RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

March 29 to April 4

RCI Podcasts & Videos

On this week’s episode of the RealClearInvestigations Podcast, RCI Editor J. Peder Zane and RCI Senior Reporter James Varney speak with the podcaster and investigative journalist Walter Curt about his efforts to identify fraud, waste and abuse in government spending.

On The Miller Report: Real Clear Journalism, Maggie Miller interviews Susan Crabtree about her recent article for RealClearPolitics reporting that the agent responsible for planning security at the Butler, Pa., event where President Trump was almost assassinated has been suspended for a third time.  

Featured Investigation:

Everything’s Bigger in Texas,

Including School Debt

Jeremy Portnoy reports for RealClearInvestigations that Texas public schools are drowning in $148.3 billion of bond debt – the most of any state – that will eventually require an additional $88.3 billion in interest payments. The crisis stems from a convoluted funding system that has driven districts into the bond market, enriching outside investors while failing students and straining taxpayers.

• Known as the Robin Hood problem, the dilemma stems from a 1989 court ruling that forced Texas to redistribute property tax revenue from wealthy to poor districts. Unable to lower their tax rates without financial penalty, districts turned to bonds as a workaround, since bond proceeds are exempt from recapture. What began as a fix for aging buildings morphed into a borrowing frenzy exceeding 1,000% growth over three decades.
• Rather than directing funds toward teachers and instruction, some districts have built lavish stadiums, water parks, and fast-food cafeterias. The Prosper Independent School District – largely unknown outside Texas – carries $4.2 billion in debt and interest, or $126,952 per student, and boasts a 12,000-seat football stadium.
• Texas fourth graders ranked 16th nationally in reading in 1998; by 2024 they had fallen to 37th. The achievement gap between economically disadvantaged students and their peers has widened since recapture began, despite the system's original equity goals.
• The state's Permanent School Fund guarantees nearly all Texas school bonds with a AAA rating, effectively encouraging unlimited borrowing so long as voters approve it. Austin ISD surrendered $772 million of its $1.6 billion budget to recapture last year, forcing school closures and tax increases.
• Proposals to cap debt, increase transparency, and revive state repayment programs have gained little traction. Dallas is now preparing a vote on the largest school bond in Texas history – $6.2 billion.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

NYC Thermostat Repairers Made $325K, Thanks to OT, RCI

$34 Billion In Secretive Military Funding, RCI

Officials Claim Safari Was ‘Professional Development’, RCI

Throwback Thursday - Crash Landing for Video Game, RCI

State Hired Lawyer for Cases He Caused, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

The Man Behind Trump’s Push to End Birthright Citizenship, Politico

One Year Later, Trump's Crackdown Made DC Safer, Daily Caller

Lindsey Graham Playing for Both Sides, Daily Caller

Affordability Pushing Dems to Limit Climate Aims, Politico

Secret Life of Kristi Noem's Crossdressing Husband, Daily Mail

US Imposed Sanction on UN Official Critical of Israel, Politico

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Iran’s Missile Infrastructure Severely Strained 

Washington Post

Legacy media coverage of the Iran war still accentuate the negative, but several news stories this week detailed the dire straits Iran finds itself in. A Washington Post analysis detailed the heavy toll U.S. and Israeli strikes have taken on the country’s military.

Four of Iran’s key ballistic missile manufacturing locations and at least 29 ballistic missile launch sites have been damaged in the first four weeks of the U.S.-Israeli offensive, undermining Iran’s central military strategy … Strikes have destroyed above-ground launching facilities, temporarily blocked access to missiles stored underground and halted Iran’s ability to immediately build new missiles, according to satellite imagery, and Iranian military and defense experts who reviewed the findings.

In a separate article, the New York Times reports that the U.S.-Israeli strikes that have killed several dozen Iranian leaders and their deputies have fractured the government’s chain of command, complicating its ability to make decisions and coordinate larger retaliatory attacks.

Those who survive have had difficulty communicating and are unable to meet in person, for fear of having their calls intercepted by the United States or Israel and being targeted in an airstrike.

While Iran’s security and military agencies continue to function, the government’s ability to plan new strategies or policies has been weakened. The Trump administration has said a new government is in charge in Iran and has pressed it to make a quick deal. … [But] With different leaders in place, Iranian negotiators may have little knowledge about what their government is willing to concede, or even whom precisely to ask. The more degraded Iranian government decision-making becomes, the more difficult it will be for it to negotiate with American envoys or make significant concessions.

In a separate article, the Wall Street Journal reports that various Trump administration efforts – the Iran war, the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and the pressure campaign against Cuba – pose a profound threat to Russia.

In recent weeks, Russia has stepped up its support for Iran, its closest partner in the Middle East, providing satellite imagery and drone technology to help Iran target U.S. forces in the region. Moscow is in part trying to salvage what’s left of its shrinking web of partnerships that once made it the world’s second-largest arms exporter behind the U.S., a backer of dictatorships from the Middle East to Latin America and lent credibility to President Vladimir Putin’s view of Russia as a great power. Russia is “learning what it means when the United States acts completely unrestrained,” said Hanna Notte, director for Eurasia at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

This article reports that the attack on Iran poses a threat to Moscow’s long-held strategy of maintaining a partnership of friendly countries and paramilitary groups on its southern flank. Its onetime partner in Syria, former President Bashar al-Assad, is sitting in Moscow after fleeing his country. Russia is now negotiating with the new Syrian government over the future of its military bases there.

Smuggled Drugs Fuel Chaos in Ohio Prisons 

Marshall Project

A powerful drug inmates call K2 or “tune” – sold in confetti-sized hits of paper that is smoked – is now the most commonly found drug in Ohio prisons, fueling violence and accounting for more deaths than any other substance, according to a yearlong investigation by The Marshall Project - Cleveland, Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and Canton Repository.

The highly addictive drug is smuggled in by staff and visitors, tossed over fences and dropped in by drones. … Synthetic cannabinoids are seemingly tailored for prisons. The drug is soaked into paper, sometimes disguised as court documents, magazines and books. It enters prisons in full sheets or tiny pieces, often packaged in balloons that can be swallowed. … “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Tim Wade, who has served time in six prisons in the past decade. “It’s different. People are getting rich off it. You can’t stop it because you can’t detect it. There’s no test for it.” When Wade first smoked K2, also called tune, he was told he threw his commissary box at his cellmate while barking like a dog. “You mess with someone on tune,” Wade said, “you’re liable to get attacked.” He said he eventually quit, but it wasn’t easy.

This article reports that at least 13 people incarcerated in Ohio who fatally overdosed on K2 in 2024, up from just three the year before, according to available autopsy and toxicology reports.

Coroners say they are struggling to identify K2 and other chemicals that evade detection in standard toxicology tests, causing state prison officials to undercount fatal overdoses, the news outlets found after reviewing dozens of death investigations.

Trump’s War On Fraud Doesn’t Include

Swindlers He’s Pardoned

ProPublica

Even as President Trump says he is pursuing a war on government fraud, waste and abuse, this article reports that he has granted clemency and pardons to several people found guilty of health-care fraud.

In 2020, he commuted the 20-year federal prison sentence of Philip Esformes, a Florida nursing home magnate convicted in a scheme that prosecutors said involved about $1.3 billion in fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid claims. … That same year, Trump commuted the sentence of Judith Negron, convicted in a $200 million Medicare fraud case. Trump’s clemency grant said the “ends of justice” did not require her to serve another two decades in prison. … Trump has also nominated nursing home owner Benjamin Landa as ambassador to Hungary. The nomination has remained in place even as a facility Landa co-owns faces a federal audit alleging there were more than $31 million in Medicare overpayments. Landa is suing the administration to block repayment. 

In April 2025, New Jersey businessman Joseph Schwartz pleaded guilty on charges connected to a $39 million payroll tax scheme connected to his nursing home empire. A federal judge sentenced him to three years in prison. But, this article reports, Schwartz served just three months after Trump granted him a full pardon. “Schwartz paid more than $1 million to lobbyists to press the White House, the Justice Department and Congress on his behalf – including on his efforts to secure a pardon – according to lobbying disclosure forms. The White House has insisted that paid lobbyists have no influence on pardons.”

Gavin Newsom’s Empire of Fraud 

City Journal

This article reports that California is a cash machine. The state collects some of the country’s highest income, business and fuel taxes, and now spends more than $300 billion per year. And yet, everywhere you look, California seems to be falling apart. The roads are crumbling, addiction and homelessness are rampant and the cost-of-living crisis is pricing middle-class taxpayers out of basic necessities like groceries and gas, even as the state spends billions on welfare programs that never seem to lift anyone out of poverty. What’s going on?

We conducted interviews with public officials, fraud experts, and political figures, and reviewed hundreds of pages of government reports, state audits, criminal indictments, and other public records on California fraud. From unemployment insurance and Medicaid to failed homeless initiatives and welfare programs, seemingly every state program has been compromised by criminals. The best estimates suggest that, on [Gov. Gavin Newsome’s] watch, fraudsters, scammers, and organized crime rings have stolen at least $180 billion from taxpayers.

After providing detailed examples showing the breathtaking size and scope of the problem, this article concludes:

The pattern that emerges in California is not one of isolated breakdowns in oversight but of a vast system that almost seems to invite fraud. From widespread failures in unemployment insurance to alleged schemes targeting Medi-Cal to mounting concerns over homelessness spending, each case points to significant lapses by state officials charged with stewarding public funds. According to California Assemblyman David Tangipa, “Sacramento is pervaded by a culture of corruption.” And he points the finger right to the top: Newsom, he says, has helped “create an environment where corruption thrives.”

In a separate article, the Los Angeles Times reports on new data from UC Berkeley strongly suggesting that many people of limited incomes have improved their finances by leaving California. Looking at people who left or arrived in California from 2016 to 2025 – millions in total – the researchers found that people who left the state saved almost $700 in monthly housing costs and that they became 48% more likely to own a home in their new state compared with California, where housing prices are notoriously high.