The Westerly School Committee is caught in a bigoted, Christian nationalist time loop

A small number of loud bigots (and at least one school committee member) pound away at the rights of transgender, gender-diverse, and transitioning students.

Steve Ahlquist

From the amount of time I spend attending and covering the Westerly School Committee and hearing the nonstop anti-transgender rhetoric, one might think that this is somehow a major issue in the town. The best I can tell? It’s not. 

Instead, a small number of Christian nationalist bigots, chief among them Westerly resident Robert Chiaradio, cycle through the same litany of imagined grievances like a skipping record. Chiaradio, I think, gets so much airplay because one of the members of the Westerly School Committee, Lori Wycall, keeps adding agenda items to the meeting with the intent of somehow circumventing Rhode Island state law and opening the door to abusing the rights of transgender students.

To understand what follows, you need to know that at the November 19 Westerly School Committee meeting, the minutes of the November 5 meeting were amended so that quotation marks were placed around the term “biological males” as used by Robert Chiaradio during his comments. This was done because the term is demeaning to trans people and has no scientific meaning. [See this footnote.¹] Chiaradio opposed the quotation marks.

Robert Chiaradio: A speaker asked this body to amend the minutes of the November 5 meeting by placing quotation marks around the term “biological male” as I used it at that meeting to describe males who are confused about their sexual identities. The speaker deemed the term derogatory.

I ask anyone in this room with a modicum of common sense, what is derogatory about this term - “biological male” - as used in reference to the above-mentioned population?

Is it unpopular with some people? Yes, it is.

Does it describe the group in a manner in which it doesn’t wish to be described, or those who support it don’t wish it to be described? Yes.

Does it belittle, diminish, or disparage anyone in the group, or show a critical or disrespectful attitude toward anyone in this group? No, it does not.

The term is truthful, honest, and sincere to all populations. I submit to you that calling males identifying as females, “females,” belittles and diminishes real, honest-to-goodness females and disrespects them. That’s what gets lost in all of this. And your desire to minimize and manipulate the truth. Not only are people like myself (who, like it or not, are truth-tellers) disparaged, lied about, threatened, et cetera (which I don’t care about), but our real females, Westerly’s real girls, are diminished and marginalized, as was the case in 2024 … where a “biological male” played against Westerly’s girls - an incident that this superintendent and many in power continue to deny.

Later in the minutes of the November 19 meeting, during the consent agenda, Mr. Killam, in true gutless fashion, I might add, made a motion to amend the November 5 minutes to, as the speaker requested, place quotation marks around the term “biological male.” Without Mrs. Wycall and Mr. Jackson, the motion passed five-to-nothing.

Ms. Dunn even said, We will do our best not to reinforce negative language.” Negative language? I ask you, what is negative, Ms. Dunn, about the term “biological male” being used to describe males who are confused with their sexual identities? Is it better to affirm a lie and call them females? There is only one way to describe them, and that is the truthful way, but the majority of this committee and its superintendent have an aversion to truth, and have for at least the last five plus years. To you, it’s not the truth that matters. It’s not the law that matters. It’s your agenda that matters. I’m not surprised at Ms. Goathals or Ms. Dunn or even Mr. Ober, but Mr. Nero, you’re just a flat-out disappointment who’s afraid to do the right thing.

Mr. Killam, I cannot figure you out. I think your heart is in the right place, but you lack courage. You’re a pleaser. You’re not a leader. You actually amended the minutes because you didn’t want this committee associated with a truthful term. What is derogatory about the truth? Truth is not subjective; it is not malleable. Truth is not debatable. Truth is absolute. It is objective. It is immutable and irrefutable. It’s not my truth or your truth, but the truth. If you people up there on the dais care about the population being discussed here, you will stop affirming this lie and help them get the mental health counseling they need, like I am doing. You know what the truth is, but the truth finishes a distant third with this crew, behind agenda fulfillment and cowardice. Shame on those of you who perpetuate this lie. Thank you.

Committee Chair Leslie Dunn: Is there anyone else who would like to address the committee? Seeing none, I will ask if committee members wish to respond.

Committeemember Timothy Killam: Okay, so first of all, let’s talk a couple things... I made the motion to [put the term] in quotes because it was [Robert Chiaradio’s] statement - that’s what the discussion was.

If you’re going to ask me if I feel that the term “biological male” or “biological female” is derogatory, my answer is “No, it is not.” And if you actually dig deeper, as I did today, you kind of end up in a rabbit hole. I went to the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE)’s guidance on transgender and gender nonconforming students - I know that’s a whole other battle - but in numerous places, RIDE lists students as “biological male” or “biological female.” It’s just a term our department of ed uses, so I don’t think it’s derogatory.

It may be used in a derogatory manner in some instances, but the overall term “biological male or female,” no, I do not feel that it is that.

I want to make it clear that this is not why I changed the minutes, not at all. I changed them because it wasn’t clear what the statement meant. But I can tell you that maybe I was wrong, because you could have just watched the video and seen it for yourself. Very simple. Maybe that’s what we need to do: start scaling back our minutes. [For example,] tonight, “Mr. Chiaradio spoke, discussion ensued.” That’s all [the minutes] need to say. You can watch it on video if you want to.

He's all over it

Under Trump, once prestigious Kennedy Center awards become self parody

See suppressed, Oscar-winning documentary, December 13

 

Reserve your spot HERE. “No Other Land,” an audacious and devastating film, was also 2024’s most decorated documentary.  Its subject — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — couldn’t be more consequential, and its approach, which includes a directorial team of two Israelis and two Palestinians, feels genuinely daring and bold.  “No Other Land "was unable to find a distributor in the United States, and producers eventually opted to self-distribute. In the very recent past, such a movie would often find a home with a major streamer, like Max or Netflix.  This is your chance to see it.

Trump regime desperate to cancel wind projects

Trump Interior Dept. to consider revoking New England Wind 1 approval

By Anastasia E. Lennon, Rhode Island Current

This story originally ran in The New Bedford Light.

The federal agency regulating offshore wind development asked a federal judge to allow it to reconsider a key approval — one the same agency granted just last year — for New England Wind 1, a project planned off the Massachusetts coast.

If the federal government’s request is granted, it would be a blow to the project, which plans to invest in New Bedford and use the city for long-term project operations. If the approval stands, the project could move toward construction once it secures a power purchase agreement with the commonwealth.

This is at least the third time the administration has sought a remand of an offshore wind project approval, the others being for SouthCoast Wind and Maryland’s US Wind. The permits give major infrastructure projects the certainty to secure financing and move forward with construction.

The filing comes more than two months after the federal government signaled it would take such action against this project. The remand request was expected sooner, but the weekslong government shutdown pushed the deadline.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management filed the motion as part of a lawsuit brought in May by offshore wind opposition group ACK for Whales and other parties, including the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah, against BOEM and the Interior Department’s approval of New England Wind 1.

This latest move illustrates how Donald Trump’s administration is using lawsuits brought by municipalities and activist groups as a tool to crack down on the industry. Of the more than 20 actions and orders issued since January, one directed federal attorneys to review pending litigation against projects and consider a remand of permits that the litigation contests.

Vaccine committee votes to scrap universal hepatitis B shots for newborns despite outcry from children’s health experts

Against medical advice and with no scientific evidence, Bobby Jr.'s hand-picked committee set course for increased Hepatitis B infections

David Higgins, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Even in Texas, vaccination is recommended

The committee advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy voted on Dec. 5, 2025, to stop recommending that all newborns be routinely vaccinated against the hepatitis B virus – undoing a 34-year prevention strategy that has nearly eliminated early childhood hepatitis B infections in the United States.

Before the U.S. began vaccinating all infants at birth with the hepatitis B vaccine in 1991, around 18,000 children every year contracted the virus before their 10th birthday – about half of them at birth. About 90% of that subset developed a chronic infection.

In the U.S., 1 in 4 children chronically infected with hepatitis B will die prematurely from cirrhosis or liver cancer.

Today, fewer than 1,000 American children or adolescents contract the virus every year – a 95% drop. Fewer than 20 babies each year are reported infected at birth.

I am a pediatrician and preventive medicine specialist who studies vaccine delivery and policy. Vaccinating babies for hepatitis B at birth remains one of the clearest, most evidence-based ways to keep American children free of this lifelong, deadly infection.

What spurred the change?

In September 2025, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, an independent panel of experts that advises the CDC, debated changing the recommendation for a dose of the hepatitis B vaccine at birth, but ultimately delayed the vote.

This committee regularly reviews vaccine guidance. However, since Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. disbanded the entire committee and handpicked new members, its activity has drastically departed from business as usual. The committee has long-standing procedures for evaluating evidence on the risks and benefits of vaccines, but these procedures were not followed in the September meeting and were not followed for this most recent decision.

The committee’s new recommendation keeps the hepatitis B vaccine at birth for infants whose mothers test positive for the virus. But the committee now advises that infants whose mothers test negative should consult with their health care provider. Parents and health care providers are instructed to weigh vaccine benefits, vaccine risks and infection risks using “individual-based decision-making” or “shared clinical decision-making.”

Trump issues new official National Security Strategy that is Russia-friendly and anti-Europe

Russia applauds new strategy saying it is in line with Kremlin goals

Brad Reed

BBC headline

The Trump administration on Thursday released its official National Security Strategy, and many critics noted that it was loaded with rhetoric frequently used by white nationalists.

Some of the most inflammatory rhetoric in the document is aimed at US-allied European countries that supposedly face “the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure” within the next 20 years.

In particular, the document accuses the European Union of enacting policies “that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”

The document goes on to claim that “should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” while emphasizing that US policy is to help “Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.”

Rhode Island municipalities “Doing more with less” is a slogan, not a plan

No municipality can realistically make that happen every single year, for all time.

Tom Sgouros in SteveAhlquist.news

We often hear about the property tax cap in Rhode Island. I mentioned it in an article about revaluations last month. The cap limits property tax increases to 4% per year. But it’s not a limit on increases in your tax bill, as it used to be, but a limit on increases in the total amount collected in property taxes, which is a little weird.

In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a movement in the plains and mountain states out west to establish a Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR). The idea was that property taxes should go up no faster than inflation plus population growth. Colorado passed a version of TABOR through a state referendum in 1992. 

After a decade of experience -- watching the devastation these tax limits caused to public schools, libraries, police forces, and pretty much all other local services -- the bill was partially repealed in 2005, again by referendum. After Colorado, despite billionaire-funded campaigns in around a dozen states. No other state has passed TABOR.

Except in Rhode Island, where, in 2006, under the leadership of Senate President Teresa Paiva-Weed and Governor Donald Carcieri, the state enacted a tax cap that was actually more restrictive than TABOR. 

The new law lowered the limit on increases and changed it to apply to the amount collected, rather than the tax rate. The number is written into law, so a city or town can increase its tax revenue by no more than 4% in years with zero inflation and in years with 4% inflation. And if the town grows by 5%, too bad, the limit is still 4%. If new construction increases the property tax base, it’s too bad; the limit is still 4%, and any increase in tax revenue above that must go toward lowering the tax rate rather than improving services.

This, of course, is crazy and a recipe for long-term municipal fiscal disaster, as cities and towns accumulate responsibilities and grow their populations while their overall budgets are strictly limited. 

Things that used to matter to Republicans

Support commuter rail service in Westerly

 

Cut your heating bills this winter

Heating Assistance and 80-100% Off Weatherizing Your Home

By State Senator Victoria Gu

Rhode Island, like a number of other states, has a free energy audit program that works in two steps:

1) the free energy audit identifies places in your home that would benefit from air sealing, insulation, and more.

2) the program pays for 80-100% of the cost of doing the weatherization work.

Every Rhode Island homeowner (and tenant, with landlord permission) can request their audit and benefit from these energy savings. Schedule your audit at https://www.riseengineering.com/residential/get-started or through RIEnergy’s website

Know someone in need of emergency assistance to pay for heating oil/fuel? A couple places to contact are:

Westerly: Jonnycake Center of Westerly

Charlestown: The Charlestown Senior Center

South County towns: Tri-County CAP for Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) applications, Heat Pumps and Weatherization, and Emergency Boiler Repair

Pentagon report says Hegseth created a risk to national security with cellphone messages

Signalgate report unsurprisingly condemns classified real-time military information in unsecure communications

By Jennifer Shutt, Rhode Island Current

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated official policy when he used the publicly available Signal app to message about military plans from his personal cell phone, including imminent bombings in Yemen, according to a report released Thursday by the Pentagon’s own watchdog. 

The Defense Department Inspector General’s 84-page report concluded Hegseth sent information about the “strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes.” 

From The Onion

“Although the Secretary wrote in his July 25 statement to the DoD OIG that ‘there were no details that would endanger our troops or the mission,’ if this information had fallen into the hands of U.S. adversaries, Houthi forces might have been able to counter U.S. forces or reposition personnel and assets to avoid planned U.S. strikes,” the report states. “Even though these events did not ultimately occur, the Secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.”

Trump wants your personal data or else!

DOJ hits Rhode Island with lawsuit over voter list data

By Nancy Lavin and Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

Trump want personal data from every source

Add Rhode Island to the list of states facing legal action from the Trump administration for refusing to turn over personal voter information.

The U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit, filed in federal court in Rhode Island Tuesday morning, comes amid a nationwide federal probe into state voter rolls under the pretense of preventing election fraud, including noncitizen voting — which is extremely rare. 

Since May, the Justice Department has reached out to at least 40 states seeking voter lists, including personal information typically protected under state and federal laws, like Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore refused to comply, responding to the DOJ probe in September by offering to provide a free copy of the statewide voter list already publicly available — typically provided upon request with a $25 fee. But Amore made clear he would not hand over confidential personal information without legal action.

More than two-and-a-half months later, the DOJ answered. The 10-page complaint echoes the same arguments made in its lawsuits against eight other states, including Maine and New Hampshire. 

In all of the cases, federal attorneys say the government is entitled to personal voter data under the 1960 Civil Rights Act, the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993.

The lawsuit, which names Amore as a defendant, seeks a federal judge’s intervention to force Amore to turn over the voter registration information within five days, while declaring his refusal a violation of the Civil Rights Act.

Amore, a former high school history teacher, maintained the DOJ’s request was unconstitutional in a statement Tuesday. 

Pope Leo tells Trump: no war against Venezuela, urges compassion toward immigrants

Pope Leo Presses Trump to End Military Escalation Against Venezuela

Stephen Prager for Common Dreams

But I'm sure he's paying close attention to what
the Pope is saying

Amid escalating threats from the White House in recent days, Pope Leo XIV pleaded for President Donald Trump to pursue diplomacy with Venezuela rather than another regime change war.

“It is better to search for ways of dialogue, or perhaps pressure, including economic pressure,” said the first American pope as he returned to Rome from Lebanon.

Since September, the Trump administration has launched airstrikes against at least 22 boats mostly in the Southern Caribbean that have extrajudicially killed at least 83 people. While the administration has claimed these people are “narcoterrorists” from Venezuela, it has provided no evidence to support this.

Trump said he had ordered the closing of Venezuela’s airspace on Saturday, which has left many observers holding their breath in expectation of military action against the South American nation.

As Reuters reported Monday, Trump also offered safe passage to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro last month if he left the country, suggesting that regime change is the administration’s ultimate goal.

Remember when