Observers have spent two weeks trying to discern the “aims”
of Trump’s war on Iran, and therefore what might constitute a victory or
defeat.
His every bizarre utterance about his war “plans” — including wildly
conflicting declarations that Iran has surrendered and the war must be expanded
to defeat the regime — immediately move markets.
The evident fact, though, is that Trump is completely nuts,
and that he’s “governing” the country — and has now taken the US to war — based
on his impulses alone, without even the pretense of a strategy or goal.
It’s almost as if Trump felt that, as a would-be dictator,
he had to have his own nihilistic war, just like his idol Vlad Putin. But
Trump’s “excursion” against Iran is nothing like Putin’s years long “special
military operation” against Ukraine — it’s actually more stupid.
Note also that Trump's mother was an immigrant as were both of his grandparents
Putin’s goals have never been hidden or uncertain — he wants
to erase the nation of Ukraine and reincorporate its territory into his
neo-Russian Empire. Trump, by contrast — and characteristically — is utterly
unable to articulate why he started the largest war the United States has
embarked on since the years following 9/11, let alone explain what “victory”
might look like.
This is hardly unusual. In fact, it’s the sine qua
non of late Trumpism, in which the Strongman of Mar-a-Lago “rules” the
country based on pure impulse, rather than even the most misguided of strategy.
“Governance” by impulse
It’s a frightening reality of the Trump regime that, as
Trump has descended into utter incoherence and is now nothing more than an
assortment of adolescent (and frequently violent) urges, the US government has
been remade into a tool for the immediate satisfaction of his wants and desires
no matter how absurd or nihilistic they may be.
We’ve seen this dynamic of chaos descend upon various
components of our government and society over the past 14 months.
In a little more than two decades, Taylor Swift rose from
being an aspiring young artist to becoming an influential pop culture icon who
has made a mark on society well beyond her sold-out live performances.
Stephanie Burt, a Harvard University professor and poetry
expert—and a “Swiftie”—has examined in her course “Taylor Swift and Her World”
the award-winning singer’s unique, joyful genius as an artist who has mastered
her craft. Burt will further discuss Swift’s artistry and celebrity during the
University of Rhode Island’s Humanities
and Popular Culture/Counterculture lecture series.
The yearlong lecture series, hosted by the URI Center for the Humanities, is
focusing on topics ranging from women’s basketball to Shakespeare to music and
social justice. The series is co-sponsored by the URI College of Arts and
Sciences, Division of Research and Economic Development, Department of Gender
and Women’s Studies and the Affirming Multivocal Humanities Mellon Grant, and
Department of Philosophy.
Burt’s presentation, part of URI’s annual Spring Humanities
Festival, will also be livestreamed through the Center for the
Humanities’ YouTube
channel, and people who register will receive a link. At the March 26 talk,
Burt will analyze Swift, her body of work and the community that her art has
fostered.
By Juan Siliezar, Associate Director of Media Relations
and Leadership Communications, School of Public Health, Brown University
A White
House briefing in September 2025 that raised concerns about acetaminophen use
during pregnancy and promoted the drug leucovorin as a potential autism
treatment was followed by sharp changes in how doctors prescribed those
medications nationwide, according to a new study.
The study shows
that after the Sept. 22, 2025, briefing,
acetaminophen orders for pregnant women in emergency rooms fell markedly while
prescriptions for leucovorin for children dramatically increased.
The study was authored by researchers from Brown
University’s School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School and published
in the Lancet.
According to the authors, the usage changes for both drugs
are notable because they were specific to the drugs mentioned in the
announcement and because they occurred despite no new clinical trial data or
formal guideline revisions during that period.
Here are the Irish "Principles of Sustainable Development"
Rhode Island needs more housing, and I support that goal.
But how we get there matters. Growth has limits, and development must respect
constraints, especially when it comes to preserving clean drinking water.
The failure to adequately plan a long-term, safe, steady
supply of drinking water for new housing can have catastrophic impacts.
Watersheds for public surface water and groundwater drinking water supplies are
not appropriate for high-density development. Once drinking water is
contaminated or overdrawn, it can’t easily be restored and must be protected
for both current and future generations.
For these reasons, I strongly support legislation to amend
the Rhode Island Low and Moderate Income (LMI) Housing Act.
This legislation would eliminate the existing state-mandated housing densities
in lands that are used for drinking water supplies.
Moreover, the current
law only requires developers to cite that public water or sewer systems are
available. The legislation adds language that the capacityof
public water or sewer be documented to support the proposed increase in
residential density before a development proposal can be approved.
The intent
of the amendments is to ensure that housing densities for LMI do not exceed the
availability of onsite drinking water supplies; do not introduce pollution that
would make drinking water unsuitable for use; and stay within the limits of any
public water or sewer system.
The budget, as presented and ultimately passed, will
require, upon voter approval, each of the three communities that make up the
Chariho School District to increase its financial contributions to the schools.
Committee Chair Louise Dinsmore opposed the budget because of
the increases and, in fact, voted against it - twice.
“I have said publicly
that I will not support passing this Fiscal Year ‘27 budget, especially because
Richmond has a significant increase in front of them.”
Richmond’s increase was
7.82%, Charlestown’s was 5.02%, and Hopkinton’s was 2.1%.
Rhode Island’s electric grid now includes some power from its first utility-scale offshore wind project, Revolution Wind, project developers announced Friday night.
The initial power delivery is not the final achievement: The 65-turbine project is 93% complete and not expected to hit its full 704-megawatt nameplate capacity until the second half of the year. However, the initial test of connection to the region’s electric grid marks an important benchmark, especially after two attempts by the Trump administration to block the project’s completion.
The initial power delivery appears on schedule with the prior timeline, despite two separate pauses forced by the Trump administration. The project was first put on hold in August 2025, with federal energy regulators unexpectedly demanding a review for national security concerns, despite having already completed a comprehensive review of project impacts nearly two years earlier. The stop work order was overturned by a federal judge in D.C. in September in response to one of two lawsuits filed by developers and state attorneys general.
A federal judge in Boston has temporarily blocked the
Trump administration’s changes to the US childhood immunization schedule.
In a ruling issued this afternoon, Judge Brian E. Murphy
said the changes made by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. to the childhood immunization schedule likely violated the
Administrative Procedure Act, as did Kennedy’s reconstitution of a federal
advisory board that makes recommendations on clinical use of vaccines.
The preliminary injunction comes in response to a lawsuit
filed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other leading medical
groups against HHS in July 2025 over
Kennedy’s unilateral changes to COVID vaccine recommendations for children and
pregnant women. The suit was amended in
January after HHS overhauled recommendations for childhood vaccines, reducing
the number of recommended vaccines from 17 to 11.
The lawsuit argued that these moves, along with Kennedy’s
appointment of vaccine skeptics to the Advisory Committee on Immunization
Practices (ACIP) after firing 17 previously
appointed members, bypassed the scientific process and didn’t follow
proper administrative procedures.
Murphy said in his ruling that there is a method to how
decisions about vaccine recommendations have historically been made, “a method
scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements.”
“Unfortunately, the government has disregarded those methods
and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions,” he wrote.
During the year she spent leading the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, Kristi Noem faced a torrent of criticism. Lawmakers from both parties assailed her for lying about the shooting of protestors in Minneapolis and spending millions of dollars on television commercials. Government audits concluded that she “systematically obstructed” investigations and created security risks at airports.
Now she has become the first cabinet-level official fired by President Donald Trump during his second term. After a combative hearing this week, during which Noem seemed to mislead Congress about whether Trump approved her ad spending, the president fired her.
As DHS secretary, Noem also raised eyebrows for an unprecedented degree of control over staffing and spending at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She paused most FEMA payments, leading to extensive delays for disaster recovery, and sought to slash the agency’s on-call workforce by thousands of employees. She also expressed a desire to downsize or eliminate the agency entirely, shifting the burden of disaster relief onto the states.
A growing number of critics and experts believe that Noem’s interference with FEMA may well have been illegal. This week, two Senate Democrats released a report alleging that Noem’s blanket freeze on FEMA payments violated federal law. At the same time, lawyers for a federal workers’ union argued to a federal judge in California that Noem’s workforce cuts also violated the law. In both cases, critics pointed to legislation passed after Hurricane Katrina, which prohibits DHS from interfering with FEMA.
When Secretary of Defense James Mattis addressed the intensification of U.S. combat operations against the Islamic State group in 2017, he assured the American public of his commitment to “get the strategy right” while maintaining “the rules of engagement” to “protect the innocent.”
Mattis’ professional tone was a stark contrast to Secretary Pete Hegseth’s remarks following the first days of the joint U.S.-Israeli combat operations in Iran.
On March 2, 2026, after bragging about the awe-inspiring lethality of U.S. “B-2s, fighters, drones, missiles,” Hegseth casually brushed aside concerns about long-term geopolitical strategy, declaring “no stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win.”
Admonishing the press for anything less than total assent, he commanded, “to the media outlets and political left screaming ‘endless wars:’ Stop. This is not Iraq.”
Two days later, Hegseth gloated about “dominance” and “control,” while asserting that the preoccupation of the “fake news media” with casualties was motivated by liberal media bias and hatred of President Trump.
“Tragic things happen; the press only wants to make the president look bad,” he said. He dismissed concerns about the rules of engagement, declaring that “this was never meant to be a fair fight. We are punching them while they are down, as it should be.”
Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon press conference, at which he asserted the Iran war would have no ‘No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise.’
I’m a communication scholar who has studied MAGA rhetoric for a decade. I have observed how Hegseth and other officials in the second Trump administration refuse to abide by what recurring rhetorical situations – urgent public matters that compel speech to audiences capable of being influenced – typically demand of public officials.
The theme of this administration is that no one is going to tell it what to say or how to say it. It will be encumbered neither by norms nor the exigencies that compel speech in a democratic society.
The big man
When the U.S. goes to war, the public expects the president and the defense secretary to convince them of the appropriateness of the action. They do this by detailing the justification for military action, but also by addressing the public in a manner that conveys the seriousness and competence required for such a grave task as waging war.
But during the first week of the Iran war, Hegseth’s press briefings deviated from the measured tone expected from high-ranking military officials.
Many observers were taken aback by his haughty tone, hypermasculine preoccupation with domination, giddiness about violence and casual attitude toward death.
During Trump’s first term, this penchant for rule-breaking was by and large isolated to the president, whose transgressions were part of his populist appeal.
Although Trump’s first cabinet members agreed on most political objectives, they attempted to rein in what they saw as the president’s more dangerous whims.
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