Saturday, October 24, 2026
Joy Harjo, first Native American U.S. poet laureate, to deliver poetry reading at URI on Oct. 28
Trailblazer comes to South County
Joy Harjo, a trailblazing
poet, artist, musician and member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, who in 2019
became the first Native American to be appointed U.S. poet laureate, will
deliver a much-anticipated poetry reading
at the University of Rhode Island on Wednesday, Oct. 28, from 5-7 p.m.
The event, sponsored by URI’s Department of English and Creative Writing
and the College of Arts and Sciences, will take place in Edwards Hall, 64 Upper
College Road, on the Kingston Campus. Harjo’s visit to URI coincides with the
250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence
and will take place on the eve of National Native American Heritage Month,
celebrated every November.
Harjo will read and discuss a selection of her poetry from a
career spanning over fifty years, including her most recent book,“Cloud
Runner,” published this month. Harjo’s revelatory poems celebrate and bear
witness to human resilience, and reckon with personal, communal, and national
histories in a voice singularly warm and oracular. Her work expands our sense
of language’s power to express what might seem inexpressible until transformed
into story and song.
This free public event will open with a ceremonial welcome
to the traditional lands of the Narragansett Nation and to URI, and will
include Harjo signing copies of her published work and a question-and-answer
session.
How Trump’s disaster aid delays and FEMA cuts could galvanize the ‘movable middle’ in the 2026 elections
Dealing with disasters should not be politicized
Dana R. Fisher, American University
When Hurricane Isaias hit the Florida Panhandle on Oct. 9, 2026, it was just the latest weather disaster for Americans in a year that continues to break records.
Rhode Island was one of the states Trump
turned down
The hottest U.S. summer on record left millions of Americans facing life-threatening heat waves. Extreme heat and drought set the stage for wildfires. Flooding from powerful storms and days of heavy rainfall inundated communities in several states. And now a “Super El Niño,” on top of already rising temperatures and sea levels, is expected to make extreme events worse, at least into spring 2027.
In the past, states relied heavily on federal aid and expertise to respond quickly to disasters. But in communities across the U.S., people recovering from floods, storms and wildfires in 2025 and 2026 have been left waiting much longer for federal aid – if it arrives at all.
Will there be political consequences in the midterm elections for the slow aid and lack of government assistance?
The answer to that question runs through the ways the Trump administration has changed disaster response and federal disaster aid. As a professor who has written for years about civic engagement and climate policy, I have reason to believe that voters’ frustration with slow disaster aid may show up at the polls.
Cuts to FEMA hobbled federal disaster help
Even though the United States is experiencing more disasters as the climate changes, the federal programs meant to help Americans recover are being diminished.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has faced significant cuts to funding and staff since the Trump administration took office in January 2025. The administration initially talked about abolishing the agency, arguing that states and communities could deal with disasters on their own. It created a plan to cut FEMA’s staffing by 50%, but in September 2026, a judge found that plan to be unlawful.
FEMA lost over 17% of its trained staff members in 2025 alone, including hundreds of people who were on call to respond to disasters. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin continues to defend the administration’s goal of a leaner workforce at the agency.
Hopkinton considers its cost share for construction of new unified elementary school in Charlestown
Hopkinton Council Hears School Bond Share Could Top 4% Tax Cap
Adriana
Vossari, RI & Local Government, is NOT an actual person but rather is an AI-bot used by UpriseRI to review and summarize public records. Click here for their explanation for how this is done:
If the November 3 bond passes with 65% state reimbursement, a median Hopkinton home at $515,500 would pay about $335.39 more a year, the town manager said. A speaker said the town's share of the debt payments could top the 4% levy cap, which the town can exceed only by asking the state.
A speaker told the Hopkinton Town Council at its Monday night
meeting that if the town's increase comes to about $1 million, its share of
debt payments on the proposed $116 million regional school bond would be over
the town's 4% cap on tax levy growth, according to the Hopkinton Town Council's
published meeting
recording.
The tax levy is the total amount a town raises through
property taxes. A speaker said the town can only increase its levy by 4%
"or else we have to go to the state" and ask for permission to exceed
the cap. A speaker added, "I believe our 4% cap is around 700,000."
The bond goes before voters in the November 3 election. The
council did not vote on the bond; the agenda item was a discussion of the
school bond financial breakdown.
The tax math
The town manager presented a one-page breakdown, also posted
on the town website, that the regional school district requested from its three
member towns for an impact statement on the bond. The manager said the managers
and finance directors of Hopkinton, Charlestown and Richmond coordinated so the
data would be consistent. The manager said they spoke with Jeff Allen of
Charlestown and the Richmond town manager, among those involved.
The manager said the figures assume the state reimburses 65%
of the $116 million bond. Under that assumption, the manager said, the total
cost to the district after reimbursement would be $80,626,214. The district's
financial advisor supplied the annual debt service figures, according to the
manager.
Costs are split among the three towns by enrollment, and
Hopkinton's share is 39.17%, the manager said. For a median Hopkinton home,
valued at $515,500, the manager said the annual tax bill would rise $335.39 for
the bond alone. Homes with higher assessed values would pay more, and
lower-valued homes would pay less.
Friday, October 23, 2026
We Should All Be Worried That Trump’s Hands Are on the Nuclear Trigger
Scary to think what Trump might do, especially if he loses the midterms
Dr. Ira Helfand and Dr. Bandy X. Lee in Common Dreams
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| In an AI-generated image that he posted on his Truth Social account on May 17, 2026, Trump presses the red nuclear button. Photo from Trump's Truth Social. |
Over the last few months, the president of the United States has
been posting
an image of himself firing nuclear weapons at
Earth from a spaceship. How worried should we be?
Right now, a handful of people in nine countries have the
power to launch a nuclear
war that will kill billions and destroy human civilization. In the United
States that power is concentrated in one person, the president, who has sole
and unchecked authority to launch nuclear war.
No one should ever have that power, but the danger is
especially acute when the individual in question has repeatedly demonstrated
that he is impulsive, vindictive, delusional, and profoundly lacking in basic
human empathy. We are speaking of Donald Trump.
The nuclear arsenal Trump currently controls includes some 1,700 deployed nuclear warheads, most of them with an explosive force of 100 to 800 kilotons, six to 50 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
If used in a large-scale attack on Russia, they could kill more than 100 million people in the first afternoon. And a Russian counterattack would kill at least that many here in the United States.
Those who survived the initial fires and explosions would find themselves living in a wasteland that we cannot imagine. None of the things we need to keep ourselves alive would be available. There would be no electric grid, no cell phones, no internet, no food distribution system, no system for distributing gasoline or natural gas or heating oil, no law and order.
And in the months following the initial attacks most of those who survived those attacks would also die—from starvation, epidemic disease, radiation sickness, and exposure to the elements.
In the first two years alone, three-quarters of humanity—6 billion people—would die.
ImpulsivityTrump has bragged that he makes decisions based on his “gut instinct.” In a 2018 interview he defended style of decision-making by claiming, “I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody’s brain can ever tell me.”
The consequences have played out
disastrously in the Iran War, where his initial decision to launch the attack
on Iran appeared to lack any coherent goals, any plan to achieve those goals,
or any back up plan if things went wrong and, for example, the Iranians closed
the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump’s explosive personal attacks on journalists who question him are well known, as are his repeated attempts to use the Department of Justice to imprison people who disagree with him publicly.
More worrisome
are his thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons against Iran when it refused his demand
for “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.”
Delusional State
Given the unprecedented torrent of false statements that Trump has made, it is sometimes difficult to know when he is willfully lying and when he actually believes the misinformation he is spreading.
But it does
appear that he actually believes that he won the 2020 presidential election,
despite the irrefutable evidence that he did not. And he has engaged in
sustained political activity grounded in this delusion.
Lack of Empathy
Trump’s nasty, ad hominem attacks, usually accompanied by a crude nickname for the target of his displeasure, are a staple of his public life.
His indifference to human suffering, and his disregard for human life, is
exemplified by the extralegal executions of people on boats that he claims may
be transporting drugs, and, on a far grander scale, by his support for the war crimes being
committed in Gaza, and his
indifference to the even greater crimes being committed in Sudan, and the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
There are no “right hands” to be in possession of nuclear
weapons. But Donald
Trump clearly possesses utterly “wrong hands” and should be lawfully
removed from an office that gives him the power to destroy humanity. And the
United States should actively work for the elimination of all nuclear weapons,
not as a distant vision, but an urgent national security priority.
Ira Helfand is a past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and serves as the co-president of the group's global federation, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.
Bandy X. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist and a world expert on violence who taught at Yale Law School for 17 years while on the faculty of Yale School of Medicine, before joining the Harvard Medical School faculty, where she remained until 2024. She is currently devoting her time to a number of policy-oriented think tanks, both domestically and abroad.
Trump Loaded Up on Big Pharma Stocks While Jacking Up Drug Costs
We pay, he cleans up
Jake Johnson for Common Dreams
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The JEC analysis estimates that Trump increased his stock holdings
in the pharmaceutical sector from $1.7 million in 2024 to as much as $56.2
million last year. The committee notes that Trump, who has repeatedly promised
to cut drug prices
while implementing policies that raised them, “held as much as
$39.1 million in stock in the same Big Pharma companies
that directly benefited” from a budget package that the
president signed into law last summer.
“Trump and congressional Republicans
intentionally force seniors to pay more for cancer treatment so that Big Pharma
can rake in more money that Trump can personally profit from,” said Sen. Maggie
Hassan (D-NH), the JEC’s ranking member. “It’s outrageous and yet typical from
this president, who makes the American people foot the bill again and again for
his own gains.”
Tucked in the Trump-GOP budget law was a provision exempting some widely used, high-priced
prescription drugs from Medicare
price negotiations. Merck’s cancer medication Keytruda was one of the drugs temporarily shielded by the provision; Merck appears more
than 60 times in the president’s 2025 financial disclosure.
The JEC analysis notes that “in 2025, Merck reported $18.8
billion in US revenues for Keytruda, which helped the company net $22.5 billion
in profits that year, a 16% increase compared to 2024.”
The president also made big purchases of stock in Johnson
& Johnson, AbbVie, Pfizer, and Amgen last year. The JEC found that each of
those companies “had at least one drug that benefited from the carveouts” in
the Trump-GOP budget law.
Additionally, the Trump
administration has entered friendly agreements with pharmaceutical companies in which
the president is invested, including Pfizer and Eli Lilly.
Rhode Island becomes the first state to file a lawsuit against Meta for the alleged scam ads
Attorney General Neronha sues Meta for fraudulent advertisements
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| Let's get Facebook to pay us more |
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha today
filed a lawsuit
against Meta for allegedly failing to curb advertisements for fraudulent
products and financial scams on its platforms, despite telling the public it
uses sophisticated efforts to prevent such ads. Rhode Island is the first state
to sue Meta over this alleged behavior, following a similar lawsuit by Santa
Clara County in California.
The Complaint, filed in Providence County Superior Court,
alleges that Meta continues these practices because they generate substantial
revenue, despite knowing that scam ads cause significant financial harm to
vulnerable consumers. Meta’s alleged conduct violates Rhode
Island’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA), and the Complaint
seeks penalties and injunctive relief under that statute.
“For a company that engages so many Rhode Islanders and
Americans, maintaining high standards for consumer safety should be of the
utmost importance,” said Attorney General Neronha. “As alleged, Meta knowingly
exposed vulnerable users to fraud and scams, and made enormous profits in doing
so. When companies, big or small, take advantage of Rhode Island consumers,
this Office will do everything within our authority to hold them to account.”
As alleged in the Complaint, Meta has helped create, refine, and distribute advertisements that promoted fraudulent schemes, deceptive offers, impersonation scams, fake investment opportunities, false Medicare and Social Security benefit offers, ineffective or dangerous health supplements or treatments, and other unlawful or deceptive conduct directed at consumers, including consumers in Rhode Island.
People have been harvesting these ocean predators for 44,000 years
From the deep sea to a can in your cupboard
Emma Elliott Smith, Smithsonian Institution and Torben Rick, Smithsonian Institution
From a humble mayonnaise-laden sandwich to an expensive piece of sashimi, tuna is a prized source of food for people around the world. Once an inexpensive, easily shipped canned protein source, today’s bluefin tunas can fetch millions of dollars at auction. Millions of tons of tuna are harvested every year, supporting a global industry worth around US$40 billion annually.
But tunas are more than just the pink flesh found in cans and sushi, and humanity’s story with these fish goes back further than you might expect.
As a biologist and an archaeologist interested in long-term human-environment interactions, we wanted to investigate the deep record of people’s relationship with tunas.
We drew on the expertise of 18 leading researchers worldwide and studied a variety of sources, from the skeletal remains of tunas in archaeological sites to ancient rock art, paintings on frescos and vases, written historical records and ethnographic accounts from Indigenous communities. This data helped us understand where, when and why people caught tunas, and what cultural and environmental forces shaped these early fisheries. In turn, this provided new insights into how past harvests compare with the millions of tons caught today.
An apex predator of the ocean
“Tuna” is a common name given to a group of 15 fish species. The major market species include eight “true tunas” in genus Thunnus along with skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis).
Tunas are among the largest predators in the open ocean, with some species reaching almost 10 feet (over 3 meters) in length and living for over 40 years. Tuna are champion swimmers; Pacific bluefin tuna can migrate 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) across the northern Pacific in a matter of months.
Tuna are also ecologically important apex predators and serve as sentinels of ocean health. However, most scientific research has focused on the past 75 years, with assessments of the health of tuna populations benchmarked against the year 1950. The focus on recent decades raises a variety of questions about the deeper history of fishing for tuna prior to the past century.
Why Mass Shootings Happen Even in States With Strict Gun Laws
Gun culture
By Jennifer Mascia for The Trace
On October 15, a 16-year-old boy opened fire at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, killing three children and a teacher and critically wounding two others. The incident is the deadliest school shooting since the one in 2024 at Apalachee High School in Georgia, which also resulted in four deaths.
Shortly after the Oregon shooting, gun control groups lamented weak federal gun laws and urged people to vote for reform-minded leaders. Gun rights advocates, meanwhile, argued that the state’s strong gun laws — including universal background checks, a red flag law, and a ghost gun ban — didn’t prevent the shooting.
Do gun rights advocates have a point? While research has shown that states with the loosest gun laws and highest rates of gun ownership have the highest rates of gun death, high-profile incidents like the tragedy in Bend still happen all over the country.
Eight of the deadliest school shootings in the past 15 years have occurred in blue states, including California, Oregon, and Washington, according to Gun Violence Archive. Those states routinely earn top scores on the annual gun law scorecard from the advocacy group Giffords, which ranks each state by the strength of its gun laws.
“Public mass shootings represent less than 1 percent of gun violence in this country,” said Michael Anestis, director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University. “Research has shown time and time again that specific forms of firearm legislation are effective at reducing specific forms of injury and death,” he added, pointing to interventions that have reduced community violence.
Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, director of the Center for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Washington, agrees that there’s no single solution for reducing all types of gun violence. “Certain gun laws can reduce gun deaths, but no law can fully eliminate the risk of school shootings,” he said. “We should judge laws by their overall impact, not individual incidents.”
So what’s going on?
Thursday, October 22, 2026
LORIB candidates still challenge Democrats in South County House campaigns
But with far less money
By Will Collette
Levesque’s League of Rhode Island Business (LORIB) galaxy of 40 – yes, forty – state and local political action committees sunk around $200,000 in the primary, all for nothing.
One of his top candidates, Charlestown sex crime defense lawyer Leah Boisclair, lost her bid to unseat popular incumbent Rep. Tina Spears by a margin of 82 to 18%. Tina has no opponent in the November 3 General Election so she will return to the General Assembly for her third term.
But LORIB still has candidates running in the General Election. I wrote about the LORIB candidates running in both of Charlestown’s state Senate districts HERE.
That leaves four RI House of Representatives races here in South County where LORIB has endorsed candidates.
House District 39
State Rep. Megan Cotter of Richmond is running for re-election after two outstanding terms representing citizens of Richmond, Hopkinton and Exeter. Like the other Democratic South County women legislators, she showed herself to be effective and responsive to community needs.
She told the South County Star she “supports legislation to cap utility company profits…improve health care access and provide towns with tools developed by the Water Capacity and Housing Commission…efforts to improve fire management, including additional forest rangers, fire suppression equipment and $200,000 for forest protection….She also highlighted her efforts to secure $2.5 million for state forest management plans and her work to provide a van for Wood River Health.”
Her record shows that she can achieve these goals.
By contrast, Megan has championed legislation to support Chariho (CLICK HERE).
Roy is big on guns and anti-green energy, especially wind and solar and wants to promote logging and farming.
Her one big new idea is this: amethyst mining:
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| I bought this specimen in Ontario. Photo by Will Collette |
Aside from the ten bucks I paid the guy in Ontario, we didn’t do much for their local economy.
Maybe Jasmin Roy can promise District 39 voters $5,000 worth of local amethyst (about a ton) if they elect her. Roy is mostly getting local Republican support and gun money with only $715 coming from three of Dave Levesques’ LORIB PACs. She has $5,147.96 in cash according to her last campaign finance report.
Rep. Megan Cotter’s fundraising was far more successful, and she went into the final month with $28,600.
House Districts 33 and 35
Two veteran Democratic women represent these South-Kingstown centered districts. Rep. Carol Hagan McEntee represents District 33 and Rep. Kathleen A. Fogarty represents District 35.
Since her 2015 election, Carol McEntee has risen high in the House leadership and chairs the Judiciary Committee. That has made her a much sought after sponsor for important legislation. She faces MAGA Republican Jessica Drew Day for the third and probably final time.
Though Drew Day is LORIB-endorsed, she has received no LORIB money as of her last campaign finance report. Going into the final month, she had $5,311.61 in her campaign treasury.
By contrast, Rep. McEntee reported a cash balance of $83,983.
Kathy Fogarty’s LORIB challenger Jennifer Poirier Nerbonne is almost as weak. Nerbonne did very little fundraising and went into the final month with $2,239.16 in the bank. She not only received NO LORIB money, but LORIB also spelled her name wrong on their website. Her main political experience was as a member of the South Kingstown Republican Committee and as a Donald Trump Convention delegate.
According to the South County Star, “Fogarty serves as First Assistant Speaker of the House, chair of the House Rules Committee and first vice chair of the House Municipal Government and Housing Committee.” Kathy went into the final month with $10,721. In her campaign fund.
House District 37
 |
| That's Sam on the right |
Sam is a very conservative octogenarian most known for his interests in veterans and the elderly, and for opposing any legislation condemned by the Catholic Diocese.
I’ve noted earlier that Sam fits the profile of candidates that Dave Levesque likes to support. Levesque has hedged his bets in the General Election by endorsing at least eight incumbents, since incumbents have an automatic edge.
In addition to Charlestown’s MAGA Senator Elaine Morgan, LORIB has endorsed DINO Sen. Leonidas Raptakis (Coventry), Gregory Costantino (Johnston), Marie Hopkins (R-Warwick), Paul Santucci (Glocester), Robert Phillips (Woonsocket), Independent Jon Brian (Woonsocket), and Richard Fascia (Cranston).
Sam is at least as conservative as most of these LORIB incumbents.
But nonetheless, he is being challenged by developer Christopher Stanton (R). LORIB has put no money into Stanton’s campaign. Stanton loaned his campaign $7000 of his own money, and he received $1500 from the Westerly Republican Committee. His balance going into the last month was $1,911.15 compared to Sam’s balance of $20,129.92.
What's next for LORIB?
Overall, the numbers show Levesque cut his payments to his slate of candidates drastically after his September 9 ass-kicking. Clearly, he’s still licking his wounds. Of his remaining candidates in the General Election, I doubt any of them will beat any of the Democratic incumbents.
I believe the best Levesque can hope for is that some of his endorsed conservative incumbents will hold their seats, allowing him to claim some victories, though those claims would be hollow given how much he scaled back the amount he has doled out.
Will LORIB be back in 2028? Levesque hasn’t said anything yet, though he must be thinking about what comes next. The Nov. 3 General Election results will certainly factor into his decision.
House has-been hopes for a political comeback
Price self-destructed after he took part in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol on Donald Trump's behalf.
Price sealed his fate with his debunked claim that it was "antifa" who actually did the deed, although he did not explain why he, a red-blooded Marine patriot, did nothing to stop them.
Justin Price wants to get back into politics by campaigning for a seat on the Richmond Town Council. If you look at his campaign statement on the Richmond GOP town committee website, you'll see that he has NOTHING to say about what he would do for Richmond, relying instead on a fanciful recap of his career in the state House of Representatives. He omits his long campaign while a state Rep against the menace of "chemtrails."
Maybe Justin is hoping he can get fellow insurrectionist and GOP candidate for Governor Vic Mellor to campaign for him. Or maybe he's banking on getting LORIB money in 2028 to make another run at Megan Cotter.
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