South County Rising community meeting on July 10

Protest in Ashaway on Wednesday

Legislation enacted to provide safety guidelines for AI chatbots and AI use in mental healthcare

Much needed protection 

Two bills from Sen. Lori Urso and Rep. Tina L. Spears to create artificial intelligence safety guidelines related to suicidal ideation and mental health treatment have been signed into law. The bills are part of the Senate’s 17-bill package of healthcare legislation.

“As the incorporation of AI in uses that directly impact human health and safety rapidly expands, it is imperative that we recognize the potential harm from these systems, whose operation is often inconsistent with professional standards,” said Senator Urso (D-Dist. 8, Pawtucket). “We have all read about the tragic instances in this country in the last few years involving distressed individuals who have turned to chatbots for companionship, advice or counsel and whom, evidence has shown, have been encouraged to, or not appropriately discouraged from, engaging in self-harm. It is time to put safeguards in place to protect Rhode Islanders of all ages from this rapidly expanding technology, both at home and in a clinical setting.”

The first bill (2026-S 2195Aaa, 2026-H 7350Aaa) requires developers to incorporate protocols to protect vulnerable users who may express suicidal ideation, desires for self-harm or desires to physically harm others while interacting with a chatbot. The systems must also refer users to a crisis service provider as soon as it detects any of these expressions, and developers will have to submit annual reports to the Attorney General’s office showing the number of safety protocol activations and related metrics.

No, your drinking water isn’t contaminated by abortion pills

Viagra, maybe? Condoms, definitely.

Jenae Barnes, Climate Reporter

This story was originally reported by Jenae Barnes, Climate Reporter of The 19th. Meet Jenae and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Anti-abortion advocates, including Republican lawmakers and state officials, want the EPA to review mifepristone as a water contaminant. Scientists say there’s no evidence it harms the environment or people.

While there is no scientific evidence that abortion medication is contaminating Americans' water supply, it has nonetheless become a central claim by the anti-abortion movement. Activists, Instagram influencers and Republican Party officials — including state and federal lawmakers — are doubling down on what experts describe as a disinformation campaign that mixes environmental policy and reproductive rights, and risks exploiting legitimate concerns about clean water.

“What if I were to tell you that every time you fill up a glass of water at your kitchen sink from the tap, you were actually *drinking* someone else’s abortion,” influencer Isabel Brown wrote in an Instagram post in May. In the accompanying video, the Gen Z conservative content creator, who has more than 1 million followers on her platform, talks to Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, a national anti-abortion organization, and contends that anti-abortion medication is “poisoning” the water.

The claim isn’t new. For decades, anti-abortion advocates have argued that abortion medications, primarily mifepristone, pollute the environment and put pregnant people’s health at risk. But the argument has now become part of a widespread and often coordinated effort to create federal and state policy that further suppresses abortion access. 

Energy costs are high and unaffordable

What utilities, governments, communities and you can do to help cut energy costs

Sanya Carley, University of Pennsylvania; Alexandra Klass, University of Michigan; Alison L. Knasin, University of Pennsylvania; David Konisky, Indiana University, and Shelley Welton, University of Pennsylvania

For many Americans, energy bills are becoming increasingly unaffordable.

Energy prices increased approximately 30% on average from 2021 to 2026. In some places, the rates of increase have been much steeper. In the Mid-Atlantic and eastern Midwest region where several of us live, the regional electricity grid is run by PJM Interconnection, and power prices in the first quarter of 2026 were 76% higher than the same period in 2025.

These rising utility costs are a shock to many people, including those already having a hard time paying for the energy they need. In 2024, 1 in 3 American households reported struggling to pay their energy bills, and 15.1 million homes were disconnected from their electricity or gas services because the residents couldn’t pay their bill. Energy insecurity is a pervasive and potentially dangerous predicament for these millions of households, and a growing challenge for America as energy bills rise.

Energy markets, which we study, are famously complex. But many parties in these marketplaces, from the federal government to individual consumers, have opportunities to help provide Americans with affordable energy. Some may not be obvious to the casual observer, or even to savvy energy wonks.

Trump doesn’t own the government – even though he acts as if Congress is not his equal in constitutional power and authority

The Constitution does not give Trump the power he thinks he has

Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin, Boise State University

In a recent exchange with reporters about the newly brokered Iran agreement, Donald Trump was asked whether he planned to submit the deal to Congress.

“I never thought about sending – never even thought about it, but I will,” Trump said. “I will send it to Congress. I like the idea.”

The most revealing phrase in the president’s statement was not “I will send it.” It was “I never thought about it.”

In a constitutional system built around separated powers, the consent of Congress should be more than an idea the president remembers after a reporter asks. Especially when it comes to questions of war, peace and foreign policy, Congress is where the public’s representatives play a crucial role in national decision-making.

Exactly what role Congress has in this particular agreement is not yet clear. The Constitution gives the Senate formal responsibility for approving or rejecting treaties. But presidents also enter many international agreements without submitting them for a Senate vote. As a result, lawyers and lawmakers often disagree about when congressional approval is legally required and when a president can act on his own.

But the legal question is not the only issue. Trump’s comment was revealing because it suggested that Congress had not been part of his thinking from the beginning.

That fits a larger pattern in Trump’s rhetoric. In his public remarks, he rarely describes Congress as a coequal branch of government. It appears as an obstacle, an audience, a pressure point, a rubber stamp or an afterthought.

As a scholar of media and presidential rhetoric, and an endowed professor for the Frank Church Institute, a center established to honor the former senator who once chaired a committee that aimed to ensure Congress’ role overseeing executive branch activities, I pay close attention to how presidents talk about power. The language they use often reveals not only what they intend to do, but how they understand America’s constitutional system itself.

In 2016, Trump accepted the GOP nomination for president, saying of the country’s problems, ‘I alone can fix it.’

Dear Leader wants you to have fun. Or else.

 

How to cook squid

SK Land Trust reopens trail

Welcome Back to Yawgoo Trail!

By the South Kingstown Land Trust

SKLT is so proud to share with you that after 6 years of planning, fundraising, conservation work Yawgoo Trail is officially reopened!

Address: 236 Barber’s Pond Rd, West Kingston, RI 02892

This milestone would not have been possible without the generous support of the many organizations, grant programs, and individual donors who believed in and donated to this project. We marked the occasion with a Ribbon Cutting Ceremony on June 12, 2026, and the trail is now fully open — kiosk and all — and welcoming visitors.

A large study of more than 23,000 adults suggests that certain sleep habits may be linked to signs of brain aging years later.

These 3 Common Sleep Habits May Be Aging Your Brain Faster

By Niranjana Rajalakshmi, University of Arizona

Sleep habits may influence how the brain ages over time. A new University of Arizona study suggests that several common sleep patterns are associated with signs of brain aging.

The study, published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, analyzed existing brain scans and questionnaire data from more than 23,000 middle-aged and older adults in a large biomedical database. The research is part of a wider collaboration involving the U of A Department of Psychology, the Zuckerman College of Public Health and the University of Southern California.

The researchers found that three sleep behaviors were clearly linked to a marker of brain aging in otherwise healthy people: sleeping outside the recommended range of seven to nine hours, frequent daytime napping, and sleeplessness. Each was associated with a larger volume of white matter lesions, which are areas of brain damage that can build up with age and are connected to a greater risk of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.

Madeline Ally, the study’s lead author and a graduate researcher at the Department of Psychology, said sleep is often examined as a single overall measure instead of as a set of separate behaviors and patterns. That approach can make it harder to see how specific aspects of sleep relate to brain aging.

Medicare’s AI Push Snarls Patients and Doctors in Errors and Delays

Big help!

By Darius Tahir

Bill Curry, 65, raises cattle on the same land in rural Oklahoma once owned by his father and generations before him. Each quarter, for several years, he has made the 2½-hour drive to Oklahoma City for an epidural in his spine to treat his back pain.

But this year, because of a new Medicare program, Curry has traveled a little more often.

In February, during one trip, he was told unexpectedly that he needed preapproval for the procedure. Then he went again a month or so later to get the injection, for a total of 10 hours on the road. His clinic wanted him to come in a third time, which they had never asked of him before. That appointment was “just to fill out a piece of paper to tell them how you feel again,” Curry said, so he hasn’t gone.

In January, Oklahoma became one of six states to begin a pilot program testing the use of preapprovals in traditional Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people 65 and older or with disabilities. Medicare had previously eschewed the practice — also known as prior authorization — which requires patients or someone on their medical team to seek insurance approval before proceeding with certain procedures, tests, and prescriptions.

Epidurals like Curry’s are among 13 medical services subject to the new program because the Trump administration says they’re prone to fraud or misuse. Powered by artificial intelligence, the program — called the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction Model, or WISeR — is intended to save the federal government money and protect patients from potentially unsafe or unneeded care.

Yet early reviews from Oklahoma and the other pilot states — Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas, and Washington — suggest WISeR’s rollout has not been smooth. Patients, doctors, and other healthcare professionals who spoke with KFF Health News say the effort has created confusion, errors, long wait times, and stress. Some described the rollout as “horrendous” and say people enrolled in Medicare in the pilot states are now getting ensnared in the same red tape as those with private insurance.

Caligula on the Potomac

Trump is desecrating the nation's capital monument by monument

Sabrina Haake

The South Lawn of the White House featured a huge, brightly lit metal cage called “the ​Claw,” a stage erected to showcase men beating each other bloody, Caligula style, to entertain a wannabe Roman Emperor on his 80^th birthday.

After musical performers refused to sing at the ​nation’s 250^th birthday party Trump made about himself, the UFC cage match has taken top entertainment billing. The Claw complements golden Trump statues, illegally-minted gold coins bearing Trump’s likeness, commemorative passports featuring Trump’s photo, and huge Nazi chic banners of Trump draped on the edifices of the DOJ, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Agriculture buildings.

A former FBI Director called the banners ‘sickening’ for their authoritarian symbolism.

An arch for one

Monument by revered monument, Trump is painstakingly desecrating the U.S. capital. Last week, Trump said that the 250 foot arch he is demanding as a monument to himself would be, “along with the White House Ballroom, the Greatest Structure in Washington.” His drive to overshadow national monuments to Presidents Washington and Lincoln reflects a level of delusion best described by the DSM: “Grandiosity presents an exaggerated sense of self-importance, entitlement, a constant need for admiration, and a lack of empathy …” It also presents profound disrespect for our nation’s history.

Trump’s ‘Triumphal Arch’ would obstruct the historically significant sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House at Arlington National Cemetery. Historical preservationists emphasize that the Lincoln Monument was designed so that it would forever gaze at the final resting place of over 400,000 veterans, a somber reflection on the cost of freedom. The sightline also connects Lincoln to the Robert E. Lee Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery to symbolize national unity, the post-Civil War reconciliation between North and South.

The massive scale of the arch, which will be more than double the height of the 99-foot Lincoln Memorial, would block the views along the Memorial Avenue Corridor and across the Arlington Memorial Bridge. When viewed from the Arlington House, the arch would obscure much of Lincoln’s Memorial, like someone walking in front of a movie screen and just... standing there.

To Trump, historical symbolism is noise. According to recent National Park Service documents, Trump is planning year-round, 20-hours-per-day construction on his arch, for projected completion within three years. Several years of construction all day and night, diverted traffic, and marred sightlines is extremely aggressive; one intuits that the completed arch will take less time to tear down.

Branding a nation

Trump’s handiwork on Lincoln’s Memorial Reflecting Pool isn’t much better. Trump posted a video on Truth Social showing workers draining and cleaning it, as Trump’s voice talks about “Biden filth and incompetence.” The Reflecting Pool, built in 1922 and restored in 2012, has nothing to do with Biden, who clearly competes with Trump in the rent-free occupation of Trump’s own head.

The Reflecting Pool was originally designed with a reflective surface intentionally subordinate and solemn, a dignified spatial connection between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Trump had it repainted in circus blue, again missing the historical significance of solemnity.

The work was also performed by another of Trump’s overpaid no-bid contractors. Trump said he handpicked Atlantic Industrial Coatings because they had done work on his personal swimming pool at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. 

Shortly thereafter, perhaps realizing that ‘I hired my pool guy’ was not the best justification, Trump did an about-face and claimed he had never used the firm’s services before. After the contract was awarded, bypassing standard competitive bidding channels, the cost ballooned from initial estimates of under $2 million to $13.1 million.

What will the future say?

Trump lawyers recently argued in federal court that they could bulldoze the Statue of Liberty and the courts couldn’t do anything to stop them. 

A man who slapped his name on steaks, vodka, a fake university, candles, soaps, NFTs, casinos, and an airline that went bankrupt has now upgraded to more durable media on the public dime: marble, federally funded, and gold, omnipresent. 

Trump has redecorated the Oval Office with heavy gold filigree, including gold cherubs, gold trim, and gold furniture. His gold overkill aesthetic, reminiscent of Versailles just before the French monarchs were beheaded, proves that Trump’s historical ignorance isn’t confined to American history.

Congress, not the president, controls federal property, but Trump doesn’t want to work with Congress, preferring to rebrand DC in his own personal, bawdy image. 

The National Trust has sued, arguing that the White House grounds, a designated national park, cannot be updated without congressional approval and that the park, like Yellowstone, can’t simply be repurposed at one man’s whim. That suit is pending.

Future generations will study this era and learn many things. They will learn about the fragility of democracy, and the extraordinary load-bearing capacity of our capital’s foundation, now bearing the weight of history, the republic and Trump’s self-regard.

E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one. And that one would really like his own monument.

Sabrina Haake is a political analyst and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1^st and 14^th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.

Buy American!

One reason why Trump hated Mueller

Heat Wave Politics: GOP Leaders Deride Calls to Conserve

Heat doesn't care who you vote for

By Marianne Lavelle

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Seeking to sow unity amid a pending heat crisis, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani reaped a whirlwind of right-wing rage.

Mamdani’s post on X on Wednesday urged New Yorkers to turn their thermostats to 78 degrees F and turn off unneeded lights and electronics—nothing original. It echoed the advice of the state’s largest utility, ConEd, which also asked customers to limit air conditioning in a Tuesday press release. “Let’s ease demand — and get through the heat — together,” Mamdani wrote.

“Welcome to socialism,” shot back Nikki Haley, the former Republican governor, diplomat and presidential aspirant.

Reader-provided context beneath Haley’s post noted that she had made a similar plea for conservation during a 2015 cold snap when she was South Carolina’s chief executive. They also pointed out that former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican, urged an identical 78-degree limit on AC during a 1999 heat wave.