Key September 9 Democratic Primary match-up in Narragansett pits progressive incumbent versus LORIB DINO

Two Narragansett neighbors live separate lives on policy

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Editor’s note: This is the first in a six-part series on state legislative races, chosen based on expected competitiveness between candidates and relevant issues to the district. Of the 113 seats in the Rhode Island General Assembly, all of which are elected every two years, 22 have primaries in September.

Sen. Alana DiMario and her Democratic primary challenger, Mark Mesrobian, live less than a third of a mile apart on the same street in Narragansett.

But the Tupelo Trail neighbors are miles apart in ideology and policy priorities for Senate District 36.

About District 36 

Represented by Sen. Alana DiMario since 2020

Geography: Includes part of North Kingstown, Narragansett, New Shoreham

Population: 29,000, 22,513 registered voters

Partisan breakdown: 56% independent, 29% Democrat, 14% Republican

Demographics: Median age: 49.1; 92% white; $103,982 median household income (2024)

DiMario was first elected in 2020, part of a band of progressive candidates that arrived on Smith Hill that year. A licensed mental health counselor and former chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Agriculture, DiMario, 47, has led the way on state laws to preserve farm and forestland while promoting solar development, increasing access to affordable mental health services and childcare, and securing state funding for a pilot public transit program for people with disabilities. She’s not done.

“I have unfinished work to do,” DiMario said, rattling off mental healthcare issues, coastal protections and infrastructure constraints that require water bans in Narragansett every summer as examples. “The range of issues I become involved with, that are brought to my attention by my constituents, and advocates, just keep adding to the to-do list.”

By contrast, Mesrobian sums up his platform in a single word: business. A serial entrepreneur whose current business involves wholesale and direct-to-consumer eyewear — he also serves as general manager of the Bonnet Shores Beach Club — Merobian sees an unmet need in the business community.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Like Charlestown's state Rep. Tina Spears, Sen. DiMario is being primaried by a "Democrat in Name Only (DINO)" who is bankrolled by right-wing MAGA nut Dave Levesque. Levesque set up 40 political action committees, 39 of them supposedly representing each RI municipality, to evade state restrictions on PAC donations. In reality, these "local" PACs are all run by Levesque to promote his MAGA agenda. In South County, nearly every Democratic woman legislator is being targeted. Read more about the LORIB attack by clicking HERE. - Will Collette

Worden Pond invasive weeds will be chemically treated on Friday

DEM says treatment will affect nothing but the weeds

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) announces that Worden Pond in South Kingstown will be treated for the invasive aquatic plant hydrilla on Friday, August 7, with periodic repeated treatments through November. 

These treatments will not harm fish and will not impact boating, fishing, or swimming. The EPA-approved herbicide treatments will target hydrilla, which was first found in the pond in 2023. 

Worden Pond is RI’s largest natural lake at 1,098 acres and is popular for fishing, boating, and paddlecraft. The treatments for this federally designated noxious weed are funded by Congressionally Directed Spending secured by Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).  

How Trump’s “America First” Administration Could Shut U.S. Scientists Out of the Next Nobel-Worthy Discovery

Trump doesn't care as long as it doesn't affect his chances of getting the Nobel Peace Prize

By Lisa Song for ProPublica

For decades, physicists wrestled with a fundamental mystery of the universe.

They wanted to know why certain particles — like the protons in atoms — have mass, while particles of light do not. Whatever the reason was, it was crucial to understanding the origins of planets, galaxies and life itself.

The leading theory stated that particles got their mass from interacting with an invisible field, later dubbed the Higgs field, but no one had ever been able to prove it existed.

Doing so would require one of the most ambitious international collaborations in scientific history. Starting decades ago, thousands of scientists from dozens of countries worked side by side, even though some of their nations considered one another adversaries. The United States contributed a quarter of the workforce and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

The investment paid off in 2012, when the team detected the so-called “God particle” or Higgs boson, confirming the half-century-old Higgs field theory. The achievement was so significant that two of the physicists behind the theory won the Nobel Prize.

Under a new rule proposed by the Trump administration, American scientists might be forced to watch similar discoveries from the sidelines. The proposal would restrict international collaboration and give political appointees the ability to decide the most important research to fund, and the power to pull the plug at any time, for any reason.

As soon as he learned about the proposal, one of the U.S. scientists who took part in the landmark project rushed to file his objection with the federal government.

“These experiments take decades to build and require sustained, cooperative international investment,” University of Chicago physics professor David W. Miller wrote in a public comment. “The experiments will continue, without American leadership. … The United States will not just fall behind. It will step aside.”

The rule’s implications reach far beyond physics. Proposed by the Office of Management and Budget, a little-known but powerful part of the White House that guides federal spending, it would give the administration’s political appointees across dozens of federal agencies significant discretion over how grants are awarded and terminated. The appointees don’t have to know anything about science or the subjects of the grants they’re reviewing.

Russell Vought, who runs the office and has made expanding presidential control over federal spending one of his signature goals, has put the philosophy into practice over the past two years, helping to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development and, in another controversial move, blocking funds already allocated by Congress. Vought’s decision last year to cancel 284 Department of Energy grants drew renewed criticism after an agency lawyer recently admitted in court records that the terminations were “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state” — in other words, blue states.

DOJ’s Environmental Enforcement Has Collapsed in the Second Trump Administration, Former Attorneys Say

Trump mission is to promote fossil fuels at all costs

By Dana Drugmand

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Tom Mariani spent nearly 40 years working as an environmental attorney inside the U.S. Department of Justice. But the return of President Donald Trump to office last year marked the end of his government career. 

His departure was part of a mass exodus of civil servants across the federal government, including at the DOJ, in the beginning of the second Trump administration. Over the last year and half, thousands of career attorneys have exited the department, and many of its litigating divisions have been drastically downsized. The Civil Rights Division lost 70 percent of its attorneys within the first few months. The Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) lost more than a quarter of its workforce. 

In June, the Trump administration announced that it would be dropping the word “environment” and replacing it with “energy” in a renamed Energy and Natural Resources Division with a re-tooled mission, “advancing U.S. energy dominance.” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson, the division’s new head, said in an emailed statement that “faithfully” enforcing environmental laws remains a central part of protecting “clean air, water, and land for all Americans.” 

“There’s nothing incompatible about unleashing American energy and making America healthy again. We are achieving both,” he said. 

But half a dozen former ENRD attorneys tell a different story, citing a substantial decline in the division’s enforcement of environmental laws and warning that this  “collapse,” as one of those attorneys called it, threatens public health, the environment and the rule of law. 

In the first year of Trump’s second term, the DOJ filed just 16 civil suits against polluters on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Environmental Integrity Project reported earlier this year. That number is an 81 percent drop from the first year of Trump’s first term and 76 percent lower than the first year of the Biden administration. 

Matthew Nies, a DOJ spokesperson, noted a string of “significant environmental enforcement and defense work” since the start of the second Trump administration, including a $100 million air pollution penalty won at trial against a coke plant near Detroit. The case was filed in 2022 by the prior administration.

The former ENRD attorneys, and numerous environmental advocates, countered that the DOJ has named a former ExxonMobil attorney as the division’s senior counsel, intervened on behalf of polluters and gone on offense for the fossil fuel industry, suing states over their climate policies and efforts to hold oil companies accountable. 

Give this guy a raise

South County Rising Community Meeting, August 7

Trump posts more crazy stuff on his social media site

At some point, even MAGA Republicans should admit enough is enough

Trump was such a pain in the ass that his parents sent him to military school where he developed a reputation as a bully. He avoided by draft by claiming bone spurs that somehow never impeded his golf game:

But, in Trump's mind, none of America's problems actually exist, as his also non-existent poll numbers show.

RI attorney general candidates find common ground before policy clashes emerge late in debate

Who will replace term-limited Peter Neronha?

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

Rhode Island’s four Democratic candidates seeking to succeed term-limited Attorney General Peter Neronha found common ground on most issues during a two-hour debate Thursday evening, though the cordial tone turned more contentious toward the end.

Kim Ahern, Keith Hoffmann, Rep. Jason Knight, and Rep. Joe Solomon sat before over 100 people inside the community room at Southside Cultural Center in Providence for a “justice and policy debate” hosted by OpenDoors. The discussion was moderated by Nick Horton, co-executive director of the nonprofit that helps formerly incarcerated people, those struggling with addiction and other unhoused people. 

Questions from Horton and other community advocates focused on police accountability, bail reform and automating the expungement of criminal records — issues candidates each supported to varying degrees.

On police accountability, Knight and Hoffmann both backed creating a process to revoke the certification of officers found to have committed serious misconduct. Solomon said the attorney general should enforce the law “against any individual who commits any offense,” while Ahern pledged to reopen field offices in overpoliced communities so residents could more easily share their experiences with prosecutors.

“Those closest to the problem are closest to the solution,” Ahern, a former state prosecutor and previous chairperson of the Rhode Island Cannabis Control Commission, said.

All four candidates rejected blanket policies to hold probation violators without bail and instead endorsed individualized assessments. 

Differences began to show when a community advocate asked whether the four supported closing the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls amid its close partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This food compound may help vaccines work better in older adults

British scientists look at a way to boost vaccine effectiveness

Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine

A naturally occurring compound called spermidine may help strengthen vaccine responses in some older adults by reducing biological signs of immune system aging, according to research published in Aging Cell.

The immune system becomes less efficient as people grow older, making it harder for the body to fight infections and respond fully to vaccines. 

This gradual decline, known as immunosenescence, can increase vulnerability to age-related health problems and leave some older adults with weaker protection after vaccination.

RI Jobless Claims Nearly Double in a Single Month

New claims jump - Why This Matters

Eddie Exxe, Labor & Workers

26,700 Rhode Islanders were counted as unemployed in July, and the state's jobless rate has climbed nearly two percentage points in a year while running above New England's for ten straight quarters — meaning a harder job hunt and thinner leverage for workers here than in neighboring states.

Here's the thing about a 400-job loss in a state with 510,300 payroll jobs: on its own, it's noise. It's eight hundredths of one percent. If that were the only number in the July employment bulletin, nobody would write about it.

But it isn't the only number.

The Department of Labor and Training's July figures show jobs at Rhode Island businesses fell by 400 from June, and the state's unemployment rate rose to 4.5 percent. Total nonfarm jobs came in at 510,300, down from a revised June figure of 510,700. Over the year, jobs are still up 6,200, or 1.2 percent. So far, so mixed.

Then look at the unemployment insurance claims.

Initial UI claims averaged 1,559 per week in July. In June, that average was 825. That is close to a doubling in a single month, and it's up 109 claims per week from July 2023. New claims are the closest thing the state has to a real-time signal — people don't file for unemployment because a statistical model told them to. They file because they just lost a job.

And the year-over-year comparison on the jobless rate is the number that should stop you. In July 2023, Rhode Island's unemployment rate was 2.7 percent. It is now 4.5 percent. That's a jump of one and eight-tenths percentage points in twelve months. There were 26,700 Rhode Islanders counted as unemployed in July, up 1,200 over the month.

Charlestown unemployment is comparatively low: 

Trump and Hegseth’s Boat Strike Murder Spree Hasn’t Slowed Cocaine Trafficking: DEA Analysis

“’Bombing boats’ to stop drugs isn’t just cruel and illegal—it’s futile,” said one expert.

Brad Reed for Common Dreams

An internal government analysis has revealed that President Donald Trump’s campaign of strikes against alleged drug boats off the coasts of Latin America hasn’t achieved its purported goal of diminishing the amount of cocaine being trafficked into the US.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) analysis has concluded that the boat-bombing campaign, which many legal experts and human rights groups consider acts of murder, has not “reduced the amount of cocaine entering” the country.

“DEA analysts found the strikes had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States,” reported the Post, “and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where US forces are less likely to open fire.”

The Post added that US Department of Defense (DOD) officials last month gave a closed-door briefing toe members of Congress where they acknowledged the strikes had not reduced the purity of cocaine entering the US from Latin America.

In an interview with the Post, a DEA official said that drug cartels had several options in addition to smuggling contraband by boats and simply switched tactics to avoid being hit by US strikes, which so far have killed at least 221 people.

Rolling coal

Wood-Pawcatuck Association announces open house and free paddle

 

WPWA Open House & Free Paddle Event   WHO: Members and General Public Welcome! WHEN: Saturday August 15th, 10am - 4pm WHERE: 203 Arcadia Rd. Hope Valley, RI 02832 WHAT: FREE Food, Fun, and Paddling   If you know anyone interested in joining the WPWA membership..... this is THE event to invite them to! Please help promote WPWA membership!   Schedule of Activities: 10:30am Intro to Paddling Lesson 2:30pm Guided Wildlife Paddle (If Saturday is rained out, then our WPWA Open House will be on Sunday, August 16th.)   Thank you for helping us grow!

Our Contact Information Wood Pawcatuck Watershed Association 203 Arcadia Rd. Hope Valley, RI 02832 401-539-9017 http://www.wpwa.org

MAGA quiz: What message is Dear Leader trying to send?

This was posted by Donald Trump on his website Truth Social yesterday. Trump has just launched a $100,000 a month subscription service so banks and investors can get advance notices of his posts especially those that will manipulate the markets.

He also posted this:

Is he planning to attack Iran with Minutemen and fixed bayonets or by yelling at them?

And this

But no matter what crazy shit he posts on Truth Social, he is still this guy

WPRI debate showcases a crowded, but not contentious, Democratic primary for lieutenant governor

Choice facing Democrats in September 9 primary

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

By Rhode Island standards, the Democratic primary for the lieutenant governor’s job is a packed one.

Yet the five-candidate contest for the seat currently occupied by Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos has received somewhat scant attention, WPRI 12 politics editor Ted Nesi remarked to four of the candidates shortly before the cameras rolled on a debate taped Friday morning at WPRI’s studios in East Providence.

As if to commemorate the occasion of their first televised debate, the TV station had recently purchased a new set of podiums with animated monitors on the front. Xay Khamsyvoravong, a Newport city councilor and former mayor of the City by the Sea, joked that the podiums were “custom designed for our respective heights.”

From behind those new podiums, the candidates — Matos, Khamsyvoravong, Providence City Councilor Sue AnderBois and former state Sen. Cindy Coyne — mostly stood on common ground.

How to watch

The debate premiered Friday, July 31, at 6:30 p.m. on Fox Providence, with additional airings over the weekend, including Sunday at 10 a.m. in the usual “Newsmakers” time slot. You can also watch it online.

The four Democrats unanimously supported the state’s new millionaires’ tax. All four said they preferred Rhode Island’s 2033 deadline for achieving 100% renewable electricity, rather than set a new deadline of 2050 as Gov. Dan McKee has suggested.

None offered an endorsement in the Providence mayoral race when asked.

And the quartet agreed McKee was right to sign the charter school moratorium.

The sharpest disagreement may have jutted out from the candidates’ different ideas about what a good relationship between governor and lieutenant governor should look like in a state where the two officeholders are elected separately.