RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

December 28 to January 3

Featured Investigation:

The Trump Administration’s Fight To Fund Scientists

While the Trump administration’s efforts to sharply reduce the overhead costs paid to universities for research has been cast as an attack on science, Paul D. Thacker reports for RealClearInvestigations that the billions of taxpayer dollars paid each year has long been a contentious issue pitting scientists against college administrators. Described by critics as a “slush fund” “shrouded in mystery,” the lion’s share of these indirect costs goes to 20 elite universities that charge an additional 60 to 70% of the research grant awarded for buildings, labs and other expenses.

• The Trump administration’s plan to cap these rates at 15% sparked outrage from academia, with leaders calling it a "ruthless takedown."
• Concerns date back to 1955. In the 1980s, a scandal at Stanford revealed indirect funds paid for a $1.2 million yacht, wedding flowers, and cedar-lined closets for the university president.
• Congressional investigators and researchers note that once money enters a university’s "byzantine accounting system," it effectively disappears, sometimes funding unrelated building campaigns or administrator "slush funds."

• Despite Trump’s reform efforts, the administration faces legal and legislative hurdles in capping rates.
• In response, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya is floating a new strategy: Separating indirect costs into competitive infrastructure grants to break the monopoly held by elite coastal universities; and allowing researchers to move grants to more affordable institutions in the "middle of the country" where facility costs are lower.
• While university lobbyists remain powerful, proponents argue these reforms would ensure taxpayer dollars fund actual science rather than administrative bloat.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

12-Time Evictee Gets Rental Assistance, RCI

SBA May Ignore Erroneous Grants, RCI

Maryland Employees Got Insurance Without Premiums, RCI

Throwback Thursday – “Dumpin’ New Year’s Eve”, RCI

Not Working Didn’t Stop CA Employee From Getting Paid, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

Anti-Trump Probe Attorney Spiked Clinton Investigation, Federalist

Trump’s Tangled Web of Policy & Deals, New York Times

The Santa Presidency: Why Is Trump Handing Out Cash?, Atlantic

The Sharp Decline in Federal Employment, Axios

Feds Keep Losing Cases Against ICE Protesters, Intercept

Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump, New York Times

HUD: $5B In ‘Questionable’ Rental Assistance Under Biden, New York Post

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Prisoners Died After Beatings by Guards.

No One Raised Alarm. 

New York Times

When an inmate named Ladale Kennedy stopped breathing one night in a New York State prison cell, this article reports, no one paid it much mind. The local medical examiner classified the incident, in July 2022, as something of an official mystery: cause and manner “undetermined.” In fact, just before he died, Mr. Kennedy, 41 and mentally ill, had been pepper sprayed by guards, beaten, handcuffed, held face-first under running water and fitted with a “spit hood” – a mesh restraint that is sometimes used to prevent inmates from biting or spitting on officers.

Over the past year, the prison system that held Mr. Kennedy has come under enormous scrutiny. Twenty guards were charged in the fatal beatings of two inmates, Robert L. Brooks and Messiah Nantwi. Lawmakers proposed a sweeping measure to strengthen prison oversight, and the governor signed it into law. But Mr. Kennedy’s case, which passed by largely unnoticed, is a reminder that other men have died after beatings like Mr. Brooks and Mr. Nantwi did – and that the public still has not received a full accounting of those deaths.

This article reports that the New York State attorney general’s office, which is required by law to conduct an inquiry into every in-custody death, took the rare step of hiring an independent reviewer in April to scrutinize the medical examiner’s ruling in the case. That reviewer, Dr. Christopher Milroy, said he was not able to determine what caused Mr. Kennedy’s death. One expert who reviewed the case at the request of The Times called the findings into question.

“They put a spit hood on, that you can see,” said the expert, Dr. Michael Baden. “He starts at that point saying he can’t breathe.”

NY: Stats Say Illegal Aliens Commit More Crimes 

New York Post

It all depends on which immigrants you’re talking about. This article by frequent RCI contributor John R. Lott Jr. reports that while legal immigrants do commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans, new data from New York State shows that those living there illegally commit crimes at a rate more than three times higher than that of legal residents.

New York is estimated to have between 676,000 and 825,000 illegal aliens out of a total state population of 19.99 million – meaning illegal immigrants make up only 3.4% to 4.15% of the state’s population. … Illegal aliens currently incarcerated … make up 14% of New York’s total inmate population – and this share is likely an underestimate, because the state doesn’t actively identify immigration status. … They’ve been convicted of committing 148 homicides, 717 assaults, 134 burglaries, 106 robberies, 235 dangerous drugs offenses, 152 weapons offenses, and 260 sexual predatory offenses, among other crimes.

Lott also reports that “housing those 7,113 illegals in prisons and jails is costly. … [probably] well over $1 billion per year, and possibly as much as $1.4 billion.”

How California Rules Fueled L.A. Wildfires 

City Journal

During the last year, people in Los Angeles have tried to determine how and why the Palisades wildfire spread so ferociously last January that it destroyed 6,800 structures and killed 12 people in what became L.A.’s worst urban wildfire catastrophe. A host of factors have already been cited – including leaving the nearby Santa Ynez Reservoir empty for nearly a year, the failure to pre-deploy firefighting resources to the area despite forecasts of extreme fire conditions and the scattered and uncoordinated response by the LAFD. This article cites evidence from a recently filed lawsuit to suggest California state policies may have allowed a smaller New Year’s Eve fire to rekindle on state park land, turning a tiny, containable blaze into a deadly conflagration that virtually wiped out the Pacific Palisades.

This evidence includes text messages that appear to show California State Parks employees seeking to limit the impact of fire suppression to protect endangered plants; an unreleased agency document stating that the park’s preferred policy is to let the area burn in a wildfire event; and secret maps that attempt to constrain firefighting operations in certain areas of the park – even adjacent to densely populated areas – to protect “sensitive natural and cultural resources” like endangered plants and Native American archaeological sites. It also includes allegations that state employees failed to monitor the smoldering burn scar in the days before the January 7 conflagration, despite nearly half a century of accumulated vegetation and forecasters issuing their direst warnings.

This article reports not only was the Palisades Fire entirely preventable, it was also fueled by California state policies that, in the words of one attorney representing fire victims, “put plants over people.”

When Surrogates Surrender Child but Get Debt

Wall Street Journal

In late 2021, Nia Trent-Wilson agreed to act as a surrogate for a couple for $70,000 plus fees. This article reports that Trent-Wilson had been a surrogate twice before and thought she knew what to expect. But this time, the pregnancy went badly. Serious medical complications forced doctors to remove her uterus and fallopian tubes. She now “owes $182,889.63 in medical bills for a baby that wasn’t hers.”

The U.S. is a leader in the global surrogacy industry. In 2023, the most recent year data is available, nearly 11,000 surrogates underwent an embryo transfer, a figure that has more than doubled since 2014, according to data that represents around 95% of IVF procedures collected by an industry group. … Surrogacy in the U.S. has surged into a multibillion-dollar industry in which the women who bear the children have few financial or other protections – and even are sometimes surprised by strangers wielding legal documents taking the babies away after birth. … Despite the physical and emotional risks placed on surrogates, the practice remains almost entirely unregulated. Lopsided contracts and disparities in wealth mean that when things turn sour, it’s often surrogates who bear costs they can rarely afford, including medical bills and attorneys’ fees, according to interviews with more than 40 surrogates, agency owners and surrogacy attorneys, and a review of court records and business filings.

This article reports that Trent-Wilson’s options for redress appear limited, in part because the parents who have the child already have numerous debts and surrogacy agency has limited liability. She has dipped into her savings and her son’s college fund and asked for donations on Spotfund and GoFundMe. “We’re out here to fend for ourselves,” she said.

Sports Leagues Paying Price for Teaming with Gambling 

Washington Post

Not so long ago, this article reports, sports leagues spoke of the gambling industry as if it were the devil itself. Now they are in bed with it. Stadiums are plastered with ads for sportsbooks; broadcasts filled with gambling commercials and commentary on betting lines and odds as Americans wagered an estimated $148 billion in 2024.

But 2025 may also be remembered as the year a reckoning began over the unholy marriage of sports and legalized gambling. Betting scandals rocked the NCAA, the NBA and MLB. At the same time, the modern phenomenon of athletes being harassed and threatened online by angry bettors grew into something resembling an epidemic. In both cases, the driving force appeared to be the ubiquity and ease of prop bets – those focusing on a specific player’s events or performance as opposed to the outcome of a game. Largely as a result, the integrity of games – perhaps the most precious commodity in sports and the one that once united the leagues’ commissioners against gambling – is increasingly being called into question, a trend some are calling an existential threat to the long-term viability of sports.

This article reports that despite the large amount of money wagered, support for sports gambling nationwide is “plummeting” amidst widespread concern about the possibility of fixed or rigged outcomes. Some of the largest drops in support for legalized gambling came from frequent sports consumers and those who bet on sports – the ones who know best the havoc it has wrought.