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Tuesday, June 23, 2026
Help address the lingering problems the Navy left behind at Ninigret Park
House District 36 Committee unanimously endorses Rep. Tina Spear for re-election in September 9 Democratic Primary
Her hard work earns support against challenger
By Will Collette
The Committee is filing this endorsement in all towns included in the district. House District 36 covers all of Charlestown and Block Island, plus small sections of Westerly and South Kingstown.
The last time Charlestown voters faced a Democratic primary
over who will represent House District 36 was twenty years ago. In 2006,
longtime State Representative Donna Walsh defeated DINO incumbent Matt McHugh
by 685 to 461 in that year's primary.
Donna never faced another primary opponent and served until
2016 when she was defeated by Blake “Flip” Filippi (Republican/Libertarian), an
all-round strange guy who in recent years has railed against seals and vaccines but has mostly stuck to raising cattle and his family’s Block
Island businesses.
Flip's surprise announcement in 2022 to drop out of Rhode
Island politics opened the door for Tina’s election as our Representative where
she has been a productive and effective legislator.
From Tina’s website:
Tina has spent the last decade advocating for people with disabilities, and is currently Executive Director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island. Her own experience as the parent of a child with significant health challenges led her to become an ardent advocate for families of children with disabilities. She has been a frequent presence at the State House over the last decade, working to defend Medicaid benefits, increase wages for caregivers and help win paid leave for people who must leave work to care for a new child or an ill family member.Opposing Tina in the September 9 Democratic Primary is Leah J. Boisclair who is a self-described “Sex Crimes Defense Attorney in Rhode Island.” On her law practice’s website, she graphically lists what types of crimes she will defend, including child rape, domestic violence, homicide, drug crime, white collar crime and so on.
Don’t take my word for it – go to her website.
I was especially surprised at the way she depicted how she
would defend against sex crimes. Here’s a screenshot from her website:
Now, if you switch to Boisclair’s campaign website, you’ll see a
very different tone as well as content. She mimics Tina’s priority issues of
education, environment, affordable housing and health care. There is no record
of Boisclair having actually done anything on these issues, but hey, if you
want to run as a Democrat, you must at least pretend.
Boisclair glosses over the sordid details of her law
practice saying only:
I went through our local schools, earned a political science degree at URI, and graduated cum laude from Roger Williams University School of Law in 2019. I’m licensed in multiple states and federal courts. Before opening my own firm, I worked on criminal and union cases — and then built The Law Office of Leah J. Boisclair, LLC from the ground up…. As an attorney, I stand up for people who need someone in their corner. [Emphasis added].
Make of that what you will. But remember that attorneys,
especially those in private practice, CHOOSE who represent.
And those of us who are registered Democratic voters living
in House District 36 also CHOOSE who we want to represent us. So, on September
9, please support Rep. Tina Spears in the Democratic Primary.
DISCLOSURE: For years, I have been a member of the House
District 36 Democratic Committee and proudly voted today to support Tina Spears
in her campaign for re-election. – Will Collette
Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine gets thumbs up from federal vaccine panel
Goes AGAINST Bobby Junior's war against mRNA vaccines
 |
| As a rule, vaccines only work if you take them. |
By a unanimous vote, the Food and Drug Administration’s
(FDA’s) Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC)
voted to recommend approval of the investigational vaccine, which will be
marketed under the brand name mFlusiva, for the prevention of flu in adults age
50 to 64.
They also voted in support of accelerated approval in adults
aged 65 and older. Moderna will be required to conduct a phase 4,
post-marketing study to demonstrate effectiveness in the older group.
The recommendation comes after several months of regulatory
uncertainty over the vaccine. After initially agreeing to review Moderna’s
application for approval of the vaccine, the FDA changed
course in February, saying that the phase 3 trial for mRNA-1010 was not
“adequate and well-controlled” because it used a standard-dose seasonal flu
vaccine as the comparator vaccine.
Moderna said that while
the FDA had expressed a preference to use a high-dose flu vaccine as a
comparator, agency officials had agreed that a standard-dose flu vaccine was an
acceptable comparator.
The move raised concerns about shifting regulatory standards
under the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy
Jr., who has been openly critical of mRNA vaccines. In August 2025, Kennedy
canceled $500 million in funding for 22 mRNA vaccine projects.
But a week later, the FDA reversed
itself again after Moderna proposed a revised regulatory approach.
The agency agreed to review the application for full approval in adults age 50
to 64 and accelerated approval for adults aged 65 and older, with an agreement
to conduct a post-marketing study in the 65 and older group.
Rhode Island joins blue state boycott of Trump event in DC
Rhode Island skips out on the Great American State Fair, joining growing list
By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current
Faith Chybowski, spokesperson for the Rhode Island Secretary of State’s office and RI250 Commission, said officials turned down the invitation to take part in the upcoming 16-day summer exhibition on the National Mall due to “financial and staffing limitations.”
“Rhode Island’s semiquincentennial commemoration is taking place in Providence on July 4, and staff are also supporting many other 250-related events across the state at the same time as the State Fair,” she told Rhode Island Current in an email Friday.
Officials from Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Illinois, North Carolina and Connecticut have also backed out, citing high costs, CNN reported Thursday. Maine has also backed out, according to the Bangor Daily News.
But those displays, and who will staff them, fall entirely on state delegations, Chybowski said. The RI250 Commission, formed in 2021 to promote semiquincentennial-themed programming across the state, was given a little more than $324,000 from the General Assembly last year to show off the state’s revolutionary role.
Most funds were used for marketing, commemorative highway signs and holiday ornaments, banners for the Revolution and Rhode Island exhibit at the State House. A little more than a third of the state’s funding were toward the commission’s one full-time staffer, Chybowski noted.
“It was a huge ask with not a lot of resources,” she said.
Monday, June 22, 2026
‘Alarm’ at White House After Vance and Miller Pushed Insurrection Act, Habeas Corpus Suspension During Anti-ICE Protests
Close call for democracy
Brad
Reed for Common Dreams
Among other things, the Times reported that Vance pushed for Donald
Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow for the US military to be
deployed on American streets, in an effort to shut down mass protests in Minnesota
against federal immigration enforcement
operations in the state.
A few days after US Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers fatally shot demonstrator Alex
Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis, the Times reported that Vance—who had
also elevated a baseless claim by Miller that Pretti had
been a “would-be assassin”—said invoking the Insurrection Act was necessary “to
crush the unrest in Minnesota.”
Vance also believed invoking the law would send a “message”
that “paid agitators could not get away with disrupting ICE operations”—even
though, as the Times noted, there is no evidence that Pretti; demonstrator
Renee Good, who was also killed by federal agents; or any other organizers in
Minnesota or elsewhere received any money in exchange for protesting.
However, right-wing attorney
Will Scharf quickly shot down Vance’s suggestion, noting that the Insurrection
Act is an instrument aimed at putting down armed rebellions rather than groups
of citizens blowing whistles at
ICE officers.
Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair then
made the political case against invoking the Insurrection Act.
Trump and Musk’s DOGE “saved” $15 million by cutting a program to prevent the spread of screwworm that will now take $1 billion to fix
Make Musk pay
Stephen
Prager for Common Dreams
The annual US Department of Agriculture (USDA) spending to combat the
flesh-eating insects only amounted to about $15 million per year. But along with
about $382 million aimed at combating animal-borne illnesses around the globe,
it was terminated in March 2025 as part of DOGE’s effort to root out what it
described as government “waste.”
But now, with the pests bearing down on Texas and New Mexico,
and at least 12 infections already identified in the US as of Tuesday,
the Trump
administration is spending at least $1 billion to fight the outbreak.
Last week, during a Senate hearing, Secretary of Agriculture
Brooke Rollins attempted to
shift blame for the screwworm outbreak onto the Biden
administration, while portraying herself and President Donald Trump as
proactive in response to reports last spring that the insects were rapidly
climbing through Central
America.
Rollins said she asked Trump for “$1 billion to build a significant
facility” in Texas that would breed hundreds of millions of sterilized male
screwworm flies, a method that had been used to keep them contained in South
America for decades. “Without hesitation, a couple questions, he said, ‘go.’”
That facility is expected to release around 300 million
sterile flies per week. But it is not expected to be fully operational until
the end of 2027.
In addition to the $15 million cut to monitoring the spread
of the bugs from Panama, the Houston Chronicle reported that DOGE paused plans for a
facility in Mexico that the Biden administration had authorized in 2024 as part
of a $165 million emergency package to fight screwworm.
RIDOH and DEM Lift Advisory at Worden Pond. No word on Watchaug Pond
Now let's deal with the Reflecting Pool
The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) and Rhode
Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) have lifted the
recommendation to avoid recreational activities at Worden Pond in
South Kingstown. 
Trump says vandals spoiled his multi-million dollar "fix"
The harmful algae bloom (HAB) caused by blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) has cleared.
Recent water testing laboratory
results show algae levels are low and no toxins were detected at
multiple locations, meeting safety guidelines.
HAB conditions can change quickly. Water with HABs may exhibit bright to dark green scum along the shoreline with thick, floating algal mats on the surface. The water may resemble green paint, pea soup, or green cottage cheese.
If you
see water in this condition, keep people and pets away
from it. Toxins may persist in the water after a blue-green algae bloom is
no longer visible.
To report
suspected blue-green algae blooms, contact DEM’s Office of Water Resources
at DEM.OWRCyano@dem.ri.gov or call 401-222-4700, Press 3,
and select Office of Water Resources. If possible, send a photograph of the
reported algae bloom. For more information and the Cyanobacteria Tracker
Dashboard that lists current advisories and data, visit: www.dem.ri.gov/bluegreen
Rhode Island beats Trump in court in suit over offshore wind farms
Stop the war on Green Energy
“Wind energy creates jobs and helps stabilize energy prices, neither of which this Administration seems to know how to do,” said Attorney General Neronha.
“Today’s win once again demonstrates that this federal
government is not immune from consequences, and our coalition is proving that
with each legal victory we achieve. Rhode Islanders and Americans everywhere
continue to pay the price, quite literally, for a collective hesitancy in
embracing clean energy infrastructure. Wind energy is crucial to bringing
energy costs down and keeping them down, and we will continue fighting to
ensure a clean energy future for generations to come.”
On January 20, 2025, Trump issued a Presidential
Memorandum which indefinitely froze all federal approvals needed for the
development of wind energy projects pending federal review. Pursuant to this
directive, federal agencies stopped all permitting and approval activities. In
May 2025, the coalition filed a lawsuit challenging the freeze and in December,
a federal judge in the United States District Court for the District of
Massachusetts them to be arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law. The
federal government appealed that ruling but subsequently decided to drop their
appeal. Today, the Court entered a judgement dismissing the appeal and
cementing the states’ victory.
Sunday, June 21, 2026
Election Year means Ruth Platner powers up the Charlestown Choo Choo for the 5th time
Enough with the irresponsible fearmongering!
By Will Collette
The CCA’s leader and founder, Ruth Platner, has an
extraordinary record of conjuring up enemies and boogeymen that only she and
the CCA can conquer. As chair of Charlestown's Planning Commission, she has a platform to spread false fear. However, over the years, just about all these existential threats
have been either imaginary or grossly exaggerated.
Ruth’s most persistent boogeyman has been trumped up fear
that Amtrak will cut a swath through northern Charlestown, obliterating
precious farmland as well as natural and historic treasures. Amtrak gave this
boogeyman a name when they included it in a 2016 draft preliminary long-term
plan: “the Old Saybrook-Kenyon Bypass.” I call it the “Charlestown Choo-Choo Hoax” because it was a goofy plan that never had chance of happening.
She's trying to raise this dead issue again, as you can read for yourself HERE. This was posted on Saturday and is her third post on the Charlestown Choo-Choo in the past month.
A stretch of the Northeast Corridor between New Haven and
Westerly runs right along the shoreline in Connecticut. In my last job before
retirement, I commuted to Manhattan several times a month, always taking the
train and loving every minute of its passage through the salt marshes between
the Westerly station and New London. I’d ride on the seaward side, count osprey
nests and wonder at the beauty of that stretch, easily my favorite of any
between Boston and Richmond, VA.
But that section of track faces natural destruction, either
in some major storm or from climate-driven sea level rise, severing the
Northeast Corridor rail line. It will have to be replaced.
The Old Saybrook-Kenyon Bypass was an option offered in an
Amtrak in a 2016 planning document that the CCA-controlled town government
failed to read. As CCA leader and Town Council President Tom Gentz said at the
time, “Who has time to wade through that?”
People in eastern Connecticut were the first to begin protesting the plan. In January
2017, chagrined CCA leaders tried to catch up by painting the Old
Saybrook-Kenyon Bypass as the end of the world as we know it, at least for Charlestown.
I tried to point out the chances of the Bypass were slim to none, given that
newly elected Donald Trump hates trains and would never commit to a
multi-billion infrastructure project in the ultra-Blue northeast. The project
had no Congressional support, and in fact, Congress drastically cut Amtrak
funding for Northeast Corridor improvements.
I speculated at the time that the Bypass would only be built if
Trump privatized Amtrak and sold it either to Elon Musk or one of his sons.
Look, nobody liked the Bypass. I didn’t like the Bypass.
Even Amtrak began distancing themselves from it. They quickly issued a legally
binding Record of Decision in July 2017 effectively killing the plan
only six months after Charlestown first heard of it.
That should have been the end of it. But Ruth Platner felt
the CCA got so much mileage out of supposedly blocking this sketchy threat that
she keeps trying to revive it to help the CCA make a political comeback. This is the fifth time she's tried to fire up
Charlestown over this dead project.
Look back at Platner’s 2021 claim that “They’re Back!” See how she tried to stir the pot again in 2022 and especially weird move in 2024 attempting to use AI to
simulate what a new rail line would look like.
She's at it again, recycling the same claims of a Charlestown
Armageddon. On May 26, she wrote (her emphasis included):
“Amtrak made an announcement on May 21, 2026, that the study required by the FRA’s 2017 Record of Decision had finally received federal government and other funding to proceed. Amtrak estimates that the study—the New Haven to Providence Capacity Planning Study—will take up to two years.
“… The selection of the new preferred alternative will be the outcome of the study. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more, and we may also need your help in contacting our federal and state officials as we move through the planning process. We are committed to protecting Charlestown and the natural resources and public and private property that would be destroyed if anything like the “Old Saybrook to Kenyon Bypass” returns.”
I suggest you read the actual report HERE: New Haven to
Providence Capacity Planning Study.
I read it. Carefully. Line by line. Guess what I
found?
Nothing, absolutely nothing about the Old Saybrook-Kenyon
bypass that died 10 years ago. It’s as if it never existed. This supposedly alarming document is nothing more than a watered-down version of Amtrak's ongoing effort to try to figure out how to improve service from New Haven to Providence. On June 20, Platner's shocking reveal is that Amtrak has created a website! OMG, the horror!
But in the actual report, the only concrete item I found in the report pertaining to our area was
support for making the popular improvements at the Westerly Amtrak station that
our state Senator Victoria Gu has been campaigning for.
So, Ruth: STOP IT! Sure, CCA’s formula for winning elections
is to claim there are monsters under every bed that only you can kill. But your
cynical attempts to manipulate people’s fears come at a terrible cost.
Here's what I mean:
From 1982 to 1999, I was organizing director for two national environmental groups, first at Lois Gibbs' Center for Health and Environmental Justice, then the Citizens Coal Council. I worked with local citizens' groups to fight hazardous waste dumps, incinerators, coal mines, sludge lagoons and more. These fights were very intense, so intense that I learned early on that they could cause marriages to break up and, in some cases, suicide.
My staff and I were careful to NEVER exaggerate or fear-monger because that only increases the stress. I'm already hearing that Platner's irresponsible efforts to jack up tension over the Charlestown Choo-Choo is indeed doing just that.
And if that's not convincing, just look at what Donald Trump's lies and exaggerated threats are doing to his followers and the rest of the country.
During the 2024 election, I catalogued all the various
threats Platner has used over the years: How the Charlestown Citizens Alliance used fake enemies and
bogus emergencies to gain and keep power.
Looks like I’m going to need to do an updated version.
Trump picks a fight with Italy with false claim their leader "begged" to have a picture taken with him at G7 conference
Scientists say house cats could help unlock new cancer treatments for humans
Another argument for kitties
University of Guelph
The research, published in Science, is the first
large-scale effort to genetically profile cancers in cats. Researchers believe
the findings could improve understanding of cancer in both animals and humans
while also creating a valuable open resource for future feline cancer studies.
Cancer is one of the leading causes of disease and death in
cats, yet scientists have historically known very little about the genetic
changes driving these illnesses.
"Despite domestic cats being common pets, there was
very little known about the genetics of cancer in these animals," said Dr.
Geoffrey Wood, a professor of pathobiology at the University of Guelph and
co-senior author of the study, "until now."
Cat Tumors Show Strong Genetic Similarities to Human
Cancers
Researchers analyzed tumor samples from nearly 500 domestic
cats collected across five countries. The team investigated the genetic
mutations involved in cancer development and discovered many of the same
cancer-driving genes seen in human and dog cancers.
Among the most important findings were mutations linked to
aggressive mammary cancers in cats.
The gene most frequently altered in feline mammary tumors
was FBXW7, with mutations appearing in more than half of the tumors studied.
In human breast cancer, mutations in FBXW7 are associated
with poorer outcomes, closely matching what researchers observed in cats.
Scientists also identified similarities between feline and
human cancers affecting the blood, bones, lungs, skin, gastrointestinal tract,
and central nervous system.
Because cats often share the same environments as their
owners, researchers believe some cancer risks could stem from common
environmental exposures.
We Were Wrong About Fasting, Massive Study Finds
Interesting new way to look at fasting
By David Nield
But is an impact on cognitive performance really an
inevitable part of the fasting experience?
According to a huge, recently published review, it's not
always the case.
Based on an analysis of 63 scientific articles representing
71 independent studies, and covering a total of 3,484 participants, the review
found that there was no meaningful difference in cognitive performance between
people who were fasting and people who were having
regular meals.
It's a comprehensive counter to the idea that moderate,
short-term restrictions on eating will deplete mental reserves in healthy
people, an idea found everywhere from snack adverts ("you're
not you when you're hungry") to the mantra that breakfast is the most
important meal of the day.
The researchers behind the analysis – psychologist Christoph
Bamberg from Paris Lodron University in Austria, and cognitive neuroscientist
David Moreau from the University of Auckland in New Zealand – don't want people
who could benefit from fasting to be put off by worrying that it'll lead to
foggy thinking.
"For most healthy adults, the findings offer
reassurance," Moreau
explained in a commentary for The Conversation.
"You can explore intermittent fasting or other fasting
protocols without worrying that your mental sharpness will vanish."