEs kill simply because they want to kill. They don’t have much in the way of ideological commitments – as the confusing hodgepodge of aphorisms Westman scrawled into his rifle, pistol, and shotgun makes clear – beyond a commitment to chaos and evil themselves.

In a separate article, Wired reported last week that one such nihilistic group – to which Westman has not been linked – says it is behind the flurry of hoax active-shooter phone calls that have panicked schools across the country, charging between $20 and $95 for such calls. “The group has been linked to 764, a nihilistic subgroup of The Com that conducts targeted campaigns against children using extortion, doxing, swatting, and harassment. Members of 764 have been accused of everything from robbery to sexual abuse of minors, kidnapping, and murder.”

What We Know About America’s 1,135 Billionaires 

Wall Street Journal

This article reports that there were 1,135 billionaires in the U.S. as of 2024 – up from 927 in 2020. The biggest concentration, 255 of them, is in California. But the super-rich are also behind businesses in places such as Ridgeland, Miss., and Waunakee, Wisc. Collectively, these people are worth about $5.7 trillion, according to data from Altrata, a wealth-intelligence firm:

The 100 richest billionaires account for nearly $3.86 trillion in wealth – more than half the total. Just three men – Elon Musk, [Jeff] Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg – account for almost $1 trillion of it. Despite those outsize Silicon Valley fortunes, most U.S.-based billionaires didn’t make their wealth in tech. About 300 came from banking and finance, compared with roughly 110 from the tech sector. Another 75 came from real estate. … While some billionaires such as Gates and Warren Buffett have openly pledged to give away much of their wealth, others have donated little so far … Billionaires have publicly donated or pledged to give about $185 billion since 2015.