AFL-CIO Launches the Department of People Who Work for a Living

If Elon Musk can make up his own government department, so can workers 

The AFL-CIO has launched the Department of People Who Work for a Living (DPWL), a new campaign to hold Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, accountable and make sure the federal government is responsive to working people and not just to the whims of an unelected CEO like Musk.

“The government can work for billionaires or it can work for working people—but not both,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “Elon is just getting started. And he has already tried to force workers doing essential services—including at the FAA and air traffic controllers even after the tragedy at Washington National Airport—to retire, gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system with everyone’s private data, and is declaring entire government agencies like USAID shut down and blocking workers from accessing the building and their email. We will hold DOGE and Elon Musk accountable because we are certain that the people who keep our food and medicine safe know more about how to make government efficient than an outsider whose companies benefit from the very agencies he is infiltrating.”

Good turnout at Providence rally against President Musk (and Donald Trump)

The Emergency Rally to End Musk's Government Takeover and Demand Our Senators Step Up

Steve Ahlquist

Over 800 Rhode Islanders rallied outside of Senator Jack Reed’s office on a chilly Saturday afternoon with a clear demand for Rhode Island’s federal delegation: Use every possible tool to protest, obstruct, and fight Elon Musk’s illegal takeover of the Federal Government.

The event, which was organized in partnership with Indivisible Rhode Island, Climate Action Rhode Island, Rhode Island Working Families Party, Black Lives Matter Rhode Island PAC, and Common Cause Rhode Island, featured members of the public, community leaders, and State and local elected officials who called on Rhode Island Senators, as well as all other Rhode Island and Federal elected officials, to take all actions possible in the face of this unprecedented constitutional crisis.

You can watch the video here: 800 Rhode Islanders rally outside Senator Reed’s office, demanding he fight against Musk's takeover

“We are grateful for Senator Reed and Senator Whitehouse’s leadership in this fight,” said John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island. “But the United States Senate is the institution in our government best positioned to protect the views of the minority. While we don’t believe a majority of Americans support the lawlessness we’re now seeing, there is no denying that a majority of the Senate is turning a blind eye. We need Senators Reed and Whitehouse to use every available tool at their disposal to protect all Americans from what Musk and others are doing and to get Donald Trump to tell Elon Musk, ‘You’re fired!’”

“Elon Musk now controls our nation’s finances, is overruling laws and the entire legislative branch of government, and has tried to fire all federal employees,” said Aseem Rastogi, an organizer with Indivisible RI. “Rhode Islanders do not want unelected billionaires in charge of our government – and we expect our leaders in Washington to be leading the resistance to these brazen violations of the Constitution.”

Specifically, protestors listed three concrete ways they believed Rhode Island’s federal delegation should be leading the resistance to Musk’s actions.

• Placing a blanket hold on all Trump nominees moving forward until the crisis at Treasury is resolved.
• Denying unanimous consent to grind Senate business to a crawl until the crisis is resolved.
• Using quorum calls to disrupt the flow of GOP business in the Senate until the crisis is resolved.

“These tactics aren’t solutions, but they can force the GOP to fight for every single destructive step they want to take,” said Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel with Public Citizen, which has filed several lawsuits challenging DOGE’s illegal actions. “And we’re here to make clear to our senators: We think that matters. Because the slower we can make them go, the less they can destroy – and the more we can demonstrate the depravity of their agenda and Musk’s coup attempt to the public. Like every would-be tyrant in history, they want us to think that we’re powerless to stop them. But we’re not powerless, and our Democratic leaders are not powerless. We need them to start acting like it.”

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, updated

We'll fix this by taking over Gaza

Refrigeration Hasn’t Changed in 70 Years – This Breakthrough Is Changing Everything

Promising, low-energy alternative for cooling

By Cell Press

Prototype thermogalvanic refrigerator. Yilin Zeng

Scientists have introduced a promising new cooling technology that could be more efficient and environmentally friendly than traditional refrigeration. Published on January 30 in the Cell Press journal Joule, the study explores thermogalvanic refrigeration, which harnesses reversible electrochemical reactions to generate a cooling effect. 

This method requires significantly less energy than conventional cooling systems, making it both cost-effective and scalable for applications ranging from personal cooling devices to large-scale industrial use.

“Thermogalvanic technology is on its way to our lives, either in the form of clean electricity or low-power cooling, and both research and commercial communities should be paying attention,” says senior author Jiangjiang Duan of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China.

Turning food waste into a new bioplastic

This might actually be a good thing

By Angelica Marie Sanchez, Waterloo University Relations

Current plastic waste management methods are costly and harmful to the environment — and common biodegradable alternatives, like soggy paper straws, fall short as a replacement. 

MetaCycler BioInnovations has changed that by creating a better bio-based plastic alternative that combines the flexible properties of traditional plastic and is 100 per cent biodegradable. The Velocity startup produces polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), a biodegradable polymer, by engineering bacteria to convert waste from milk and cheese production. It’s a solution that upcycles waste from the dairy industry into cost-effective, sustainable bio-based plastics. 

Watch video on YouTube

Blue states, including Rhode Island fear invasion by red-state National Guard troops for deportations

Is it legal? If it's not, that hasn't stopped Trump in the past

By Matt Vasilogambros, Rhode Island Current

There’s an emerging blue-state nightmare: Inspired by Donald Trump’s call to round up immigrants who are in the country illegally, Republican governors would send their National Guard troops into Democratic-led states without those leaders’ permission.

It’s a scenario that was so concerning to Washington state Rep. Sharlett Mena that she introduced legislation that would make uninvited deployments of out-of-state troops illegal. Her bill cleared a committee last week and has the backing of Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson, who pushed for the proposal in his inaugural address last month.

The legislation is about maintaining the state’s autonomy and authority, Mena, a Democrat, told her colleagues during last week’s hearing. “Without this bill, there’s nothing on the books to prevent this.”

Later, she added, “Other states may take matters into their own hands when they want to enforce federal laws.”

In December, 26 Republican governors — all but Vermont Gov. Phil Scott — vowed to assist Trump with deportations of immigrants “who pose a threat to our communities and national security.” Their pledge included the use of National Guard troops.

Mena has reason to be concerned, said Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning New York-based pro-democracy institute.

“The Trump administration has made it quite clear that they intend to use the military to assist with immigration enforcement,” he said. “States who are opposed to that would be wise to take what measures they can to protect themselves and their states.”

When Trump says he's going to "protect" you, RUN!

Order doesn't protect free speech and indeed might harm it

By Alex Abdo for Just Security

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” There’s a version of this executive order that might have given free-speech advocates some hope that the incoming administration would investigate so-called “jawboning”—government pressure to suppress constitutionally protected speech—in good faith. 

The actual order, though, suggests that its goal is to rewrite history to suit its own agenda, and that it may itself become a vehicle for the new administration to engage in its own form of jawboning.

The executive order has three main sections. The first, titled “Purpose,” takes aim at the Biden administration’s effort to combat alleged misinformation on social media, characterizing those efforts as a campaign to “suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.” 

The second section declares that it is the policy of the United States to protect free speech by ensuring that federal officials do not engage in, facilitate, or spend taxpayer money on “any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” 

Third section directs the Attorney General to “investigate the activities of the Federal Government over the last 4 years” and to “prepare a report to be submitted to the President … with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken.”

If the executive order were limited to the second section, it would be unobjectionable. That section essentially requires the government to comply with the First Amendment. While there’s a lot of uncertainty around the exact limits that the First Amendment imposes on government pressure related to social media, there’s certainly nothing wrong with reminding federal officials of their duty to comply with the First Amendment.

But the first and third sections of the order give cause for concern.

MAGA crayons

When dementia and genocide meet

New Tracker Spotlights Corporate Criminals Trump Could Let Off the Hook

"The five corporations with the most federal investigations or cases against them are Tesla (7), Amazon (6), Pfizer (5), Wells Fargo (4), and SpaceX (4)."

Jake Johnson

The progressive advocacy group Public Citizen on Tuesday launched a new project aimed at tracking the incoming Trump administration's approach to corporate crime, an effort the watchdog said is particularly urgent given that many of the companies currently under federal investigation have connections to the president-elect.

Public Citizen found that of 192 individual corporations currently facing federal probes or cases, a third "have known ties with the Trump administration."

"They or their executives have either contributed to his inauguration, or Trump has nominated their former employees, investors, and lobbyists," the group noted.

Public Citizen said its new Corporate Enforcement Tracker will serve as "a resource for watchdogging ongoing federal investigations and cases against alleged corporate wrongdoing that are at risk of being dropped, weakened, or otherwise modified by the incoming Trump administration."

RSV vaccine 78% to 80% effective against infection, severe illness in older US veterans

RSV can be fatal for vulnerable people

Mary Van Beusekom, MS

The estimated effectiveness of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) among older US veterans in the 2023-2024 respiratory virus season against infection, emergency department/urgent care (ED/UC) visits, and hospitalization was 78%, 79%, and 80%, respectively.

The findings, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, come from a target trial emulation study led by researchers at the Veterans Affairs Portland Health Care System in Oregon. The observational study was designed to fill in knowledge gaps remaining after clinical trials (e.g., vaccine effectiveness (VE) in people with weakened immune systems, effects on healthcare use for infection).

Vaccine uptake low

The researchers used electronic health records at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to emulate a target trial comparing a single dose of RSV vaccine (RSVPreF3 [Arexvy] or RSVpreF [Abrysvo]) with no vaccination in veterans aged 60 years and older from September through December 2023, with follow-up until March 2024. 

By the end of the 2023–24 respiratory illness season, only 24% of eligible adults in the USA had received an RSV vaccine.

Purging federal health agency websites of vital information is disrupting health care and medical research

\By Will Collette

Here's a partial list of forbidden terms

Here are two interesting articles covering the impact of the Trump regime to strip federal websites of content that might somehow annoy Trump or the MAGA people. 

In some instances, whole reports are being pulled to review them and censor out any references to transgender, LGBT health issues and a host of other subjects that Trump wants to ignore. See the list at left.

These two articles describe what information is being removed and what medical researchers are doing to try to cope with this sledgehammer censorship assault.

The first article is from the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP; "SID-wrap") 

The second article is from the activist site Truthout and describes active measures underway to mitigate the dangers to public health and safety created by this blackout. 

Here's the first article. I recommend you read both.

Removal of pages from CDC website brings confusion, dismay

Chris Dall, MA

Several pages on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website remain offline amid a move by the Trump administration to remove all language related to gender identity and LGBTQ issues from government communications.

According to social media posts from researchers and journalists, pages on the CDC website started to disappear late last week, with searches producing the message "The page you're looking for was not found." Among the many pages that remain down are Health Disparities Among LQBTQ Youth, Interim Clinical Considerations for Use of Vaccine for Mpox Prevention, and Fast Facts: HIV and Transgender People.

Pages containing data from the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System are also unavailable, as is the Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication page. A page containing vaccine recommendations and guidelines from the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was also unavailable for a time late last week but is now back online.

The moves are linked to an executive order issued by the Trump administration that stated the federal government will only recognize an individual's "immutable biological classification" as either male or female and that gender identity cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex. The order calls for all agencies to "remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology, and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications or other messages."

A subsequent memo from the Office of Personnel Management called on the heads and acting heads of departments and agencies to "Take down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology" by 5 pm, January 31.

Over the weekend, a note was added to the CDC website that states, "CDC's website is being modified to comply with President Trump's Executive Orders."

Is DOGE a cybersecurity threat?

How much do you trust a 19-year-old who goes by the name "Big Balls" to access your Social Security or work on air travel?

Richard Forno, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

19 year old uber wealthy Edward Coristine also goes by the name of “Big Balls”. Musk has tasked “Big Balls” and his teen pals with examining YOUR SS payments as well as working on transportation safety.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), President Donald Trump’s special commission tasked with slashing federal spending, continues to disrupt Washington and the federal bureaucracy. According to published reports, its teams are dropping into federal agencies with a practically unlimited mandate to reform the federal government in accordance with recent executive orders.

As a 30-year cybersecurity veteran, I find the activities of DOGE thus far concerning. Its broad mandate across government, seemingly nonexistent oversight, and the apparent lack of operational competence of its employees have demonstrated that DOGE could create conditions that are ideal for cybersecurity or data privacy incidents that affect the entire nation.

Traditionally, the purpose of cybersecurity is to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of information and information systems while helping keep those systems available to those who need them. But in DOGE’s first few weeks of existence, reports indicate that its staff appears to be ignoring those principles and potentially making the federal government more vulnerable to cyber incidents.

Technical competence

Cybersecurity and information technology, like any other business function, depend on employees trained specifically for their jobs. Just as you wouldn’t let someone only qualified in first aid to perform open heart surgery, technology professionals require a baseline set of credentialed education, training and experience to ensure that the most qualified people are on the job.

Currently, the general public, federal agencies and Congress have little idea who is tinkering with the government’s critical systems. DOGE’s hiring process, including how it screens applicants for technical, operational or cybersecurity competency, as well as experience in government, is opaque. And journalists investigating the backgrounds of DOGE employees have been intimidated by the acting U.S. attorney in Washington.

DOGE has hired young people fresh out of – or still in – college or with little or no experience in government, but who reportedly have strong technical prowess. But some have questionable backgrounds for such sensitive work. And one leading DOGE staffer working at the Treasury Department has since resigned over a series of racist social media posts.

Bad Egg

For all you irony fans

Trump’s offshore wind energy freeze: What states lose if the executive order remains in place

Good bye, green energy jobs

Barbara Kates-Garnick, Tufts University

The U.S. Northeast and Northern California have the nation’s strongest offshore winds. NREL

A single wind turbine spinning off the U.S. Northeast coast today can power thousands of homes – without the pollution that comes from fossil fuel power plants. A dozen of those turbines together can produce enough electricity for an entire community.

The opportunity to tap into such a powerful source of locally produced clean energy – and the jobs and economic growth that come with it – is why states from Maine to Virginia have invested in building a U.S. offshore wind industry.

But much of that progress may now be at a standstill.

One of Donald Trump’s first acts as president in January 2025 was to order a freeze on both leasing federal areas for new offshore wind projects and issuing federal permits for projects that are in progress.

The order and Trump’s long-held antipathy toward wind power are creating massive uncertainty for a renewable energy industry at its nascent stage of development in the U.S., and ceding leadership and offshore wind technology to Europe and China.

As a professor of energy policy and former undersecretary of energy for Massachusetts, I’ve seen the potential for offshore wind power, and what the Northeast states, as well as the U.S. wind industry, stand to lose if that growth is shut down for the next four years.

This is bad: Bird flu makes the jump to cattle

USDA confirms spillover of 2nd H5N1 avian flu genotype into dairy cattle

Lisa Schnirring

Not even Flip's cows are safe

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today announced a new spillover of H5N1 avian flu to dairy cattle, which involves the D1.1 genotype currently circulating in wild birds and has been implicated in human infections, including the fatal case in a Louisiana resident who had contact with sick backyard birds.

Until now, all dairy herd H5N1 detections have involved the B3.13 genotype, thought to be the result of a single spillover from wild birds in late 2023 or early 2024. The genotype has been linked to mild infections in dairy workers, along with some poultry cullers, with conjunctivitis the main symptom.

"Genotype D1.1 represents the predominant genotype in the North American flyways this past fall and winter and has been identified in wild birds, mammals, and spillovers into domestic poultry," APHIS said in its statement.

Withholding meds from patients with chronic pain isn't going to stop fentanyl

Interview: Doctors Need Flexibility in Prescribing Opioids

By Sara Talpos

About 8 years ago, Stefan Kertesz published a provocative commentary calling for the U.S. government to reconsider its response to the opioid epidemic. The epidemic was sparked by physicians who were over-prescribing pain medication, but those prescriptions leveled off around 2010 and then began to decline. Opioid-related deaths, however, continued to climb — driven not by prescription medications but by heroin and fentanyl.

This shift had implications for both physicians and patients, wrote Kertesz, a physician in internal medicine and addiction medicine who holds positions at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Heersink School of Medicine and at the Birmingham VA Medical Center: “A relentless focus on physician prescribing” could incentivize doctors to quickly decrease or stop prescribing opioids to chronic pain patients who were previously stable and doing well. This could harm patients, he cautioned, without addressing the current causes of opioid-related deaths.

Since the release of his paper, which garnered wide attention among substance-abuse and addiction experts, Kertesz has continued to warn against overaggressive cutbacks in opioid prescribing. “People deserve individualized care,” said Kertesz in a recent Zoom interview. “Our health care system has been looking for a quick fix, both on the way up in this crisis, and on the way down. I pray for the day when we stop looking for quick fixes.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

UD: There’s a narrative, you’ve written, of a chronic pain patient who starts on opioids and then becomes addicted very severely. If I understand correctly, this experience represents just a small number of chronic pain patients.

SK: There's a lot of debate about this right now because of changing definitions of addiction and how we measure it. But the popular cartoon of this situation was that somehow chronic pain patients have become all addicted to heroin and are all dying in the streets, and if we simply stop prescribing opioids to them, they'll be safer.

That was the popular conception. It was really reflected in a quote from Vermont's Governor Pete Shumlin in The New York Times, who said — and I'm paraphrasing: We didn't have this problem in this country until oxycodone started being handed out like candy. If we could just get together on this, we could solve this problem with a click of our fingers. The implication was, reduce the opioids [and] deaths will go down.

Everybody bought into that and managed to set aside any questions about the fate of the patients whose opioids were being reduced.

Musk’s Nazi inauguration salute is not the only apparent fascist signal from Trump’s administration

Elon Musk now has access to all your Social Security, Medicare, IRS data and more

Matthew Kriner, Middlebury Institute of International Studies

Elon Musk claimed this is not a Nazi salute − but then
replied to critics with Nazi-themed puns.
 Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

Once again, a presidential administration headed by Donald Trump is in the spotlight over allegations of hidden fascist sympathies. This time, it’s precipitated by what one observer called a “stiff-armed salute” that presidential supporter and adviser Elon Musk did twice during inauguration festivities.

Critics have said it is a clear Nazi salute, while others have claimed it was just an awkward motion. Perhaps it was just the world’s worst dab.

Musk turned the controversy over his gesture into something like a joke about Nazis. On X, he posted, “Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations!” and “Bet you did nazi that coming.”

This is not the first time that Trump or someone close to him has been accused of sending fascist messages, even if they denied doing so. Nor even is it the first time a well-known figure endorsing Donald Trump has been accused of giving a Nazi salute.

As a scholar of far-right extremism, I regularly review instances of coded fascist symbols and other right-wing messages being sent by public figures and their supporters, some more obvious than others.

Go nuke yourself

Saturday rally in Providence against Elon Musk's coup

State funds awarded to expand Charlestown's Ninigret Park troll trail and add others in Suth County

More trolls!

By Will Collette

Jessica Sloan

It looks like the Charlestown's two acclaimed upcycled wood trolls, created by artist Thomas Dambo and installed in Ninigret Park, may be getting a little brother or sister soon..

In a new round of state grants from RI Commerce, two grants will help fund more trolls, in Ninigret and elsewhere in South County:

South County Tourism, Inc. | $107,500 | To support expanding the South County Troll Trail by constructing and installing a third Thomas Dambo troll sculpture in South County. 

Town of North Kingstown | $107,500 | To support constructing and installing a Thomas Dambo troll sculpture in North Kingstown. 

These grants are part of a $2 million package of grants RI Commerce has dubbed "Placemaking Initiative Awards to Support Statewide Outdoor and Public Space Capital Improvement Projects & Events" or you can just call them PIASSOPSCIPE grants. 

While some might consider government funding for public art displays a waste of money for any variety of reasons, public art, in my opinion, is a worthy investment for enriching the soul. Civil societies have understood this for millennia leaving behind monuments that still inspire awe and wonder today.

Here is the full list of grants:

URI wildlife disease expert discusses avian flu, risks and prevention

One of the root causes of egg and chicken price hikes

Kristen Curry 

Johanna Harvey, assistant professor of wildlife disease
ecology, in URI’s Department of Natural Resources Science.
(URI photo)

With the advent of cases of avian flu in southern New England, and the rise in egg prices due to limited supply as a result, concerns are rising about the threat and impact of the fowl-borne illness. 

Highly pathogenic avian influenza made its way into North America, first detected in Newfoundland, Canada, in late 2021, then spread rapidly across the continent. Global spread has continued while the virus has maintained presence in wild migratory birds.

Johanna Harvey, a noted wildlife disease ecologist and assistant professor in the University of Rhode Island’s department of Natural Resources Science can offer expert perspective. 

An evolutionary ecologist with a focus on immunogenetics, conservation and management science, Harvey was a Gerstner Scholar Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History, and comes to URI from the U.S. Geological Survey Eastern Ecological Science Center and the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on emergent diseases such as avian influenza and pathogens including avian malaria parasites and vampire flies.

At URI, she is bringing a focus on immunology and the role of wildlife disease in bird populations. The immunological and pathogenic response mechanisms of the current H5N1 circulating avian influenza are not understood for diverse wild bird and mammal species currently being impacted, she says. Harvey’s research seeks to provide research and solutions to inform disease management and improve conservation and species management for sensitive species. 

“I am motivated by my desire to understand the impacts of disease and pressures on wildlife caused by environmental change,” she says. 

Harvey discussed the risks of avian disease in an interview.

Your research has focused on highly pathogenic avian influenza — what does “highly pathogenic” mean?

The term highly pathogenic refers to influenza viruses which have the potential to cause severe disease or result in death in chickens. This term is rooted historically in the spillover of low pathogenic viruses that commonly occur in wild birds spilling over to poultry where they mutate or reassort to produce a highly pathogenic virus that causes high mortality. 

Rhode Island Senate Democrats unveil health care proposals

Senate Leadership want to improve health access, prices, and the shortage of primary care providers 

Senator Melissa A. Murray, Chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, and the Senate Leadership today announced the introduction of a 9-bill package of legislation focused on addressing health care accessibility and affordability. 

The package builds upon other actions for which the leaders also have advocated strongly, including a rate review for primary care providers and consideration of creating a medical school at the University of Rhode Island. 

The rate review proposal, which the Senate passed last year, has been incorporated into the Governor’s proposed Fiscal Year 2026 budget, which is currently under review. And a Senate commission created last year is in the process of examining the education and retention of the primary care workforce, including the feasibility of establishing a state medical school at URI. 

The bills in the package announced today build upon this work, removing burdensome administrative requirements that present barriers to patient care, protecting patients from crushing medical debt, and otherwise improving access and lowering costs. 

Chairwoman Murray (D – Dist. 24, Woonsocket, North Smithfield) is sponsoring legislation to end prior authorization requirements imposed by insurance companies on primary care providers. 

“It is the doctors, not insurers, who know best what care is needed for their patients. And we need our primary care doctors focused on providing care, not haggling with insurance companies,” she stated. 

Already on life support, hospitals blast McKee’s FY26 proposed funding cuts and fee hikes

Is McKee making a bad situation far worse?

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Half of the state’s hospitals finished fiscal year 2023 in the red,
including independently owned South County Hospital in
South Kingstown. (Photo by Laura Paton/Rhode Island Current)

Seventy-two minutes after Gov. Dan McKee released his proposed fiscal 2026 budget on Jan. 16, the state’s hospital trade group fired back.

The Hospital Association of Rhode Island in a statement warned that McKee’s spending plan would “worsen the health care crisis,” harming hospitals and, in turn, the residents who depend on them for critical services.

The strong and swift response came 11 days before the abrupt threat of a federal funding freeze that could hold up billions in aid for local hospitals. 

Rhode Island’s array of private and nonprofit hospitals have been battling rising costs, staffing shortages and a frenzy of malpractice claims for years. Meanwhile, a critical source of revenue — Rhode Island’s reimbursement rates for the one-third of state residents on Medicaid — has not kept pace with operating costs, or with neighboring states.

Musk-Trump want smaller government

 

Award-winning actress to perform acclaimed one-woman show at URI, Feb. 10

Iris Bahr in 'See You Tomorrow' at Swan Hall Auditorium

Dawn Bergantino 

Award-winning writer, actor, director, producer, and podcast host, Iris Bahr will perform her one-woman show, “See You Tomorrow,” followed by a question and answer session on Monday, Feb. 10, at 7 p.m. in URI’s Swan Hall Auditorium, 60 Upper College Road, Kingston. 

“See You Tomorrow” tells the autobiographical story of how Bahr, while video chatting with her mother thousands of miles away, saw her mother having a stroke. 

Navigating a life and death situation, Bahr relocates across the globe from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv practically overnight. Straddling cultures, generations, and an ocean, “See You Tomorrow” is a surprising, funny and poignant story about family, caregiving, guilt, and what happens when memory and one’s history dissolve in an instant.

With over 50 television and film credits to her name including roles on “Friends” and “Hacks,” Bahr is best known for her recurring role on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and her series “Svetlana.”

Rhode Island Legislative Talk Swirls Around Federal Funding Freeze

How do you plan with the federal government in chaos?

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff

Legislative coffee hours early in the session are usually a mundane affair.

Lawmakers and advocates from different policy groups sip on coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts, munch on pastries and cookies, and discuss the current legislative session.

But Tuesday’s coffee hour, hosted by the Environment Council of Rhode Island, a coalition of the state’s leading environmental groups, was more serious than usual. The night before, on Jan. 27, the Trump administration froze all federal spending, after the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) placed countless federal programs under review.

The order sent Rhode Island government into panic mode; most, if not all agencies or government entities, receive some kind of federal funding.

It’s possible the state’s environmental entities, such as the Department of Environmental Management and the Coastal Resources Management Council, could be financially handicapped. Big chunks of each agency’s budget, about $60 million (25%) of DEM and $3.1 million (30%) of CRMC’s budgets, could be frozen or inaccessible.

Sea urchin "pandemic" causing mass die-off

My least favorite sushi

By Will Collette

Two unrelated articles that appeared the same week caught my eye. One was a URI piece on research to try to figure out a good way to raise sea urchins through aquaculture. The second was a report on Israeli research on the global die-off of sea urchins and its disruption of the marine ecology.

Although sea urchin (Uni) are the only variety of sushi I've encountered and really hated, I wondered what was the fuss. As the articles detail, sea urchins aren't just a food source, but a valuable part of ocean environment. 

I begin with first with the URI story below, followed by the report from Tel Aviv University.

URI aquaculture professor and scientists worldwide look for solutions

By Hugh Markey.

Green sea urchin brood stock at the University of Maine’s
Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research.
(Photo courtesy of Coleen Suckling)

A collection of tiny golden eggs crowns a swirl of pasta. They sit on a small plate, the beautiful orange color looking very much like salmon roe. 

However, the source of these eggs may be surprising. Instead of coming from the sleek, silvery bodies of the salmon, these are the spawn of sea urchins, spindly ocean dwellers that spend their lives wandering the cold, dark bottom of the ocean.

The eggs are commonly called uni, and Coleen Suckling, a marine eco-physiologist and associate professor of aquaculture and fisheries at the University of Rhode Island, is convinced that raising these animals and harvesting the uni is part of a viable industry.

“If you think about what a clean ocean smells like, and translate that to taste, you’ll have an idea of what they taste like,” Suckling said.  

Brown University study links hospital affiliation with higher patient costs

Ironic findings from the operator of Rhode Island's hospital group

Brown University

A study by researchers at the Brown University School of Public Health shows that nearly half of all primary care providers (PCPs) in the United States are affiliated with hospitals, while the number of PCPs affiliated with private equity firms is growing and concentrated in certain regional markets.

Compared with PCPs at independent practices, those affiliated with hospitals or private equity firms charged higher prices for the same services.

The findings were published in JAMA Health Forum.

Health care consolidation is a driving force behind high health care prices in the U.S., said lead study author Yashaswini Singh, an assistant professor of health services, policy and practice who is affiliated with the Center for Advancing Health Policy through Research at Brown.

Because of a lack of data on the consolidation of primary care physicians, Singh said that it was difficult to quantify the trend.

Why Trump’s tariffs can’t solve America’s fentanyl crisis

Jacking up American consumer costs isn't going to solve our drug problem

Rodney Coates, Miami University

Americans consume more illicit drugs per capita than anyone else in the world; about 6% of the U.S. population uses them regularly.

One such drug, fentanyl – a synthetic opioid that’s 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine – is the leading reason U.S. overdose deaths have surged in recent years. While the rate of fentanyl overdose deaths has dipped a bit recently, it’s still vastly higher than it was just five years ago.

Ending the fentanyl crisis won’t be easy. The U.S. has an addiction problem that spans decades – long predating the rise of fentanyl – and countless attempts to regulate, legislate and incarcerate have done little to reduce drug consumption. Meanwhile, the opioid crisis alone costs Americans tens of billions of dollars each year.

With past policies having failed to curb fentanyl deaths, President Donald Trump now looks set to turn to another tool to fight America’s drug problem: trade policy.

During his presidential campaign, Trump pledged to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico if they don’t halt the flow of drugs across U.S. borders. Trump also promised to impose a new set of tariffs against China if it doesn’t do more to crack down on the production of chemicals used to make fentanyl. He reiterated his plan on his first day back in office, saying to reporters, “We’re thinking in terms of 25% on Mexico and Canada because they’re allowing … fentanyl to come in.”

Speaking as a professor who studies social policy, I think both fentanyl and the proposed import taxes represent significant threats to the U.S. While the human toll of fentanyl is undeniable, the real question is whether tariffs will work – or worsen what’s already a crisis.

How tariffs actually work

Definition of journalism

URI’s humanities lecture series expands discussion on ‘Sustaining Democracy’ this spring

Series wraps up in April with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jefferson Cowie

Tony LaRoche 

The University of Rhode Island Center for the Humanities will continue its year-long look at “Sustaining Democracy” this spring through the groundbreaking work of four guest speakers.

At a time of wide concern about challenges to democracy, the series showcases the vital role the arts and humanities play in interpreting and communicating threats to democracy and offering paths to democratic engagement. The spring speakers will focus on such issues confronting democracy as racism, censorship and the meaning of freedom. The lectures are free and open to the public. Registration is requested.

Trump Administration’s Halt of CDC’s Weekly Scientific Report Stalls Bird Flu Studies

What you don't know CAN hurt you

Amy Maxmen

The Trump administration has intervened in the release of important studies on the bird flu, as an outbreak escalates across the United States.

One of the studies would reveal whether veterinarians who treat cattle have been unknowingly infected by the bird flu virus. Another report documents cases in which people carrying the virus might have infected their pet cats.

The studies were slated to appear in the official journal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The distinguished journal has been published without interruption since 1952.

Its scientific reports have been swept up in an “immediate pause” on communications by federal health agencies ordered by Dorothy Fink, the acting secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Fink’s memo covers “any document intended for publication,” she wrote, “until it has been reviewed and approved by a presidential appointee.” It was sent on President Donald Trump’s first full day in office.

Former state Senator Sandra Cano resigned from office for a job with the SBA. It lasted two months.

She took her shot but lost when Biden lost

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Cano with her partner state Treasurer
 James Diossa and their kids

Former state senator Sandra Cano insists she has no regrets about her decision to leave political office to serve as New England regional administrator for the U.S. Small Business Administration, despite her brief tenure in the presidentially appointed role.

Cano’s last day with the SBA was Jan. 20 — the same day President Donald Trump took office, she confirmed in an interview on Monday. She had started the federal position on Nov. 4, a day before the presidential election.

Her last day was exactly two months after the SBA confirmed the rumors that Cano had been tapped to lead its small business programming for New England. While she suspected Trump’s victory would put her out of a job, she didn’t get her official notice until two weeks before he was sworn into office, she said.

“I am definitely honored to have served,” Cano said in an interview. “It was important for me to play a vital part in advancing programs that promote small business and entrepreneurship.”

She gave up her jobs as commerce director for the city of Pawtucket and resigned as a state senator representing Pawtucket’s Senate District 8 to take the federal position. 

“When the president of the United States calls you to serve the country, for me, that is a great honor and opportunity to serve,” Cano said.

Inside a Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda

“Put Them in Trauma”: 

By Molly Redden and Andy Kroll, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented

For Vought, these are the good old days. John Filo's Pulitzer Prize–
winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the dead body
of Jeffrey Miller minutes after the unarmed student was
fatally shot by an Ohio National Guardsman

Reporting Highlights

• “In Trauma”: A key Trump adviser says a Trump administration will seek to make civil servants miserable in their jobs.
• Military: In private speeches, he laid out plans to use armed forces to quell any domestic “riots.”
• 1776 and 1860: He likened the country’s moment to those fractious periods in American history.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

A key ally to former President Donald Trump detailed plans to deploy the military in response to domestic unrest, defund the Environmental Protection Agency and put career civil servants “in trauma” in a series of previously unreported speeches that provide a sweeping vision for a second Trump term.

In private speeches delivered in 2023 and 2024, Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, described his work crafting legal justifications so that military leaders or government lawyers would not stop Trump’s executive actions.

He said the plans are a response to a “Marxist takeover” of the country; likened the moment to 1776 and 1860, when the country was at war or on the brink of it; and said the timing of Trump’s candidacy was a “gift of God.”

ProPublica and Documented obtained videos of the two speeches Vought delivered during events for the Center for Renewing America, a pro-Trump think tank led by Vought. 

The think tank’s employees or fellows include Jeffrey Clark, the former senior Justice Department lawyer who aided Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election result; Ken Cuccinelli, a former acting deputy secretary in the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; and Mark Paoletta, a former senior budget official in the Trump administration. 

Other Trump allies such as former White House adviser Steve Bannon and U.S. Reps. Chip Roy and Scott Perry either spoke at the conferences or appeared on promotional materials for the events.