RealClearInvestigations Original Articles

The push to “protect” children from cell phones and social media is gaining momentum worldwide. As EU and Asian countries consider legal limits on minors’ access to social media, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled in a Los Angeles courtroom last week about whether his company’s popular apps, which include Facebook and Instagram, are addictive. That question already seems to have been resolved in the public mind. Pennsylvania now seems poised to become the 32nd state to ban or limit cell phones in its public schools. A parent leader who...

As ICE sweeps in Minneapolis have drawn wide attention, a little-noticed immigration case playing out in a New York federal court has significant implications for America’s relationship with Britain and the ongoing debate over global censorship.   In late December, the State Department announced its intention to revoke the visas of five foreign individuals who have allegedly censored Americans. The most consequential member of this group is Imran Ahmed, a British Labour Party political operative now living in the U.S., who is the CEO of an influential nonprofit,...

The decline of religion remains a fundamental reality in most Western countries, particularly in Europe, where over 50% of those under age 40 do not identify with any faith. Even in more religious America, some estimate that as many as 100,000 churches will close in the near future. Meanwhile, the ranks of “Nones,” those outside religious communities, have grown so large that their numbers rival those of Catholics and evangelical Protestants. Yet, as we document in a new report for the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, there are signs...

It was summer 2021, and my mother’s desk was a mess, including a torn envelope from the IRS shoved in the back of a drawer. “Mom?” I asked. “Did you pay your taxes?” My mother, increasingly forgetful at 84, said she wasn’t sure. She told me to call her accountant of 30 years, who said the taxes hadn’t been paid but that he would take care of it. That’s not all he took care of.  Within the year, a family member had my mother sign a blank check, which the accountant (or someone in his office) filled out for $25,000 to supposedly take over...

In December, bestselling author and humorist David Sedaris wrote a New Yorker magazine essay about a recent trip to Portland, Oregon. While on a walk to a donut shop, he “lost count of the strung-out addicts I passed on my way” before eventually encountering four homeless people huddled around an empty baby carriage and smoking drugs right on the sidewalk. Moments later, a dog belonging to one of the addicts rushed out and bit him.  Following the incident, Sedaris, a former methamphetamine addict himself, was struck by the fact that most people in Portland didn’t...

The Republican leader of Pennsylvania's state Senate saluted his allies in labor earlier this month after their successful, years-long effort to defeat what they saw as a job-killing climate initiative. "Thanks to this repeal, the members of this union won't have to pack suitcases to go to a job," Sen. Joe Pittman declared while introducing business agent Shawn Steffee of Boilermakers Local 154 in Pittsburgh. "They'll pack lunchboxes." In the years since state leaders had committed Pennsylvania to joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), membership in the union had dropped by...

Looking to reorient U.S. energy policy toward fossil fuels and nuclear plants, President Trump has access to an enormous sum of money made available by an unlikely source: the Biden administration and congressional Democrats. Legislation passed on party-line votes, most notably the $1 trillion Inflation Reduction Act, allocated hundreds of billions to the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency to fund various green energy projects. While some of that money has since been zeroed out by Republicans, more than $280 billion remains – allocated but unspent. Greg...

Instead of the word of the Lord, worshippers at the Jan. 18 Sunday prayer service at Cities Church in St. Paul were met with chants such as “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.” But that’s not all. Families in the pews were harangued as “pretend Christians” and “comfortable white people,” and even condemned as “Nazis,” who would “burn in hell” by at least one of the dozens of opponents of the Trump administration’s Twin Cities Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge who disrupted church...

In the run-up to the 2016 Democratic Party convention, FBI Director James Comey gained access to at least eight thumb drives containing large volumes of former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s sensitive State Department emails – as well as some from President Obama – that appeared to have been compromised by foreign hackers. Instead of investigating the explosive new batch of evidence revealed in recently declassified documents, Comey rushed ahead to close an investigation into whether Clinton improperly transmitted and received classified material from a private, unsecured...

This is the fourth part of a series on the crisis in academic research and publishing. Read the first three parts here, here and here. By Vince Bielski The driving ethos of academia, “publish or perish,” is fighting for its life.  The requirement that scholars constantly publish or face academic ruin has been considered the primary engine of scientific discovery for decades. But a growing movement of universities and researchers is trying to banish the practice to the archives, saying it has perverted the pursuit of knowledge and eroded the public’s trust in...

Opponents of affirmative action hoped that the Supreme Court had delivered a death blow to the controversial policy in 2023 when Chief Justice John Roberts declared for the court’s majority that “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” But as sweeping as that pronouncement was, it came in a ruling in the landmark SFFA v. Harvard case, solely barring the use of racial preferences in college admissions. The practices that the court deemed illegal on campus have persisted elsewhere, including in programs across the federal government. SBA...

The panic and outrage were palpable last February when President Trump announced plans to trim reimbursement rates for government-funded scientific research. “This is going to decimate U.S. scientific biomedical research,” Northwestern University biologist Carole Labonne told Bloomberg. “The lights will go out, people will be let go, and these [medical] advances will not occur,” David Skorton, CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges, told PBS. “The goal,” University of Washington biologist Carl Bergstrom warned...

More than a million Americans may unwittingly hold second jobs – because that work is being performed by an illegal alien using their stolen social security number. News of the identity theft can come as a rude shock to citizens like the Minnesota factory worker who had crushing tax bills because of a thrice-deported illegal immigrant in Missouri who was working under his name for years. Or Iowa taxpayers who learned that the superintendent of the Des Moines school system was an illegal immigrant facing a deportation order. More likely, they may never know that their...

Even as many scholars and pundits deny the differences between the sexes and vastly expand the concept of gender, society is increasingly dividing along these clear and simple lines.  Mountains of data and broad-based studies show that men and women increasingly inhabit separate psychological, relational, and civic universes that interpret adulthood, authority, intimacy, and obligation in profoundly different ways.  The most visible sign of this cleaving of the sexes is the steady decline of marriage and childbearing. The share of U.S. adults ages 25–54 without...

It’s a tale of two investigations. In one version – based on past comments by former FBI Director Christopher Wray – the arrest last week of Brian Cole Jr. as the individual who allegedly placed pipe bombs near the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee on Jan. 5, 2021, was the culmination of a dogged, five-year effort by the bureau.  In another version, suggested by Dan Bongino, the bureau’s deputy director, FBI agents revived a long-dormant case a few months ago, quickly tracking down Cole through an...

Gov. Gavin Newsom has made reducing the homelessness crisis in California a top priority, saying the scale of the state’s efforts is “unprecedented” and calling for the continued expansion of his signature effort – Project Homekey – that has already cost $3.75 billion.  But in a state with more than 181,000 homeless individuals, or about one-third of the U.S. total, Homekey has been marred by failures and scandals, including a lack of government oversight and accountability as well as a federal investigation into allegations of fraud in Los...

On the campaign trail, Vice President JD Vance repeatedly chastised the Biden administration for allegedly losing track of some 320,000 minors who had crossed the border unaccompanied. “Our government, under the policies of Kamala Harris, has lost thousands of innocent children to sex trafficking, to drug trafficking, to human trafficking,” Vance said. One year later, the fate of most of those children remains unknown. While the Trump administration has all but stopped the crush of migrants that occurred during Biden’s term, neither the government nor the nonprofits...

Joseph Cohen had worked for an organization in Britain devoted to encouraging Jewish-Muslim dialogue and combating antisemitism. But following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israeli civilians and then the bombing and destruction of Gaza, the rising tide of sometimes violent antisemitism made him feel he no longer belonged in his native land. “I would rather be living in the nation where the police and the military are set up to do everything they can to prevent that,” he recently told the Jerusalem Post. The deadly October attack at the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester...

When Obama administration officials manufactured U.S. intelligence tying Donald Trump to Moscow following his stunning 2016 victory, they had no idea Trump’s own political appointees would help them undermine Trump’s presidency – and his chances of reelection in 2020.  RCI’s review of recently declassified documents and exclusive interviews with former Trump officials reveals for the first time how key members of Trump’s cabinet and other appointees during his first term shrouded the previous administration’s machinations and either...