Saturday, February 28, 2026
News from the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee
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End debacles like Roger Williams and Our Lady of Fatima Hospitals
Kathy Fogarty and Linda Ujifusa introduce bills to pushback on private equity hospital take-overs
Sen. Linda Ujifusa and Rep. Kathleen A.
Fogarty have filed two companion bills to protect Rhode Island’s health care
system from abuses associated with private equity ownership and the corporate
practice of medicine (CPOM).
For more on this study, CLICK HERE.
The legislation is based on model legislation developed by
the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP), informed by analyses
conducted by researchers at the Center for Advancing Health Policy through
Research (CAHPR) at the Brown University School of Public Health. The bills
would strengthen transparency, oversight and accountability for corporate
actors operating within Rhode Island’s health care system.
The first bill (2026-S 2492, 2026-H 7720) addresses private equity ownership in health care, in which financial firms acquire or exert control over hospitals and medical practices in ways that prioritize short-term financial returns over long-term patient care and workforce stability. National research has linked private equity ownership to hospital closures, reduced access to care, and deteriorating working conditions for health care staff.
Bobby Junior goes full quack on autism treatments
FDA makes its warnings about bogus autism cures disappear
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| A page recently pulled from the Food and Drug Administration’s website gave examples of “false claims” about treatments for autism and its symptoms. Internet Archive |
Among them: chelating agents, hyperbaric oxygen therapies, chlorine dioxide and raw camel milk.
Now that advisory is gone.
The Food and Drug Administration pulled the page down late last year. The federal Department of Health and Human Services told ProPublica in a statement that it retired the webpage “during a routine clean up of dated content at the end of 2025,” noting the page had not been updated since 2019. (An archived version of the page is still available online.)
Some advocates for people with autism don’t understand that decision. “It may be an older page, but those warnings are still necessary,” said Zoe Gross, a director at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, a nonprofit policy organization run by and for autistic people. “People are still being preyed on by these alternative treatments like chelation and chlorine dioxide. Those can both kill people.”
Chlorine dioxide is a chemical compound that has been used as an industrial disinfectant, a bleaching agent and an ingredient in mouthwash, though with the warning it shouldn’t be swallowed. A ProPublica story examined Sen. Ron Johnson’s endorsement of a new book by Dr. Pierre Kory, which describes the chemical as a “remarkable molecule” that, when diluted and ingested, “works to treat everything from cancer and malaria to autism and COVID.”
Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who has amplified anti-scientific claims around COVID-19, supplied a blurb for the cover of the book, “The War on Chlorine Dioxide.” He called it “a gripping tale of corruption and courage that will open eyes and prompt serious questions.”
The lack of clear warning from the government on questionable autism treatments is in line with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s rejection of conventional science on autism and vaccine safety. Last spring, Kennedy brought into the agency a vaccine critic who’d promoted treating autistic children with the puberty-blocking drug Lupron. And in January, Kennedy recast an advisory panel on autism, appointing people who have championed the use of pressurized chambers to deliver pure oxygen to children, as well as some who support infusions to draw out heavy metals, a process known as chelation.
Kennedy has embraced various unconventional measures in his fight against what he views as a government system corrupted by special interests. In October 2024, shortly before Donald Trump won the presidency again, Kennedy vowed on social media that the FDA’s “war on public health” was about to end.
ICE covered up murder of US citizen Ruben Ray Martinez in Texas Last March
‘How Many Other Killings Are They Concealing?’
Jessica
Corbett for Common Dreams
“While Martinez’s death was reported in local media at the
time, the reports did not identify HSI involvement or disclose that a federal agent fired the shots through the
driver-side window,” Newsweek reported, citing publicly available information and records obtained by American Oversight through the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
“It shouldn’t take 11 months and a FOIA lawsuit to learn
that the government killed someone,” American Oversight said on social media late
Friday. Separately, the watchdog noted that “the details sound similar to the death of
Renee Good,” a 37-year-old US citizen and mother of three fatally
shot by officer Jonathan Ross last month in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Good’s killing, and two Customs and Border Protection
agents’ subsequent fatal shooting of 37-year-old US citizen and nurse
Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, have fueled outrage over President Donald Trump’s
mass deportation agenda, resulting in a congressional funding fight that
has partially shut down the US
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees both agencies.
ICE’s internal report on the Texas shooting states that HSI
agents were helping redirect traffic at the site of a major accident early on
March 15, 2025. Martinez and his passengers aren’t named, but the document
claims that the driver of a blue four-door Ford “failed to follow
instructions,” including verbal commands to stop and exit the vehicle.
Instead, the driver “accelerated forward, striking a HSI
special agent who wound up on the hood of the vehicle. Upon observing this, HSI
group supervisory special agent utilized his government-issued service weapon,
discharging multiple rounds at the driver through the open driver’s side
window,” according to the ICE report—a version of events that a DHS
spokesperson echoed in a Friday statement added to the Newsweek article,
which was initially published Wednesday.
The DHS spokesperson also said that the incident remains
under investigation by the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Ranger Division,
whose press secretary, Sheridan Nolen, confirmed that “this is still an active
investigation by the Texas Rangers, and no other information is currently
available.”
Charles Stam, a lawyer for the Martinez family, told the New York Times that
the 23-year-old was the driver in the ICE report. Stam and another attorney,
Alex Stamm, also said in a statement that eyewitness accounts of the scene
don’t match the document.
“It is critical that there is a full and fair investigation
into why HSI was present at the scene of a traffic collision and why a federal
officer shot and killed a US citizen as he was trying to comply with
instructions from the local law enforcement officers directing traffic,” the
lawyers said.
The Times also reached Martinez’s mother,
Rachel Reyes, who said her son worked at an Amazon warehouse in San Antonio and
was out to celebrate his birthday. According to her: “He was a good kid. He
doesn’t have a criminal history... He never got in trouble. He was never
violent.”
Reyes challenged the federal government’s narrative about
her son, telling the newspaper: “What they’re saying is different from what
they told the family, so that’s adding insult to injury... They are making it
sound different. I don’t appreciate their language.”
In a Friday interview with the Texas Tribune,
American Oversight executive director Chioma Chukwu also called out the government: “What they’re telling the
public is very different than what they’re doing behind closed doors. The only
reason why we’re able to make these connections and really call into question
the public statements that they’re making to mislead the public is because
we’re able to get our hands on these documents... That should deeply concern
everyone.”
The revelations this week have generated concern. André
Treiber, the Democratic National Committee’s Youth Coordinating Council
chair, wrote on social media Friday evening that “ICE
murdered a Texan last March and we are only just learning about it now. They
are once again offering the excuse that this was done in self-defense, but
forgive me if I am extremely skeptical after they’ve been caught lying about
that exact same thing multiple times already.”
Federal lawmakers also sounded the alarm on Friday.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) declared that
“Americans deserve immediate answers and an independent investigation of the
shooting.” Another Texas Democrat, Congressman Joaquin Castro, similarly called for
“a full investigation,” including into the monthslong “cover-up.”
US Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), whose Chicagoland district
has also faced a recent ICE invasion, pointed to other deaths tied to the agency, including
those of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, who was shot by ICE in the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park
last September; Keith Porter Jr., who was shot by an off-duty agent on New Year’s Eve in Los
Angeles, California; and Linda Davis, a special education teacher in Savannah,
Georgia, who was killed in a Monday car crash that involved a man
fleeing ICE.
“For a whole year, DHS hid that they murdered Ruben, a young
man in Texas, after a traffic stop. Just like they did with Silverio, Renee,
Keith, Alex, and Linda, they lied and avoided accountability,” said Ramirez,
who supports abolishing ICE. “How many more people have to be
executed before my colleagues realize that reforms are not enough?”
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