RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'
Picks of the Week
January 19 to January 25, 2025

Featured Investigation:
Despite Biden Pardon,
Fauci Still Faces Legal Perils.
Here They Are.

In RealClearInvestigations, Paul D. Thacker reports that Dr. Anthony Fauci is not completely out of legal jeopardy despite President Biden's last-day pardon for the man whom major media feted as “Mr. Science ” during the COVID pandemic. Thacker reports:

• Fauci will be unable to dodge investigators’ questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination – because with a pardon, he forfeits them. "If he lies about any prior lie, he can be prosecuted for that or held in contempt,” says a former Senate investigator.

• And so lawmakers have vowed to continue investigating the origins of COVID, which Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky strongly suspects was a Chinese lab doing “gain of function” virus research, for which Fauci approved U.S. funding.

• Sources tell RealClearInvestigations that Sen. Ron Johnson and House Republican investigators plan such inquiries as well. 

• Several X accounts have uploaded videos that show Fauci’s inconsistent statements. One set of clips shows Fauci claiming he kept an “open mind” about how the pandemic started while alleging in others that the evidence points against a lab accident and “strongly” in favor of a natural spillover.

• Also bound for scrutiny is Fauci’s secret involvement in prominent research published in a medical journal in March 2020. Dubbed the “proximal origin” paper, it turned public and scientific sentiment against the possibility of a lab accident. Subsequent emails showed Fauci helped guide the “proximal origin” paper to publication. 

Featured Investigation:
Can a Sabre-Wielding Trump
Have Mercy On
His Fiscal Watchdogs This Time?

In RealClearInvestigations, Bob Ivry reports that President Trump, who used a sword to cut cake on Inauguration Day, turns next to a task that is surely no piece of cake – cutting the bureaucracy. But he has what some might call a terrible swift habit of slashing federal inspectors general who could help him:

• The 74 inspectors general are embedded in each Cabinet-level department along with agencies such as Amtrak and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The IGs recover money lost to fraud and waste and prod the agencies to efficiency.

• During his first term – which saw epic fraud and waste in hasty COVID economic relief -- Trump used his executive power to oust without warning the IG tasked with overseeing that relief and four other IGs in the space of six weeks. 

• Perhaps in response, a coalition of the IG offices has announced that Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa will lead a bipartisan group in the Senate to support IGs. The so-called IG Caucus includes Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. 

• In fiscal 2023, the IG offices recovered $10.9 billion, conducted investigations that resulted in the conviction of 4,318 scammers and won 1,106 civil actions on a combined budget of $3.5 billion. 

• The recoveries are a return on investment of more than $3 of taxpayer money for every $1 spent to run the offices.

Waste of the Day
by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

Energy Secretary Blew Gas Budget With EV, RCI
New Orleans’ Top Cop Earned $3M in 8 Years, RCI
Budget Office Identifies Trillions in Savings, RCI
Field Trips to China With Federal Funds, RCI
Chicago to Pay in Free Speech Lawsuit, RCI

Election 2024 and the Beltway

Elon-Vivek Split:
Musk Put Spending Cuts No. 1
Wall Street Journal

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are famous for saying almost anything, anywhere and at any time. So it may or may not be surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy is no longer co-leading the new Department of Government Efficiency with Musk because he was, this article reports, too outspoken.

People familiar with the situation said Trump’s inner circle of aides had become annoyed with Ramaswamy’s outspokenness on virtually any topic, a tendency that had also aggravated the Tesla and SpaceX CEO. “There were always going to be tensions between two CEOs who have built successful companies,” said a person familiar with DOGE. “Everyone saw the writing on the wall.” A frequent poster on Musk’s X platform, Ramaswamy also angered some Trump supporters and aides in late December when he let loose with a long message as part of a debate over H-1B visas, suggesting some U.S. technology companies hire foreign workers in part because U.S. culture has “venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.”

This article also reports that the departure of Ramaswamy – who says he will run to be Ohio’s next governor – was rooted in policy differences: “The split was also predicated in part by DOGE’s increasing attention on achieving spending cuts, which Musk has championed, and less of a focus on cutting regulations and bureaucracy,” which Ramaswamy favored. It now appears that Ramaswamy was among Musk’s first cuts.

Other Election 2024 and the Beltway

Trump Clemency for 1,500+ Jan. Sixers, Associated Press
President Trump's Day One Executive Actions, White House
Trump's Rescissions of 'Harmful' Biden Measures, White House
Biden Pardons 5 Family Members in Final Minutes in Office, New York Times
Biden Frees Indigenous Activist Convicted of Killing 2 FBI agents, AP 
Trump DOJ Investigating Uncooperative Sanctuary Cities, Daily Caller
House Creates New Subcommittee to Investigate J6, Federalist
Why Elon Musk Looks Like an SEC Lawfare Victim, New York Post
You're Fired: Trump to Purge Over 1,000 Biden Appointees, New York Post
President Is Just One of Many Already Cashing In on Trump, Wired

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Why Pacific Palisades Reservoir
Was Empty
Los Angeles Times

The 117-million-gallon Pacific Palisades reservoir was empty as fires raged because Los Angeles bureaucrats couldn’t get their act together to repair a tear in the reservoir’s floating cover that was first spotted in January 2024, this article reports:.

[L.A. Department Water and Power] policy calls for minor repairs to the cover to be addressed "within 48 hours of discovery," according to a maintenance manual for the reservoir. Major repairs, however, require "specialized skills" and are contracted out, the manual indicates. It's unclear how the DWP initially assessed the tear, but in either case, the manual reflects urgency: "Make repairs ASAP as directed by the engineer." By late January [2024], the DWP was developing a plan for repairs and had a target date for bringing the reservoir back, by April 2024, before "higher demands" in the late spring and summer, the emails indicate.

It wasn’t until April, this article reports, that the “utility issued an invitation for bids to repair the cover, with the cost put at $89,000. Only one company, Layfield Group – which had installed the cover in 2012 – turned in a bid, and the contract was finalized Nov. 21 for about $130,000.”

In a separate article, Reason reports that 18 months after wildfires destroyed some 2,000 homes on Maui, just three homes have been rebuilt because “a thicket of red tape has made the island's rebuilding efforts painfully slow

Proposed FDA Nicotine Cuts
Would Effectively Ban Smokes
Atlantic

The Biden administration’s last acts included more than just pardons to the president’s sketchy family members. This article reports that FDA regulators announced that they were pushing forward with a rule that would almost completely remove nicotine from cigarettes, which would, of course, remove the chief reason people smoke them in the first place.

The average cigarette nowadays is estimated to have roughly 17 milligrams of the drug. Under the new regulation, that would fall to less than one milligram. If enacted—still a big if – it would decimate the demand for cigarettes more effectively than any public-service announcement ever could. … The FDA insists that the proposal isn’t a ban per se. But in the rule’s intended effect, ban may indeed be an apt term. The FDA estimates that nearly 13 million people – more than 40 percent of current adult smokers – would quit smoking within one year of the rule taking effect. After all, why inhale cancerous fumes without even the promise of a buzz?

This article reports that the regulation is just a proposal. For the next eight months, the public – including tobacco companies – will have the opportunity to comment on the proposal. Then the Trump administration can decide whether to finalize the regulation as is, make changes, or scrap it entirely. Luis Pinto, a vice president at Reynolds American, which makes Camel and Newport cigarettes, told the Atlantic that, if enacted, the policy “would effectively eliminate legal cigarettes and fuel an already massive illicit nicotine market.”

School Buses Add Cameras
to Catch Illegal Passing
CNN

School districts across the country are outfitting their buses with cameras to catch cars that illegally pass when the bus’s stop arm – the retractable stop sign that bus drivers activate while picking up or dropping off children – is deployed. The camera system’s operator sends any video of possible infractions, along with data such as time and location, to a local law enforcement agency, which then reviews the footage and decides whether to send a citation to the vehicle’s owner. One such vendor, Virginia-based BusPatrol, says it has installed cameras on more than 30,000 buses in 18 states. But not everyone is endorsing the move.

Jay Beeber, executive director for policy at the National Motorists Association, a driver advocacy group, says he believes the main incentive for the program is profit – not safety. “Automated enforcement is a for-profit entity that is mostly interested in generating revenue and generating as many tickets as possible,” he said. Beeber argues in part that deaths of school-aged children from being struck by cars illegally passing stopped buses are rare. 

But, as is the case with so many crime stats, this article reports that the number of actual cases is disputed. Beeber’s group cites National Highway Traffic Safety statistics indicating that from 2013 to 2022, four people 18 and younger were killed outside a vehicle in crashes where at least one driver involved in the crash was charged with a violation of passing a stopped school bus. 

However, in that same period, other children were fatally struck by drivers that authorities said failed to stop for a stopped school bus but were not noted in the NHTSA database as having been charged with illegal passing, including at least four in 2018. And the number of pedestrians 18 or younger fatally struck in school-transportation situations by vehicles other than school buses from 2013 to 2022 is 37 – or nearly four deaths a year – according to NHTSA. The administration told CNN it could not immediately say how many of the 37 were killed by a vehicle illegally passing or failing to stop for a school bus.

Alcohol Industry Is Hooked
on Its Heaviest Drinkers
Wall Street Journal

The 80/20 rule applies to most things in life – but not booze, this article reports. In that case the disparity is even more extreme as 20% of adults account for an estimated 90% of alcohol sales volumes in the U.S. 

It is hard to pinpoint how much people drink because people often underreport their own consumption. According to survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6% of American adults say they drink enough to meet the agency’s definition of heavy drinking: at least 15 drinks a week for men and eight drinks for women. [Equity research firm] Bernstein’s 2023 analysis put the figure much higher, finding that people who consume more than 14 drinks a week represent as much as 20% of adults in the U.S. 

This report is from the business pages, not the health section, so it focuses on the unhealthy implications of that stat for corporate bottom lines. Alcohol-industry veterans say they are aware of the loyal customers but don’t market to them. But Philip Cook, a professor emeritus at Duke University whose books include “Paying the Tab: The Costs and Benefits of Alcohol Control,” noted, “Heavier drinkers are obviously where the money is.”