RealClearInvestigations Newsletters: RCI Today
RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week
RealClearInvestigations'
Picks of the Week
May 31 to June 6
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 Andrew G. Bostom – whose books include “The Legacy of Jihad” and “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism” – about how Shariah law differs from U.S. jurisprudence and the extent to which it reflects the values and aims of American Muslims.
In The Miller Report: Real Clear Journalism, Maggie Miller sits down with Scott Tinker, Chairman of Tinker Energy Associates, to discuss why natural gas remains one of the world's most versatile energy resources and how it supports reliability, affordability, and energy security.
Featured Investigation:
The Strange Afterlife of Fascism
In this reported essay for RealClearInvestigations, Joel Kotkin examines whether fascism is genuinely resurging in modern politics — or whether the term is being dangerously misapplied while a more technologically sophisticated threat goes largely unnoticed. Ironically, he finds its impulses are strongest among those who most loudly tar others with the label.
- "Fascist" has been applied to Trump, Bush, McCain, Romney and countless others, diluting its meaning. True historical fascism – born under Mussolini in post-WWI Italy – was revolutionary, youth-driven, violent, and totalizing in ways modern right-wing movements simply are not.
- European leaders like Giorgia Meloni of Italy, Viktor Orban of Hungary, and Marine Le Pen of France are called fascists but accept election results, face free opposition, and govern conventionally. Real autocrats who rig elections and refuse to leave power are found almost exclusively on the left.
- Donald Trump shares some populist traits with Mussolini but lacks fascism's essential ingredients – disciplined paramilitaries, a cult of youth, and a coherent totalizing ideology. MAGA is too old, too disorganized, and too constitutionally constrained.
- Progressive movements increasingly exhibit fascist characteristics – intolerance, censorship, political violence, and an impulse to reshape human behavior and culture from above.
- The most authentic fascist danger lies not in political movements but in AI and surveillance technology. Tech elites across the political spectrum – Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman and others – envision remaking humanity itself, achieving through algorithms what Mussolini could only dream of with blackshirts.
- The article warns that fascism's spirit persists not in crude political theater but in sophisticated technologies of control – ones that, as Aldous Huxley cautioned, may prove impossible to overthrow.
Featured Investigation:
Gun Safety: Violent Crime Drops
as More Americans Pack Heat
John R. Lott Jr. reports for RealClearInvestigations that new data suggesting the rise in the number of Americans carrying concealed weapons is making the country safer. Drawing on a survey by the group he leads, the Crime Prevention Research Center, Lott reports about 30% of Americans say they carry a firearm at least some of the time. This rise in concealed carry– up 5.5 percent in December 2024 – coincides with what preliminary data indicating the nation had a record-low murder rate in 2025.
- The survey, commissioned by the Crime Prevention Research Center and conducted by McLaughlin & Associates, found that 13.2% of respondents carry a firearm all or most of the time; an additional 16.6% carry sometimes or rarely.
- 29 states now permit concealed carry without a permit; in states like New Jersey and Hawaii, where permit access was expanded after a 2022 Supreme Court ruling, violent crime has fallen sharply.
- Black and Hispanic voters carry at disproportionately high rates relative to their share of the electorate; over the past decade, permit growth among women outpaced men by 112%, while growth among Black Americans outpaced whites by 284%.
- Physically vulnerable groups – women, the elderly, and low-income residents of high-crime areas – benefit most from carrying, as a firearm offsets size and strength disadvantages
- Concealed carry permit holders are exceptionally law-abiding, convicted of firearm offenses at one-twelfth the rate of police officers. More than nine in 10 street police officers support concealed handgun laws.
- Over 91% of street police officers support concealed carry laws, recognizing that citizens often must defend themselves before law enforcement can arrive.
Waste of the Day
By Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books
NYC Renting Empty Schools, RCI
DOD “Wish Lists” Continue, RCI
Trump 2.0 and the Beltway
Trump and Netanyahu Clash Over Ending Iran War, Wall Street Journal
White House Seeks Political Test for Federal Grants, New York Times
DOD Running AI Propaganda Mill Targeting Latin America, Intercept
Two Lives Upended by Vindictive Prosecutors, Federalist
The E. Jean Carroll–Reid Hoffman Lawfare Mess, National Review
DHS Targets Lawyers for Migrants, Federalist
Biden Administration’s 5-Year Plan To Trans Child Welfare, Daily Wire
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series
Autism Therapy Hotbed of Billing Abuse
Wall Street Journal
This article reports that the autism-therapy industry, once a tiny corner of pediatric care, has exploded into a multibillion-dollar business, fueled by rising diagnoses, new providers entering the market and laws requiring insurers to cover more services. It has also attracted predatory providers who bill for phantom services, pad hours and charge steep fees for care delivered by low-wage workers with minimal training.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona said spending per autism patient has risen by about 30% over the past two years, and much of the increase is due to a few dozen providers billing large numbers of hours for each child—what amounts to full-time workweeks of therapy. … The boom has also made the therapy one of Medicaid’s fastest growing segments, according to a Journal investigation published in March. Medicaid claims data showed providers billed as much as $340,000 per patient a year, the Journal reported.
This article reports on one especially egregious case in which a behavior technician spent a total of 70 minutes with a boy working on a puzzle and playing with educational toys. For that day, the provider submitted a claim for $15,200 for the technician and another $15,300 for that person’s supervisor – a total of $30,500, or $436 a minute for Ezekiel’s care. Stunningly, the insurer paid about $15,000 to resolve the matter.
In a separate article, the Daily Caller reports that widespread fraud across Affordable Care Act exchanges is projected to cost American taxpayers billions in 2026, according to a new study Paragon Health Institute. The study estimates that approximately 6.2 million or nearly 27% of all ACA exchange sign-ups were improper in 2026. The analysis also estimates U.S. taxpayers will pay up to $25 billion in improper subsidies in 2026, almost a quarter of total projected ACA subsidy spending for the year.
In a separate article, City Journal reports that despite constant efforts to root out scammers, Medicare and Medicaid fraud don’t disappear because “there is a fundamental flaw in the programs’ design: fraud is not meaningfully distinct from ordinary billing” in an open-ended entitlement system that has no set budget. “Other publicly funded health systems – in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere – make tradeoffs explicitly. They operate within budgets, tolerate waiting lists, and make collective decisions about which treatments are cost-effective. But when there is no budget, there is no pressure on spending. And when there is no pressure on spending, incentives flow in only one direction: more care, more billing, and more cost.”
Inside Troubled Treatment Center for Adoptees
Associated Press
This article reports that a facility deep in rural Missouri promises relief for desperate parents whose adopted kids are struggling – a lakeside, summer camp-like academy where kids can heal by bonding with golden retrievers, and where caring employees “create joy.” The company that operates the place, known as Calo Programs, says it exists “to serve the hardest-to-treat cases – the students and families the broader system has given up on.” It also charges a hefty price, up to $20,000 per month for each child.
Law enforcement is often called to Calo to investigate assaults or track down runaways. State agencies that pay to send kids there have questioned its operations, training and transparency. Parents and former employees say there is minimal treatment and barely any schooling, with only young, poorly trained staff to supervise the kids. Two mothers described it as something out of “Lord of the Flies.” It is part of the so-called troubled teen industry, a sprawling network of loosely regulated, for-profit residential centers, boarding schools and wilderness programs that have been quietly institutionalizing adopted children at extraordinarily high rates – adoptees are as much as 10 times more likely to be sent away than the general population. A deep dive into Calo’s practices – how it makes money, and what happens to kids under its watch – offers a window into a larger phenomenon: Some youth treatment centers, backed by private equity companies, share a business model that depends on government funding, despite limited oversight and few consequences for negligence.
This article reports that many families have decried the conditions at Calo as jail-like. Stacy Roberts, who runs the local juvenile detention center, rejects that comparison – because traditional juvenile detention centers like his are held to a higher standard. Unlike Calo, Roberts answers to the public, a judge and the juvenile justice system, which monitors children’s stays within his facility.
Why Did the Murders Stop in Baltimore?
Free Press
Thanks to reality and the TV series “The Wire,” Baltimore has long been seen as a hotbed of violent crime. In 2020, amid a national increase in killings, the city saw homicide rates about eight times higher than the national average. During the last three years, this article reports, the murder rate has plummeted – last year there were just 133 murders in the whole city, the fewest Baltimore has seen since 1965. How did it happen?
When you look closely and talk to the people on the front lines, some strong patterns emerge, with two competing stories coming into focus. One is the return of a program focused on deterring the small fraction of offenders in Baltimore who commit the large majority of violent crimes. … A strategy variously called Group Violence Intervention, focused deterrence, or “Operation Ceasefire” gathered up the frequent offenders, well-known to police, and had officers issue a clear message: Violence would no longer be tolerated. Community organizations offered help – with jobs, records, and so on. But the overwhelming message was that if these offenders offend again, the law will come down on them like a ton of bricks. The strategy worked. Youth homicides fell 63 percent, while the number of “shots fired” incidents fell 32 percent.
The other crime-reduction strategy, this article reports, is the election of a new tough-on-crime prosecutor, who replaced a scandal-plagued progressive. “If you’re seeing your friends all going to prison, you’re going to go: ‘What? I don’t want to go to prison,’ ” (state’s attorney for Baltimore Ivan] Bates said. “Now all of a sudden, that job or that program someone’s offered you before that you didn’t want to talk about – now it looks pretty appealing.”
Biden Administration’s 5-Year Plan To Trans Child Welfare
Daily Wire
Since Donald Trump began his second term, he has worked to fulfill a campaign promise that was crucial to his victory by pushing back against many claims of the transgender movement. How might things be different if Kamala Harris has prevailed? This article – the third in a Daily Wire series on the issue – suggests an answer by drawing on a 78-page plan that detailed how the Biden administration was planning to make affirming transgenderism the national standard within child welfare services without having to pass a single law.
The crux of that plan was the creation of the Child Welfare Sexual Orientation Gender Identity and Expression Institute (SOGIE). Funded by a $20 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services, SOGIE was on track to employ a 40-person team to push transgenderism on child welfare agencies across the country. Even the people behind the plan acknowledged its radical nature. Angela Weeks, a University of Connecticut employee tasked with administering the SOGIE grant, wrote to colleagues in August 2024 that “we wrote a proposal that was innovative, so much so that some other reviewers thought we should tone it down.” But “we chose to go big,” Weeks said, adding that it was “thrilling to see” the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), an agency within HHS, “wanted a contractor who would lead this work in a way that can create real change.”
This article reports that the draft work plan outlines five years' worth of initiatives, including efforts to collect data about the sexual orientation and gender identity of children in foster care, and trainings to help child welfare workers “maximize SOGIE knowledge and practice competencies.” The institute also had plans to handpick child welfare workers from state and local agencies to participate in a “SOGIE Champions” program, where they would participate in a “robust training and coaching program that teaches the skills and knowledge necessary to implement evidence-informed LGBTQIA2S+ best practices.”
Graham Platner's Dates Recall ‘Unsettling’ Behavior
New York Times
If Virginia Governor Ralph Northam could stay in office at the height of the BLM Movement even after it was disclosed that his medical school yearbook page featured someone dressed in KKK robes, there may be hope for Graham Platner. Having already withstood revelations that he made homophobic remarks, disparaged his fellow soldiers, sexted multiple women while married, and had a Nazi tattoo on his chest for 18 years, perhaps this story detailing how he had made women he had dated “uncomfortable” will not be enough to persuade Democrats to demand their leading candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in Maine to step down. In extensive conversations over the past two months, the Times reports, three women he had dated described volatile and “toxic” relationships that were unsettling and at times emotionally wrenching.
Mr. Platner could be charming and charismatic, they recalled in interviews, but also demeaning to women and, in at least one case, even physically threatening. He drank heavily and was regularly unfaithful. … [one woman] said he regularly grabbed her by the shoulders — sometimes hard enough to leave marks — and, on one occasion, yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after an argument when she wanted to stay in the car. During one argument, she recalled, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was “calm.”
This article reports that some of the women also raised questions about his trustworthiness. Although Platner has insisted that he did not know that his tattoo was a Nazi symbol until it became a campaign issue last fall, one former girlfriend said he had taught her the word for it years earlier, referring to it as “my Totenkopf.”
