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?

Get ready!

And be careful...

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.