RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

September 7 to September 13

Featured Investigation:

Exodus: Affordability Crisis

Sends Americans Packing From Big Cities

For over a century, migration in the U.S. flowed from rural towns to major cities. Now, that trend is reversing, Joel Kotkin & Wendell Cox report for RealClearInvestigations. Urban cores are shrinking while suburbs, exurbs, and small towns are experiencing rapid growth. Between 2010 and 2020, suburbs gained 2 million domestic migrants, while core counties lost 2.7 million. Pandemic-driven remote work accelerated this shift, with core counties losing 3.2 million people in just the first four years of the 2020s.

• High housing costs in large metros are a major driver. Prices in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York are far out of reach for most young families. In contrast, smaller metros and rural areas offer affordable housing, homeownership opportunities, and a lower cost of living. Cities such as Sioux Falls, Omaha, and Clarksville, Tennessee, are gaining both domestic and international migrants, while states like Alabama, South Dakota, and Maine attract new residents with affordability.
• Millennials—once expected to concentrate in big coastal cities—are increasingly moving to smaller metros to buy homes, start families, and pursue work-life balance. Surveys show they still want traditional middle-class lifestyles, but affordability is only achievable outside major urban cores. Cost-of-living adjusted salaries are often higher in the Heartland than in coastal cities, further fueling the trend.
• Immigrants, too, are now choosing medium-sized metros such as Columbus, Des Moines, and Indianapolis over Los Angeles or New York. This has increased diversity in unexpected places like Omaha, Nebraska, which has seen foreign-born growth at double the national rate.
• Small metros and rural states are also emerging as America’s “new nurseries,” with higher birth rates and slower aging than coastal urban centers. This suggests that the nation’s demographic vitality is shifting inland, where family formation remains stronger.
• Overall, the U.S. is entering a new demographic era: one of dispersion. Rather than signaling decline, the movement toward smaller places echoes historic migrations in pursuit of freedom, opportunity, and homeownership.

Featured Investigation:

Revival: Americans Heading Back to the Hinterlands

In their second installment in their series for RealClearInvestigations, Joel Kotkin & Wendell Cox report that Americans are dispersing away from dominant coastal metros toward smaller cities, towns, and rural regions that once seemed left behind. Lower housing costs, expanding job opportunities, cultural renewal, and a resurgence in manufacturing are reshaping the nation’s demographic, economic, and political landscape.

• Communities like Fargo, Springfield, and Chattanooga are attracting new residents with affordable housing, universities, civic engagement, and high-speed internet infrastructure. Many millennials see these areas as places where they can afford independence, participate in civic life earlier, and enjoy closer-knit communities.
• Immigrants are revitalizing towns from Omaha to Knoxville, opening restaurants and businesses, and enriching cultural life. Contrary to stereotypes, smaller communities increasingly showcase diversity, with cricket leagues in Iowa, ethnic restaurants in the Midwest, and Latino influences reshaping Southern cities like Nashville.
• Once dismissed as “flyover country,” places such as Huntsville, Tulsa, and Pittsburgh are drawing high-tech firms and remote workers. Incentives, low costs, and infrastructure—like Chattanooga’s 10-gigabit municipal internet—are fueling growth and creating new economic hubs outside the coasts.
• Manufacturing and energy development are powering recovery in Rust Belt states and Appalachia. Domestic energy, foreign investment, and reshoring industries are generating middle-class opportunities in states like Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, reversing decades of decline.
• Once synonymous with poverty and decline, much of Appalachia is rebounding through proximity to growing metros, natural gas development, outdoor recreation, and historic town revitalization. Communities like Marietta, Ohio, are blending tradition with entrepreneurship and high-tech innovation.
• The hinterlands’ revival could reshape U.S. politics and culture. These regions are attracting investment, immigrants, and educated workers, blending traditional values with new perspectives. Small cities and towns—long dismissed as stagnant—are emerging as incubators of America’s economic future and evolving identity.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

Waste of the Day: Maine Nonprofit CEO Gets Big Payout, RCI

DOD Spending Lacks Transparency, Checks, RCI

NYPD Conceals Hit and Run, RCI

Throwback Thursday – Facebook Promotes Parks, RCI

Veterans Affairs’ Spa Days Return, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

Charlie Kirk's Alleged Killer Identified, Daily Mail

Charlie Kirk's Murder and the Fight for America’s Soul, Free Press

Trump-Linked Fund Tops $1B in Assets, Reuters

What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security, ProPublica

IG Reports Indicates James Biden May Have Committed Perjury, Washington Free Beacon

Secret Service Spent $11M on Hunter Biden Travel Detail, Daily Signal

Nick Fuentes: A White Nationalist Problem for the Right, New York Times

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

How JPMorgan Enabled the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein 

New York Times

Jeffrey Epstein had long been a treasured customer at JPMorgan, arguably the world’s most prestigious bank. The sex offender’s accounts, this article reports, were brimming with more than $200 million. He generated millions of dollars in revenue for the bank, landing him atop an internal list of major money makers. He helped JPMorgan orchestrate an important acquisition. He introduced executives to men who would become lucrative clients, like the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and to global leaders, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. He helped executives troubleshoot crises and strategize about global opportunities.

Epstein’s crimes have been exhaustively documented, and elements of JPMorgan’s relationship with Epstein have become public via legal proceedings in the United States and Britain. But the full story of how America’s leading lender enabled the century’s most notorious sexual predator has not been told. This account has been pieced together from thousands of pages of internal bank records, sealed deposition transcripts and other court documents and financial data, as well as interviews with people with direct knowledge of the Epstein relationship. Among the findings: Bank officials for more than a decade were anxious about Epstein’s prolific wire transfers and cash withdrawals – JPMorgan ultimately processed more than $1 billion in such transactions for him – and warned senior management about his suspicious activities. But on at least four occasions over five years, the bank’s leaders overrode those objections and continued to serve Epstein.

In a separate article, the Wall Street Journal reported that lawyers for Epstein’s estate gave Congress a copy of the birthday book put together for the late financier’s 50th birthday, which includes a lewd letter with President Trump’s signature that he has said doesn’t exist.

In a separate article, Bloomberg reports that hundreds of emails from Epstein’s personal Yahoo account show that Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein were closer, in many respects, than either publicly admitted. Maxwell – who has tried to distance herself from the late financier as she seeks to reduce her prison sentence on charges related to the late sexual predator –“opened at least one foreign bank account using one of his addresses, was a named director on one of Epstein’s main revenue-generating companies and traded stock in a company they were both invested in, details that haven’t been previously reported. The pair discussed undergoing a shared fertility procedure, long after Maxwell claims she largely disassociated from him. They [also] corresponded about discrediting women who raised allegations against them.”

Law Allows Her Alleged Rapist to Stay Free

WBUR

Seventeen years had passed by the time Boston police knocked on Louise’s door to say they had identified the man who allegedly raped and stabbed her in October 2005. The suspect was now a father of two, a possible serial rapist  - but also beyond the reach of the law, investigators told her. Police had taken so long to identify him, this article reports, that they missed the state’s deadline to prosecute her case.

In Massachusetts, the law says prosecutors have only 15 years to file charges after an alleged rape. Past that statute of limitations, it’s nearly impossible to bring charges. … A review of criminal codes by WBUR and ProPublica found that as many as 47 states allow more time to charge rapes or similar assaults of adults than Massachusetts. For example, Vermont and Maryland are among a number of states that have no deadline to file charges for rape. Other states like Montana and Texas extend their deadlines when there’s DNA evidence. … But here, evidence would not matter. The case would be almost impossible to win.

This article reports that details of Louise’s case only became public because prosecutors took the unusual step of filing charges even though they had missed the state’s charging deadline. In June she testified before the state Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary to urge them to pass a bill that would allow prosecutors to charge suspects after the deadline in some rape cases with DNA evidence.

Following Trump, Red States Targeting Blue City Crime 

Washington Post

The idea of bringing extra, outside manpower to crime-plagued cities didn’t start with President Trump. This article reports that several red states have made similar moves in their own blue cities.

In Texas, for instance, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) deployed thousands of National Guard troops and Department of Public Safety troopers in anticipation of immigration-related protests in Houston and other cities where federal deportation raids had occurred. … In neighboring Louisiana, Gov. Jeff Landry (R) created a contingent of state troopers he dubbed “Troop NOLA” to police New Orleans, then used emergency powers in the wake of a deadly New Year’s Day truck attack in the city’s French Quarter to surge state police into the city, patrol the neighborhood and sweep homeless people from downtown. … Missouri lawmakers, citing an increase in homicides and case backlogs, voted in March to take over the police department in St. Louis and voted two years ago to allow the Republican governor to appoint a special prosecutor there.

This article reports that similar efforts are afoot in Georgia, Indiana and Mississippi. “It’s part of the narrative that these cities are incapable of administering public safety even though crime is on a downswing since the pandemic,” said Jorge Camacho, an associate research scholar in law at Yale Law School. “You still need a foil to blame for problems that are real and imagined. I expect to see that wielded for the foreseeable future.”

Inside CIA’s Fight Against Mexico’s Cartels 

Reuters

Working with special Mexican army and navy units, the CIA for years has been running covert operations to hunt down Mexico’s most-wanted narcos. These CIA vetted units, the details of which Reuters is reporting for the first time, fall under the agency’s covert operations. Such activities are generally classified, and their budgets and staffing are kept secret.

With the permission of the Mexican government, the CIA gives training and equipment to these outfits, as well as financial backing for activities like travel. The U.S. spy agency also screens their members with U.S.-administered polygraph tests, which is why the groups are often called “CIA vetted units.” Today, there are at least two such CIA vetted military units operating in Mexico. … The CIA vetted Mexican army and navy units have played key roles in planning or executing the majority of captures of high-profile narcos in recent years. The army outfit is comprised of hundreds of CIA-trained special forces and is seen as the military force in Mexico most capable of nabbing heavily armed drug lords holed up in fortified mountain hideouts, security sources say.

This article reports that while U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has been the face of U.S. anti-narcotics efforts in Mexico – leading U.S. efforts to investigate suspected drug traffickers and gather evidence that is admissible in U.S. courtrooms – the CIA spearheads the high-level coordination between the myriad U.S. agencies working on anti-narcotics. “The CIA is the facilitator and the coordinator on some of the most important anti-narcotics issues in Mexico,” said a recently departed senior official in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.

The Revolt of the Rich Kids 

Free Press

It’s easy to laugh at the caricature of the wealthy progressive – taking a knee in Brooklyn for Black Lives Matter, occupying a quad at Harvard for Palestine, or waving a placard outside the headquarters of a Fortune 500 company in the name of climate. Yet, this article reports, the radicalization of seemingly well-off people is one of the defining political developments of the past decade.

Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi, in his 2024 book, “We Have Never Been Woke,” argues that this downward mobility of children born into wealth is the psychological engine of contemporary politics. This may look like a trivial problem – the petty disappointments of a small slice of America – but the unhappiness of this group, raised to expect the world and denied it, has outsize consequences. … Unlike the working classes they so often claim to represent, these downwardly mobile elites remain armed with the tools of their upbringing: degrees, contacts, cultural fluency. They may no longer have the bank accounts their parents did, but they retain platforms in media, academia, and politics through which to broadcast their grievances. Given these advantages – or perhaps the right word is privileges – it should come as no surprise that their concerns, which seem to the average American profoundly niche, have dominated the cultural conversation.

When reality disappoints those raised in privilege, the gap between expectation and outcome produces rage. 

This article reports that this helps to explain “why modern movements like Occupy Wall Street were filled not with the destitute but with college-educated professionals. These were not people starving; they were aggrieved that they were in the 90th percentile rather than the 99th.”