Parakeets Reveal a Surprising Rule for Making Friends

Bonding with your 'keet

By University of Cincinnati

Forming new relationships can be difficult, even in the animal world. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati discovered that monk parakeets introduced to unfamiliar birds tend to “test the waters” before deciding whether a potential companion is safe. 

Instead of approaching immediately, they move in gradually, becoming comfortable over time before engaging in interactions that carry a higher risk of conflict or injury.

The work was published in the journal Biology Letters.

Why Parrots Value Close Social Bonds

“There can be a lot of benefits to being social, but these friendships have to start somewhere,“ said Claire O’Connell, the study’s lead author and a doctoral student in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences.

O’Connell conducted the study with UC Associate Professor Elizabeth Hobson, former UC postdoctoral researcher Annemarie van der Marel, and Princeton University Associate Professor Gerald Carter. She explained that many parrot species develop deep connections with one or two trusted partners. These pairs may spend long periods together, groom each other, or form reproductive partnerships. According to O’Connell, maintaining strong bonds such as these is often associated with reduced stress and higher reproductive success.

Kids and the elderly most at risk from erratic Trump vaccine maneuvers

Here are two articles with the details

From CIDRAP - Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy, University of Minnesota

When confusion replaces clarity about vaccines, children pay the price

Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH and Sarah Despres

When the US government changes long-standing childhood vaccine recommendations, parents deserve clarity: what changed, why it changed, and what it means for their children’s health. Instead, the recent revamp of the US childhood immunization schedule was announced abruptly by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with limited explanation and evidence, and little transparency about how decisions were reached or how they are expected to improve health outcomes. 

Who needs science?

One thing, however, is clear: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. achieved his intended goal. He created even more confusion about and distrust in the use of vaccines. When purposeful confusion leading to doubt is the goal, the consequences show up quickly, not in abstract debates, but in pediatric wards, neonatal intensive care units, and grieving families.

Much of the public commentary since the announcement has focused on the remaining policy levers available to HHS to reduce access to vaccines, such as changes to insurance coverage, liability protections, or federal programs for under- and uninsured children. Those concerns are real. But they obscure a more immediate and troubling reality: vaccine uptake is declining, not because access has disappeared, but because vaccination itself is being steadily de-normalized through uncertainty, mixed messages, and the spread of inaccurate information coming from the political appointees at HHS. 

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. achieved his intended goal. He created even more confusion about and distrust in the use of vaccines.

$380 Million in Funding Cuts to One of the Most Successful US Public Education Programs

Trump's assault on bilingual education

By Jeff Bryant for The Left Chapter

You can use the same maps to chart funding cuts

Chicago schoolteacher Claudia Morales may have been reflecting the feelings of most Americans about life under the Trump presidential administration when she told Our Schools, “Every day, there’s yet another abuse. It’s scary. And it’s coming from our own government.” In her work as a bilingual program teacher and bilingual coordinator at Curie High School in Chicago Public Schools (CPS), she’s been witness to one trauma after another.

“First, there were the funding cuts the Trump administration made,” said Morales, referring to the federal government’s decision to withhold more than $4 billion in funds for public education at the start of the 2025-2026 school year. CPS was particularly hit hard by the cuts, with the district losing millions it had counted on to pay for staffing positions and programs.

“Then we had ICE invade,” Morales recounted, noting that the Archer Heights neighborhood, where most of her students come from, was one of the communities targeted by the federal government’s immigration crackdown. The Trump administration’s decision to rescind the protected status that prohibited immigration raids at schools and student gathering places, like bus stops and playgrounds, made her school’s largely Hispanic student population—many of whom are recent immigrants—especially vulnerable.

“And now this,” she concluded. “This” is the December 2025 announcement from Trump’s U.S. Department of Education, signed by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, to withhold some $380 million in federal funding that was previously granted to schools from the department’s full-service community schools (FSCS) program. The initiative provides support for the planning, implementation, and operation of the community school approach to school improvement. The community school approach transitions traditional schools from being strictly academic institutions into community hubs that provide student and family support services based on resources and voices of the surrounding community. The strategy is showing promise in improving student outcomes nationwide, but that seems irrelevant to current federal officials.

As a result of the funding cut-off to Chicago schools, according to Morales, Curie will lose money it needs to pay for tutors, after-school programs, parent education courses, and academic support for students who struggle with learning. These are programs and services parents specifically asked the school to provide, said Morales.

The loss of funding for in-school and after-school tutors will be especially damaging to the students’ academic achievement, according to educators at Curie.

Making America Vicious and Unwelcoming Whether You Live Here or Not

Don’t come here and don’t stay

Rebecca Gordon for the TomDispatch

During my slog through the Substack messages, newspaper headline notices, and podcast reminders that hit my inbox every morning, two stories drew my attention. 

Both had to do with the fact that human beings have always moved around this planet, beginning long before there were any countries or maps to display the borders where one nation ends and another begins. 

I was reminded of a decades-old song by the Venezuelan singer Soledad Bravo, “Punto y Raya”—“The Dot and the Dash”:

Entre tu pueblo y mi pueblo hay un punto y una raya,

la raya dice no hay paso el punto vía cerrada

“Between your people and mine,” says the song, “there’s a dot and a dash. The dash says, ‘No entrance,’ and the dot, ‘The road is closed.’” Bravo goes on to say that, with all those dots and dashes outlining the borders of nations, a map looks like a telegram. If you walk through the actual world, though, what you see are mountains and rivers, forests and deserts, but no dots or dashes at all.

Porque esas cosas no existen, sino que fueron creadas

para que mi hambre y la tuya estén siempre separadas.

And she adds, “Because those things aren’t real, they were created so your hunger and mine would remain separated.”

Two Immigration Stories

Two morning news stories brought that song back into my mind, along with the human reality it expresses. Both appeared in the New York Times (and no doubt elsewhere). The first reported that the “United States population grew last year [between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025] at one of the slowest rates in its history.” 

Such a reduction in growth was in large part due to the Trump administration’s immigration policies. In 2025, immigration rates to the United States dropped by 50% compared to the previous year. Perhaps surprisingly, Trump’s vicious and deadly deportation efforts accounted for only about 235,000 of the 1.5 million-person net decline in immigration.

Much more significant were the barriers to entry created under Trump, largely through the influence of Stephen Miller, the man Steve Bannon has labelled the president’s “prime minister.” Those include the effective closing of our southern border to undocumented arrivals. The administration has also made legal entry to the US much more difficult in a variety of ways, including:

• Instituting a $100,000 fee to be paid by employers seeking to hire professional workers under an H1-B visa;
• Erecting barriers to foreign students, leading to a 17% drop in new ones enrolling in American universities;
• Fully or partially restricting entry by the citizens (including refugees) of 19 nations: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen (full restrictions) and Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela (partial restrictions);
• Pausing all asylum applications by citizens of any nation in the world, leaving a backlog of 1.4 million cases;
• Capping all refugee admissions at 7,500 per year, a reduction of 94% from previous limits (with the exception, of course, of white South African farmers).

Now we know where they went

Two re-scheduled Tomaquag Museum that were snowed out

 

News from the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee

 

C-Town Dems News

February 2026

Meet your 2026 candidates!

Wednesday, March 4, 6:00 PM CDTC Meeting with AG candidate Kim Ahern LG candidate Sue AnderBois   Join the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee for conversation with Kim Ahern and Sue AnderBois   Meeting will be held at the Charlestown Police station 6 PM   We'll be hosting other candidates for statewide races on future dates, so subscribe and follow our socials below.

About Kim: A trusted prosecutor for nine years, Kim served as a Special Assistant Attorney General under three Rhode Island attorneys general. She fought to uphold the law, prosecuting over 1,000 cases in what is now known as the Special Victims Unit, as well as environmental crimes to protect Rhode Islanders’ air and water. She served as the Attorney General’s representative on the Rhode Island Commission on Prejudice and Bias and worked closely with the office’s Civil Division.   Kim went on to serve as a senior counselor to Rhode Island’s last two governors. Kim was a trusted advisor on a range of policy and legal matters, including juvenile justice reform, reentry support, and housing.   When COVID hit Rhode Island, Kim helped lead the state’s response, including efforts to provide food, housing, and other supports to the state’s most vulnerable populations.   Most recently, Governor McKee appointed Kim as the first-ever Chairperson of the Rhode Island Cannabis Control Commission. From 2023 to 2025, Kim successfully built a new, independent state agency, balancing economic opportunity with public health safeguards. She oversaw the regulation, licensing, and enforcement of adult-use and medical cannabis in a way that was safe, transparent, and equitable.   delete   About Sue: Currently Deputy Majority Whip of the Providence City Council, where she is also chair of the Special Committee on the Environment and Resiliency & also the North Main Street Task Force. She is a member of the Finance Committee, HOPE Committee, a Commissioner of the Providence Parks, and Vice Chair of the City Property Committee.    Sue's career has largely focused on energy policy and local food systems. She most recently was the Northeast Director of Climate and Energy for The Nature Conservancy, and prior to that was Rhode Island's first "food czar" in the Raimondo Administration, where she wrote and implemented RI's first food strategy Relish Rhody. She has served on many boards and commissions, including as a current appointee on the RI Energy Efficiency Council. She previously served as Chair of the Providence Sustainability Commission, was a founding board member of the Local Return, and was a board member of Farm Fresh RI, Green Energy Consumers Alliance, Southside Community Land Trust, and the RI Food Policy Council.   She lives in Providence with her husband Scott and their dog Captain Ruggles and cats Zeni and Wasabi.  She has a BA from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Yale University.   Button

Call for Volunteers Your Charlestown Democratic Town Committee needs you! We are looking for active participants who want to help support Democratic candidates and causes. If interested, send a note to info@charlestowndemocrats.org. Please consider joining us!

**In America, we don’t do kings.**  For those looking to keep abreast of local and state resistance efforts, we recommend South County Resistance and Indivisible RI to find out what’s going on and to join some like-minded neighbors.​

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The Charlestown Democratic Town Committee manages the affairs of the Democratic Party in the town of Charlestown, RI subject to RI Election Law, State Party rules and its own bylaws. We meet the first Wednesday of every month at 6:00 PM at the Charlestown Police Station. Any Charlestown registered Democrat is welcome to attend.

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