RealClearinvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

June 21 to June 27

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 Dr. Kendall Conger who lost his job after challenging a 2021 statement issued by his employer – Duke Health – declaring racism a “public health crisis.”

On The Miller Report: Real Clear Journalism, Maggie Miller speaks with one of the world's leading energy experts, Daniel Yergin, about how the global energy landscape is being transformed by geopolitical conflict, shifting supply chains, and America's shale revolution.

Featured Investigation:

Russiagate Prosecutor Calls Audible

On ‘Grand Conspiracy’

In an exclusive report for RealClearInvestigations, informed sources tell Paul Sperry veteran prosecutor Joseph diGenova has launched the first investigation looking at every aspect of the Russiagate hoax that marred President Trump’s first term. Sources also tell Sperry that instead of trying to build a single ‘grand conspiracy’ case against all the government officials who targeted Trump, diGenova is pursuing a series of discrete cases. Sperry reports:

• Two grand juries in South Florida – in Fort Pierce and Miami – are actively hearing evidence, with a fresh round of subpoenas expected in early July. The D.C. grand jury has been abandoned in favor of the more Trump-friendly Florida jurisdiction.
• Primary targets include former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, all of whom have been subpoenaed. Both Comey and Brennan have denied wrongdoing.
• DiGenova's team has uncovered a previously hidden FBI document spanning several hundred pages that reportedly exposes new malfeasance in the bureau's Crossfire Hurricane investigation of alleged Trump-Russia ties.
• The probe spans nearly a decade of alleged misconduct – from Trump's 2015 campaign announcement through the 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid – and examines the FBI's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation as evidence of a double standard of justice.
• Prosecutors are also scrutinizing the Obama-ordered Intelligence Community Assessment, which diGenova's team believes was politically manufactured to frame Trump as a Kremlin asset ahead of his 2017 inauguration.
• Former NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers is cooperating and has provided investigators with "alarming new information."
• DiGenova has inherited all files from Special Counsel John Durham, whose four-year probe yielded only one conviction – a result one DOJ official described as "taking a dive."
• DiGenova must secure convictions before January 2029, when a change in administration could shut down the prosecutions.

Featured Investigation:

National Insecurity: America’s Continuing

Reliance on Critical Chinese Materials

Ben Weingarten reports for RealClearInvestigations that six years after China threatened to weaponize medical supply chains during the COVID pandemic, the United States has made only limited progress reducing its dependence on Chinese exports in sectors critical to national security, economic stability, and public health. Despite bipartisan efforts spanning two administrations, China retains dominant positions in rare earth minerals, semiconductors, pharmaceutical ingredients, printed circuit boards, and key defense components – and has demonstrated a willingness to use those positions as leverage.

• China controls over 60% of rare earth production and nearly 90% of refining capacity, and recently restricted exports of rare earth materials and magnets critical to U.S. defense systems in retaliation for American tariffs.
• American policymakers lack comprehensive supply chain data to identify vulnerabilities, largely because industry actively resists transparency requirements, fearing exposure of China dependencies that undermine their business models.
• China routes products through third countries to evade tariffs, obscuring its role in supply chains across defense, consumer electronics, and other sectors.
• Slow National Defense Authorization Act legislative cycles mean supply chain vulnerabilities can go unaddressed for over a year, compounding the risk of delayed action.
• Experts view tariffs as a useful defensive tool for protecting critical industries, but warn they alone cannot spur domestic production without broader strategic investment.
• Some progress has been noted in defense, telecommunications, and automotive sectors, and the May 2026 Trump-Xi summit produced Chinese commitments to address rare earth supply chain concerns.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

• Excessive Spending on Travel, RCI
• Pay For Absent School Chief, RCI
• ICE Wasted Millions on Food, RCI
• Beef Jerky Researched, RCI
• Youth Grants Mismanaged, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

• Judges’ Criticism Mounts Against Trump Administration, CNN
• Park Service: Reflecting Pool Liner Was Vandalized, AP
• Trump Is Defying Congress on Foreign Aid, ProPublica
• ‘Stop Being Weak’: Secret Files Detail Guidance for Tulsi Gabbard, Washington Post
• DOJ Unveils $6.5 Billion Healthcare Fraud Crackdown, The Hill
• Feds Levying Massive Fines on Deportees Who Stay, Marshall Project
• Richard Nixon's Instagram Redemption, Vanity Fair

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

DEA Stood by as Fentanyl Hit Streets 

Associated Press

Sometimes the government lets the little fish swim free in hopes they’ll lead them to the whales. Sometimes this strategy has deadly consequences. In a move that echoes the Obama administration’s Operation Fast and Furious – in which the ATF allowed guns to be sold to illegal straw buyers in hopes of tracing them back to Mexican cartels, at least until one of the firearms was used to kill a US Border Agent – this article reports that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration permitted hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to hit the streets of New Mexico between 2023 and 2025. Drawing on the accounts of three current and former DEA agents and government records, the AP reports:

DEA agents repeatedly monitored shipments of fentanyl pills — but did not seize them — as federal prosecutors sought to bring bigger criminal cases against traffickers of a synthetic opioid that the White House last year designated a “weapon of mass destruction.” Agents and experts, however, said the tactic amounted to a gamble with public safety that potentially imperiled communities in and around Albuquerque and may have violated U.S. Justice Department rules intended to safeguard the public.

This article reports that those pills wound up in the hands of Americans, some of whom died of overdoses. “Alex Uballez, who served as U.S. attorney in New Mexico from 2022 through last year, said authorities at times allowed drug shipments to go unseized as part of a broader effort to gather intelligence and build cases against major drug traffickers. He said the approach reflected his office’s limited resources and his belief that prosecuting larger organizations can have a bigger impact than interdicting every suspected drug transaction. Last year, the DEA recorded the largest fentanyl bust in its history in Albuquerque. “The bigger fish are worth catching,” Uballez said, “and that will save more lives.”

Sudan: The Genocide the World Ignores

Vanity Fair

Africa’s third largest country, Sudan, has a bloody and painful history. The most recent wave of crushing violence and want began three years ago, this article reports, when two opposing forces – the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful paramilitary group, and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) – began fighting, creating what one UN official describes as an “atrocities laboratory” on the ground.

Sieges of villages, rampant sexual violence, and targeted ethnic killings by rebel forces, as well as attacks on schools and medical facilities have been acknowledged by experts as having “hallmarks of genocide.” … Around 34 million Sudanese are currently in need of humanitarian assistance—that’s 72 percent of the population. About 26 million people are facing food insecurity and imminent famine has been flagged in several areas of Darfur. More than eight million children are out of school—an entire generation deprived of education. Up to 90 percent of the health care facilities are shut down. One aid worker tells me that the number of dead and displaced is so high that organizations have stopped counting.

Although there are many causes for the struggle, this article reports that the strongest backer of the RSF is the United Arab Emirates, which has become the destination point for gold that is mined in Sudan. Money from gold is essential to keeping the arms supply running throughout the region. The UAE denies all ties to the RSF despite numerous sources – the UN among them – documenting its arms shipments and logistical support to them. The article also notes that the lack of vigorous action by the UN and other organizations and governments to address the crisis but does not provide much insight into the reasons for this failure.

The Deadly Rise of Giant Trucks and S.U.V.s 

New York Times

For decades, this article reports, American roads were steadily getting safer for pedestrians. But around 2009, the trend reversed. Since then, the number of pedestrians killed each year has risen by about 75 percent. The reason: the rise of ever-larger vehicles, especially S.U.V.s., whose extra weight, along with taller hoods and larger blind zones, make them deadlier.

More vehicles than ever have hoods that exceed the average American’s center of gravity, which is generally around the belly button. The hood of an average passenger vehicle today is about three feet high. Anyone shorter than 5-foot-6 – about half of American adults – would frequently be rammed to the pavement [rather than thrown atop the hood]. So would most children. … Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century. That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.

This article reports that automakers assert that new technology designed to detect and avoid pedestrians – including systems that automatically apply the brakes – will dramatically improve safety. For example, Bill Grotz, a spokesman for General Motors, pointed to a recent study that found that G.M. vehicles with so-called front pedestrian braking reduced the frequency of injuries by 35 percent.

Chemical Accidents Rising in U.S. 

WSJ

This article reports that in just the last month, two major chemical incidents rocked communities on the West Coast: A 900,000-gallon tank containing a toxic chemical used to make paper collapsed at a Longview, Wash., plant, killing 11 workers, and a chemical tank belonging to a jet-parts maker in California overheated, forcing the evacuation of more than 40,000 residents from Garden Grove, Calif., a densely populated city near Los Angeles. These incidents are part of an alarming trend: Serious chemical accidents are on the rise in the U.S., according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data submitted to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, or CSB.

There were 131 serious chemical accidents in 2025, the data show, up 20% from the year before. Of these, 89 resulted in at least one death or serious injury. All told, chemical accidents killed 48 people in 2025 – almost double 2024’s toll – and seriously injured 142. Former CSB and Environmental Protection Agency officials, as well as industry safety experts, attribute much of the rise in accidents to years of deferred safety maintenance on aging plants. CSB reports cited a range of avoidable failures, from corroded pipes to the lack of safety equipment. Some of the increase may also reflect a rebound in industrial activity in the years following the Covid-19 lockdowns.

This article reports roughly a quarter of the incidents reviewed by the Journal occurred at sites that reported at least one other accident to the CSB since 2020 that state and local environmental regulators can have authority to inspect and issue violations, but often, the fines levied are too small to spur lasting changes

Yes, AI Chatbots Skew Left - Even Musk's 

Washington Post

Should the Supreme Court overturn Citizens United or continue to allow corporate spending in elections? Should affirmative action in university hiring be continued or phased out? The Washington Post asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and other popular AI platforms to answer those and dozens of other questions on politically fraught issues. The Post found that chatbots clearly lean to the left, despite promises of neutrality made by the companies behind them.

The model that powers ChatGPT answered nearly every question exclusively with left-leaning arguments and presented only right-leaning positions just once. Google’s Gemini mostly took a both-sides approach, offering both left and right positions in more than 90 percent of its answers. And even AI models marketed as having conservative views, including Elon Musk’s Grok, offered by his company SpaceX, cited left-leaning arguments more often, on average. (The Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.)

This article reports that chatbots can pick up political perspectives in different ways. Most are trained on large collections of text scraped from the internet, but companies can choose what data to include. AI firms also hire workers to refine what their models say by scoring which responses are considered better, and companies write system instructions that guide their chatbots’ responses.