RFK Jr. is not a doctor. But he plays one at HHS.

His unprofessional beliefs have already cost lives and will probably cost many more

By Philip Eil, Rhode Island Current

I am worried. 

Rhode Island is in a vulnerable spot when it comes to mental health. For more than a decade, the state has lost an average of more than 100 residents per year to suicide. In 2020, the director of the Mental Health Association of Rhode Island warned of “gaping holes in Rhode Island’s continuum of care, through which people are slipping and getting stuck.” 

More recently, the Rhode Island Council of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry declared a state of emergency for local young folks’ mental health. Our state would face challenges with even the most responsible federal leadership. 

And so I felt a particular spike of dread when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was recently confirmed as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and other sub-agencies. 

Some of this is simply because I care about science and public health, and RFK has a long and egregious record of promoting misinformation. He blamed exposure to certain chemicals for gender dysphoria, stated that the COVID pandemic spared certain ethnic or religious groups, maligned the safety of COVID vaccines (and made ghastly comparisons of pandemic public health measures to the Holocaust), denied a link between HIV virus and AIDS, and falsely blamed childhood vaccines for autism. (The New York Times has collected these statements in a handy listicle, “7 Noteworthy Falsehoods Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has Promoted”.) 

To put this man at the helm of an agency with a trillion-dollar budget and a mission of “enhanc[ing] the health and well-being of all Americans” is a grievous error that’s likely to cause harm and unnecessary death. If this sounds hyperbolic, read about RFK’s exploits in Samoa, where he supported anti-vaccine efforts amidst a deadly measles outbreak.

When it comes to mental health, Kennedy has spread more dangerous misinformation. He has blamed antidepressants for school shootings, despite the fact that, to quote one Columbia University expert, “SSRIs, and psych meds in general, are not responsible for mass shootings or violence in any way.” He has also – falsely – suggested that antidepressants are more addictive than heroin. 

Yeah, that's really tough

Hypocrite Trump pardoned his goons who killed four cops

Rhode Island’s ‘Squid Squad’ targeted in DOGE purge of NOAA

President Musk cuts to NOAA endanger Rhode Island fisheries

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

The head of squid research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Narragansett Bay facility is among the hundreds of agency employees nationwide who are no longer on the job, according to one of NOAA’s former administrators.

Former National Marine Fisheries Service Administrator Janet Coit said Monday that about 20 employees from NOAA’s Rhode Island office and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts were recently dismissed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Coit shared the revelation during a roundtable discussion hosted by U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.) at Save the Bay’s headquarters near the Port of Providence.

Coit, who directed the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) from 2011 to 2021, called the firings “sudden, irrational and indiscriminate.”

“The circumstances are dire,” she said. “The impact will be felt in a cascading and ripple effect across many different coastal communities.”

NOAA began firing employees Feb. 27 as part of the latest wave of cuts from DOGE to shrink the federal workforce. NOAA employs some 12,000 people nationally — 94 of whom work in Rhode Island, according to the latest figures available from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. 

NOAA was a specific target in Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the second Trump term. The document contained a call to “break up NOAA,” criticizing the agency as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” DOGE plans to eliminate up to 50% of the agency’s staff, according to Magaziner, who is a member of the House Natural Resources Committee.

All generic drugs are not equal, study finds

Generics made in India have more ‘severe adverse events’

Ohio State University

Photo Credit: Policy and Medicine

Generic drugs manufactured in India are linked to significantly more “severe adverse events” for patients who use them than equivalent drugs produced in the United States, a new study finds.

These adverse events included hospitalization, disability, and in a few cases, death.  Researchers found that mature generic drugs, those that had been on the market for a relatively long time, were responsible for the finding.

The results show that all generic drugs are not equal, even though patients are often told that they are, said John Gray, co-author of the study and professor of operations at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business.

“Drug manufacturing regulation, and therefore quality assurance practices, differ between emerging economies like India and advanced economies like the United States,” Gray said.

“Where generic drugs are manufactured can make a significant difference.”

They Worked to Prevent Death. The Trump Administration Fired Them.

American lives sacrificed on the altar of MAGA

By Annie Waldman and Duaa Eldeib for ProPublica

Every day, they tackled complex issues with life-or-death stakes:

• A failure to get donor organs to critically ill patients.
• Tobacco products designed to appeal to kids.
• Maternal and infant death.

They were hired after lawmakers and bureaucrats debated and negotiated and persuaded their colleagues — sometimes over the course of years — to make those problems someone’s job to solve.

Then, this month, they were fired as part of President Donald Trump’s widespread purge of federal workers. Suddenly, the future of their public health missions was in question.

The White House hasn’t released figures on how many have been fired, but news reports have begun to take stock: about 750 workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which plays a central role responding to pandemics; more than 1,000 staffers at the National Institutes of Health, which funds and conducts life-saving research; dozens at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which manages public health care and insurance programs; and scores of employees at the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees the safety of food, drugs and medical devices.

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has vowed to gut the federal health centers, stating “entire departments” at the FDA should be cut. Neither the administration nor the federal agencies responded to ProPublica’s questions, but a White House spokesperson has previously said they were removing newer employees who were “not mission critical.”

We study mass surveillance for social control, and we see Trump laying the groundwork to ‘contain’ people of color and immigrants

King Donald is our Big Brother

Brittany Friedman, University of Southern California and Raquel Delerme, University of Southern California

King Donald Trump has vowed to target his political enemies, and experts have warned that he could weaponize U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct mass surveillance on his targets.

Mass surveillance is the widespread monitoring of civilians. Governments typically target specific groups – such as religious minorities, certain races or ethnicities, or migrants – for surveillance and use the information gathered to “contain” these populations, for example by arresting and imprisoning people.

We are experts in social control, or how governments coerce compliance, and we specialize in surveillance. Based on our expertise and years of research, we expect Trump’s second White House term may usher in a wave of spying against people of color and immigrants.

Spreading moral panic

Trump is already actively deploying a key tactic in expanding mass surveillance: causing moral panics. Moral panics are created when politicians exaggerate a public concern to manipulate real fears people may have.

Take Trump on crime, for example. Despite FBI data showing that crime has been dropping across the U.S. for decades, Trump has repeatedly claimed that “crime is out of control.” Stoking fear makes people more likely to back harsh measures purportedly targeting crime.

Trump has also worked to create a moral panic about immigration.

He has said, for example, that “illegal” migrants are taking American jobs. In truth, only 5% of the 30 million immigrants in the workforce as of 2022 were unauthorized to work. And in his Jan. 25, 2025, presidential proclamation on immigration, Trump likened immigration at the southern border to an “invasion,” evoking the language of war to describe a population that includes many asylum-seeking women and children.

The second step in causing moral panics is to label racial, ethnic and religious minorities as villains to justify expanding mass surveillance.

Building on his rhetoric about crime and immigration, Trump frequently connects the two issues. He has said that migrants murder because they have “bad genes,” echoing beliefs expressed by white supremacists. During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s coinage “bad hombre” invoked stereotypes of dangerous migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to steal jobs and sell drugs.

The president has similarly connected Black communities with crime. At an August 2024 rally in Atlanta, Georgia, Trump called the majority-Black city “a killing field.” The month prior, he said the same thing about Washington, D.C.

Small comfort

Rights you have under law that President Musk and King Donald will no longer protect

Rep. Spears introduces bill to clarify local zoning opinions

Legislation is part of Speaker Shekarchi’s 2025 12-bill housing package 

Charlestown state Rep. Tina Spears has introduced legislation to allow those purchasing property to rely on the zoning certificates or opinions they receive from local officials.

The legislation is part of House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi’s (D-Dist. 23, Warwick) 12-bill package of legislation regarding housing issues, his fifth comprehensive suite of housing bills since becoming Speaker in 2021.

“The specific zoning status of a parcel can be complex and difficult to understand for property owners and prospective buyers,” said Representative Spears (D-Dist. 36, Charlestown, New Shoreham, South Kingstown, Westerly). 

“That’s why it’s so important that the zoning opinions issued locally are reliable enough for owners and buyers to make informed decisions about their development plans for their properties. This bill ensures that they will be, removing an unneeded area of ambiguity in our state zoning law.”

The bill (2025-H 5795) would allow purchasers to reasonably rely on zoning opinions issued by local officials. Presently, when a current or prospective property owner obtains a zoning certificate, the certificate is for instructive purposes only and not binding; this amendment would remove the non-binding nature of zoning certificates to allow property owners to rely on the municipal determination of the legality of the present use.

The bill would take effect upon passage and has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee.

CDC layoffs strike deeply at its ability to respond to the current flu, norovirus and measles outbreaks and other public health emergencies

President Musk and King Trump gut US ability to fight infectious diseases

Jordan Miller, Arizona State University

The Trump regime ordered the CDC to pull this
public service ad

In just a few short weeks, the Trump administration has brought drastic changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and public health. Beginning with the removal of websites and key public health datasets in January 2025, the Trump administration has taken actions to dismantle established public health infrastructure as part of its second-term agenda.

In addition, the administration has begun a widespread purge of the federal public health workforce. As of Feb. 19, around 5,200 employees at the CDC and the National Institutes of Health had been let go. About 10% of the CDC’s staff have been removed, with plans for additional firings.

As a teaching professor and public health educator, I, like thousands of other health professionals, rely on CDC data and educational resources throughout my work. CDC websites are the first stop for health information for my students and for health care practitioners, and are vital to protecting the U.S. from infectious diseases, like avian flu and COVID-19, as well as noninfectious health conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease.

Here’s a quick look at what the CDC does to protect Americans’ health, and how it’s likely to be affected by the Trump administration’s actions:

Gutting the CDC’s capacity

Prior to the February cuts, the CDC employed over 10,000 full-time staff in roles spanning public health, epidemiology, medicine, communications, engineering and beyond to maintain this critical public health infrastructure.

In addition to the centers’ wide variety of functions to protect and promote public health in the U.S., a vast amount of research in the U.S. relies on CDC data. The CDC obtains data from all 50 states, territories and the District of Columbia, which is collated into widely utilized databases such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, National Health Interview Survey and Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.

Several of these datasets and CDC websites were removed at the start of the second Trump term, and while they are currently back online due to a federal court order, it remains to be seen if these important sources of information will remain accessible and updated going forward.

The CDC also publishes the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which allows for ongoing and timely surveillance of key health conditions. The reports cover a wide range of topics, including wildfires, motor vehicle accidents, autism, asthma, opioids, mental health and many others. The CDC plays a central role in monitoring and reporting the spread of flu in winter months through its FluView, which informs clinical practice as well as public health interventions.

Physicians are reporting that their ability to respond to the surges in respiratory viruses they are seeing has been hobbled by the missing data and by prohibitions on CDC staff communicating outside the agency.

The CDC’s famed “disease detectives,” part of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, appear to have been spared following public outcry after more than half of its members were initially told they would be let go as part of the Feb. 14 mass layoffs.

It remains to be seen if this group will remain intact long term. Concerns are growing that shakeups to the nation’s infectious disease surveillance teams will hamper the government’s ability to respond effectively at a time when avian flu and measles are growing concerns in the U.S.

How Trump’s compulsion to dominate sabotages dealmaking, undermines democracy and threatens global stability

Bullies are terrible deal-makers

Karrin Vasby Anderson, Colorado State University

Journalists covering the Feb. 28, 2025, Oval Office meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described it as a “jaw-dropping” “spectacle” and a “striking breach of Oval Office comity.” Slate’s Fred Kaplan asserted, “Nobody has ever seen anything like it.”

People shouldn’t have been surprised.

The Oval Office encounter was expected to be an on-camera meeting between the president and the Ukrainian head of state before the signing of a crucial minerals deal between the two countries that was meant to be a key step toward ending the war in Ukraine.

But as reporters described it, the initially routine meeting devolved into a “fiery exchange” in which Trump and Vice President JD Vance “berated” and “harangued” Zelenskyy after he pushed back on Vance’s assertion that Trump’s diplomatic skills would ensure that Russian President Vladimir Putin would honor a ceasefire agreement.

Trump’s compulsion to dominate both allies and enemies seems to have caused him to jettison the negotiation the moment that Zelenskyy declined to perform subservient fealty. The meeting, which was ended by Trump with no agreement signed, illustrated why authoritarians are lousy dealmakers, particularly when autocratic instincts are exacerbated by what’s known as toxic masculinity.

Toxic masculinity is a version of masculinity that discourages empathy, expresses strength through dominance, normalizes violence against women and associates leadership with white patriarchy. It devalues behaviors considered to be “feminine” and suggests that the way to earn others’ respect is to accrue power and status.

As a communication scholar who studies gender and politics, I have written about Trump’s displays of toxic masculinity and authoritarian tendencies in a variety of situations, during and after his first presidential term.

Trump’s reaction to Zelenskyy in the Oval Office illustrates how these inclinations stymie the president’s purported dealmaking abilities, undermine democratic values and make the world a more dangerous place.

Excerpts from the Feb. 28 Oval Office meeting, featuring U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

DOGE kids dig in at Social Security

Anxiety Mounts Among Social Security Recipients 

by Eli Hager for ProPublica

Donald Trump was asked at a press conference this month if there were any federal agencies or programs that Elon Musk’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency wouldn’t be allowed to mess with.

“Social Security will not be touched,” Trump answered, echoing a promise he has been making for years. Despite his eagerness to explode treaties, shutter entire government agencies and abandon decades-old ways of doing things, the president understands that Social Security benefits for seniors are sacrosanct.

Still, the DOGE team landed at the Social Security Administration this week, with Musk drawing attention for his outlandish claims that large numbers of 150-year-old “vampires” are receiving Social Security payments. DOGE has begun installing its own operatives, including an engineer linked to tweets promoting eugenics and executives with a cut-first-fix-later philosophy, in multiple top positions at the Social Security Administration.

Their first wave of actions — initiating the elimination of 41 jobs and the closing of at least 10 local offices, so far — was largely lost in the rush of headlines. Those first steps might seem restrained compared with the mass firings that DOGE has pursued at other federal agencies. 

Elon Musk comes to visit your house

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow, CLICK HERE

corp

Senator Jack Reed denounces Trump/Vance alignment with Russia

From the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee

 

C-Town Dems News

March 2025

CHARIHO DISTRICT PUBLIC BUDGET HEARING TOMORROW, March 4, 2025, 7:30pm Charlestown Middle School Auditorium

Please attend the Chariho District Public Budget Hearing on Tuesday, March 4th at 7:30pm in the CMS Auditorium. The public hearing is an opportunity to listen, speak out, and share your story, concerns, values, and questions. The voices of the public on March 4th will influence the continuing budget process on March 11th, which decides the budget that is then presented to voters on April 8th.   We're looking for people who live in Charlestown, Richmond, or Hopkinton to attend so that all three Chariho towns are represented.

Coming soon: March Food Drive!   The RI Democratic Party is helping to ensure that no Rhode Islander goes hungry. Charlestown Dems will be helping this effort and will announce a drop-off and location to benefit the Community Food Bank later this month… please check our web site for info or subscribe below.

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The Charlestown Democratic Town Committee manages the affairs of the Democratic Party in the town of Charlestown, RI subject to RI Election Law, State Party rules and its own bylaws. We meet the first Wednesday of every month at 6:00 PM at the Charlestown Police Station. Any Charlestown registered Democrat is welcome to attend.

P.O. Box 1088, Charlestown RI 02813 charlestowndemocrats.org