RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
June 1 to June 7 Featured Investigation: In RealClearInvestigations, Paul Sperry reports that Stacey Abrams' nonprofit Fair Fight Action paid more than $20 million to her close friend and attorney Allegra Lawrence-Hardy between 2019 and 2023, raising significant conflict-of-interest concerns among ethics watchdogs. The payments went to Lawrence-Hardy's law firm primarily for a failed race-bias lawsuit against Georgia Governor Brian Kemp following Abrams' 2018 gubernatorial loss. Despite Fair Fight's incorporation documents stating the organization would not operate for individual profit, the nonprofit paid Lawrence-Hardy's firm an average of over $4 million annually for five years. Abrams and Lawrence-Hardy are longtime friends dating back to Spelman College. Lawrence-Hardy served as Abrams' campaign chair during both gubernatorial elections and helped incorporate at least two of Abrams' private businesses. The women shared the same Atlanta office address for several years. The lawsuit, Fair Fight Action v. Raffensperger, claimed Georgia's election laws discriminated against minority voters. In September 2022, U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones dismissed the case, noting Fair Fight failed to provide "direct evidence of a voter who was unable to vote" due to allegedly racist election laws. The court ordered Fair Fight to pay over $231,000 in additional costs and fees. Ethics experts called the $20.2 million in legal fees "outrageous" compared to similar voting rights cases. Georgia's government spent less than $6 million defending against the lawsuit. The excessive costs drove Fair Fight more than $2.5 million into debt, forcing staff layoffs. State records show Abrams holds ownership interests in multiple entities incorporated by Lawrence-Hardy's firm, all sharing the same Atlanta address as the law firm. The IRS has received multiple complaints about Fair Fight and is actively investigating another Abrams nonprofit, the New Georgia Project, for failing to report millions in contributions. The arrangement adds to ethical concerns surrounding Abrams, who has amassed significant wealth while working primarily in public and nonprofit sectors and maintains presidential ambitions. Featured Investigation: Wikipedia, the world’s largest online encyclopedia, is under increasing scrutiny for alleged anti-Israel bias in its content and sourcing. Critics, including U.S. lawmakers, scholars, and former editors, accuse the platform of favoring left-leaning and anti-Zionist voices while minimizing or omitting pro-Israel perspectives. Aaron Bandler reports for RealClearInvestigations that the controversy is unfolding amid a global surge in antisemitism and violent attacks targeting Jews. A bipartisan group of 23 members of Congress expressed alarm in an April letter, alleging antisemitism and imbalance in Wikipedia articles on Israel and the Palestinian territories. Wikipedia articles often rely on sources like Amnesty International and professors with anti-Israel records, while deeming groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) unreliable on Israel-related topics. One prominent example is the “Gaza genocide” entry, which presents accusations against Israel in the lead section but delays mention of Hamas’ October 7th attack – triggering Israel’s invasion – until the seventh paragraph. Critics argue that this structure misleads readers, 60% of whom do not read beyond the opening paragraph. Wikipedia’s consensus model and editor-driven reliability assessments are said to empower ideologically motivated contributors. Editors have blocked pro-Israel sources, including the ADL and the Heritage Foundation, from citations. The entries on “Nakba” and “Zionism” rely heavily on academics like Rashid Khalidi and Ilan Pappé, both of whom have controversial affiliations and positions, including alleged links to the PLO and calls for Israel’s end. Wikipedia’s Hamas page compares the group’s charter to Israel’s Likud party platform. The comparison cites left-leaning figures like Noam Chomsky but excludes opposing interpretations that stress Hamas’s call for Jewish eradication. Pro-Israel scholars like Gil Troy face rejection for inclusion on recommended source lists, while others with extreme views against Israel, such as Shahid Alam, are accepted and cited prominently. NGOs viewed as anti-Israel, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, are considered reliable despite disputed claims—for example, denying Hamas’s use of human shields, a stance countered by terrorism experts and Palestinian officials. Editors and experts quoted anonymously in the report argue that Wikipedia’s sourcing policy fails to ensure neutrality on controversial topics, with its leniency toward biased academic publications and activist voices undermining its stated goals. The Wikimedia Foundation did not comment on the allegations. Waste of the Day by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books Taxpayers Will Fund Qatari “Gift”, RCI Gym is Almost Unused, RCI Dirty and Damaged” Veterans Hospital, RCI Oklahoma’s Rock House, RCI Secrecy Surrounds California Capitol Annex, RCI Trump 2.0 and the Beltway Musk and Trump Burn Down Their Bromance, RealClearPolitics Federal Official Suspected of Funneling Funds to Former Employer, Daily Signal Rich Dems Bankroll Man Who Defended Jewish Museum Shooter, Washington Free Beacon DOGE Makes Some Government Work Less Efficient, Washington Post Trump Lashes Out at Former Ally Leonard Leo, AP Discrimination Cases Unravel Under Trump, Washington Post Duck Hunt Triggered His Rise to MAGA Power Broker, The Assembly Docs Raise New Questions about FBI's Anti-Catholic Memo, Daily Signal FBI's Failed Effort to Search Protestors' Instagram, Intercept The Secret History of Trump’s Private Cellphone, Atlantic Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Washington Post Ukraine’s surprise strike that used relatively inexpensive drones to knock out a significant portion of Russia’s long-range bomber capability illustrates the growing threat from asymmetric warfare. This article reports that such warfare is as old as the Bible’s David versus Goliath and as devastating as the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, in which al-Qaeda operatives hijacked U.S. airliners and killed almost 3,000 people. That plot cost between $400,000 and $500,000, according to the 9/11 Commission. By some estimates the United States has spent $8 trillion on post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. More recently, the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have been using low-cost missiles and drones to snarl commercial shipping in the vital Red Sea waterway, prompting a retaliatory U.S. bombing campaign under President Donald Trump that cost well over $1 billion. Drones, even short-range craft like the ones Ukraine smuggled into Russia, have become the asymmetric weapon of choice because of their relatively low cost, accessibility and remote piloting. … The out-of-the-blue drone blitz elicited glee among Ukraine’s backers in Washington, but also a chilling realization: The United States is increasingly vulnerable to just such a low-tech, low-cost strike. “The Pentagon should be very worried about this,” said Stacie Pettyjohn, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who focuses on drone warfare and nuclear deterrence. A Ukraine-style attack – using drones hidden in shipping containers or trucks – could very well happen on U.S. soil, or against U.S. air and naval bases overseas, she said. This article reports that drones have already induced the kind of panic that an adversary, or terrorist, would want to foment in a conflict. Late last year, a spate of drone sightings over New Jersey, including a U.S. military research facility and Trump’s Bedminster golf club, set off hysteria. The U.S. government struggled to explain the incidents and how it would defend against them. City Journal While it is not yet clear how artificial society will transform society, there is one thing we know for sure: it will require remarkable amounts of energy. As Mark Mills reports in this article, the digital economy runs on hardware, and hardware consumes a lot of energy. In many ways, the new economy will encounter many of the same challenges as the old one. Nowhere is that more evident than with the latest giga-scale data centers. Building just one requires about 200,000 tons of concrete, 100,000 tons of steel, and 10,000 miles of power cables—more materials than are used to build a skyscraper. (Then there’s the hundreds of tons of silicon microprocessors costing billions of dollars, per data center.) Once completed, operating that single data center consumers as much natural gas every day as a single SpaceX rocket launch. Converting all that natural gas into electrons, of course, requires megatons of machinery. Generating that electricity using solar panels instead entails a radical increase in the tonnage of materials and machinery. Just how much material and energy will be needed to power an AI-infused future is one of the questions of the decade. The digital cognoscenti have long known that building and sustaining information infrastructure uses massive amounts of energy; now, they must add AI to that accounting. In a separate article, the New Yorker reports on the debate between those who believe human beings will be able to control the otherworldly capacities of AI and those who fear dire consequences. “Which is it,” he writes, “business as usual or the end of the world?” Daniel Greenfieldr As President Trump makes it harder for foreign students to study in the United States, this article reports on their countries origin. Of the more than 1 million foreign students in the United States, the largest contingent by far are Chinese students whose numbers have fluctuated between a third and a quarter of a million. South Korea, Mexico, Spain, Canada and Viet Nam are next. Many students come from the Muslim world: Saudi Arabia is in 10th place, Bangladesh in 13th place, Iran in 14th, Pakistan in 16th, Turkey in 19th and Indonesia in 22nd. Notably, few of America’s foreign students are westerners. No European nation even shows up in the top 10 countries for foreign students. The UK is in 15th place and France is only in the 20th. Only Canada, right across the border, is in the top 5, but accounts for only 2.6% of foreign students. Nigeria accounts for three times as many foreign students as France, Iran sends more foreign students than the UK and Pakistan far more than Spain. While most American students who study abroad go to Europe, European students are not going to America. This article reports that international students are mostly non-westerners and that’s by design. The Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, after extensive lobbying by Ivy League colleges, began bringing third world students to America to counter Communist influence. In a separate article, the Federalist reports that “as much as one-quarter of U.S. public school enrollment could be … children with at least one parent illegally present in the United States. This alone amounts to at least $145.6 billion in public resources diverted from U.S. citizens every year.” New York Times Canada is a leading provider of assisted dying in the world. While it has largely confined this option to terminally ill people, in 2021 it expanded its law to include people who were suffering but who weren’t actually dying. This article tells the stories of several such people, including a woman named Paula Ritchie who had suffered a series of physical and mental illnesses during her five decades of life, but then suffered unimaginable pain in 2023, after suffering a head injury. In the days following, she had vertigo and a migraine that wouldn’t go away. Her muscles jerked, and her legs buckled underneath her when she tried to walk. When Paula was alone at her apartment, her symptoms grew worse. She was dizzy. She vomited all the time. Paula said it was like the world was spinning. Like she was on a “roller-coaster ride at full warped speed.” Her body hurt, too. Like the blood in her veins had been replaced with burning gasoline.” The article provides vivid details about the efforts to relieve her symptoms medically and the debates among doctors and ethicists about whether the state should help her end her life. |
