RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

April 26 to May 2

RCI Podcasts & Videos

On this week’s episode of the RealClearInvestigations Podcast, RCI Editor J. Peder Zane and RCI Senior Reporter James Varney speak about his RCI article which details the central yet largely hidden role played University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric in both the risky scientific work that may have created the virus that causes COVID-19 and the subsequent campaign to suppress public debate about its origins.

On The Miller Report: Real Clear Journalism, Maggie Miller speaks with the American Legislative Exchange Council's Jonathan Williams about their latest Energy Affordability Report, focusing on electricity prices and the policies driving costs across states.

Featured Investigation:

COVID Cover-Up: Hiding Star Researcher Ralph Baric’s

Ties to Global Pandemic

Paul D. Thacker reports for RealClearInvestigations reveals that University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric – one of the world’s foremost coronavirus researchers – played a central and largely hidden role in both the risky scientific work that may have caused the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent campaign to suppress public debate about its origins. The federal government has now taken the extraordinary step of removing Baric from all his NIH grants. Drawing on hundreds of pages of emails and interviews with more than a dozen current and former congressional staffers and administration officials, Thacker reports:

• Baric pioneered gain-of-function research and collaborated closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, co-authoring a 2018 DARPA grant proposal – known as DEFUSE – that described inserting a furin cleavage site into bat coronaviruses, the precise feature that makes SARS-CoV-2 deadly to humans. A matching virus emerged in Wuhan one year after DARPA rejected the proposal.
• When the pandemic began in early 2020, Baric privately briefed intelligence officials on the possibility of a Wuhan lab accident, then scrubbed that possibility from a subsequent public presentation to congressional staff.
• Emails show Baric secretly edited a widely-cited scientific paper dismissing the lab-leak theory while concealing his involvement – conduct experts describe as research misconduct.
• Two congressional investigations largely shielded Baric from scrutiny. A Senate report omitted all mention of NIH-funded gain-of-function research, and the senator who oversaw it later joined Baric's biotech company as a board member after retiring.
• The University of North Carolina has released only six pages of Baric's documents from the critical year the pandemic began, despite years of freedom of information requests.
• A senior HHS official reviewed classified material and told RCI that UNC is concealing evidence of its complicity: "Baric designed the gun. But the Chinese built it, and then they pulled the trigger."

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

Pentagon Spent Big on GLP-1s, RCI

City Chief Overspent, RCI

Federal Staff Outearn Trump, RCI

Throwback Thursday: Golf With Imagination, RCI

NJ School Cut Audit Budget, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

Simple Security Flaws Exposed Trump to Another Gunman, Wall Street Journal

Manifesto of W.H. Correspondents' Dinner Gunman, New York Post

Suspect's Path from 'Genius' to Alleged Assassin, NBC News

Press Parties Continued After Attempted Shooting, Vanity Fair

Vance Doubts the Pentagon’s Depiction of the Iran War, Atlantic’

Did Politicized DOJ Scuttle Clinton Foundation Probe?, Federalist

Did Biden Agency Try To Hide Planned Parenthood Loans?, Federalist

DOJ: Biden Admin Persecuted Conservative Christians, National Review

Claim: 'Mother Lode' of Russiagate Files in FBI Burn Bags, Fox News

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Top Fauci Aide Indicted for Concealing COVID Records 

PJ Media

The Department of Justice has indicted a longtime aide to Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), alleging that he destroyed, falsified and concealed federal records as part of a conspiracy against the U.S. to suppress evidence that COVID-19 might have been created in a Chinese lab.

Prosecutors allege that [David Morens] used his personal Gmail account to evade Freedom of Information Act requests, shared non-public NIH information with outside grantees, and coordinated efforts to restore funding to a company the indictment calls "Company #1." The scheme, according to the DOJ, was deliberate and documented — the conspirators "agreed in writing to intentionally hide their communications."

In a separate article, the New York Times reports that the indictment “accuses Dr. Morens of working in concert with scientists outside the federal government to protect their funding for virus research. In return, the indictment says, one of those scientists supplied Dr. Morens with “illegal gratuities,” including two bottles of wine and a promise of a future meal at a “Michelin starred” restaurant. … The most prominent of those scientists was Peter Daszak, the former president of EcoHealth Alliance, a virus-hunting nonprofit that lost N.I.H. funding over collaborations with a Chinese virology lab that the Trump administration has suggested conducted research that may have led to the pandemic.”

U.S. Mint Buys Drug Cartel Gold and Sells It as ‘American’ 

New York Times

Every year, this article reports, the United States Mint sells more than $1 billion of investment-grade gold coins. Each is stamped with an icon like the bald eagle, signifying the government’s guarantee, required by law, that the gold is 100 percent American. But a New York Times investigation has found that the government’s program of gold sales is based on a lie. The Mint is actually the last link in a chain that launders foreign gold, much of it illegally mined, for an insatiable market.

The Mint buys gold that originates in a Colombian drug cartel mine. It makes Lady Liberty coins out of gold from Mexican and Peruvian pawn shops and from a Congolese mine that is part-owned by the Chinese government, records show. Some Mint gold has come from a company in Honduras that dug up an Indigenous graveyard for the ore underneath. … The Mint, the biggest name in the global market for investment gold coins, is an example of how the industry’s guardrails have collapsed. Gold prices hover around $5,000 an ounce, about four times the price of a decade ago. That gives criminal organizations and fly-by-night operators a huge incentive to mine in wasteful, destructive and risky ways.

This article reports that while buyers see gold as a safe haven, they are actually helping to create the very instability they are trying to hedge against. “Gold mining funds Sudan’s brutal civil war and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Surging gold prices have helped Venezuela and Iran temper the effects of financial sanctions. Colombia’s biggest cartel, the Clan del Golfo, traffics in gold alongside cocaine – and uses the proceeds to maintain control through murder and bombings. Illegal miners deforest and pollute the Amazon, poisoning people there with mercury. Terrorist groups, including some linked to Al Qaeda, are getting into the gold business, too. The easier it is to sell this gold on the world’s legitimate exchanges, the easier it is to make war, sustain an autocracy, launder money or destroy the environment. Drug cartel gold ending up at the U.S. Mint is one example of that process in action.”

Anti-Government Violence Hits 30-Year High 

Wall Street Journal

As the left and right argue which side is more responsible for political violence, this article reports on a study that says it’s a tie.

Domestic attacks and plots against the U.S. government are at their highest levels since at least 1994, according to data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. … Of the 20 attacks and plots recorded in 2025, the center categorized 10 as originating from the extreme left and eight as coming from the extreme right. … All told, three people were killed last year in attacks characterized as extreme right, while one died after an attack classed as extreme left.

While the cited study narrowly focused on violence targeted against the government officials and entities, it is still odd the reporters did not see fit to mention high-profile killings connected to political causes, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk and of murder of two people outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. by a man shouting “Free, free Palestine.” The Journal’s news division does little to boost its credibility when it also reports that two men have been charged “with attempting to carry out an attack near New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s residence,” suggesting the left wing mayor was the target when, in fact, it was the right-wing group protesting near Gracie Mansion.

How YouTube Took Over the American Classroom 

Wall Street Journal

This article reports that American public schools are awash in YouTube. According to more than 45 families, school administrators, clinicians and educators across the country interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, schools’ overreliance on the Google-owned platform for educational content has created a gateway for students to get sucked into an infinite scroll of videos on school-issued devices.

YouTube during snack time, dismissal and indoor recess. YouTube to teach drawing to first-graders. YouTube to read a book to class. YouTube under the covers at night, watching hamster videos on school-issued Chromebooks. A survey touted by YouTube executives shows that 94% of teachers have used YouTube in their roles. Granular data provided by parents highlight the scale: A second-grader in New York watched more than 700 in two months during school hours, including one featuring pole dancing. A tenth-grader in Oregon scrolled through more than 200 between 9 and 11:40 a.m. on March 6.

This article reports that the concern about YouTube arrives during a crisis in education. American math and reading scores have slid to their lowest point in decades. Many educators, families and learning scientists say they can no longer blame pandemic learning loss; the decline has coincided with a dramatic increase in school screen time, turbocharged by the embrace of 1:1 devices by more than 88% of public schools, according to government survey data. 

Turning the Pentagon into a Venture Capital Firm 

Washington Post

This article reports that the Pentagon’s new technology chief, Emil Michael, is scouring the tech world for companies that can build cheaper, smarter and smaller weaponry to power the future of war.

Best known as Uber’s No. 2 executive in the 2010s, Michael is part of a roster of Trump-era leaders who are bringing their business backgrounds to bear on the Pentagon, aiming to transform the military with a private investor’s tool kit and a mindset shaped by Silicon Valley’s critiques. In addition to Michael - who has been funding companies since leaving the ride-sharing company nine years ago - Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg used to run one of the country’s biggest private equity firms, Cerberus Capital Management, and Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, a close friend of Vice President JD Vance’s from Yale Law School, had a career in private equity and venture capital. Rather than enduring years of delays for new munitions, they argue, the Pentagon must actively search for emerging technologies to confront a landscape of growing threats - and then give the companies the financial backing to succeed. They say that a new level of innovation is necessary to fix a broken procurement system and to secure the country as it becomes enmeshed in new conflicts and as warfare evolves from tanks battling on the ground to software-enabled drones.

This article reports that the new approach is also causing concern among some former Defense Department officials, lawmakers and experts, who worry that Trump appointees may be ushering in their chosen firms and taking on risks with taxpayer dollars - while placing fewer guardrails on new technology.