RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
July 21 to July 27, 2024 On April 13, 2022, a bus pulled into Union Station in Washington, D.C., carrying 24 migrants who had been offered a free ride from the border city of Eagle Pass, Texas, chartered by the state’s Division of Emergency Management. In the ensuing two years, this article reports, Texas has bused more than 119,000 people to Democrat-led cities, shifting both migration patterns and the debate over immigration. A New York Times analysis of state records, immigration data collected by Syracuse University, and records from the destination cities found: For every five migrants who had immigration court hearings scheduled in New York, Chicago or Denver over the last two years – a clue to where they planned to live – one migrant traveled to those cities on a state-funded bus from Texas. While [Texas Gov. Greg] Abbott did not create the migrant crisis that reached a peak at the end of last year, the analysis showed, he amplified and concentrated it. … In doing so, he appears to have succeeded in his stated aim: to shift the conversation around immigration in the United States, forcing Democrats to demand better border security and President Biden to reverse many of his pledges for a more welcoming immigration policy. This article reports that while New York has spent $4.3 billion so far to handle the recent surge of arriving migrants – not all of whom arrived on Texas buses – Texas has spent around $230 million on its bus program. In a separate article, NBC News reports that liberal jurisdictions across the country are rethinking their sanctuary city policies and increasing their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the interest of public safety. In a separate article, ProPublica and Frontier report on “the harsh and often abusive conditions endured by the tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants who have quietly become the backbone of many U.S. marijuana operations. … Chinese mafias – some with suspected ties to the Chinese government – have taken advantage of state-level legalization to dominate a nationwide black market for marijuana.” Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Texas City Manager Finagles $1.2M Exit, RCI
Disabled People Who Can Work but Don't, RCI
Louisville's Empty-Building Costs, RCI
Anti-Crime Cash Spent on Frivolities, RCI
ObamaCare's BidenCare Explosion, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway The suicide drones used by Iran’s Houthi militants to conduct a deadly July 19 attack on Tel Aviv were constructed primarily with American components, highlighting severe gaps in U.S. sanctions on Tehran, according to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas: The advanced military equipment was supplied by Iran, constructed using American parts, and funded by more than $100 billion in sanctions relief that has been granted to the hardline regime during President Joe Biden’s tenure in office, Cruz said in an investigatory letter sent to the White House on Monday. … The letter comes just days after the Biden administration renewed a sanctions waiver that unlocks upwards of $10 billion for Iran via cash payment from Iraq. These funds, Cruz and other Republicans say, are funding Iran’s production of deadly drones, which have been exported to terror groups across the region, as well as Russia for use in its war on Ukraine. Iran has been accessing key American electronic components for years, allowing it to build up a fleet of advanced drones that comprise about 80 percent of its total arsenal, according to congressional sources briefed on the issue. Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway Secret Service for Years Nixed More Trump Agents, Washington Post
How Trump Shooter Eluded Countersnipers' Lines of Sight, New York Times
Trump Campaign Distorts a Minnesota Cop Shooting Case, Reason
J.D. Vance’s Short-Lived Career as a Venture Capitalist, Wall St Journal
Many Charges Dropped in Campus Protest Arrests, New York Times
DOJ Finds Biden Classified Docs Transcripts It Denied Having, Fox
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series A team of Reuters journalists wanted to know if it would be expensive or hard to make millions of doses of fentanyl. The answer was neither: At the tap of a buyer’s smartphone, Chinese chemical sellers will air-ship fentanyl ingredients door-to-door to North America. Reuters purchased enough to make 3 million pills [for $3,600, including the cost of equipment]. Such deals are astonishingly easy – and reveal how drug traffickers are eluding efforts to halt the deadly trade behind the fentanyl crisis. … Transactions like this are part of the biggest upheaval in the global narcotics trade since the war on drugs began half a century ago. The manufacturing of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that’s killing tens of thousands of Americans a year, has become an endlessly inventive and ruthlessly efficient global industry. This article reports that the 12 chemicals used to make fentanyl are hard to regulate because they are also crucial for the manufacture of perfumes, pharmaceuticals, rubber, and dyes. “Tightly restricting all of them would upend global commerce.” It also reports that “turning these precursors into fentanyl would have required just modest lab skills and a basic grasp of chemistry. One Mexican fentanyl cook who dropped out of school at age 12 told Reuters he learned the trade as an apprentice at an illegal lab.” Gymnastics was supposed to change after revelations of sexual abuse by former U.S. team doctor Larry Nassar led many young competitors to call out their sport’s toxic culture. This article reports that gymnasts’ allegations of physical and emotional abuse in their clubs have been met largely with inaction, “leaving hundreds of young gymnasts still in the care of coaches accused of serious misconduct.” Quote: The U.S. Center for SafeSport, an independent body set up by Congress in the wake of the scandal to investigate misconduct across Olympic sports … has investigated at least six coaches of recent U.S. Olympians or alternates over allegations of emotional and physical abuse, according to news coverage and reporting from The Post, as well as several other coaches of elite gymnasts. But they are all still coaching. None of the probes have resulted in public findings, and most are still open. This article reports that nearly 300 coaches affiliated with USA Gymnastics have been banned or are suspended for misconduct, according to SafeSport’s database. But most are ineligible because of criminal convictions, not SafeSport’s own investigations. “Among the gymnastics coaches SafeSport investigated itself, none were banned solely because of physical or emotional abuse, and only one is suspended.” COVID-19 was a far greater medical threat to the old than the young, but COVID-era policies continue to exact a devastating toll on students. This article reports that despite the $190 billion in federal aid distributed to schools since the pandemic began, student test scores are continuing to fall – two years after experts had claimed a recovery in education was under way: The Northwest Evaluation Association’s analysis found that the gap with pre-COVID-19 results for sixth graders in math and English grew by 40% and 31%, respectively, between the fall of 2023 and the spring of 2024. The study also found that the average eighth grade today requires approximately nine months of additional schooling to reach pre-COVID-19 levels in the two subjects. A similar – albeit less extreme – trend was found for younger students, with third graders requiring 1.3 additional months of schooling to catch up in math and 2.2 more months to catch up in reading. “At the end of 2021-22, we optimistically concluded that the worst was behind us and that recovery had begun,” wrote the study’s authors, Karyn Lewis and Megan Kuhfeld. “Unfortunately, data from the past two school years no longer supports this conclusion.” In a 2021 tape now making the rounds, Republican Vice-Presidential candidate J.D. Vance laments the rise of childless political leaders. This article reports that these authority figures are not alone as growing numbers of Americans are forsaking the joys and strains of parenthood: Women without children, rather than those having fewer, are responsible for most of the decline in average births among 35- to 44-year-olds during their lifetimes so far, according to an analysis of the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey data by University of Texas demographer Dean Spears for The Wall Street Journal. Childlessness accounted for over two-thirds of the 6.5% drop in average births between 2012 to 2022. … Younger Americans view kids as one of many elements that can create a meaningful life. Weighed against other personal and professional ambitions, the investments of child-rearing don’t always land in children’s favor. With less pressure to have kids, economists say, more people feel they need to be in the ideal financial, emotional and social position to begin a family. The article reports that 42-year-old New Orleans resident Beth Davis epitomizes some millennials’ new views. “I wouldn’t mess up the dynamic in my life right now for anything, especially someone that is 100% dependent on me,” she says. | 
