RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

November 2 to November 8

Featured Investigation:

The Governor, the CEO & the FBI:

Scandal Threatens New York Hospital 

A dispute over $1 billion in allegedly withheld Medicaid funds has erupted into a partisan battle over Nassau University Medical Center, pitting Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul against Republican county officials ahead of New York's 2026 gubernatorial race. Ben Weingarten reports for RealClearInvestigations that the controversy centers on claims that New York State engineered a two-decade scheme forcing the Long Island safety-net hospital to provide its own Medicaid matching funds, potentially violating federal law.

• New CEO Megan Ryan discovered the hospital had been putting up $50 million annually for 20 years in place of required state matching funds for federal Medicaid grants. The state's own general counsel reportedly deemed the arrangement improper, though state Democratic leaders dispute this characterization.
• When the hospital sued in December 2024 to recover the $1 billion, Governor Hochul seized control of the facility in May 2025, removing it from Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman's oversight and firing Ryan and other hospital leaders.
• State officials claim the takeover was necessary to rescue a debt-riddled facility hobbled by Republican cronyism and mismanagement. Democrats call the 530-bed trauma center serving 270,000 patients annually a "Republican patronage pit."
• Ousted hospital leaders say the takeover was retaliation for exposing alleged corruption and part of a Democratic power play to close the hospital and repurpose its nearly 100 acres for high-density housing development that would benefit Democrats politically.
• The saga has drawn FBI scrutiny and a congressional Republican probe into whether New York is systematically withholding Medicaid funds to counties and low-income hospitals to balance the state's budget—New York has the nation's highest per-capita Medicaid spending at $4,942.
• The dispute has become central to the expected 2026 gubernatorial race between Hochul and Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, with competing lawsuits and allegations of mismanagement, discrimination, and defamation continuing to mount.

Featured Investigation:

Americans Are Increasingly Alone,

But Are They Really Lonely?

In RealClearInvestigations, Christopher J. Ferguson reports on the pushback to former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s widely covered claim that the United States is facing an “epidemic of loneliness.” While Murthy warned that social isolation poses health risks comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, many researchers say he misread the data.

• Experts cited by Murthy, including University of Rochester’s Viji Kannan and AEI’s Daniel Cox, said their studies measured declining social contact – not rising loneliness. They argue Americans are spending more time alone but are not necessarily feeling lonelier. Oxford researcher Hans IJzerman criticized Murthy for “butchering the narrative,” saying there is no strong evidence of a loneliness epidemic.
• Critics say the “loneliness crisis” mirrors a broader pattern of using science to support sweeping cultural claims – such as linking racism or technology directly to public health problems.
• Data show Americans are spending more time alone due to social and economic shifts – fewer marriages and births, longer lifespans, and more remote work – but social engagement has dropped only about 1.7% since 2003, hardly an epidemic. Loneliness, a subjective feeling of unwanted isolation, differs from simply being alone. Quality of relationships matters more than the amount of social contact.
• The claim that loneliness is as deadly as smoking stems from Brigham Young University’s Julianne Holt-Lunstad, whose coauthor, David Sbarra, later expressed doubts about framing loneliness as an epidemic.
• Evidence linking loneliness to serious health problems remains weak and mostly correlational, not causal. Concerns about loneliness among teens may also be overstated, with some scholars comparing fears over social media to past anxieties about writing, television, or the telephone.
• Ferguson concludes that while loneliness deserves attention, data do not support calling it an epidemic. A more nuanced, evidence-based discussion is needed.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

Baltimore Put Crosswalks on the Wrong Streets, RCI

New Orleans Mayor Travels to France, RCI

Pennsylvania Pays Big for Empty Lot, RCI

Throwback Thursday - Entrepreneurs in Barbados, RCI

Michigan’s Chinese Battery Plant Falls Through, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

Congressional Perks: House Account Spending Balloons 

Center Square

From the Annals of Nice Work If You Can get It, an investigation by The Center Square found that spending on U.S. House of Representatives office accounts has increased by more than 85% over the past three decades – and nearly half of that occurred since 2020.

The Members' Representational Allowance (MRA) provides each of the 435 U.S. representatives in Congress about $2 million a year to pay staff, travel, buy equipment and run their Washington, D.C., and district offices, giving members wide latitude on how to spend the money within House ethics and administration committee rules. … Each member is required to disclose his or her spending, and The Center Square found significant spending on private jet travel, luxury car leasing, meals and catering, [and] questionable mileage reimbursements …There was also at least $50 million spent on partisan and issue-specific caucuses.

This article reports that on top of about $810 million in 2024 for individual lawmakers' office accounts, the House appropriates billions more for other operations of the House, including perks like a childcare center and an office of attending physician so members didn't have to deal with waiting for a primary care.

The ObamaCare Blue-City Bailout

Wall Street Journal

Cash-strapped big cities reeling from the generous pension benefits they have promised workers are finding fiscal relief by making federal taxpayers cover some of their IOUs through Obamacare. This column by Allysia Finley reports that Chicago, Detroit, Stockton, Calif., and San Bernardino, Calif., are among the communities that have

saved billions by shifting pre-Medicare retirees to ObamaCare when they filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in the 2010s. That minimized cuts to workers’ compensation and pensions. Detroit’s $170 million annual retiree healthcare bill made up nearly 20% of its general fund budget, one of the city’s biggest costs. … Chicago’s $2.1 billion unfunded retiree healthcare liability vanished [when it moved retirees to the federal exchanges]. Now U.S. taxpayers pick up the tab for Chicago’s retirees in their 50s and early 60s.

Finley reports that more cities may seek to offload their obligations onto federal taxpayers, noting a Reason Foundation reports that state and local governments faced $958 billion in retiree medical obligations in 2023, about $2,900 per American. The liabilities are largest in blue states like New York ($15,017 per capita), New Jersey ($10,599) and Connecticut ($6,657), which let workers retire early with generous health benefits. Finley also suggests that protecting backdoor bailout strategy is one reason Democrats are making Obamacare sweeteners their price for ending the government shutdown.

More Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

Trump Weighs Options, and Risks, for Attacks on Venezuela, New York Times

Battle in Virginia Over Activist Who Doxxed Stephen Miller, New York Times

Biden Prosecutor Who Targeted GOP Has Big Job at Microsoft, Daily Caller

Trump Escalates Demands for 2020 Election Probes, Washington Post

Despite Trump Green Investors Enjoying Huge Returns, Bloomberg

CBO Believed To Be Hacked By Foreign Actor, Washington Post

Big Food’s Fight Against Kennedy Is Heating Up, New York Times

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Did Fauci Get Top Virologist to Stay Mum on COVID Lab Leak? 

Washington Free Beacon

Documents provided to the Free Beacon by a whistleblower indicate that a prominent U.S. virologist who collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the COVID-19 pandemic privately informed the U.S. intelligence community in January 2020 that the Chinese lab may be responsible for the outbreak. But, this article reports, in his public remarks to congressional staffers “one month later – and after meeting with former White House health adviser Anthony Fauci – he stayed mum about the Wuhan lab and lent credence to the discredited wet market theory.”

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill virologist Dr. Ralph Baric warned the Office of the Director of National Intelligence during a closed-door presentation with the agency’s Biological Sciences Experts Group on or around Jan. 29, 2020, that the Wuhan lab, which was conducting risky gain-of-function experiments on bat viruses similar to the one that causes COVID-19, may have accidentally released the virus into the human population. … But Baric had nothing to say about the Wuhan lab in his public remarks during the early days of the pandemic as the press cast Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and other proponents of the lab leak theory as unhinged conspiracy theorists.

This article notes that in that January presentation to the DNI, Baric also downplayed China’s claim that a Wuhan wet market was responsible for the outbreak, noting that most of the first known cases of COVID-19 had no exposure to the market. He later removed those slides from his presentation as well and instead lent credibility to the wet market theory.

Unregulated Industry Coaches Vets to Pile on Benefits 

Washington Post

It used to be a benefit-rich club no one wanted to join. While those who were given a 100 percent disability rating from VA are paid about $50,000 a year, tax-free, and receive no-cost health care and a host of other perks the status used to be given to only the most incapacitated vets. But today, this article reports, that status is common. Of the roughly 6 million veterans receiving disability payments last year, about 1.5 million were designated 100 percent disabled – a nearly ninefold increase since 2021.

VA officials say many veterans hold 100 percent ratings because of disfiguring injuries or severe illnesses they suffered while serving the United States. … But a Washington Post investigation found that for-profit consultants … are compounding the spike in ratings with manipulative tactics. Many urge veterans to stretch the truth about their ailments and claim hard-to-disprove conditions that VA is unlikely to challenge, such as migraines, erectile dysfunction and post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. By promising higher ratings and bigger disability checks, they have persuaded millions of veterans to pay as much as $20,000 for their services.

This article reports that unlike nonprofit veterans organizations, these businesses are not accredited by the VA. “Yet the industry helps veterans secure compensation from VA for hundreds of thousands of disabilities, according to current and former company and government officials. While many of the businesses provide legitimate services, some who have worked in the industry say it is steeped in hucksterism and fraud.” The article also reports that a high disability designation usually does not mean that a veteran is physically unable to work. Most disabled veterans under 65 still earn paychecks from full-time jobs, the data shows.

Communities Pushing Back on Ubiquitous Police Cameras 

NBC News

Communities around the country have signed contracts with companies to install automatic license plate readers. Once locally based, this article reports that these cameras are increasingly being networked by companies like Flock Safety, which “centralizes their data like never before, creating a vast, interconnected surveillance database for law enforcement agencies using information from its suite of products, including facial recognition cameras, drones and audio detectors.”

Flock contracts with more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States, its CEO has said, and scans over 20 billion license plates per month, according to Flock's website. More than 75% of those offices opt in to provide information to Flock’s live national database, which allows law enforcement agencies from across the country to view drivers’ license plate numbers, locations and directions and the times of recording without warrants, Flock told the office of Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

This article reports that some citizens are starting to push back.

In an ongoing lawsuit accusing Norfolk, Virginia, of violating the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections by using the cameras, two plaintiffs said they were tracked hundreds of times over a few months this year. A Flock spokesperson told NBC News that the number was misleading, as Flock ALPRs might take multiple photographs in a single second as a vehicle crosses an intersection, but declined to provide specific numbers. In response to the Norfolk lawsuit and other allegations that Flock violates the Constitution, a spokesperson pointed to the fact that to date, courts have generally agreed with the company that ALPR searches shouldn’t require warrants and don’t violate the Constitution. Norfolk declined to comment on ongoing litigation.

Meta Earns Fortune on Fraudulent Ads, Documents Show 

Reuters

This article reports that scammers seeking to cheat its own customers is a real money maker for Meta, whose holdings include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Meta internally projected late last year that it would earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue – or $16 billion – from running advertising for scams and banned goods, internal company documents show. … On average, one December 2024 document notes, the company shows its platforms’ users an estimated 15 billion “higher risk” scam advertisements – those that show clear signs of being fraudulent – every day. Meta earns about $7 billion in annualized revenue from this category of scam ads each year, another late 2024 document states. … The documents further note that users who click on scam ads are likely to see more of them because of Meta’s ad-personalization system, which tries to deliver ads based on a user’s interests.

This article reports that the documents make clear that Meta aims to reduce its illicit revenue stream in the future but it is concerned that abrupt reductions of scam advertising revenue could affect its business projections In the internal documents, Meta weighs the costs of beefing up its enforcement of scam ads against the toll of financial penalties from governments for failing to protect its users.