Wednesday, April 22, 2026
Rep. Tanzi bill would reform structure of RIPTA board
RIPTA needs a fix
Rep. Teresa A. Tanzi has introduced
legislation to reform the structure of the board of the Rhode Island Public
Transit Authority.
Photo: Steve Ahlquist
Since 2023, the director of the Rhode Island Department of
Transportation has automatically served as the chair of RIPTA’s board.
Representative Tanzi’s legislation (2025-H 8127) would instead make the chair a position
elected by the members of the board itself. The director of RIDOT would still
hold a position on the board.
Why Ozempic doesn’t work for everyone
Scientists just found a hidden reason
Stanford Medicine
More than one in four people with Type 2 diabetes use GLP-1
receptor agonists, a class of widely prescribed medications. However, new
research from Stanford Medicine and international collaborators suggests these
drugs may be less effective for some individuals due to genetic differences.
About 10% of the population carries certain genetic variants
linked to a newly identified phenomenon called GLP-1 resistance. In these
individuals, levels of the hormone GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1), which helps
regulate blood sugar, are actually higher than normal but appear to be less
effective at doing their job.
It is still unclear whether these genetic variants influence
weight loss outcomes from GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, which are
increasingly used to treat obesity. These medications are typically prescribed
at higher doses for weight loss than for diabetes.
The study, published March 29 in Genome Medicine,
focused on how these drugs affect blood sugar. It represents a decade of work
involving experiments in both humans and mice, along with analysis of clinical
trial data.
Trump's polling is terrible and getting worse
Looking behind Trump's cratering polls
Trump’s approval ratings have reached historic lows. He’s polling lower than he did at the same point in his first term, and he suffers net-negative approval ratings in all but nine states. Americans overwhelmingly reject him, his policies, and his job performance as president.
In fact, if the
third of Americans who comprise his bedrock base of red-hatted MAGAs are held
aside, the rest of the nation is now nearly unified in deeming Trump’s second
term a failure, if not a disaster.
No matter the pollster or topic, no matter how questions are
phrased nor the subgroup of Americans tracked, Trump and his policies are
disfavored, even despised. His numbers were bad before he started his reckless
Iran war and they have fallen further since. And most recent approval ratings
came before Trump began circulating images that likened him to
Jesus. (More on that at the end.)
Per pollster G.
Elliott Morris, comparing Trump to other recent presidents 15 months into their
terms confirms how badly the public rates him. At -21.6 net negative approval,
Trump lags behind Joe Biden (-10.8), Barack Obama (+2.3), and a post-9/11
George W. Bush (+57.0) at comparable points of their terms. In fact, Trump
already lags more than 8 points behind the 15-month mark of his own first term
(-13.3).
Even if his current term is treated as a second term — when presidents tend to experience declining approval — the comparisons are still grim.
At the end of the first year of their second terms, only the
Watergate-addled Nixon had a lower net approval number, -29.6, than the -16.2
net disapproval Trump had at the end of his fifth combined year in office. And
that low rating came three months ago, before the ICE/CBP shootings in
Minneapolis and the Iran war eroded Trump’s support by another five points and
counting.
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
Trump’s Budget Proposes Massive Cuts for Climate and Environmental Programs
The budgets of the EPA, NOAA and FEMA would all be slashed, as would incentives for renewable energy.
Donald Trump’s annual budget request to Congress continues his administration’s defunding of climate change programs, environmental protection and renewable energy, slashing the budgets of the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The spending plan for fiscal 2027 “builds on the President’s vision by continuing to constrain non-defense spending,” wrote Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, in a foreword to the 92-page document, which includes an historic, $1.5 trillion defense budget, an increase of 44 percent.
EPA spending would be cut in half under Trump’s proposal, released Friday, and grants from the agency would be slashed by $1 billion. Congress rejected a similar budget request from the president last year.
An Inside Climate News analysis of federal workforce data released by the Office of Personnel Management shows that EPA lost more than 4,000 employees in the first year of Trump’s second term, reducing its workforce to 12,849, its lowest level since the 1980s. The 24 percent reduction was more than double the rate of losses across the entire federal government.
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URI bee specialists share information for insect enthusiasts of all ages
Mind your bee’s and q’s
 |
| Bees are small but play a big role in our environment. (URI Photos / Casey Johnson) |
For Steven Alm and Casey Johnson, it’s a bug’s world every day in the University of Rhode Island Bee Lab. With a new exhibit on insects opening at Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, they could not be happier to see a new generation of insect enthusiasts get an up-close look at their small subjects of study.
Part of URI’s Plant
Sciences and Entomology department, Alm and Johnson answered
questions on the local bee population for zoo visitors who may be interested in
learning more after their day at the park:
Which bees are most common here in Rhode Island?
We know the most about our bumble bees because they are
large and fairly easy to identify. The Common Eastern Bumble Bee is our most
prevalent bumble bee here. We also have good numbers of sweat, mining, digger,
and cellophane bees.
We have recorded more than 280 bee species in Rhode Island,
past and present; they are incredibly diverse with different needs. Some
species have evolved to only collect pollen from certain plant families or even
a single plant species. This means they are closely linked to these plants and
will disappear if the plant disappears.
The Southeastern Blueberry Bee, for instance, forages only on blueberry, lupine or redbud and nests only in loose, sandy soil. This bee was recorded in Rhode Island for the first time in 2024. The Macropis Cuckoo Bee was thought to be extinct for nearly 60 years until it was rediscovered in Nova Scotia in 2004. Since then, it has been recorded in a handful of U.S. states, including one specimen collected here in Rhode Island in 2024.
Tylenol during pregnancy not tied to increased risk of autism in children
Trump and Kennedy are wrong. AGAIN.
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| Bobby Jr. does science. This is a REAL story, not made up |
For the nationwide study, published
yesterday in JAMA Pediatrics, Copenhagen University Hospital
investigators linked prospective individual-level data from national
demographic and health care registers on singletons born in Denmark from
January 1997 to July 2022 who were alive at one year old. Follow-up was one
year or until emigration or autism diagnosis.
Exposure to acetaminophen during pregnancy was identified by
maternal fulfillment of a prescription for the drug in the National
Prescription Register. Another analysis compared sibling groups with
discordant acetaminophen exposure in pregnancy.
“Evidence regarding the association between prenatal
acetaminophen exposure and risk of autism in offspring remains inconsistent,”
the study authors wrote. “One large Swedish cohort study reported a small but
statistically significant increase in autism risk among children in a
population-level analysis; however, the association was not observed in a
sibling matched analysis, raising questions about residual confounding.”
Trump’s unfounded claims spook pregnant women
The researchers initiated the study after Donald Trump’s September 2025 remarks discouraging
pregnant women from using acetaminophen because of a purported link to autism.
He also claimed, without evidence, that leucovorin (folinic acid) can help
autistic children.
Trump regime data shows little evidence that the killing almost 200 people on the high seas has stopped drugs from reaching the US.
Murder at sea and for what?
The US Southern Command posted a video on social media of
the bombing, which it said targeted a boat that was “transiting along known
narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in
narco-trafficking operations.”
As with the 50 previous attacks on boats in the Pacific and
the Caribbean Sea, the military did not publicize any evidence that the boat
was carrying drugs or that its passengers were “narco-terrorists.”
A small number of the at least 177 victims of the Trump
administration’s boat bombings have been identified.
The Associated Press reported in November that Robert Sánchez, who was killed
in the Caribbean, was a 42-year-old fisherman who made $100 per month and had
started helping cocaine traffickers navigate the sea due to economic pressures.
Juan Carlos Fuentes was an out-of-work bus driver who also worked as a “drug
runner” to make ends meet.
The families of at least two victims have filed legal complaints over the killings of their family
members, saying they were fishermen.
Adam Isacson of the Washington Office
on Latin America has compared the
boat bombings, assuming they have targeted people involved in the drug trade at all, to
“straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners.”
Monday, April 20, 2026
Trump’s sweeping nuclear energy and weapons agenda has prompted revisions of longstanding radiation standards.
The Nuclear Safety Protections in Federal Crosshairs
By Alicia Inez Guzmán, High Country News
Throughout, Clawson, a member of the United Steelworkers union, leaned on safety standards to argue for extra protections against radiation, including respirators and additional shielding.
But Donald Trump’s sweeping agenda to expand nuclear energy
and modernize nuclear weapons now includes easing the radiation standards that
Clawson credits with keeping his exposure as low as possible.
“They’re pulling away from what’s kept us safe all these
years,” said Clawson, who retired in 2021 and now serves on the advisory board
on radiation and workers under the Centers for Disease Control. He spoke
to High Country News in an unofficial personal capacity.
Last May, Trump signed four executive orders aimed at
reviving what he called an industry “atrophied” by regulation. The U.S.
Department of Energy quickly began stripping away regulations designed to
reduce the amount of radiation exposure workers can face at its national
laboratories, cleanup sites, and energy infrastructure.
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