A President's Day protest in Wakefield with South County Resistance

Just what the Founders would have wanted

Steve Ahlquist

Various Presidents

South County Resistance hosted a President’s Day protest in Wakefield that marched from the intersection of the bike path and Main Street to downtown, where over 100 people gathered at all four corners holding signs and joining in song with Singing Resistance.

The theme of the protest and march was “President’s Day Legacy - From Statesmen to Stooge.” Among the marchers were people dressed as Presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Donald Trump. President Trump was dressed in a prison jumpsuit.

Here’s the video:

Meera Raphael, singer, songwriter, and worship leader in Peacedale, is one of the organizers for Singing Resistance. She led the group in songs that originated on the streets of Minneapolis, from the Peace Poets and resistance movements across the country. These songs, said Raphael, are meant to “nurture the spirit of peace, love, solidarity, and unity.”

“We need to stand together and come together,” said Raphael. “It’s the only way we’re going to get through this… we need more music. Music brings us together and brings harmony in a world full of dissonance.”

Here’s all the video of Singing Resistance:

R.I.P. Rev. Jesse Jackson, died today at age 84

 

Quonset firm reaped millions in state energy incentives.

Now it backs McKee’s plan to gut them.

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

“No more silent costs,” Gov. Dan McKee proclaimed Monday at an event in Warwick before signing an executive order to roll back state renewable and energy efficiency programs to save ratepayers money on their monthly bills.

Behind him stood leaders of the state’s top manufacturing companies. Each stepped up to the podium to bemoan rising energy costs during the 20-minute press conference. Except one.

John Ranieri, senior director for corporate engineering for Toray Plastics (America), stood silently in the background, smiling as McKee put pen to paper in a recording posted online by independent journalist Steve Ahlquist. 

Ranieri stood in at the last minute for the North Kingstown manufacturer’s CEO, Christopher Roy, who was originally scheduled to attend and deliver remarks alongside executives from igus Inc., Bullard Abrasives, and VIBCO, Laura Hart, a spokesperson for McKee’s office, confirmed in an email Tuesday.

But environmental advocates in the audience, holding signs and wearing green T-shirts, noticed the Toray executive’s silence. They were not invited to speak during the press conference but had plenty to say after about the millions of dollars in state incentives Toray has received through the very programs McKee now wants to weaken.

“It’s disappointing to hear from business leaders about high energy costs without acknowledgement of the ways that those businesses have taken advantage of renewable energy and energy efficiency programs,” Emily Koo, Rhode Island program director for Acadia Center, said in a phone interview Monday afternoon.

Emily Howe, state director for Clean Water Action Rhode Island, called the silence from Toray executives “hypocritical.”

Toray applied for and received a $15.9 million energy efficiency rebate from National Grid in 2013, along with a $1.8 million advanced gas technology incentive to upgrade its 70-acre campus in Quonset Business Park. 

Wall Street Journal reports ICE Barbie and her boyfriend are ripping off taxpayers

WSJ details conflicts of interest, extravagant spending, abusive conduct

Brad Reed for Common Dreams

An explosive report published by the Wall Street Journal on February 12 shed fresh light on what critics have described as “outrageous corruption” by US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Among other things, the Journal report highlighted Noem’s relationship with top adviser Corey Lewandowski, whom sources said is romantically involved with the Trump Cabinet official despite both of them being married.

Of particular note, the Journal wrote, is the way Lewandowski has taken over the contracting process at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) despite being classified as a special government employee whose service is supposed to be capped at a maximum of 130 days per year.

“Given Lewandowski’s continuing business interests in the private sector, his role in awarding contracts has raised alarm bells inside the White House and DHS,” reported the Journal. “Several officials inside the department said contracts and grants are being awarded in an opaque and arbitrary manner, and some are being held up without explanation.”

The report also claimed that Noem and Lewandowski have been flying around the country together on a luxury 737 MAX jet, complete with a private cabin.

DHS has been leasing the plane, although the Journal’s sources said it is in the process of buying it for $70 million, which “would be double the cost of each of seven other commercial planes the department is also buying at the pair’s direction to carry out deportations.”

Additionally, the report outlined allegedly abusive behavior by Noem and Lewandowski toward DHS staff members, as sources said they “frequently berate senior level staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust, and have fired employees,” including one incident where “Lewandowski fired a US Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane.”

They don't care

ICE equipment check

Gotta wonder how much they paid Trump

Trump declares climate change-causing gasses do not endanger public health and welfare

One giant leap backwards

Gary W. Yohe, Wesleyan University

In 2009 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency formally declared that greenhouse gas emissions, including from vehicles and industry, endanger public health and welfare. The decision, known as the endangerment finding, was based on years of evidence, and it has underpinned EPA actions on climate change ever since.

The Trump administration is now tearing up that finding as it tries to roll back climate regulations on everything from vehicles to industries.

“This is a big deal,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in announcing with Donald Trump on Feb. 12, 2026, that the administration had “terminated” the endangerment finding. 

Zeldin argued that the finding had “no basis in law.” Trump, smiling next to him, talked about the benefits of fossil fuels and said the finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare “had no basis in fact. None whatsoever.”

There’s no question that the EPA’s decision will be challenged in court. The legal question over the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases will be debated, just as it was in 2009. The administration’s claim that the finding was scientifically wrong, however, has no basis in fact.

The world just experienced its three hottest years on record, evidence of worsening climate change is stronger now than ever before, and people across the U.S. are increasingly experiencing the harm firsthand.

Several legal issues have already surfaced that could get in the EPA’s way. They include evidence from emails submitted in a court case that suggest political appointees sought to direct the scientific review that the administration has used to defend its plan, at the exclusion of respected scientific sources. On Jan. 30 a federal judge ruled that the Department of Energy violated the law when it handpicked five researchers to write the climate science review. The ruling doesn’t necessarily stop the EPA, but it raises questions.

To understand what happens now, it helps to look back at history for some context.