RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

June 14 to June 20

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 Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, about the national civics education he has spearheaded and how to have conversations across the political divide.

On The Miller Report: Real Clear Journalism, Maggie Miller speaks with Jeremy Portnoy about his RCI article detailing the spending surge by America’s largest cities (see below) to examine why higher spending isn't translating into better outcomes across the board.

Featured Investigation:

Zero Sum: Cities Have Little to Show for Big Spending

Jeremy Portnoy reports that a RealClearInvestigations analysis has found that while America's largest cities have dramatically increased spending over the past decade – up 18% per resident after inflation – they have little to show for it in terms of improved quality of life. The spending surge rivals only the New Deal and Great Society eras, but unlike those periods, today's cities lack the revenue to sustain it.

• Per-resident spending now outpaces revenues by 25%, the largest gap on record. Administrative costs rose 55%, while core service staffing (police, corrections) has actually declined.
• Homelessness is up 34% on average, with no statistical link between welfare spending and reduced rates. High-profile failures in Seattle and Portland point to mismanagement, fraud, and lack of accountability – while cities like Detroit and Milwaukee saw success through smarter policy, not bigger budgets.
• Violent crime improved only marginally, despite rising police budgets. Police staffing dropped about 7% nationally, offset by expensive overtime. Cities like San Jose doubled police spending yet saw crime surge 50%. Meanwhile, San Antonio improved outcomes by deploying officers strategically – at lower cost.
• Poverty and inequality were largely unchanged, regardless of how much cities spent.
• The root problem: cities expanded bureaucracy and payrolls during the COVID pandemic when federal grants were flush, then failed to cut back when that funding expired. Many now mask structural deficits by underfunding pensions, selling assets, and issuing bonds.
• Absent genuine reform, cities face an unavoidable reckoning – large tax increases, significant service cuts, or both. For now, most leaders appear content to defer the problem, leaving future generations to foot the bill.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

• Medicaid’s Spiritual Healing, RCI
• School Lost $20M in Inventory, RCI
• Town Manager’s Snacking Spree, RCI
• Medicaid for Tax-Dodging Docs, RCI
• DOJ Did Not Claw Back Grants, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

• Reading the Text of the Agreement Between the U.S. and Iran, New York Times
• Secret Service Funds Redirected Amid Ballroom Project, Washington Post
• Memos Show Merrick Garland's DOJ Targeted Parents, Jonathan Turley
• The Dem Operative Powering Anti-Data Center Push, Daily Wire
• Super PACs Using Old Tactic To Hide Funding, Politico
• Trump Delivering on Campaign Promise to Gun Owners, Washington Post
• Congresswoman Knows How to Go Viral, Wall Street Journal

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

UK: The Rape Gang Inquiry 

Rupert Lowe, Rupert Lowe

The UK political party Restore Britain released a report this week claiming that at least 250,000 girls have been raped by predominantly Pakistani Muslim gangs since the 1950s – and that leaders covered up these “unspeakable” crimes.

The Rape Gang Inquiry was necessary because the state and its institutions have failed catastrophically over decades. Police, social services, schools, the NHS, licensing authorities, and governments allowed these gangs to operate with impunity," read the report's introduction. There was a demonstrable lack of political will to confront them. The Labour Party initially refused a public inquiry altogether, only relenting under considerable pressure," it continued. "It will be many years before this inquiry is complete and there is no guarantee that it will adequately address the politically sensitive ethnoreligious nature of the phenomenon. Despite now pushing for an inquiry in opposition, when in government the Conservative Party did very little.

Rupert Lowe, the MP who chaired the inquiry, asserted that the "true motivations have been hidden, and the scale of the rape has been concealed from the British people." He added that: "The influence of Islam has been swept away, with no acknowledgment of the role the religion played in these crimes."

Public Support Growing for Accused Killer Luigi Mangione 

Brian Mann, NPR

The shocking support on the left for Luigi Mangione – who is accused of stalking and murdering health care executive Brian Thompson in 2024 – may raise moral questions about the state of the American soul, but for NPR the question is its potential impact on the jury pool.

His crowd-sourced legal defense fund now tops $1.5 million, with more than 42,000 donors. According to a pro-Mangione website created by volunteers, he has also received nearly 7,000 personal letters from dozens of countries around the world. Gary Galperin, a former assistant district attorney in New York County who teaches at Cardozo School of Law, agrees jury selection will be challenging because of Mangione's popularity. "You may come to find that one or more jurors who seemed [unbiased] harbor views that could derail the deliberations," he said.

Gale and others told NPR that another risk is that some jurors could come to see Mangione's state and federal trials as a referendum on the costly, frustrating and often inaccessible U.S. healthcare system. Evan Clarkson, an assistant professor at Utah Valley University who has studied the phenomenon of Mangione's popular support, said many people believe Mangione “is absolutely a justified vigilante ... against this system, the American healthcare system, that they think is unjust."

Making It Easier for White Men to Sue for Discrimination 

Bryce Covert, Intercept

This article reports that the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has moved to delete the agency’s affirmative action rule that was implemented almost 50 years ago.

Chair Andrea Lucas, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, proposed to rescind the “Affirmative Action Appropriate Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964” rule on May 27. The rule has proved a barrier to her efforts to bring lawsuits on behalf of white men who say they were discriminated against at work – a barrier the rescission would get rid of.

This article reports that “the move, which was previously unreported, comes amid Lucas’s quest to characterize all employer efforts at diversity, equity, and inclusion as illegal race discrimination. The agency has filed lawsuits under her watch on behalf of white men at the New York Times and Coca-Cola, as well as investigations into Nike and Northwestern Mutual.

Nigeria’s Internet Scammers Are Local Celebrities 

Bloomberg

Defrauding Americans and other residents of wealthy countries is big business in the developing world. While many operations, especially in Southeast Asia, are industrial-sized criminal enterprises involving thousands of workers often laboring against their will, this article says the business has evolved more haphazardly in Nigeria. Drawing on a new book, “The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria’s Romance Scammers” by Carlos Baragan, this article details why Nigeria has long been a hotbed for scammers.

The occupation has no barriers to entry, and for many young people without any prospects, there’s nothing to lose in giving it a try. Faced with Nigeria’s unfettered inflation and staggering youth unemployment, [scammers] spend druggy nights impersonating White women from Western countries they’ve never been to, satisfied that at least they’re not falling further behind. … Compared to their peers in school or employment, successful Yahoo Boys, named after the email accounts often used by early digital scammers, inhabit a parallel world. Uniformed in designer clothes with free-flowing cash, they live in hotels, hire private drivers, and become conspicuous mainstays of local economies. 

This article reports that while there is no definitive headcount, an informal poll of Nigerian scammers conducted by Baragan suggested that between 60 and 80 percent of young men in Lagos are involved.

The Untold Story of Jeffrey Epstein’s Death 

New York Times

Did Jeffrey Epstein really commit suicide? This deeply reported article says that, despite “odd-seeming coincidences, outwardly baffling decisions and credulity-straining mistakes and oversights,” he almost certainly did.

Our reporting establishes that Epstein showed a clear pattern of behavior in the weeks before his death suggesting an intent to kill himself. The apparent suicide note memorialized Epstein’s despair and desire to “say goodbye” on his own terms. Other writings from his final days presented a picture of a fraying mental state that sharply contrasted with the upbeat picture he presented to jail psychologists, including another note in which he hinted at ending his life. … We were told by a former cellmate that Epstein made more than one previously unreported attempt to craft a noose. And we located a former inmate, never before interviewed, who was housed in a neighboring cell at the time of Epstein’s death and whose account circumstantially supported the conclusion that Epstein died by hanging himself.

This article reports that Epstein had written a suicide note before what appears to have been his first attempt on his own life. There was some belief that his cellmate at the time, who would later be convicted of murder, had been involved in the incident. The cellmate discovered but did not share the handwritten note with authorities; he kept it instead as evidence that might clear him if he was accused of attacking Epstein. “As a result, the note was not seen by the jail staff at the time, or even by investigators looking into Epstein’s death in the weeks and years to come. It was made public only this May, after The Times’s lawyers petitioned the judge” his cellmate’s case to unseal it. The article also reports that other Epstein cellmates expressed concern that he might harm himself. Epstein died on one of the rare nights he did not have a cellmate. When his body was discovered, “the cell itself was filled with heaps of linens Epstein was not supposed to have and scattered with multiple nooses and other ropelike strips of orange fabric.”