Environmental Organizations Endorse Foulkes for Governor, Citing Stances on Transit, Electric Rates

While McKee turns against the environment, Foulkes steps up

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff

With less than six weeks to go until September’s primary, some environmental groups are getting off the bench and making their political endorsements in the governor’s race.

The Providence Streets Coalition, a grassroots activist organization devoted to increasing funding, safety, and reliability in the state’s transit network, announced July 21 that it is backing former CVS executive Helena Foulkes for governor.

“For far too long, this community has advocated for our state leaders to care about improvements and investments for safer streets and a transit system that works for all,” said Nichole O’Loughlin, political director for the Providence Streets Coalition, at the group’s endorsement announcement. “Unfortunately, our current governor has repeatedly done the opposite, and we need to change that right now.”

Transit and the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority have not fared well under Gov. Dan McKee. Thanks to a persistent $32 million budget deficit and a lack of support from the governor’s office and the General Assembly, RIPTA had to make deep operational cuts to balance its budget, reducing bus service or frequency, resulting in fewer and worse rides for the agency’s regular users.

The cuts have particularly hit hard in the state’s metro area, where it sees the bulk of its riders, many of whom cannot afford to own a car or come up with transportation alternatives outside of RIPTA. Foulkes, meanwhile, has pledged to fully fund and invest in expanding RIPTA’s bus service, as well as the state’s network of roads, bridges and bike infrastructure.

In her remarks accepting the Providence Streets Coalition endorsement, Foulkes said she had spent hours attending listening sessions when the cuts were first proposed, recalling riders gathering in small rooms to share their personal stories of what cuts to bus service would mean to them.

“Owning a car costs over $11,000 a year in this state, and riding a bus is less than $1,000 a year,” Foulkes said. “If we want to attract young people and keep them here, this is the wave of the future.”

The group didn’t endorse a gubernatorial candidate in 2022. Other endorsement announcements from the Providence Streets Coalition are expected later this summer.

Tuesday’s announcement was far from the first endorsement Foulkes picked up from an environmental organization. Last month Climate Action Rhode Island announced it was endorsing Foulkes, citing her policy platform of investing $40 million for residents and businesses to install solar and battery storage, and her pledge to hold Rhode Island Energy accountable for its rate hikes.

Coffee may help shield the liver from fat, scarring, and cancer

Another study flags coffee's potential benefits

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

A major long-term study linked coffee consumption with lower risks of cirrhosis, liver cancer, and death from liver disease. Coffee drinkers also showed healthier liver scans and blood protein patterns, with less fat, inflammation, and scarring. Benefits appeared even at one or two cups daily and were strongest around three to four cups.

One of the largest investigations yet into coffee and liver health has found that people who drink more coffee tend to have lower risks of cirrhosis, liver cancer, and death related to liver disease.

The Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University study, published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, also uncovered biological patterns that could help explain why coffee consumption has repeatedly been associated with healthier livers.

"Previous studies suggested that coffee might benefit the liver, but most were smaller or looked at only one piece of the puzzle," said hepatologist Hyunseok Kim, MD, MPH, PhD, assistant professor of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai and corresponding author of the study. "We followed hundreds of thousands of people for more than a decade and looked at their health outcomes along with liver MRI scans and blood protein analyses. Together, those findings help explain the biological mechanisms behind coffee's association with better liver health."

New Trump administration rules on federal science funding could make American research slower, costlier and harder to share

Imposing ideological screening on scientific research will cost lives

Aliasger K. Salem, University of Iowa

Most Americans don’t read the rules that govern the federal grants funding science. Those rules, called the Uniform Guidance, shape how cancer research is funded, graduate students are trained, clinical trials are sustained, universities stock their labs and discoveries from those labs move into broader society.

When the Trump administration announced on May 29, 2026, its intentions to revise these rules, many researchers were alarmed.

The Office of Management and Budget – the White House agency tasked with implementing the president’s policies across the executive branch – proposed requiring political appointees to review grant decisions for whether research projects advance the president’s policy priorities. These political officials would also have greater authority to override the decisions of the research agencies managing the grants.

The proposal was open for public comment until July 13, 2026, and received nearly 500,000 comments. Scientists have warned that these changes could allow political considerations to displace objective assessments, undermining merit-based federal research funding.

The OMB said these changes are intended to improve transparency and oversight of federal funds. However, scientists worry that several of these revisions could make research less predictable, harder to share and more expensive to do.

Beyond concerns about political influence over funding decisions, there are also more practical issues: What happens when the federal grant system becomes less stable for the people involved in the work of research?

Deprioritizing scientific merit

The first issue is peer review. Federal science agencies already use peer-review systems to assess which research projects will receive federal funding.

These systems generally involve scientists and other specialists with expertise relevant to the proposed work. Grant proposals typically undergo several rounds of review, one involving external experts and one involving agency officials. I am a scientist who has served for many years on federal grant review panels, including within the National Institutes of Health.

Reviewers like me assess the scientific merit of a research proposal through several factors. These include the rigor and feasibility of the work – that is, whether the study design can appropriately answer the research question. We consider whether the investigators have the expertise and institutional support to conduct the work. We also assess the overall impact of the project, examining whether the research could meaningfully advance the field and benefit science and society.

A high T, low IQ military is the last thing we need

Maybe Pete is taking TOO MUCH testosterone

Sabrina Haake

On July 21, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee, hats in hand. The war in Iran has depleted key weapons stockpiles, reducing U.S. inventories of interceptor missiles and stealth cruise missiles to less than half and costing over $37 billion to date. 

To the naked eye, these expenditures against a nominal force reflect waste and incompetence: disastrous mismanagement of an undefined, intractable, and escalating war.

Hegseth expected lawmakers to correct his urgent shortfall, but wouldn’t correct, clarify or explain his own obviously false claims about Iran. Hegseth’s early-in-the-war announcements that Iran’s military had been dismantled, “destroyed and made combat ineffective,” while claiming “historic and overwhelming victory” were obviously untrue, but on July 22, the GOP-led House put another $1 trillion in Hegseth’s hands anyway. 

Not only did the MAGA wing reward Trump’s incompetent war in Iran with a massive spending boost, it codified Hegseth’s rebrand of the “Department of War,” snuck in Trump’s voter suppression bill, and blocked hormone therapy coverage for gender care just as Hegseth is braying about increased testosterone levels.

Arming a blowhard who delivers culture war braggadocio instead of sober analysis is not confidence inspiring, it’s irresponsible. It’s also dangerous as hell.

Hegseth’s bloodlust

As a Fox News commentator, Hegseth lobbied hard for presidential pardons for war criminals, leading Trump to fully pardon a Lieutenant convicted of murdering two Afghan civilians, and a Major who admitted to the CIA that he killed someone off base in 2010 and buried his remains. 

For his own activities in Iraq, Hegseth kept a ‘kill board’ totaling up his kills, including dead civilians, providing context for his bloodlust today (“maximum lethality not tepid legality”) and his disdain for restraint (“stupid rules of engagement.”)

Hegseth seems to be grooming U.S. servicemembers for war crimes by modeling how rules and laws do not apply. 

Added to over 200 extrajudicial killings in South America, he bombed a school in Iran, killing175 grade-schoolers, and is now bombing Iran’s civilian energy infrastructure and water desalination facilities, more war crimes. Millions of Iranians are living under fire in nightmarish hellscapes, compounding anti-American hatred sure to outlast Trump for generations.

This is the same idiocy that blames other countries for climate-change induced wildfires, while pouring gas on the flames. But of all the mistakes, bloodlust, and incompetence displayed to date, none is more dangerous than Hegseth’s new experiments with testosterone.

OK, so here's the evidence

Why are some animals considered ‘pests’?

It comes down to culture and convenience

Elan Abrell, Wesleyan University

Turkey pecking at his reflection in the back of my car.
Photo by Will Collette

After wild turkeys attacked an 83-year-old woman in May 2026, sending her to the emergency room for stitches, police warned residents of Alameda, California, to avoid interacting with the animals. 

Wild turkeys can be particularly aggressive during mating season. They can also damage property: digging up gardens, staining decks with their droppings and occasionally attacking cars and windows when they mistake their own reflections for rival turkeys.

Turkeys may be a nuisance to Alameda’s human residents, but they have also been highly valued by multiple cultures throughout the history of North America. Given these threats to human safety and property, is it fair to call this quintessentially American bird a pest?

As an anthropologist who studies human-animal interactions, I have found that the idea of a “pest” is a flexible concept that changes over time and across cultures. Just as one person’s weed can be another’s wildflower, the category of pest is a subjective one that depends on social, aesthetic and economic values within a particular culture.

If Turkeys decorate American dinner tables and are pardoned by presidents, are they still pests?

Labeling an animal a pest typically justifies the use of harmful or deadly methods to remove undesirable species from human spaces. But these methods can lead to costs that far outweigh their benefits, causing unnecessary suffering for not only the so-called pests, but also for humans, other animals and entire ecosystems.

Understanding why people label certain animals pests can help society respond to potential conflicts while minimizing harm to both humans and animals.

Colorectal cancer warning signs younger adults (actually, no one) should never ignore

Colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death among people under 50

American College of Surgeons

Colorectal cancer has become the leading cause of cancer related death among people younger than 50. 

Although routine screening generally begins at age 45 for adults at average risk, warning signs can appear earlier and should be discussed with a health care provider at any age.

To help people recognize possible symptoms and speak with their doctors sooner, the American College of Surgeons (ACS) has introduced free public education resources and a checklist designed for use before primary care appointments.

Why AI’s environmental footprint won’t disappear into orbit

What could possibly go wrong?

Peter Howson, Northumbria University, Newcastle

AI companies increasingly want to move their operations into space. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has applied to launch over a million AI data centre satellites and ultimately build them on the moon.

Jeff Bezos, Google, OpenAI and others have similar plans. The idea is to harness 24/7 solar energy and, in Bezos’s vision at least, to move all polluting industries off-world, re-zoning Earth for humans and nature.

It’s an intriguing plan. But once you factor in the whole life cycle, from water and rocket fuel used to launch these satellites into space, to keeping them cool and eventually disposing of old satellites, the environmental case becomes less clear.

Outer space, out of mind

Off-worlding polluting industries is not a new idea. In the 1970s, when the last Iranian oil crisis caused rocketing fuel prices, Nasa kicked off a plan to build huge solar plants in space. The idea flopped when the oil began to flow again.

Nasa also explored the prospect of storing nuclear materials on the moon and blasting hazardous waste at the sun. These plans may have been feasible from an engineering perspective but were politically impossible due to the risk of radioactive particles eventually falling back to earth.

A concept image from Nasa’s 1978 proposal for a
10km-wide ‘satellite power system’. The space-based
solar farm is visible top right, while the energy would
be beamed down to a ‘rectenna farm’ on earth,
in the center of the image.
Nasa / US DoE / Satellite Power System (SPS)
Concept Development and Evaluation Program Plan, 1978.

Since data centers need so much energy, much of it for AI, such astronomical ideas are back on the table. Regular Earth-based data centers were responsible for around 5% of all electricity used in the US last year, for instance, mostly using fossil fuels. Their share of US power demand will likely triple by 2028.

The fragile frontier

That’s why the cold vacuum of space, with its endless supply of solar energy, is being pitched as a more sustainable alternative to big, noisy, hot data centers in our back yards.

Meanwhile, a recent petition from environmental law charity Earthjustice, is calling for a comprehensive review. They argue these proposals fail to acknowledge any environmental impact. “This is not just poor planning and a missed opportunity”, the petition states, “it violates federal law”.

Indeed, SpaceX’s planning applications come with assurances of no meaningful environmental impact. “It’s always sunny in space,” according to Musk, who says orbital data centers are “obviously the only way to scale”.

Yet data centers in space would be even more prone to overheating than those on earth. That’s because, like a Thermos flask, space keeps things hot. There’s no water or air to carry excess heat away. Instead, keeping powerful AI chips cool in orbit requires massive ammonia-filled radiators that let heat escape as infrared radiation. This isn’t very efficient and those radiators are much larger than the computers they cool. Lifting these huge structures to orbit would require a lot of rocket fuel.

Why Trump screws Rhode Island any time he has the chance

Trump Admin Targeted Democrats by Canceling Clean Energy Grants

Brad Reed for Common Dreams

Donald Trump’s administration has admitted in court that it chose to cancel certain grants for clean energy projects because they were set to benefit Democratic-voting states.

The New York Times reported that attorneys representing the US Department of Energy (DOE) acknowledged in court documents filed earlier this month that decisions about canceling grants were based “solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”

The Times described this as a “stunning admission” that “offered an unvarnished glimpse into the way President Trump has weaponized the provision of federal education, energy, health, housing, and infrastructure aid in his second term.”

According to the Times, the DOE last year recommended canceling more than 600 grants awarded for energy projects under former President Joe Biden’s administration.

However, the White House Office of Management and Budget only made 284 of the recommended cuts while leaving the rest of the grants in place.

Trump solves inflation

August 1 fundraiser in Narragansett for Gabe Amo

Seaweeds are not plants – and six other surprising facts about aquatic flora

Crucial to life on earth

Alexander Bowles, University of Oxford

Hidden beneath the water’s surface is a botanical world that is among nature’s most innovative and ecologically important.

As I highlighted in a recent paper, an extraordinary range of adaptations have evolved in aquatic plants for life beneath the water’s surface. Some flower underwater, others capture animals in ingenious traps. Here are seven facts that show how these remarkable organisms challenge our assumptions about what plants are and how they survive.

Many people think of plants as nice-looking greens. Essential for clean air, yes, but simple organisms. A step change in research is shaking up the way scientists think about plants: they are far more complex and more like us than you might imagine. This blossoming field of science is too delightful to do it justice in one or two stories. This article is part of a series, Plant Curious, exploring scientific studies that challenge the way you view plantlife.

1. Plants can’t stop returning to water

When we think of plants, we often picture life on land: forests, grasslands and meadows. Yet throughout their evolutionary history, plants have repeatedly returned to the water, where they first evolved. Around 500 million years ago, plants moved from water onto land. Since then, many have moved back. Scientists estimate that the aquatic lifestyle has evolved independently more than 100 times across different plant groups.

Water lilies float their leaves on the surface, duckweeds drift freely and seagrasses live entirely submerged in the ocean. Some of these groups made their return over 100 million years ago. The repeated evolution of aquatic plants is one of nature’s most striking examples of convergent evolution.

Save kids' lives

Flu shots prevent 80% of death in kids

Mary Van Beusekom, MS

During eight respiratory illness seasons, estimated influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) against death in US children was 80% overall, 77% in those who had underlying medical conditions, and 87% among those without such conditions, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers report today in Pediatrics. 

The team used data from the US Influenza Associated Pediatric Mortality Surveillance System and survey data to estimate VE against death and assess vaccination status in children aged 6 months to 17 years who died of their infections from August 2016 through July 2025. The study excluded the 2020-21 flu season.

“Seasonal influenza vaccination has been shown to reduce the risk of influenza and severe complications among children aged 6 months and older,” the study authors noted. “Since 2010, reported numbers of influenza-associated pediatric deaths among children younger than 18 years have ranged from 37 during the 2011 to 2012 season to 289 during the 2024 to 2025 season.” 

Over half of flu deaths were in otherwise healthy children

In total, 1,234 children aged 6 months to 17 years died of flu. Overall, 48% of pediatric deaths occurred in children with one or more underlying medical conditions and 52% in those without such conditions. 

Of deaths in children with at least one high-risk condition, the greatest proportion of flu vaccination was in those with non-asthma lung disorders (35%), followed by immune-weakening conditions (33%) and genetic and mitochondrial disorders (29%) and was lowest among those with obesity (18%), diabetes (11%), and hemoglobinopathies such as sickle cell disease (8%).

Among 1,086 deaths with flu vaccination data, only 23% of 530 children with chronic conditions and 13% of 556 children without these conditions were fully vaccinated against flu. By season, the proportion of flu deaths in children vaccinated in the current year ranged from 26% in 2018-19 to 9% in 2024-25. 

Federal health agencies say they need a big funding bump to prepare for future emergencies

Rebuild our ability to handle public health emergencies

Sarah Boden

Public health decisions are made by this clown

Federal agencies tasked with planning for and responding to public health emergencies say they need a big bump in funding to prepare for future pandemics and antimicrobial resistance, as well as chemical, biological, radiologic, or nuclear threats. 

The multiyear budget, released July 15, proposes an allocation of $53.3 billion over the next three fiscal years: 2027, 2028 and 2029. If funding remains flat, the allocation will be $20 billion, or $33.5 billion less than requested. 

The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), the federal government's leading health security agency, says the budget is based on agency professional judgment. 

"These investments will strengthen our ability to develop, manufacture, and deliver lifesaving medical countermeasures when they are needed most," said John Knox, ASPR's principal deputy assistant secretary and interim leader, in an ASPR news release. 

The proposed budget comes at a time when many have criticized the federal government's deep cuts to preparedness efforts amid the recent hantavirus outbreak and ongoing Ebola outbreak in Africa.

Trump has a public nervous breakdown on Truth Social

He flaunts his dementia for all to see

By Will Collette

There was a ton of political commentary today about Donald Trump's astounding six-hour posting spree on Truth Social yesterday. As one of my favorite columnists Jeff Tiedrich put it: 

Dear Leader is bugfuck nuts.

we know this. it’s not open to debate. we’ve all seen the erratic behavior. the pants-shittingly infantile tantrums. the utter lack of impulse control. the mood swings. the ever-shifting incoherence he wreaks on the world, as the family of raccoons that live inside his fat, waterlogged head randomly chew through all the wires.

The AI-slopped photo above of Trump and John F. Kennedy in front of the now half-destroyed White House is particularly ironic, given Trump's blasphemous destruction of Jackie's Rose Garden and treatment of the Kennedy Center.

Then there's this:

And this:

And this one featuring Cadet Bonespurs:

And this interpretation of how his endless war with Iran is going:

For Trump, this one is a pretty subtle attack in our renewed war on Canada:

Of course, he tried to make fun of his critics:

This is how the President of the United States spent his Sunday. We are at war with Iran, a war Trump started without cause or plan or exit strategy. Runaway inflation, diseases running rampant, hungry children, unaffordable housing. A world that now either hates us or doesn't trust us. 

When he isn't trying to come up with new things to name after himself or historic treasures he wants to turn into gilded bordellos, he spends his time with this shit.

He's out of control and that spells danger for all of us, MAGA and DSA alike. Since the Republican controlled Congress doesn't have the guts to deal with him, we need to deal with them on November 3.