Monday, June 1, 2026
Richmond Takes Action on Climate Resilience
Climate change-driven storms threaten more than the coast
By Jonmaesha Beltran / ecoRI News staff
In Richmond, where a little more than 8,000 people live, Town Councilor Daniel Madnick is working to close gaps that recent wildfires and brushfires across the state revealed in the town’s environmental planning.
Madnick proposed creating an environmental resiliency
commission to prepare the town for threats, including drought, flooding,
hurricanes and wildfires, while monitoring its hazard mitigation plan.
“We don’t have a board or commission that their sole focus
is to make sure that we are prepared for any environmental issues that come,”
he said during a May 19 town council meeting.
The proposal is modeled after the Charlestown Climate
Resilience Commission, which was established in 2021 and worked with state Rep.
Megan Cotter, D-Exeter, Hopkinton, and Richmond, on forest management and fire
prevention.
Cotter, who serves on the Northeastern Forest Fire
Prevention Commission, urged the commission to reach out to Charlestown
landowners with five acres or more to connect them with resources and federal
funding available for private land management.
A Medical School at URI would be a boon for South County
Much to gain, little to lose
By Sen. Alana M. DiMario
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Ask any group of people from North Kingstown to New Shoreham and you’ll hear the same stories: physicians retiring or leaving the state with no one to take their patients at their clinic, leaving their patients bouncing from provider to provider, driving up to Providence or beyond for routine care or just giving up and going without a primary care provider.
There is no single solution to this problem. Last year the General Assembly began the process of increasing primary care reimbursement rates and reduced prior authorization requirements to make Rhode Island more attractive to primary care providers, but it’s not enough to just hold onto the providers we have: we need a supply of new primary care providers to make up the gap.
That is why the Senate launched a commission last year to study the feasibility and impact of starting a primary-care-focused medical school at the University of Rhode Island. I served on the commission and I believe that its conclusion that “a state medical school would provide transformative long-term benefits for the state’s healthcare system, economy and communities” goes double for South County.
A medical school at URI would be a sustainable pipeline of homegrown doctors in our backyard that we sorely need.
Forecasters Predict Below-Average Hurricane Season, Advise Against Complacency
Hurricane season begins today
Forecasters are calling for below-average activity this hurricane season, which begins Monday, June 1.
The National Weather Service is predicting eight to 14 named storms, including three to six hurricanes and one to three major hurricanes of category 3, 4 or 5 strength, packing winds of 111 mph or greater. By comparison, a typical season is characterized by 14 named storms, including seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes. The season ends Nov. 30.
“It just takes one,” said Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service. “Now is the time to start thinking about your hurricane preparedness.”
The forecasters based their predictions on an expected El Niño that is likely to develop during the season. An El Niño is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon that begins with unusually warm waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean and can affect weather patterns worldwide.
Sunday, May 31, 2026
Rhode Island needs to pass bills to codify the Voting Right Act into RI law
We are at Code Red for Democracy
As community leaders, we are calling on the Rhode Island
General Assembly to pass the RI VRA and all 10 amendments before the session
ends in June. There is extreme urgency.
Voting rights are being attacked across the country, both at
the state and federal levels. The recent United States Supreme Court decision
in Louisiana
v. Callais gutted the federal Voting Rights Act. Action needs to
be taken now. Rhode Islanders cannot afford to have their voting rights put at
risk. The way to do this is to pass the Rhode Island Voting Rights Act and its
ten amendments before the session ends, and implement the bill immediately upon
passage.
“Standing inside the Rhode Island State House
alongside Common Cause, The Womxn Project,
the RI Coalition of Black Women, The Women’s Fund, Clean
Water Action, and members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta
Sigma Theta and Zeta Phi Beta sororities, lobbying
for the codification of the Voting Rights Act into Rhode Island law, was a
surreal and sobering moment — because sixty-one years ago, my grandparents
already fought and won this battle,” says Shahidah Ali, the
Political Action Committee Chair of the RI
Coalition of Black Women.
Yet here we are again.
Trump posts on social media about himself
Insight into the mind of Donald provided by Donald himself...
Ticks already sending more people to the ER in RI
Rhode Island has a tick expert in its own backyard.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says
emergency room visits for tick bites are running higher than normal in many
parts of the country. In all U.S. regions except the South Central United
States, weekly rates of ER visits for tick bites are the highest for this time
of year since 2017.
For Rhode Island, the warning is especially relevant.
The state remains a high-risk area for Lyme disease and other tickborne
illnesses, with cases typically rising during the warmer months. The Rhode
Island Department of Health says most Lyme disease cases are reported during
the summer, with a peak in July. Washington County consistently has the highest
Lyme disease rate in Rhode Island, with a 2024 rate of 723 cases per 100,000
people.
And Rhode Island has one of the country’s best-known tick
resources in its own backyard: the University
of Rhode Island’s TickEncounter Resource Center.
Led by Dr. Thomas Mather —
URI’s “TickGuy” and one of the nation’s foremost tick experts —
TickEncounter provides practical, plain-language guidance on tick
identification, tick-bite prevention, and what to do after finding a tick.
URI’s TickEncounter site also includes tools and videos to help people
understand which ticks are active and how to reduce the risk of tickborne
disease.
Mather has long emphasized that conditions matter. Ticks do
not like dry weather, while damp, shady, leafy areas create more favorable tick
habitat. In a URI summer-prevention update, he said Rhode Islanders can often
judge tick risk by looking at yard conditions, including whether lawns and
surrounding areas are dry or damp.
Ticks are not the only warm-weather pest concern. The National Pest Management Association is
also warning that ticks, mosquitoes, ants and stinging insects become
increasingly active as summer approaches. Mosquitoes can breed in small amounts
of standing water and may transmit illnesses such as West Nile virus and Zika
virus. Stinging insects are also a seasonal risk, especially for people with
allergies.
The advice is simple, but important: act early, before
pest activity peaks.
What to do now
7,000 Local Food Benefit Cards Available for Eligible Seniors
No home delivery anymore due to Trump allowing funding to lapse
Eligible seniors can apply to participate in
the SFMNP through their local senior center or other applicable
nutrition program, with sign-up locations listed on the SFMNP webpage
at www.dem.ri.gov/sfmnp.
The SFMNP helps eligible seniors access fresh, locally grown food, supports Rhode Island farmers, and keeps food assistance dollars in the state. DEM works closely with the Rhode Island Office of Healthy Aging (OHA) to identify communities in need and ensure an equitable distribution across the state. Due to the end of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, there will be no deliveries of produce boxes to homebound seniors this season.
The SFMNP helps eligible seniors access fresh, locally grown food, supports Rhode Island farmers, and keeps food assistance dollars in the state. DEM works closely with the Rhode Island Office of Healthy Aging (OHA) to identify communities in need and ensure an equitable distribution across the state. Due to the end of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, there will be no deliveries of produce boxes to homebound seniors this season.
To
provide RI SFMNP benefit access for homebound eligible participants, DEM
encourages eligible homebound individuals to complete the application found on
the SFMNP webpage and indicate a selected proxy. The proxy can take the
completed application to a SFMNP Distribution Location to obtain a SFMNP
benefit card and then shop for produce on the participant’s behalf.
Pope Leo XIV compares AI to the Industrial Revolution – as new alternatives to big AI firms take shape
A very different Pope
Since the first act of his papacy – choosing his name – the current pope has repeatedly invoked the earlier Leo’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum.
That document, which waded into the political and economic debates of the time, denounced the excesses of the Gilded Age and pointed toward a more just social order.
Rerum Novarum was more than just a theological text. It helped reshape economic policy around the rights of workers, serving as a spiritual foundation for European social democracy and the 1930s New Deal programs that still undergird economic life for working Americans today. It also spurred a movement of entrepreneurs to transform the economic system from within.
Understanding its influence is key to seeing the potential of Leo XIV’s encyclical.
Saturday, May 30, 2026
Revenue for Rhode Islanders Coalition urge General Assembly to tax the rich
They can afford it and it's the right thing to do
“We are here to demand that lawmakers tax the rich,” said
emcee Alisha Pina, director of Rhode Island Interfaith
Coalition to Reduce Poverty. “We are here today because we know Rhode
Island needs more revenue. We are here today because most of us are not
thriving; we are struggling paycheck to paycheck. We know that tax fairness and
more revenue from the 1% will bring in more money that we all need. Rhode
Island can take care of itself, and we do that by doing it together. We know
that federal cuts will be on the order of $400 million for fiscal year 2028, so
the money found a few weeks ago is not enough. What we need is tax fairness,
and tax fairness means taxing the top 1% to bring in more money for all of us
and to address the inequities we see every day in education, housing, and
healthcare.
“We need money for childcare, the unhoused, RIPTA, and
healthcare. Every session, we tell our legislators the same thing: It is your
moral obligation to help all of us, not just some of us. To think that the
budget that’s going to be announced tomorrow may not include any millionaires
or 1% tax ... It’s not fair, logical, or good for Rhode Island. We’re here to
demand what we need. Listen to your taxpayers. We’re the ones who elect you,
and yet you make decisions that are against what we want. That’s why we’re here
today.”
“In April 1978, martyr and Saint Óscar Romero wrote,
‘A church that doesn’t provoke any crisis, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a
word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t
touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed -- what
gospel is that?’2 The original column was written for an
archdiocesan newspaper in response to secular attacks from the Salvadorian
oligarchy, corrupt and fraudulent leadership supported by the U.S. government,”
said Jeremy Langill, Executive Minister of the Rhode Island
State Council of Churches. “Romero had been accused of being a communist,
but like many inspired by liberation theology and the reality that the gospels
compelled action, he continued to insist that his care and support for the
rights of the poor were a matter of faith.
“But Saint Romero is not the only leader who understood the
Christian call to action. Karl Barth, arguably
the most preeminent Protestant theologian of the 20th century, wrote that the
churches have injured the cause of the gospel by the way they have identified
the gospel with the badly planned and ineptly guided cause of the West. Bart,
too, was responding to claims that he was a crypto-communist because of his
consistent critique of the attempt to identify Christian faith post World War
II with the economic and political systems of the United States. His commentary
was theological. It was grounded in the gospel. It could not be assimilated
into market forces that prioritized profits over people.
“Friends, a marginal tax rate on the top 1% is, to speak
simply, a no-brainer. It’s a no-brainer because it does not even get close to
addressing the deep structural inequities that drive our dystopian and immoral
economic reality. It merely addresses a symptom, the excessive accumulation of
wealth by a handful of people. As a minister of the gospel of Christ, I already
know what Jesus thinks about wealth. The gospels go straight to the heart of
the matter: ‘The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.’ (Matthew
20:16) It is a teaching that comes just after the parable of the workers in the
vineyard, where the manager paid every employee equally, regardless of the
number of hours they worked.
Senate approves Sen. Gu’s shoreline access education bill
Local fake fire districts who block beach access also need "educating"
“This bill expands upon the work we’ve done to codify shoreline access and educate buyers of shoreline property about the public’s right to access the shore,” said Senator Gu (D-Dist. 38, Westerly, Charlestown, South Kingstown).
“While a lot of people in Rhode Island are aware of the
public’s right to access the shoreline, people coming in from other states to
rent or book a short-term rental aren’t necessarily aware of them. This is an
important consumer protection and education measure to ensure that people
renting ocean front real estate understand the public’s right to access the
shoreline.”
Senator Gu sponsored a new law in 2024 that requires similar disclosure to
buyers of shoreline property. This bill (2026-S 2734A) would extend this disclosure to tenants of
shoreline properties, requiring landlords to provide renters with written
shoreline access disclosure before the start of tenancy.
The disclosure would include
the public’s rights and privileges to the shore up to 10 feet above the
recognizable high tide line, requires the landlord to disclose any known rights
of way to the tenant and advise the tenant to contact CRMC to find out if any
public rights of way or permits are tied to the property.
Health alert for Worden Pond
RIDOH and DEM Recommend Avoiding Contact with Worden Pond
All recreation, including swimming, fishing, boating and kayaking, is high risk to health and recommended to be avoided at this location.
This HAB is caused by blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, which are naturally present in bodies of water. HABs can produce toxins which can be harmful to humans and animals.
Toxins and/or high cell
counts have been detected by the RIDOH State Health Laboratory from water
samples collected by DEM at several locations.
Use caution in all areas of Worden Pond as HABs can move
locations in ponds and lakes. People should not drink untreated water or eat
fish from affected waterbodies. Pet owners should not allow pets to drink or
swim in this water. This
advisory recommendation remains in effect until further notice.
Skin contact with water containing blue-green algae can cause irritation of the skin, nose, eyes, and throat. Symptoms from ingestion of water can include stomachache, diarrhea, vomiting, and nausea. Less common symptoms can include dizziness, headache, fever, liver damage, and nervous system damage.
Young children and pets are at higher risk for health effects
associated with HABs because they are more likely to swallow water when they
are in or around bodies of water. People who have had contact with these ponds and experience those symptoms
should contact their healthcare provider.
If you or your pet come into contact with an algal bloom (HAB):
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