Celebrate Medicare and Medicaid—and Protect Them From Trump!

Trump and his allies in Congress apply "Death of a Thousand Cuts"

Max Richtman in Common Dreams

There is reason to celebrate Medicare and Medicaid turning 61 years old. Both highly successful programs were signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 30, 1965 as a cornerstone of his Great Society agenda. But this year, our celebration is tempered by grave concern over the future of both programs under the Trump regime.

Let’s compare the words of the two presidents:

LBJ:

No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine. No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime. No longer will young families see their own incomes, and their own hopes, eaten away simply because they are carrying out their deep moral obligations to their parents.

Donald Trump:

It’s not possible for us to take care of… Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.

The comparison speaks volumes. One is a leader who understood that the federal government has a crucial role in the protecting the health and well-being of our most vulnerable citizens—including the poor, disabled, and the elderly. The other is a president who claims to support Medicare and then says that the federal government can’t afford it because of his illegal war in Iran. So much for supporting Medicare.

But this goes deeper than Trump’s rhetoric. The Medicare program, like Social Security, is at a pivotal point in its history. The Part A hospital) trust fund must be fortified so that it doesn’t run dry in the 2030s. (There are reasonable solutions that Congress could enact without hurting seniors.) So far, though, we have heard no constructive ideas from Trump.

More urgently, though, the Trump administration is actively undermining the “traditional Medicare” program that LBJ signed into law. The administration has begun a pilot program to use AI bots to determine whether traditional Medicare patients will be covered for procedures their doctors have ordered. This appears to be an attempt to cut costs by erecting obstacles to medically necessary care—with decisions made by bots instead of human beings.

FINALLY, the truth

Posted by drunken Pete Hegeseth, the admission that WINNING is NOT an option

Upcoming events in Charlestown

 

Community Update | August 2026 Charlestown Residents United (CRU) remains committed to keeping our community informed about important local events, town initiatives, and opportunities to meet the candidates seeking to represent us. We encourage you to stay engaged, ask questions, and participate in the events that help shape the future of our town. Important Vote – Special Financial Town Referendum Tuesday, August 4, 2026 8:00am - 8:00pm All Charlestown Voters Will Vote at Charlestown Town Hall, Council Chambers 4540 South County Trail Click here - The Pipeline has all the information. Your vote is an important part of our community's future. Town Council Meeting Tuesday August 11, 2026 7:00 PM Charlestown Town Hall, Council Chambers 4540 South County Trail To place an item on the Council Agenda, please forward your written request to the Town Clerk at arweinreich@charlestownri.gov or deliver it to Town Clerk's Office. The Town of Charlestown is now using IQM2 software for live Video Streaming of the Town Council, Planning Commission and Zoning Board of Review meetings. Please click here to be redirected to the Meeting Portal. Meet the Candidates! Tuesday, August 25 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM Breachway Grill - Upstairs in The Loft 1 Charlestown Beach Road Charlestown, Rhode Island Come meet CRU's newly endorsed candidates in an informal setting. This is an opportunity to introduce yourself, ask questions, and learn more about the individuals seeking to serve our community. There will be no formal speeches—just good conversation and an opportunity to get to know your local candidates. This event is hosted by Charlestown Residents United Second Annual Charlestown Farm Day Saturday, August 29 10:00am - 3:00pm This event promotes awareness about the many farms and their importance to Charlestown. Farm Day is designed to shine a spotlight on the hard work, resilience, and dedication of local farmers, while educating the community about the importance of agriculture. https://charlestownri.gov/farmday This event is being sponsored by the Economic Improvement Commission and the Agricultural Preservation Committee of Charlestown Psst: Was this email forwarded to you by an informed friend? Sign up on the Contact! page and get your own. Charlestown Residents United | PO Box 412 | Charlestown, RI 02813 US

Trump to HIV and Cancer Patients: Get Back to Work

Priorities

By David Dayen

This piece is part of our Trump’s Beautiful Disaster series about the consequences of the mammoth budget law, one year later. You can see all stories in this series here.

Yesterday was the 61st anniversary of the signing of Medicare and Medicaid, a promise by the government to at least care for the oldest and most vulnerable people in our society. Today is the deadline for public comment on a rule that could force severely ill patients with cancer, HIV, and other ailments to get out of their hospital beds and go to work if they want the government to keep that promise.

The new rule, which was spurred by cuts to Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) but was not required in the text, adds a layer of bureaucracy for “medically frail” individuals who got a statutory exemption from the law’s new work requirements for health coverage. 

Medical frailty has long been a concept in Medicaid, giving patients suffering from serious conditions the ability to access coverage. But the administration’s interim final rule published last month said that not only would individuals have to exhibit one of the medically frail conditions, but their condition would have to “significantly impair” their ability to work.

“That’s not an existing standard, and there’s no data source for that information,” said Jennifer Wagner with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). This means that states, which are partners in Medicaid, will have to establish an entire regime for verifying “significant impairment” on the fly, and justify it to a federal government that is quick to say that anything resembling expansion of assistance to the poor is actually fraud. “There’s language in the [rule] that says ‘we will hold states accountable’ if they don’t follow this unclear definition precisely,” Wagner said.

So people with serious medical maladies—osteosarcoma patients suffering severe bone weakness, for instance—will have to jump through very undefined bureaucratic hoops to “prove” they cannot work 80 hours a month, with the risk of a coverage loss if that’s denied. Even a temporary coverage gap could be serious. “They will die, they will become sick,” said Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute in Washington. “That’s why we pushed so hard for the exemption, because we know the ramifications of people losing access to health care.”

Schmid cited estimates that 145,000 Americans living with HIV could be affected by the change. About 40 percent of all Americans with HIV rely on Medicaid, according to Schmid.

How vaccine skeptics use storytelling effectively to create powerful but medically inaccurate messaging

Vaccine stupidity has a long history

A drawing published by the London Society for
the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination in the late 1800s.
Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia

Katherine Shwetz, Rice University; University of Toronto

As long as there have been vaccines, there have been people who doubted their science and safety.

Back in 19th-century England, people rioted against a mandatory smallpox vaccine, claiming that it violated civil rights and was an affront to human bodily integrity. In the United States, organizations dedicated to resisting vaccines have existed since the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League of Brooklyn was established in 1894.

Researchers generally refer to people who do not follow the standard advice of health professionals about vaccines, by either refusing or delaying some or all vaccines, as vaccine hesitant. Today, vaccine hesitancy is most famously associated with the Make America Healthy Again movement and its standard-bearer, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Public health advocates and science communicators have largely tried to counter these ideas by offering accurate, factual information. But as a medical humanities researcher studying how groups that embrace vaccine hesitancy craft their message, I’ve learned that part of why vaccine hesitancy is so hard to combat is how these groups use storytelling to spread their views.

Vaccine-hesitant groups have fewer limitations than pro-vaccine groups on the kinds of stories they can tell about the development and impact of vaccines. While science-driven messaging that encourages vaccination has to be faithful to the complex and often uneventful reality of science, vaccine-skeptic stories tend to make more dynamic claims.

You’re not imagining it: Your kid’s school supplies cost more this year

From lunchboxes to No. 2 pencils, the prices are skyrocketing. Here's how much.

Chabeli Carrazana, Economy and Child Care Reporter

This story was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of The 19th. Meet Chabeli and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Pencils are more expensive. So are notebooks, scissors, glue sticks — just about every back-to-school item that families will load into their literal or virtual carts this summer has gone up in price at a time when American families already feel crushed by rising costs.

According to one analysis of the 21 most common school supply items by the Groundwork Collaborative and The Century Foundation, two progressive think tanks, prices are up about 7.7 percent with parents paying an average of $173.45 for their school supply haul. That’s an even bigger jump than last year. Add to that an 11 percent hike in prices for school lunch essentials — from the literal tons of blueberries needed to feed young children to apple juice — and costs balloon to nearly $4,000 a year to cover supplies and meals. 

That data was first shared exclusively with The 19th. The analysis is based on weekly retail transaction data on millions of products collected by NielsenIQ from about 50,000 retailers.

With school supply costs outpacing inflation, many families — and especially the women who do the majority of purchases in American households — are going to feel the sticker shock, said Lindsay Owens, the president and CEO of the Groundwork Collaborative.

“Women in this country are rip-roaring mad about the price hikes that they're absorbing. They're trying to manage household finances and budgeting. They're trying to feed their kids healthy food,” Owens said. “The work is getting harder of providing for your family.”

Here are the school supplies with the biggest spikes in price: 

• Lunch boxes are up 27 percent
• Notebooks, notebook paper, tissues and index cards are all up about 20 percent
• Scissor costs rose 14 percent
• Dry erase markers and glue sticks are up 8 percent
• Headphones, binders, crayons, colored pencils and No. 2 pencils increased between 5 and 7 percent

On the lunch side: 

• 12 ounces of blueberries are up a whopping 48 percent
• A loaf of sandwich bread is up 22 percent
• Apple juice prices have risen 20 percent
• A pound of oranges has risen 17 percent
• A box of packaged animal crackers will run you nearly 16 percent more 
• A package of chocolate chip cookies is up 14 percent

Driving up some of these costs are tariffs and the war on Iran. 

Voters Are Realizing that Trump Doesn’t Care About Them

He has his own priorities

Mark Schauer for Common Dreams

This month, the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law—without Donald Trump’s signature, exactly as he’d threatened. It’s a small, recent example of a much bigger habit: Trump keeps showing voters exactly how little he thinks of them. 

The bill wasn’t controversial at all. It was negotiated by both parties’ top committee members and aimed squarely at lowering housing costs. 

But Trump let it sit for weeks rather than sign it, hoping to extract an unrelated voter-suppression bill in return.

At this point, childish behavior from the president shouldn’t be surprising.

In his first inaugural address, Trump claimed to be the champion of America’s “forgotten men and women.” But it was a lie from the start. He never cared about the poor and marginalized. 

He cared about cutting taxes for his friends; scapegoating immigrants for the struggles of the working class; and restoring a mythical era of American “greatness” characterized by the supremacy of straight, white, Christian males.

Although his lie was obvious, it was also effective. In 2016, Trump won around one-eighth of voters who’d supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Democratic primaries. In 2024, he significantly increased his share of the Black and Hispanic vote. 

Brilliantly explained

Trump's mentor, Roy Cohn, was the brains behind McCarthy

South Kingstown leaves Flock

South Kingstown cancels Flock Safety contract after community advocacy, ACLU letter 

SteveAhlquist.news 

In a move that protects the critical privacy rights of residents in South Kingstown and beyond, the South Kingstown Town Council voted unanimously last night to terminate the Town’s contract with the company Flock Safety and to remove the half-dozen automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras presently in the Town.

From an ACLU of RI press release

The decision by the council came after a thorough discussion where a representative from Flock Safety was asked numerous questions and the councilors shared their concerns, and concerns they had received from dozens of their constituents, who also showed up to the meeting to support cancellation of the contract.

The contract was initially approved a year ago, in June 2025. The Council’s decision to terminate it comes just weeks after the Little Compton Town Council voted to reject installing Flock Safety cameras in that community.

Last week, the ACLU of RI sent a four-page letter to the South Kingstown council members outlining numerous privacy concerns about the Flock Safety cameras. 

The letter emphasized that the cameras collect more information than just license plates, that there are no state laws that protect the privacy of Rhode Islanders in the installation and use of these systems, and that the cameras are part of a nationwide surveillance system that has been misused in many ways. 

In the past year, dozens of other municipalities across the country have canceled their contracts or rejected the cameras due to the significant privacy concerns their use raises. In Rhode Island, in addition to Little Compton, the Warren and Portsmouth Town Councils have recently rejected police efforts to install the cameras in those communities.

Dems push Trump to restore funding for global vaccination program

Communicable diseases do not care about national boundaries

Rep. Rose DeLauro Press Release

House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) issued the following statement after the State Department notified Congress of its intent to release $600 million in lawfully appropriated funding for Gavi, an international organization that supports children in developing nations with vaccine access.

“After continued advocacy from myself and my Democratic colleagues on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, these funds are finally being allowed to flow. It is utterly shameful that these resources were ever blocked in the first place, and children around the world were deprived of desperately needed vaccines for nearly two years.

How can you trust a Health Secretary who
takes his grandchildren swimming in sewage?

“Gavi has helped to vaccinate over 1 billion children globally over the past 25 years, preventing more than 20 million deaths. The insertion of Secretary Kennedy’s senseless, selfish, and absurd crusade against vaccines is putting children in the United States and abroad at great risk. He must stop putting his own personal, ill-informed opinions above well-established scientific evidence before even more children get sick.”

Ranking Member DeLauro raised this issue during an Appropriations Committee meeting in late April.

More West Nile Virus found in mosquitoes around the state

A closer look at Foulkes’ record on opioids

What she did and didn't do - are the attacks fair?

By Philip Eil, Rhode Island Current

In 2022, when Dan McKee and Helena Buonanno Foulkes first squared off for the democratic gubernatorial nomination, opioids didn’t get a lot of airtime. 

Aside from a few high-profile moments — a jab in a debate by candidate Luis Daniel Munoz, a controversial TV ad where the McKee campaign claimed Foulkes had made money “pumping opioids into our homes” — you could have easily missed discussion of the issue. McKee ultimately won that primary over Foulkes by three percentage points.

This time has been different.

On the day the former CVS executive announced her run again for governor last fall, McKee debuted a website and attack ads tying her to the opioid crisis. And he hasn’t let up, continuing to link her to the crisis via campaign statements, interviews, TV ads, and social media posts. His ongoing criticism of CVS recently prompted a rebuke from some state business leaders. 

Foulkes — who polls show leading McKee by a significant margin — defended her opioids record in her first TV ad of the campaign. To date, CVS — the Woonsocket-based juggernaut with a market capitalization exceeding $125 billion — has been sued by thousands of cities, counties, states, and tribal governments for its role in the crisis. In 2022, the company paid $5 billion to settle those lawsuits, though it stated that the deal was “not an admission of any liability or wrongdoing.” 

CVS has also paid more than $70 million in fines after Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations into opioid-related conduct — involving improper dispensing, filling prescriptions for unauthorized prescribers, record-keeping violations, and more — across 11 states, including Rhode Island and its neighbors, Connecticut and Massachusetts. 

Foulkes was president of CVS’s Pharmacy division from January 2014 to February 2018. During that time she was, as a company-produced bio noted, responsible for all aspects of the company’s retail business, including pharmacy operations. 

In her answers to reporters’ questions and in stump speeches, Foulkes has returned to a few points: the company’s record of cutting off pill mill doctors, its role in passing legislation that lowered the number of pills allowed in initial opioid prescriptions, the sweeping drug-takeback initiatives on her watch, and a steep overall drop in opioids dispensed during her tenure. 

Here’s a closer look at her claims:

O Canada

Trump renews war on Canada because?

Robert Reich

Trump on Monday signed orders to impose a 50 percent tariff on a wide range of Canadian imports.

The White House claims the tariffs are a “punishment” for Canadian discrimination against American cars, dairy, and alcohol.

But the tariffs will also punish us. Remember, tariffs are import taxes — paid for by you and me and everyone else in America. So, we’re about to pay more for everything we import from Canada — plywood, paper, furniture, hockey sticks, cement, et al. Canada is our second-largest trading partner, for chrissake.

Even if the Supreme Court finds that Trump lacks authority to invoke these tariffs and the government must refund American importers for the extra cost — as the high court did with his first round of tariffs — you and I won’t be reimbursed for the extra costs we’ve paid.

Corporations aren’t giving their customers any of the $80 billion in refunds they’ve received from the Treasury Department for the first round of tariffs, so don’t expect any reimbursement on this second round. Which means we’re doubly screwed.

Worse yet, the Treasury isn’t really bearing the cost of the $80 billion in refunds. 

Tired of winning yet?