Critics Say His Policies Won’t Help Raise Them.
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“Our country wants us to be birthing machines, but they’re cutting what resources there already are,” said Olcott, 20. “And a $1,000 baby bonus? It’s low-key like, what, bro? That wouldn’t even cover my month’s rent.”
The Trump administration wants Americans to have more babies, and the federal government is debuting policy initiatives to reverse the falling U.S. fertility rate. In mid-October, the White House unveiled a plan to increase access to in vitro fertilization treatment. President Donald Trump has heralded such initiatives, calling himself “the fertilization president.”
But reproductive rights groups and other advocacy organizations say these efforts to buttress the birth rate don’t make up for broader administration priorities aimed at cutting federal programs such as Medicaid, its related Children’s Health Insurance Program, and other initiatives that support women and children. 
Trump likes kids once they turn 14
The pro-family focus, they say, isn’t just about boosting procreation. Instead, they say, it’s being weaponized to push a conservative agenda that threatens women’s health, reproductive rights, and labor force participation.
Some predict these efforts could deter parenthood and lead to increases in maternal mortality.
“The religious right wants more white Christian babies and is trying to curtail women’s reproductive freedom in order to achieve that aim,” said Marian Starkey, a spokesperson for Population Connection, a nonprofit that promotes population stabilization through increased access to birth control and abortion. “The real danger is the constant whittling down of reproductive rights.”
The White House did not respond to repeated interview requests.
Maybe you love your gas stove but it may not love you back
Stanford University
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According to the research, switching from gas to electric stoves lowers nitrogen dioxide exposure by more than one quarter nationwide and by about half for people who use their stoves most frequently. Earlier studies documented nitrogen dioxide from gas stoves, but this work is the first to examine both indoor and outdoor exposure across the entire country.
"We know that outdoor air pollution harms our health,
but we assume our indoor air is safe." said study senior author Rob
Jackson, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor in Earth System
Science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. "Our research
shows that if you use a gas stove, you're often breathing as much nitrogen
dioxide pollution indoors from your stove as you are from all outdoor sources
combined."
Indoor pollution can be as dangerous as outdoor emissions
Outdoor air pollution contributes to hundreds of thousands
of deaths in the U.S. each year and leads to millions of new cases of childhood
asthma worldwide. Laws such as the U.S. Clean Air Act have helped reduce
outdoor pollution, but indoor air remains largely unregulated even though it
can pose similar risks. This new analysis is the first nationwide evaluation of
how much nitrogen dioxide people encounter from both indoor and outdoor
sources, including gas stoves, vehicle traffic, and electricity generation.
This is good news, but what will the Supreme Court do?
By Anastasia E. Lennon, Rhode Island Current
A federal judge on Monday ruled in favor of Massachusetts and more than a dozen states that sued the Trump administration in May over President Donald Trump’s day-one offshore wind memo. The directive has frozen permitting since January, pending a comprehensive review by federal agencies.
The states argued the memo is unlawful and has caused significant harm – stymieing domestic investment, jeopardizing states’ abilities to supply enough electricity, and creating an “existential threat” to the industry.
Judge Patti B. Saris seemed to agree with their legal claims: “The State Plaintiffs have produced ample evidence demonstrating that they face ongoing or imminent injuries due to the Wind Order.”
On the flip side, she delivered sharp criticism of the federal government’s arguments and the wind memo itself, writing that it fails to adequately explain or support such a significant change in course from the agencies’ prior permitting practices.
“Whatever level of explanation is required when deviating from longstanding agency practice, this is not it,” Judge Saris wrote.
New US domestic terrorism priorities raise constitutional alarms
National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7, issued on Sept. 25, 2025, is a presidential directive that for the first time appears to authorize preemptive law enforcement measures against Americans based not on whether they are planning to commit violence but for their political or ideological beliefs.
You’ve probably heard a lot about Donald Trump’s many executive orders. But as an international relations scholar who has studied U.S. foreign policy decision-making and national security legislation, I recognize that presidents can take several types of executive actions without legislative involvement: executive orders, memoranda and proclamations.
This structure allows the president to direct law enforcement and national security agencies, with little opportunity for congressional oversight.
The memorandum represents a profound shift in U.S. counterterrorism policy, one that risks undermining foundational American commitments to free speech and association.
URI study reveals opportunity to improve blue carbon measurements in coastal wetlands
By Mackensie duPont Crowley
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| A new study finds a critical limitation in a widely used method for measuring organic carbon in flooded coastal sediments, a gap that could influence global carbon storage estimates and assessments of marsh resilience. (URI Photo/Courtesy Erin Peck) |
Coastal wetlands, like salt marshes, keep pace with sea-level rise by accumulating sediment and burying organic carbon in their soils, an important natural process that also helps sequester carbon. Accurately measuring this stored carbon is essential for understanding marsh resilience and informing blue carbon strategies.
But a new study led by Erin Peck, an assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, and Serina Wittyngham, an assistant professor at the University of North Florida, identifies a fundamental limitation in a widely-used method for measuring organic carbon in flooded coastal sediments.
This gap has implications for global estimates of carbon storage and marsh resilience. Traditional blue carbon methods assume that all measured organic matter contributes to long-term carbon storage and sediment volume. The new study shows this isn’t always the case.
Some organic matter is dissolved in sediment porewater, while other portions adhere loosely to sediment particles or are bound within the internal structure of clay minerals. These forms of organic matter may not contribute to sediment volume, accretion, or marsh resilience.
By examining more than 23,000 tidal marsh sediment samples
across multiple marsh systems, Peck, Wittyngham, and their collaborators
demonstrated that this overlooked fraction of “volumeless” organic matter can
lead to overestimates of both carbon storage and marsh elevation gains.
Recognizing this nuance allows scientists to refine their estimates of carbon
sequestration and resilience, ensuring that restoration planning, carbon
accounting, and predictive modeling are based on the most accurate information possible.
The researchers’ findings were published recently in a
peer-reviewed article in the journal Limnology
and Oceanography Letters.
Welcome boost to addressing affordable housing shortage
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| Representatives from Bank of America and South County Habitat for Humanity. Photo: South County Habitat for Humanity |
South County Habitat for Humanity (SCHH) has been named a 2025 Bank of America Neighborhood Builder, receiving $200,000 in unrestricted funding to support its mission of building affordable homeownership units in Washington County, Rhode Island.
“This year, as we celebrate the 35th anniversary of South County Habitat for Humanity, we are deeply honored to receive this incredible investment from our longtime partners at Bank of America,” said Colin Penney, Executive Director of SCHH.
“Unrestricted support like this gives us the flexibility to strategically grow our capacity and better meet the needs of our community, ensuring every dollar advances our mission of a world where everyone has a decent place to live. With ambitious plans for larger-scale housing developments, this funding arrives at a pivotal moment. We are truly grateful for Bank of America’s partnership.”
Your cell phone tells them where you are
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The U.S. government doesn’t need to collect data about people’s locations itself, because your mobile phone is already doing it. While location data is sometimes collected as part of a mobile phone app’s intended use, like for navigation or to get a weather forecast, more often locations are collected invisibly in the background.
I am a privacy researcher who studies how people understand and make decisions about data that is collected about them, and I research new ways to help consumers get back some control over their privacy. Unfortunately, once you give an app or webpage permission to collect location data, you no longer have control over how the data is used and shared, including who the data is shared with or sold to.
What the data shows about threats of a tax exodus by the wealthy
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It set off a chorus of warnings about the tax flight of the city’s wealthiest residents.
Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman claimed that both the city’s businesses and wealthy residents “have already started making arrangements for the exits.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul echoed the concern, opposing the proposal “because we cannot have them leave the state.” Before the election, Mamdani’s opponent, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, joked that if Mamdani won, “even I will move to Florida.”
I research whether high earners actually move when their taxes go up. My colleagues and I have analyzed millionaire taxes in New Jersey and California, the migration of Forbes billionaires globally and decades of IRS data tracing where Americans with million-dollar incomes live.
Top earners are often thought of as “mobile millionaires” who are ever searching for lower-tax places to live. In reality, they’re often reluctant to leave the places where they built their careers and raised their families.
At the same time, there are grains of truth in the tax migration arguments, so it’s important to carefully parse the evidence.
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Flat Earth, spirits and conspiracy theories – experience can shape even extraordinary beliefs
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| A belief in ghosts could be a way to explain a strange experience while asleep. 'The Nightmare' by Johann Heinrich Füssli/ Wikimedia Commons |
On Feb. 22, 2020, “Mad” Mike Hughes towed a homemade rocket to the Mojave Desert and launched himself into the sky. His goal? To view the flatness of the Earth from space. This was his third attempt, and tragically it was fatal. Hughes crashed shortly after takeoff and died.
Hughes’ nickname – Mad Mike – might strike you as apt. Is it not crazy to risk your life fighting for a theory that was disproven in ancient Greece?
But Hughes’ conviction, though striking, is not unique. Across all recorded cultures, people have held strong beliefs that seemed to lack evidence in their favor – one might refer to them as “extraordinary beliefs.”
For evolutionary anthropologists like me, the ubiquity of these kinds of beliefs is a puzzle. Human brains evolved to form accurate models of the world. Most of the time, we do a pretty good job. So why do people also often adopt and develop beliefs that lack strong supporting evidence?
In a new review in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, I propose a simple answer. People come to believe in flat Earth, spirits and microchipped vaccines for the same reasons they come to believe in anything else. Their experiences lead them to think those beliefs are true.
