RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

October 26 to November 1

Featured Investigation:

Why Is New York’s AG Targeting

a Castle in West Virginia?

Lawfare or feather-bedding? James Varney reports for RealClearInvestigations reports that question is at the heart of the ongoing legal dispute between New York Attorney General Letitia James and one of the right’s most controversial opponents of immigration, Peter Brimelow, who says the AG’s claims of financial impropriety centered on a West Virginia castle are really an effort to silence him.

• VDARE, established in 1999 to advocate for strict immigration limits, has been labeled a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League. Brimelow argues these designations made his organization a target for government persecution.
• After a two-year investigation beginning in 2022, James filed civil charges alleging the Brimelows used VDARE "like their personal piggy bank" through improper transactions involving a West Virginia castle and other financial dealings.
• VDARE purchased Berkeley Springs Castle for $1.4 million in 2020 after more than a dozen venues cancelled contracts to host their conferences. The Brimelows say the castle was intended for events and revenue generation, not personal use.
• The AG alleges the Brimelows lived in the castle at nonprofit expense and improperly transferred ownership to a separate foundation. The Brimelows say their extended stay resulted from COVID-19 shutdowns and necessary repairs, and the transfer followed standard nonprofit liability protection practices.
• The investigation began with 70 subpoenas requesting 40 gigabytes of data. Legal costs exceeded $1 million, draining VDARE's resources before charges were filed. The nonprofit raised less than $750,000 annually—far below amounts typically attracting regulatory scrutiny.
• Rick Sawyer, a prosecutor on the case, previously outlined at a 2022 ADL conference how attorney generals have "massive amounts of power" to investigate organizations through pre-lawsuit subpoenas—"an untapped power" for combating groups "advocating hate speech."
• VDARE's attorney claims the castle allegations are a pretext for suppressing controversial political speech, noting that neither West Virginia nor the IRS raised concerns about the transactions.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

California’s Fake College Students Collect Funds, RCI

Kristi Noem Buys Two Luxury Jets, RCI

Taxpayers Fund Mayor’s Wife’s Charity, RCI

 Throwback Thursday - Tracking College Students, RCI

TV Ads Thank Trump for Border Control, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

Documents Expose Breadth of Biden DOJ’s Weaponization, Federalist

Inside the Trump Family’s Global Crypto Cash Machine, Reuters

AG Pam Bondi Reviewing Biden Pardons Signed by Autopen, Axios

Seeking Safety Trump Officials Living on Military Bases, Atlantic

Pro-Life Forces Derail Trump's IVF Promises, Politico

How Trump Bulldozed Bureaucracy to Get White House Ballroom, Wall Street Journal

Inside Jasmine Crockett's Secret Stock Portfolio, Washington Free Beacon

Inside Paul Manafort’s Comeback, Politico

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

FDA Protects Suspect Medicine Factories 

ProPublica

For decades, this article reports, the FDA has blacked out the names of generic drugs on inspection reports for foreign factories that were found to have safety and quality violations. The practice – seemingly aimed at protecting corporations rather than people – has prevented patients, doctors, and pharmacists from knowing whether manufacturing failures have made medications ineffective or unsafe.

Just two and a half years ago, FDA inspectors visited a factory in western India and discovered that spore-forming organisms had contaminated the sterile manufacturing area. The plant went on to ship its drugs to the United States anyway. … There’s no specific requirement that the FDA block out drug names on inspection reports about foreign facilities. Still, the agency preemptively kept that information hidden, invoking a cautious interpretation of a law that requires the government to protect trade secrets. … It’s part of a decades-long pattern of discounting the interests of consumers who want to make informed choices about the drugs they take – even as 9 out of 10 prescriptions in the United States are filled with generics, many from India and China.

This article reports that even if the FDA opted to disclose the drug names in its reports, it would still be hard for patients to know if their medicine came from a flagged factory because pill bottles don’t list the name of the manufacturer.

Push to Hide Childrens' Health Records from Parents 

Federalist

This article reports that major medical companies are using state law and electronic medical records [EHR] software to advance gender ideology among children and keep their parents in the dark.

According to a new report from Do No Harm (DNH), EHR companies across the country limit and advocate limiting parental access to their children’s health records around 12 or 13, often using state laws passed years ago with the purpose of blocking parental access to medical records related to sexually transmitted disease (STD) testing and treatment or treatment for substance abuse.

Those controversial laws were initially passed to make it easier for teens to seek treatment for treatable issues they might forgo if they had to tell their parents. This article reports that “doctors and medical companies obsessed with transitioning children have found those laws — both at the state level and through the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) — to be a useful way to secretly start transitioning children with zero knowledge from parents.”

In a separate article, the City Journal suggests that transgender medical providers might be deceiving insurance companies when submitting bills for gender medicine – which usually include the use of hormones. It reports: “A common form of potential billing fraud involves use of the diagnosis ‘Endocrine Disorder Not Otherwise Specified’ … instead of ‘Gender Identity Disorders’ for patients who do not have or are not being treated for endocrine disorders.” The article lays out the complex reasons driving this practice, which the Trump administration is investigating.

Mysterious Rise of Cancer Among Young Adults in the Corn Belt 

Washington Post

This article reports on an unsettling shift in cancer diagnoses in America, with rates for young adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s trending up even as overall cancer rates decline – and with geography appearing to be a key characteristic in who falls ill young.

The six leading states for corn production – Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana and Kansas – had the same cancer frequency as the rest of the nation for young adults and the overall population when state-level tracking began in 1999. In the 2000s they began to diverge, and since 2015 the states have had a significantly higher cancer rate among those ages 15 to 49. In the latest data from 2022, those states have a rate 5 percent higher for young adults and 5 percent higher for the overall population. Young adults in those states have significantly higher rates of several cancers, the Post analysis found, especially kidney and skin cancers. The skin cancer risk for young adults in the corn-producing states is 35 percent higher for men and 66 percent higher for women than their peers in other states.

This article reports Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s focus on the links between environmental exposure and diet and chronic diseases is resonating with many people. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds this year announced a $1 million investment to establish a research team dedicated to investigating the underlying causes of the state’s growing cancer rates.

Big Tech Uses NDAs to Hide AI Data Center Details 

NBC News

Even as tech companies and governments tout the benefits of the multibillion-dollar data center boom fueled by artificial intelligence services, many other aspects of these enterprises are shrouded in secrecy. This article reports that major tech companies launching these huge projects across the country are asking land sellers and public officials to sign non-disclosure agreements [NDAs] to limit discussions about details of the projects. 

Those in the data center industry argue the NDAs serve a particular purpose: ensuring that their competitors aren’t able to access information about their strategies and planned projects before they’re announced. And NDAs are common in many types of economic development deals aside from data centers. But as the facilities have spread into suburbs and farmland, they’ve drawn pushback from dozens of communities concerned by how they could upend daily life. Data centers often draw enormous amounts of water and electricity, causing residents to complain about rising power bills and water shortages. In Virginia’s Loudoun County, the world’s densest hub of data centers, locals have complained of a “constant whir” from cooling fans and backup generators. And in Tennessee’s South Memphis, the methane gas turbines that power an xAI data center give off air pollutants contributing to smog and formaldehyde.

This article reports that even as data centers seem to offer an economic lifeline to some communities, critics are troubled by their lack of transparency. “That violates a very fundamental norm of democracy, which is that they are answerable first to the voters and to their constituents, not to some secret corporation that they’re cutting deals with in the back room,” said Pat Garofalo, the director of state and local policy at the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit organization focused on economic equality.

Inside the Mamdani Machine: Soros Cash & Radical Imams 

Fox News

How did Zohran Mamdani seemingly come out of nowhere to likely become the next Mayor of New York City? This article says his ascent has been powered by a network of 110 groups that identify as Muslim or socialist and that has been “working hand-in-glove with 76 Democratic Party affiliates, allied groups and unions.” Mamdani has particularly close ties to Linda Sarsour, an Islamic activist who has been accused of making antisemitic remarks and embracing extremist views.

Particularly important in this political machine are two networks – Sarsour’s MPower organizations and another constellation of groups called Emgage, with which she works closely. The organizations have been generously funded. In total, billionaire George Soros’s Open Society philanthropies have given MPower and Emgage nearly $2.5 million in recent years, according to tax filings. … Over almost a decade, Sarsour and her allies have orchestrated a network of well-financed and tightly connected socialist activists, radical imams, political organizers and nonprofit organizations funded with millions of dollars by major philanthropies including Foundation to Promote Open Society, the Ford Foundation, Macarthur Foundation and the Tides Foundation.

This article reports that the confluence of big philanthropy, partisan operatives and clerical authority has helped drive Mamdani’s swift rise. Its architecture combines nonprofit activism with faith-based politics and the precision of a professional campaign operation.