RealClearInvestigations'
Picks of the Week
March 9 to March 15, 2025 In RealClearInvestigations, James Varney examines what happened to environmental spending that the Biden administration decided to expedite before the November election – an effort that included moving $20 billion to a private institution, Citibank, where it’s able to earn interest away from oversight of the Treasury Department. Officials described the novel maneuver as a hedge against future administration attempts to curb the program. New Trump EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin this week moved to terminate the arrangement as the enriched nonprofits have filed lawsuits looking to protect their grants. The money had been put into the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a new entity born of 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, the mega-spending measure that Democrats pushed through Congress without Republican support. Described as a green venture-capital financing entity -- and by detractors as a "slush fund" -- the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund is characterized by grant-making to newly formed nonprofits with few assets but political connections to important Democrats. Case in point: Stacey Abrams, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and now lead counsel for Rewiring America, through which she is linked to a $2 billion EPA grant. Critic: “Even if you look past the entities that receive the money, or how they figured out how to get the money to them, this is a setup that is prone to corruption, abuse and cronyism regardless of party.” In RealClearInvestigations, Vince Bielski reports on the new Classic Learning Test, an upstart challenging the dominant SAT and ACT college entrance exams in a contest reflecting profound forces transforming K-12 education. After the Classic Learning Test was adopted by Florida in 2023 under Gov. Ron DeSantis, new bills to embrace it have emerged this year in school choice-friendly states such as Arkansas, Tennessee, and Texas. The SAT and the rival ACT tests have long formed a duopoly dominating the college admissions market, but the CLT aims to replace their perceived emphasis on careerism with one encouraging traditional learning and values. The Classic Learning Test is a recent addition to the national movement to alternatives to failing public education -- alternatives featuring charter, private and home schools. The CLT’s market share of 182,000 test takers is still a far cry from the leading SAT’s 1.97 million and ACT’s 1.4 million for the class of 2024. But Florida made clear the nationwide potential of the CLT in public schools, in addition to private and religious ones. CLT founder Jeremy Tate is a central figure in the educational revival: “We need to get back to the ancient goal of the cultivation of virtue, and the CLT is part of that.” Waste of the Day
by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books So Far, DOGE Ignores Billions in Earmarks, RCI
Largest U.S. Cities Called Deeply in Debt, RCI
U.S. Funding for Dog Experiments in China, RCI
$10 Million for Rutgers DEI Staff, RCI Trump 2.0 and the Beltway ICE Arrests Palestinian Leader of Columbia’s Anti-Israel Protests, New York Post
USAID Staff Told to Destroy Classified Docs, Email Shows, Guardian
Radical Linked to USAID Now Works For 'Bidenbucks' Affiliate, Federalist
In Last Days, Biden Rushed Out Billions in 'Green' Loans, Reason
Autopen-Gate: Biden Personally Signed Few Orders, Fox News
Early ICE Arrests Nowhere Near Trump's Target, Just The News
Trump's FBI Is Investigating ‘Dishonest Leakers’, Just The News
Inside the Trump Resistance, Funded by the Ultra-Wealthy, Free Press
Trump Official's Side Hustle: Fashion Influencer, From Her Office, CNN Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Claims that today’s air travel safety has been compromised by years of race-based hiring efforts may have been bolstered by the surfacing of a 2014 recording that suggests some minority air traffic controller candidates were given the chance to cheat in a make-or-break entry exam, this article reports: Shelton Snow, a powerful figure in the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE), can be heard promising advance access to test answers in a shocking audio clip obtained by DailyMail.com. 'There are some valuable pieces of information that I have taken a screenshot of and I am going to send that to you via email,' says Snow, an air traffic operations supervisor based out of New York. 'I am about 99.99 percent sure that it is exactly how you need to answer each question.' The inside info was made available in 2014 to African Americans, females, and other minority candidates – but whites were left out of the loop to 'minimize competition'. It is not known how many applicants took advantage of Snow’s offer, this article reports. But one former NBCFAE member, Matthew Douglas, told DailyMail.com: 'I know several people who cheated and I know several people who are controlling planes as we speak.' Feeding incarcerated people has become big business as states and counties outsource their food service operations. The industry was worth almost $3.2 billion in the U.S. in 2022, which, this article reports, seems like a lot given the quality of the fare: It’s not just that meals are bland and unappetizing — though they often are. Cell phone images smuggled out of jails and prisons across the country reveal food that hardly looks edible let alone nutritious. … In lawsuits and news reports, kitchen workers at prisons in Arizona, Oregon, and elsewhere reported seeing boxes of food that were served to prisoners marked: “not for human consumption.” Echoing the old Woody Allen joke, this article reports not only is the food bad, but the portions are small: A 2020 study by the criminal justice reform advocacy group Impact Justice found that 94% of incarcerated people surveyed said they did not receive enough food to feel full. More than 60% said they rarely or never had access to fresh vegetables. With the average wage paid to incarcerated workers maxing out at well under a dollar an hour and commissary prices rising, the food served in the chow hall is often people’s only sustenance. Meager portions have left desperate people eating toothpaste and toilet paper …Prison officials have said that hunger has led to unrest and a riot. Last month, a dramatic and highly publicized operation by Thai, Chinese and Myanmar authorities led to the release of more than 7,000 people from locked compounds in Myanmar where they were forced to trick Americans and others out of their life savings. But, this article reports, survivors have found themselves trapped once again, this time in overcrowded facilities with no medical care, limited food and no idea when they’ll be sent home: One young man from India said about 800 people were being held in the same facility as him, sharing 10 dirty toilets. He said many of the people there were feverish and coughing. Like all former enslaved scammers who talked to The Associated Press, he spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for his safety. “If we die here with health issues, who is responsible for that?” he asked. The armed groups who are holding the survivors, as well as Thai officials across the border, say they are awaiting action from the detainees’ home governments. This article reports that “the people released are just a small fraction of what could be 300,000 people working in similar scam operations across the region, according to an estimate from the United States Institute of Peace.” The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, A federally funded database created to help track long-term, missing-person cases and to pool information from law enforcement, families and medical examiners, is woefully incomplete, this article reports:. An NPR investigation found that even in Washington and New Mexico – two states legally required to submit missing-person cases to NamUs – nearly 2,400 of them are not listed. NPR focused on Washington and New Mexico in our analysis because we were able to obtain a state list of missing people and compare it against the NamUs database. … About half of all law enforcement agencies in the United States are not listed in the NamUs system, an NPR investigation found. Some agencies rely on partner departments to access the system; others told NPR they simply don't use it – or had even heard of it. Experts and advocates within the missing-persons movement told NPR that there's only so much individuals can do when the system is broken. Even getting correct data on the number of missing people nationwide can be difficult. The bills are coming due for California’s pledge to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants. This article reports that Golden State will borrow the maximum amount allowed, $3.44 billion, to cover bills for Medi-Cal – the state’s Medicaid program – through the end of the month: The budget pressure will bring fresh scrutiny to the state’s coverage of undocumented immigrants, which is costing more than first budgeted. Originally, the state estimated it would cost around $3 billion per year to insure that population. But one year after the program has been fully implemented, it’s turning out to be more expensive than anticipated. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s current budget proposal estimates the state will shell out $8.4 billion to cover undocumented immigrants in Medi-Cal in 2024-2025, and $7.4 billion in 2025-2026. This article reports that is a big chunk of the $42 billion the state expects to spend on the program in 2025-26. California has been covering undocumented children on Medi-Cal since 2016. Under Newsom, the program has slowly expanded, to young adults in 2020, older adults in 2022 and then all ages in 2024. | 