RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
August 23 to August 29

RCI Podcasts & Videos

On this week’s RCI Podcast, Zane & Varney speak with Atlantic writer Tyler Austin Harper about his widely discussed, gracefully written articles – including a piece addressing Jason Arday's suicide – reporting how identity politics is undermining academic freedom.

Featured Investigation:

American Medinas: Turning US Cities Into ‘Beachheads’ for Islam

Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations that Muslim-Americans have won political control of several American cities – including Paterson, N.J., Hamtramck and Dearborn, Mich – where they have rewritten local law to conform to their faith. Sperry finds that that assimilation is demonstrably rare in these communities that have been plagued by corruption and connections to figures and groups tied to terrorism.

• Paterson, N.J. – home to America’s largest Palestinian community and 30,000 Muslims – renamed five blocks of Main Street “Palestine Way,” and its Muslim-majority council rewrote noise rules to let a dozen mosques broadcast the call to prayer five times a day.

• Mayor Andre Sayegh declared the city the “capital of Palestine in the United States of America” and gave the keys to the city to imam Mohammad Qatanani, who served time in an Israeli prison over confessed Hamas ties. Qatanani denies advocating violence.

• Islamic influence has spread beyond Paterson – more than 40 Muslims hold elected office in New Jersey – and leaders liken the trend to Muhammad’s hijrah to Medina, calling Paterson an “American Medina.” The Center for Security Policy calls it an “electoral jihad.”

• In New York City, an RCI analysis found Islamic activists hold at least 10 high-ranking posts under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, including top legal adviser Ramzi Kassem, who represented Columbia encampment leader Mahmoud Khalil, and former CAIR staffer Faiza Ali, now immigrant affairs commissioner.

• Hamtramck, Mich., became the first U.S. city with an all-Muslim, all-male elected council, which renamed its main street “Palestine Avenue” and legalized ritual backyard slaughter of goats and sheep. Five of its six Muslim council members face election-fraud charges or investigations.

• In Dearborn, where almost half the police force is Muslim, Mayor Abdullah Hammoud has called for the annihilation of Israel “from the river to the sea.” Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary Aug. 4 with backing from a super PAC his father-in-law funds.

• In Minneapolis, where roughly 80,000 Somalis make up close to 20% of the population, DOJ estimates as much as $9 billion may have been paid on fraudulent welfare claims, much of which federal authorities believe reached al-Shabaab. Attorney General Keith Ellison, who denies wrongdoing, overrode regulators who flagged it.

This article is the seventh in RCI’s series, Islam’s Rise Across America. The series so far:

• A Call to Power: Islamic Leaders See Ballot Box as Path to Paradise

• GOP Battles Sharia: Is Islamic Law a Threat or Dog Whistle?

• Sharia’s Growing Influence on U.S. Finance

• How Hamas’ Attack on Israel Is Transforming American Politics

• The Rising ‘Anti-Zionist’ Funding Network | RealClearInvestigations

• Anatomy of the ‘Islamophobic’ Shooting That Wasn’t | RealClearInvestigations

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

• Improper School Medicaid, RCI

• Deficit Could Surpass $2 Trillion, RCI

• Potential Fraud in Memphis, RCI

• Tax Breaks for Brothels, RCI

• Audits Flag UConn Payments, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

• Grassley Presses FBI for Biden Records, Idaho Public Press

• Hegseth’s Purge of Top Generals Leaves Army Rudderless, New York Times

• GOP Efforts To Prosecute Fauci Hit a Wall, Wall Street Journal

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

U.S. Unveils Sweeping Financial Campaign Against Iran 

Washington Post

This article reports that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday unveiled a sweeping campaign of financial sanctions and diplomatic pressure designed to sever Iran’s remaining links to the global economy. Dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast,” the initiative is aimed at closing loopholes in the existing U.S. financial dragnet around Iran

Bessent said Trump is contacting other world leaders to demand that they support the United States in seeking the “economic asphyxiation of this regime.” He would not identify the leaders contacted or provide a deadline for action. Iran’s top trading partners include China, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iraq. … But Bessent left unresolved what many analysts see as a key issue: whether the administration is prepared to take on China one month before President Xi Jinping is due in Washington for an official state visit.

As the world waits to see the impact of these moves, Robert Kagans writes in the Atlantic that Iran has already won the battle.

It has gone head-to-head with the superpower and Israel, withstood a pounding from their most advanced weapons, and more than survived. As a result, Iran has, with American help, completely reconfigured the power structure of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. The dominant power in the region going forward will be Iran, not the U.S. or Israel. Neighboring countries are already making their adjustments to this new reality. More distant powers will too. For years, the world has been dealing with an Iran constrained. It will now discover what Iran unleashed looks like.

While that claim should probably be taken with a thousand grains of salt – Kagan doesn’t show how Iran has become a stronger nation after being bombed and economically strangled – the New Yorker reports that even a weakened nation can sow havoc. It reports on 

a widening campaign by the Iranian government which involves hiring criminals—Russian mobsters, Hells Angels bikers, and even Swedish teen-agers—to attack its detractors and sow fear among Iranians in exile. Because these operations draw from the criminal underworld, the Iranian regime can deny any involvement. “Hired criminals are cheap, and they know how to blend in,” Colin Clarke, the executive director at the Soufan Center, a global-security think tank, told me. “And Iran doesn’t seem to care if these guys get caught or can’t get the job done.” Even a foiled plot can spread fear among the diaspora. “Sometimes terrorism isn’t about body counts. It’s about who is watching.”

US Faces Critical Shortage of Patriot Missiles in Europe

Associated Press

The ever-biased Associated Press finds yet another way to attack the Trump administration. This article reports that the U.S. military is experiencing a “beyond critical” shortage of advanced missile interceptors in Europe, especially of Patriot missiles which can shoot down Russia’s high-speed ballistic missiles. 

In the event of a Russian ballistic missile assault on, for example, a military headquarters or power plant, NATO could be in a similar position to Patriot-starved Ukraine and be forced “to take punch after punch in the mouth,” the U.S. defense official said. In Europe, the American military “definitely” does not have enough Patriots to stop any possible sustained ballistic missile attack and would have “very limited” capability to defend against a single ballistic missile strike or a stray Russian missile that goes off course, the U.S. official said.

According to the AP this shortage has nothing to do with the Biden administration’s decisions regarding the military budget or America’s provision of such inceptors to Ukraine. While never really addressing whether Russia – which is unable to defeat Ukraine – would actually attack NATO, the AP’s reporting starts from the assumption the Iran war is an indefensible mistake such that any cost (even hypothetical ones) is too much. Thus it states the that shortage “illustrates the cascading fallout from Trump’s decision to launch a war against Iran, a conflict that reaches the six-month mark on Friday. U.S. missile stocks in Europe have been moved to the Middle East, where U.S. and Gulf allies have fired off significant numbers of interceptors, including Patriots, to thwart Iran’s drones and missiles.” Just for good measure, the AP adds: “Some of those attacks have killed and wounded American troops.”

Zuckerberg's Plan to Replace Workers with AI

Reuters

In January, this article reports, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants hatched a radical plan to reimagine work at the social-media giant in the age of artificial intelligence. About 60% of the company’s employees would be laid off in two waves – the first in May, the second in November – replaced by virtual workers, overseen inside Meta by smaller, “talent-dense” cadres of human staffers. When May came, Zuckerberg blinked.

Meta laid off 10% of its employees the next day, but it called off planning for the November cuts, according to one internal document reviewed by Reuters. By then, Meta employees were in open revolt, convinced that the company's AI transformation initiatives were partly aimed at replacing them. Internal data was also suggesting that autonomous AI "agent" technology at the heart of the strategy was failing to deliver hoped-for productivity gains. Some investors were questioning what Meta had to show for its gargantuan spending on AI.

This article reports that the plan illustrates how the company’s leaders were captivated by ideas emerging out of the startup world arguing companies shouldn't just incorporate AI into their existing processes, but instead go fully "AI native." According to two people familiar with the matter, Meta intended to spend some of its savings from layoffs on giant pay packages to attract and retain such talent, especially AI engineering rock stars.

Oregon's Secret Spending on Low-Income Housing 

ProPublica

This article reports that Oregon’s spending on low-income housing has exploded in the past five years. The state has given developers an unprecedented $1.4 billion, and the cost of developing each apartment has nearly doubled, to $540,000. Dozens of projects are lined up for an additional $850 million in future state funding. Federal tax credits, which the state oversees, will bring even more money to bear. 

Yet one thing has remained constant: The public isn’t allowed to see the details of how all these dollars are being spent. Oregon is one of the only states in the country with a carve-out in its public records law that prevents disclosing the financial details of subsidized housing projects, thwarting researchers and journalists who have tried to examine their costs. The issue is especially pressing in the Pacific Northwest, where leaders have tied the lack of affordable housing to the region’s dire homelessness crisis. Understanding and controlling the cost of construction could make it possible, with the same amount of money, to either build more rent-restricted apartments or to discount rents more steeply.

This article reports that such transparency is necessary because researchers and journalists have used developers’ financial records in other states to investigate spiraling costs of subsidized housing. Indeed, What’s more, despite all the state’s spending on housing, Oregon’s homeless population continues to grow. 

Mold Driving Homeowners Crazy – Want Builders To Pay 

Wall Street Journal

Modern energy efficiency codes have given a new lease on life to mold. This article reports it’s in showers, behind walls, and deep in linen closets, making homeowners struggle to breathe and costing them millions in repairs and healthcare bills. In response they want homebuilders to fix the problem, as evidence by a surge of lawsuits.

Homeowners say their builders have made mistakes as they attempt to put up homes as quickly and cheaply as possible, installing improperly sized HVACs, putting in windows incorrectly, or poorly ventilating attics. … TikTok and Reddit channels discuss “Toxic Mold Syndrome,” a series of vague symptoms including sudden fits of anger and brain fog stemming from systemic mold in the body. … Builders say the fears are overblown. Many of these lawsuits engage vastly different opinions on the health impacts of mold, how it should be measured and what is required to remove it. 

This article reports that whatever the outcome, “lawsuits are long, unpredictable and exorbitantly expensive for both sides. For America’s largest home builders, they are adding to their growing legal costs and weighing on their profits as they cope with a stagnant housing market.