Rhode Island state agencies helped kill open records reform

State Agencies like DEM Claim Public Records Reform a Burden

By Colleen Cronin / ecoRI News staff

When the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA)
ran the town, loopholes in the state open
records law were used to cover up shady deals

For several years, a Rhode Island public records reform bill has been introduced to the General Assembly, and each time it gets a hearing, several public bodies write to oppose the bill or express their concerns.

The Department of Environmental Management is regularly one of those bodies, writing in a May letter that the reforms would create additional burdens for the agency.

“DEM is one of the top recipients of [Access to Public Records Act] requests among state agencies,” director Terry Gray wrote in the letter outlining his concerns. “While we welcome the opportunity to provide more transparency in our work, it is an extremely resource-intensive process to comply even under existing law.”

DEM and nine other state agencies cited increased workload in their letters of concern or opposition to the bill, which would have expanded the definition of public records and tried to tamp down on some of the fees agencies charge, among other reforms.

ecoRI News requested and reviewed information from those departments on their public records requests from the last calendar year and found the volume of requests they receive varies greatly, with DEM coming out on or near the top for requests.

In 2024, DEM received 1,508 requests, most of which involved septic system and site remediation records, according to a list kept by the agency. Those types of documents are frequently requested during property transactions and transfers.

Of the agencies that responded to ecoRI News, either through an APRA or informal request, the Department of Health had the next highest number at 476 requests.

The Department of Public Safety, which wrote to the General Assembly with concerns about the proposed reforms, didn’t respond to ecoRI News requests by press time, but did estimate in its letter that it receives about 2,000 requests annually.

Canary in the coal mine

What was cut

How your data pulls in hundreds of billions of dollars for app and social media companies

The hidden cost of convenience

Many apps, including the weather channel app,
send you targeted advertising and sell your
personal data by default. Jack West, CC BY-ND

Kassem Fawaz, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Jack West, University of Wisconsin-Madison

You wake up in the morning and, first thing, you open your weather app. You close that pesky ad that opens first and check the forecast. You like your weather app, which shows hourly weather forecasts for your location. And the app is free!

But do you know why it’s free? Look at the app’s privacy settings. You help keep it free by allowing it to collect your information, including:

• What devices you use and their IP and Media Access Control addresses.
• Information you provide when signing up, such as your name, email address and home address.
• App settings, such as whether you choose Celsius or Fahrenheit.
• Your interactions with the app, including what content you view and what ads you click.
• Inferences based on your interactions with the app.
• Your location at a given time, including, depending on your settings, continuous tracking.
• What websites or apps that you interact with after you use the weather app.
• Information you give to ad vendors.
• Information gleaned by analytics vendors that analyze and optimize the app.

This type of data collection is standard fare. The app company can use this to customize ads and content. The more customized and personalized an ad is, the more money it generates for the app owner. The owner might also sell your data to other companies.

You might also check a social media account like Instagram. The subtle price that you pay is, again, your data. Many “free” mobile apps gather information about you as you interact with them.

As an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and a doctoral student in computer science, we follow the ways software collects information about people. Your data allows companies to learn about your habits and exploit them.

It’s no secret that social media and mobile applications collect information about you. Meta’s business model depends on it. The company, which operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is worth US$1.48 trillion. Just under 98% of its profits come from advertising, which leverages user data from more than 7 billion monthly users.

Following This Diet Can Reduce Your Risk of Alzheimer’s, No Matter Your Age

Improving diet later in life may lower dementia risk, especially in certain ethnic groups

By University of Hawaii at Manoa

A recent study from the University of Hawaiʻi Cancer Center found that people who followed the MIND diet were much less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia, even if they adopted healthier eating habits later in life.

The MIND diet, which stands for Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay, combines features of both the Mediterranean and DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diets. It focuses on foods known to support brain health, including leafy greens, berries, nuts, and olive oil. The findings are based on data from nearly 93,000 adults in the United States who participated in the Multiethnic Cohort (MEC), a major study co-led by the UH Cancer Center and the University of Southern California.

“Our study findings confirm that healthy dietary patterns in mid to late life and their improvement over time may prevent Alzheimer’s and related dementias,“ said lead author Song-Yi Park, professor in the UH Cancer Center’s Population Sciences in the Pacific Program.

Cold comfort: We're not as bad as Massachusetts

How does R.I. rank on affordable rental housing in new report?

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

Rhode Islanders making the state’s minimum wage must work at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week, in order to afford a basic two-bedroom apartment, according to a new analysis by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLICH).

The annual Out of Reach report released Thursday by the Washington D.C.-based organization found Rhode Island renters must earn $31.71 an hour — or $65,954 a year — to afford a typical $1,649 apartment. 

The finding that an 85-hour work week is what it takes a low-wage worker to find housing makes Rhode Island the 18th most expensive place to rent in the country. It ranked fourth overall among the six New England states. 

The situation is far worse in Massachusetts, which ranked as the fourth most expensive state in the nation to find housing and requires renters to make $45.90 per hour to afford the average two-room apartment. Connecticut ranked 11th, followed by New Hampshire at 12th, Vermont at 21st, and Maine at 26th.

California ranked as the most expensive state to live, where the renters need to make $49.61 per hour. West Virginia was the least expensive among states at $18.94 an hour. Only Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, ranked lower with a required wage of just $11.64 an hour.

While in the top half of unaffordable states, Rhode Island ranked better than it did in last year’s report — where the Ocean State was 12th in the nation. Massachusetts also improved, moving up two ranks after being the second most expensive state for housing last year.

Now the Second (and Worse) Stage of Trump’s Police State

It’s part of the Big Ugly Bill just signed into law, and it will be evident very soon.

Robert Reich

Friends,

Trump’s Big Ugly Bill delivers $170 billion for border and immigration enforcement.

This is on the scale of supplemental budgets passed by the United States when we enter war.

ICE will add 10,000 agents to the 20,000 already on the streets.

Its annual budget for detentions will skyrocket from $3.4 billion in the current fiscal year to $45 billion until the end of the 2029 fiscal year. That’s a 365 percent increase.

Funding for ICE detentions will exceed funding for the entire federal prison system.

When government capacity is built out this way, there’s always political and bureaucratic pressure to utilize such capacity. Supply creates its own demand.

“They pass that bill, we’re gonna have more money than we ever had to do immigration enforcement,” Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said recently, adding, “You think we’re arresting people now? You wait till we get the funding to do what we got to do.”

Which means that the number of people detained in ICE facilities — numbering 56,397 as of June 15 — will likely grow dramatically. A four-fold increase in the detention budget could mean a quarter of a million people locked up.

Don’t fall for the Trump regime’s lie that these people are criminals. As of now, 71.7 percent of ICE detainees have no criminal record. Some have been hardworking members of their communities for decades.

Homeland Security posts a bizarre tweet on X

What in the name of dysentery is Kristi Noem talking about?

Daily Kos

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is so freakin’ weird.

On Monday, the official Department of Homeland Security X account posted an image of a painting, along with the caption, “Remember your Homeland’s Heritage. New Life in a New Land - Morgan Weistling.”

If you grew up playing the video game “Oregon Trail,” you know what this evokes: dysentery. The National Park Service estimates that 30,000 settlers died from it—nearly 10%—on the Oregon Trail alone. That’s 10-15 deaths per mile.

But maybe that’s on brand for today’s conservatives. After all, they’re bizarrely excited to bring back measles, too.

But dysentery was just the beginning. Gun mishaps, hypothermia, wild animals, drowning during river crossings, rightly hostile Indigenous tribes—this was a death gauntlet. It’s just plain weird to romanticize one of the most brutal chapters of American expansionism.

And that baby in the painting? That poor, nameless baby?

In the mid-1800s, one-third of children didn’t make it to their 5th birthday according to this study from Our World in Data. Other estimates suggest that infant mortality was closer to 40-45% during this era and likely even higher on the trail. Parents often waited a full year before naming their children because survival was far from guaranteed, so this little anchor baby likely didn’t have a name yet.

Yes, anchor baby. The Morgan Weistling painting, which was incorrectly labeled by DHS as “New Life in a New Land,” is titled “A Prayer for a New Life.”

Sounds pretty immigration-y, right? But that’s odd, considering that conservatives absolutely hate people looking for a better life somewhere else. Why didn’t these immigrants just stay home?

Meanwhile, Trump’s ancestors hadn’t even made it to America yet. Neither had most of his wives’. It sure ain’t their “homeland heritage.”

And stepping back, what does this painting even have to do with DHS? Are they trying to police vibes now?

It’s just all so weird.

These Trumpists aren’t “tough.” They’re just strange.

July 21 DEM forum on PFAS in water

Rhode Island back in court with Trump, this time over disaster prep funds

Attorney General Neronha suing Trump Administration for unlawfully cutting billions in disaster mitigation funding

RIFuture.news

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha today joined a coalition of 20 states in suing the Trump Administration over its decision to illegally shut down the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) bipartisan Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, designed to protect communities from natural disasters before they strike.

For the past 30 years, the BRIC program has provided communities across the nation with resources to proactively fortify their infrastructure against natural disasters. By focusing on preparation, the program has protected property, saved money that would have otherwise been spent on post-disaster costs, reduced injuries, and saved lives.

“There’s no denying that Rhode Island is particularly susceptible to the ever-increasing effects of climate change, which is why we need to stay ahead of the curve on mitigating risk,” said Attorney General Neronha. 

Is bird flu gone or just ignored?

If you ignore a problem, does it go away?

By Arjun V.K. Sharma

From the outset of the Trump administration, bird flu, or H5N1 avian influenza, has flown rather conspicuously — and in fact quite mysteriously — under the radar. So much so that this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the end of its emergency response to bird flu, citing the lack of reported human cases. Updates, previously issued weekly, will now arrive monthly. But something isn’t adding up.

At the end of 2024, infections in the United States were surging. From Ohio to California, and in a swath of intervening states, diagnoses were being made in growing numbers of farmworkers who came into contact with infected cattle and poultry. Most suffered a mild spectrum of symptoms — low grade fevers, muscle aches, inflammation in their eyes. As cases swelled, an older man in Louisiana fell critically ill. 

He would eventually become the first person in the U.S. to succumb to the virus since initial human cases were reported to the World Health Organization in 1997. We seemed then, for a moment, to be at a tipping point: bound to unleash something both larger and deadlier than we could foreseeably contain, and destined to dust off the cobwebs of a life grimly lived, again, under a pandemic.

And yet, none of that came to pass. Instead, since February, the CDC, which still monitors infections in humans, has not recorded a single new case in the U.S. The count remains the same — stuck firmly at 70.

Rationalizing the lull in infections has been puzzling. Researchers have tied wild birds, the virus’s largest reservoir, and their spring and fall migrations to periods of greater spread of contagion. Cuts to staff who monitored the virus, at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Center for Veterinary Medicine, might also be playing a role. But these ideas dismiss the deeper and more fundamental problem around our present grasp of bird flu. 

As an infectious diseases physician who works primarily with immigrant populations, my perspective often sits at the nexus between the people a novel disease affects and the apparatuses that exist to control it. Lately, the actions of each arm of that equation, no longer motivated by the ethos of a collective concern, are fractured by individual ambitions and epitomize our faltering response.

Cases, in all likelihood, are being missed, in part because detecting infections is simply challenging.

Emergency preparedness, Trump-style

Trump and Texas Republicans Show How Not to Prepare for the Climate Crisis

Kenny Stancil for the Revolving Door Project

More than 120 people, including dozens of young summer camp attendees, have died in Central Texas from flooding intensified by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis. With search-and-rescue operations ongoing and active flash flood warnings in the region, the death toll is expected to continue climbing.

Over last weekend, Texas officials quickly tried to blame the carnage on inadequate warnings from the National Weather Service (NWS), which has been gutted by the Trump administration. Donald Trump himself lied about this, too. When asked if he thinks the federal government should rehire recently fired meteorologists, he erroneously claimed that “nobody expected” this flooding and that NWS staff “didn’t see it.”

However, NWS provided accurate forecasts and warnings despite everything that Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE wrecking crew have been doing to impair the agency.

We sorely need a return to the Rooseveltian ideal of big government that works for working people, including by phasing out the fossil fuel industry and protecting us from increasingly frequent and severe storms, heatwaves, and wildfires.

That’s not to suggest that the Trump administration’s ill-advised cuts to the federal forecasting apparatus couldn’t have contributed to lethal havoc on the ground. Local NWS offices were missing key officials, which may have undermined swift and cohesive coordination between forecasters and local emergency managers.

Prepare yourself for another episode of the Charlestown Choo-choo

Article in the ProJo may give temporary life to a dead issue

By Will Collette

There’s an article in the July 15 edition of the Providence Journal by Patrick Anderson entitled “Will Amtrak ever improve its Northeast Corridor through Providence? Where it stands.” Judging from the past, there is a pretty good chance we may again see some extreme anxiety in Charlestown over the content of this article. 

Since 2017, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) has used the specter of what was called “the Old Saybrook-Kingston Bypass” to stir panic in Charlestown that Amtrak would destroy the northern half of town by building a new rail line to accommodate high-speed Acela trains.

The current Amtrak line from New Haven to Westerly currently runs dangerously close to the shore. While that makes it a truly spectacular trip through coastal salt marsh, the line is vulnerable to washouts either quickly in a hurricane or slowly through sea level rise.

The Bypass was never a real threat to Charlestown because it was publicly revealed after the 2016 election that led to Donald Trump's first term. Then as now, Trump also had a Republican-controlled Congress. Trump notoriously hates trains (unless they burn coal) and the Republican Congress was as reluctant then to fund Amtrak as it is now, never mind a new rail line through Charlestown.

Indeed, the only apparent interest in rail policy by either the Trump regime or the current Congress is to sell Amtrak to some oligarch. Ironically, such a sale may be the only scenario that could actually revive any rail modernization or expansion as I suggested in THIS ARTICLE.

But Anderson’s ProJo piece contains this section that may lead Ruth Platner and the CCA to press the red Charlestown Choo-choo panic button:

And the Transit Costs Project plan revives the proposed "Kenyon Bypass" through southwest Rhode Island and southeast Connecticut that engendered fierce local opposition a decade ago.

In fact, the new plan would extend the bypass – which starts near Kingston Station and mostly follows the path of Interstate 95 – all the way to New Haven instead of returning to the current alignment at Old Saybrook, Connecticut like the version studied a decade ago in the Federal Railroad Administration's NEC Future planning.

To alleviate some of the opposition that helped scuttle the bypass in 2017, the Transit Costs Project plan would move new tracks north of I-95 through Old Lyme to reduce disruptions to that Connecticut town. 

The bypass is estimated to cost $5 billion and save 32 minutes of travel time, while alleviating concerns about flooding of the current low-lying coastal alignment. Upgrading the Providence and Stoughton lines is estimated to cost $250 million to $300 million.

But before Charlestown residents once again succumb to CCA-induced panic, take a closer look. First, remember these facts:

·       🚂The actual Amtrak Northeast Corridor plan is “at least two years from being completed,” according to Anderson and, in my opinion, will probably be abandoned by the Trump regime.

·       🚂The $17 billion Northeast Corridor plan has no funding. In fact, Congress cut total Amtrak funding for Northeast Corridor operations from a total of $1.14 billion to only $850 million in the Big Beautiful Boondoggle Bill.

·       🚂The latest version of the bypass, laid out in a recent report by The Transit Costs Project, proposes new track be laid well north of the original Old Saybrook-Kingston bypass. It would skip over Lyme, CT, Westerly and possibly even Kingston.

·       🚂Further, Charlestown Town Council President Deb Carney has stayed in regular contact with the RI Department of Transportation to closely monitor any new developments and none have been forthcoming. She has reached out to RIDOT specifically about Anderson’s article but, as we go to press, she has not heard back.

Let’s take a look at the actual map in the Transit Costs report that spurred Anderson to say the Kenyon Bypass has been "revived":

The dotted line shows the present rail line. The solid line labelled “New Haven Bypass” and “Connecticut Bypass” is the route offered for consideration by the Transit Costs report. Note that it is well to the north of Westerly and Charlestown, though that may not be seen as good news in Hopkinton and Richmond. That is, unless the entire plan is scrapped by Trump as I believe is likely.

Facts have never prevented Charlestown Planning Commissar Ruth Platner and the CCA from trying to use an Amtrak panic to their political advantage. In 2017, the CCA tried to compensate for their earlier failure to take note of the potential new track that was in a report no one at Town Hall apparently read. Said CCA leader and Town Council President Tom Gentz, “Who’s got time to read this stuff?”

Exuberant protests led to a legally-binding Record of Decision ruling out the bypass. But that didn’t stop Platner from trying to gin up more anxiety with a 2021 claim that “They’re Back!” She tried to stir the pot again in 2022. She made an especially weird move in 2024 attempting to use AI to simulate what a new rail line would look like.

If Ruth follows her past practice, we should expect to see a new attempt to get Charlestown residents once again worked up. And, of course, you can count on Ruth (or her spokes-troll Bonnita Van Slyke) to make the claim that only the CCA can save us from this deadly albeit imaginary peril.

True story: Trump Justice Dept. notifies Rhode Island it will investigate state's voter files

Trump official says ICE cops can engage in racial profiling

Neronha leads fight against Trump education ripoff

Rhode Island attorney general leads 24 states, DC in suit over $6.8 billion cut in education funding

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha joined 23 states and the District of Columbia Monday in filing suit against President Donald Trump’s administration over $6.8 billion in unexpectedly frozen funds for education initiatives like summer programming and adult learning.

The lawsuit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island against the U.S. Department of Education, the Office of Management and Budget and President Donald Trump. 

The complaint is the first legal response to a June 30 email memo sent from the U.S. Department of Education to education departments nationwide detailing the abrupt suspension of billions in federal education grants. 

A quarter of the grant money typically arrives in state education coffers on July 1, the start of a new fiscal year, so local education departments can plan for the year ahead. But the expected payments were paused on June 30, the last day of fiscal year 2025. 

The maneuver’s timing leaves state-level education officials in precarious positions as they plan for the year ahead, Neronha suggested during a virtual press conference Monday with the Attorneys General of California, Colorado, and Massachusetts, who co-lead the lawsuit.

“It is impossible for states to effectively budget for an upcoming school year…when the president takes the football away from us like Lucy in a Charlie Brown cartoon,” Neronha said.

The funds supported after-school and summertime programming for kids, as well as adult education, and teacher training. In states like Massachusetts, the grants also subsidized education for children of migrant workers.

Rhode Island would lose an estimated $29 million in federal funds. Across New England, Massachusetts would see a loss of over $100 million, and Connecticut would receive $50 million less. Vermont and Maine would lose $25 million each. New Hampshire, which would also see a $25 million loss of grant funding, is the only New England state not listed as a plaintiff in the suit.

60% of R.I. beaches unsafe for swimming in 2024

Coastal beaches tend to be cleaner than those on the Bay

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Nearly six in 10 of the 66 Rhode Island beaches analyzed by Environment America were marked by one or more days of potentially unsafe bacteria levels in 2024. (Courtesy Environment America)

Steven Spielberg never made a cult-favorite thriller about the dangers of sewage-infested waters.

But the amount of fecal matter lurking in the water surpassed federal safety recommendations at least one time in 2024 at nearly six in 10 of the 66 Rhode Island beaches tested, new data shows.

Even more alarming: 25 state and local beaches exceeded federal water quality safety thresholds on 25% or more of the testing days, according to a report published on July 7 by Environment America’s Research & Policy Center.

 “It’s absurd in today’s society we need to be worried about crap in the water, literally,” said Rex Wilmouth, state director for the Rhode Island chapter of the nonprofit research and advocacy firm. “Even one day is one day too many.”

Wilmouth unveiled the disturbing findings at a press conference at Oakland Beach in Warwick Friday morning. The Rhode Island Department of Health closed the city-run saltwater beach on June 24 due to high bacteria counts, though it was reopened two days later. On Thursday, two other Warwick swimming areas, at City Park and Conimicut Point beaches, were closed due to high bacteria accounts detected by the Rhode Island Department of Health.

The state health department samples and tests water at state and local saltwater beaches during the summer season each year and notifies the public if unsafe bacteria levels are detected. Swimming in contaminated water can cause gastrointestinal illnesses, respiratory disease, eye and ear infections and skin rashes, with an estimated 57 million cases of illness nationwide each year. However, a majority of the illnesses go unreported.

Environment America’s report compares state and federally reported levels of fecal contamination against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s health safety threshold, or Beach Action Value, to determine which beaches may pose health risks to swimmers, and how often. 

Of the 3,187 beaches tested nationwide in 2024, 61% showed unsafe levels of contamination on at least one testing day. And one in seven of those tested were marked by dangerous levels of bacteria at least 25% of testing days.

And that’s just on days when waters were sampled — suggesting infected waterways were contaminated even more often than data suggests, Wilmouth said. Take Tiverton’s Fogland Beach, for example, which surpassed the federally recommended bacteria cap on five of seven days it was tested in 2024.

“There were a lot more days it was probably unsafe as well,” Wilmouth said. 

Other repeat offenders in 2024 included Matunuck Town Beach in South Kingstown and Jamestown’s Mackerel Cove Beach, which both exceeded recommended bacteria levels on roughly two-thirds of testing days, along with Narragansett’s members-only Dune’s Club. State-run beaches were not immune either: Scarborough State Beach North showed unsafe levels of bacteria on 38% of the 24 testing days, according to the data. 

If you want to save on green energy in your house or business, DO IT NOW!

How to Take Advantage of the IRA Tax Credits Before Trump’s GOP Kills Them

Bill Mckibben for The Crucial Years

You may recall the amount of sweat, anguish, and resolve it took to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. 

There were the amazing young people of the Sunrise Movement, who channeled the energy of Greta’s worldwide outburst into the offices of Nancy Pelosi, energizing the 2020 primary race and then—in a remarkable display of political maturity—turning that energy into legislative sausage making. 

There was the steady morphing of the Build Back Better bill into ever-more compromised climate legislation, and then the widespread conviction that even that would not pass. Until at the last minute Joe Manchin agreed, as long as it was larded with yet more gifts for the fossil fuel industry. And with that Congress took its first real action on climate in the 35 years it’s been an issue.

It was supposed to be a steady source of funding that would last a decade, giving this energy transition time to find its feet, and giving the U.S. a foothold in the fight with China to determine the future. But in the course of a few months the White House and the fossil-funded GOP Congress have overturned all that except the extra gifts to the fossil fuel industry. (Antonia Juhasz provides the best account yet of all the excruciating details in Rolling Stone.)

The IRA won’t last a decade. Its funding starts running out at the end of September—if you’re in the market for an electric vehicle, that has to be done now. (And there may be some excellent lease deals). And if you’re even considering getting solar on your home, that needs to happen by the end of the year if you want the tax credit.

Normally we talk about these things as political questions—but today I asked a few experts to share their take on what individual Americans might want to do over the 165 days.

Here’s Cindy del Rosario-Tapan, from the very experienced Solar United Neighbors (who are sponsoring a webinar later this week to go over the same ground and more):

• The impacts of this new law will be severe. We expect the solar market to shrink significantly and will readjust over time. It’s likely many companies will have layoffs or go out of business in the near-term.
• Our advice to homeowners is to act now:
• If you are a homeowner and planning to pay cash or finance your system through a loan, we highly recommend you go solar in 2025 to benefit from the tax credit and that you do so soon. Homeowners should proceed with caution and consult a tax adviser to determine the extent to which their project is eligible.
• The safest way to ensure your project will qualify for the tax credit is to have it “placed in service” before the end of 2025. “Placed in service” is a gray area, but a conservative interpretation would be when your system is ready to be connected to the grid.

My old 350.org colleague Phil Aroneanu has been hard at work at Climate United trying to protect what they can of the IRA funding. He breaks it down a little further:

If you're hoping to put solar on the roof of your home, and you want to own the system (not lease it), the 30% residential clean energy tax credit (25D) will sunset at the end of 2025, 10 years sooner than what was written into the Inflation Reduction Act.

If you own a business or nonprofit, or work at a school or city government agency and want to install solar OR you want to lease a solar array for your home rather than own it outright, you'll need to get started as soon as possible to qualify for the up to 60% investment tax credit (48E) and bonuses available. 

Elect a felon, expect crime

The conman in chief remakes the government in his own image.

Paul Waldman

In almost every way imaginable, Donald Trump’s second term is a purer expression of his personality and preferences than his first term was. 

Not only is he far less constrained — by the courts, by the law, by Congress, or by aides who might suffer an unfortunate attack of conscience — he has created a system in which his desires and predilections are translated into policy far more smoothly than before.

So it should not be surprising that a man who built a career on scams, cons, grifts, and swindles has fundamentally reoriented the US government’s approach to corruption. 

It isn’t just that Trump has ramped up his own personal self-dealing (though he most certainly has), or that his administration is tolerant of conflicts of interest in other officials (though it is). Just as important, Trump is enacting a sweeping set of policy changes that will make it more likely that Americans will themselves be the victims of all kinds of scams.

This is less a single strategy than the accumulation of many policy decisions pushing in the same direction: to make America a place where citizens can no longer expect that the government will be there to protect them when they’re being taken advantage of.

There are few better examples than the demise of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), one of the key progressive achievements of recent years. Arising out of the 2008 financial crash, it was based on a simple premise: Americans ought to be protected from financial scams and exploitation. 

And it was extraordinarily successful: According to the Bureau’s data (which for some reason the Trump administration hasn’t gotten around to removing from the web), its actions have returned over $21 billion to consumers and imposed billions in fines on wrongdoers. 

Just as important, it sent a message to anyone contemplating financial exploitation of consumers that there is an agency that will aggressively investigate illegal activity, and there will be consequences for those who break the law.

So when Trump took office, he sought to shut the CFPB down. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, the dark lord of the effort to dismantle the government, told its employees to stay home and “stand down from performing any work task.” 

Under its new management, the agency then began dropping lawsuits it had brought against banks, mortgage companies, car dealers, and others it had found were defrauding or mistreating customers. The administration is hoping to fire 1,500 of the agency’s 1,700 employees (that move has been temporarily halted by a judge).

Doing their part, congressional Republicans sought to eliminate the agency entirely in their budget bill. Fortunately, that provision was struck down by the parliamentarian as being inconsistent with the rules of budget reconciliation. Nevertheless, the CFPB has all but ceased to function, which means that the kind of financial abuse it was established to prevent will likely go unpunished.

You’re on your own

The administration is taking a similar approach in area after area, sending a clear message to consumers that you’re on your own, and a message to those who exploit them that they’re free to do pretty much whatever they like.

Trump’s attempts to fire Democrat-appointed members of independent commissions have been described mostly as an effort to consolidate power, which is true, but those moves also mean removing restraints on scams and abuse. 

In other words, he is dismantling the government’s ability to rectify exploitation based on power imbalances. If he succeeds, the Consumer Product Safety Commission will do far less to protect consumers, the National Labor Relations Board will cease protecting workers, and the Merit Systems Protection Board will no longer protect government employees.

If the Department of Education is dismantled, it will no longer police the for-profit colleges that saddled millions with crushing debt and useless degrees (or no degrees at all). With long-awaited reforms at the Internal Revenue Service being quickly reversed — the administration is planning to cut its workforce in half — tax cheats know that they stand a good chance of getting away with their crimes. 

At times it almost seems as though administration officials are searching frantically for anything the federal government does that might be useful or helpful to regular people, and quashing it. They’re even eliminating the Energy Star program, which does nothing but inform consumers about which appliances are energy efficient, saving them tens of billions of dollars in utility costs every year.

There may be no area with more reckless dismantling going on than finance, where the system of regulation and law enforcement now reflects Trump’s personal views. He himself was repeatedly investigated by the federal government for various financial misdeeds, and he obviously believes that finance is and ought to be an arena where rules are for suckers and succeeding at the con game just means you’re smart.

To understand how and why, Trump’s reversal on the crypto industry is the key piece of context. In years past he had described crypto as “a scam,” but at some point he had a realization: If crypto is a scam, the scammer-in-chief surely ought to be in on it. 

The then-unprecedented corruption of Trump’s first term pales in comparison to what his family is now doing, building a crypto empire — stablecoins, meme coins, bitcoin mining — with ample opportunities for criminals, foreign governments, or anyone else who might want something from the president to put money right in his pocket.

And since crypto is becoming so central to his own wealth, Trump very much wants to ensure that the industry is regulated as little as possible, if at all. To that end, his Justice Department disbanded its National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and told prosecutors to stop investigating certain kinds of crypto crimes. 

Under the leadership of Paul Atkins, the crypto advocate Trump made chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency has dropped a dozen pending enforcement actions against crypto firms for various kinds of alleged violations, including some involving major donors to Trump. 

Few were happier about the policy about-face than Justin Sun, the Chinese-born crypto billionaire who was charged by the SEC in 2023 with various forms of fraud. After Sun bought $75 million in crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial, a firm controlled by the Trump family, the SEC halted the investigation and asked a judge to set the case aside.

As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, enforcement of laws against all kinds of white-collar crime is atrophying and “in some cases, the administration is effectively redefining what business conduct constitutes a crime.”

It’s only getting started

It can be a shock to remind oneself that we’re still less than six months into Trump’s term, so when it comes to changing the government’s position on scams and cons, he may just be getting started. Though most people probably weren’t aware of it, the Biden administration amassed an impressive record of regulation aimed at preventing consumers from being misled and manipulated — all of which could be vulnerable to the current administration’s regulatory rollback.

For example, the FTC under Biden created a “click-to-cancel” rule, which requires companies to make it no more difficult to cancel a subscription or a service than it is to sign up in the first place; if you’ve ever tried to cancel a gym membership, you know why this was necessary. 

But the Trump administration has delayed implementation of the rule, and it’s unclear as of yet whether they’ll try to kill it entirely. Will they reverse the regulation cracking down on junk fees in hotels and concert tickets, or the one banning fake online reviews? They certainly might.

Why, one might ask, would Donald Trump want Americans to live in Scamville? The answer is that it’s the place that made him, where he thrived by preying on those with less money and power than he had. 

When he sees that America has a law that bans our companies from paying bribes overseas, he recoils in disgust and tells the Justice Department to stop enforcing it; after all, that’s just how things work. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.

Corruption and scams are not the same thing, but they are close cousins. They add a note of tension and uncertainty to life — the knowledge that rules are not necessarily followed, fair treatment is not the default, and we’re more vulnerable than we ought to be. All of which is fine with Trump and the administration he leads. 

America ought to be a place where everyone is expected to act with integrity and the government protects people from abuse and exploitation. But in the phrase the Trump administration uses so often, that would be “not consistent with the president’s priorities.”

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'Unforgivable': FEMA Missed Thousands of Calls from Texas Flood Victims After Noem Fired the people who answer the phones

A preview of what will happen when it's Charlestown's turn to deal with a disaster

Stephen Prager for Common Dreams

Outrage continues to grow against U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem over her response to the deadly floods that ravaged Texas last week.

According to a Friday report from The New York Times, more than two-thirds of phone calls to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from flood victims went unanswered after Noem allowed hundreds of contractors to be laid off on July 5, just a day after the nightmare storm.

According to The Times, this dramatically hampered the ability of the agency to respond to calls from survivors in the following days:

On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.

That evening, however, Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies, and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter.

The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.

Calling is one of the primary ways that flood victims apply for aid from the disaster relief agency. But Noem would wait until July 10—five days later—to renew the contracts of the people who took those phone calls.

Preschoolers are unwitting sponges for an evolving cocktail of household and environmental chemicals

Researchers tested 200 toddlers — 96 chemicals were lurking in their bodies

University of California - Davis Health

A national study published in Environmental Science & Technology finds children aged 2 to 4 years in the United States are routinely exposed to a broad range of potentially harmful chemicals. Many of the chemicals the researchers identified are not routinely monitored and may pose health risks.

The research was conducted by multiple institutions across the United States in coordination with the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO), a program supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The researchers analyzed urine samples from 201 children aged 2 to 4 years. They tested for 111 chemicals. Their study found:

• 96 chemicals were detected in at least five children.
• 48 chemicals were found in over half of the children.
• 34 chemicals were detected in more than 90% of children -- including nine chemicals not currently tracked in national health surveys like the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).

"Our study shows that childhood exposure to potentially harmful chemicals is widespread. This is alarming because we know early childhood is a critical window for brain and body development," said Deborah H. Bennett, lead author and UC Davis professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences. "Many of these chemicals are known or suspected to interfere with hormones, brain development and immune function."

Children exposed to chemicals through everyday activities

The NIH-funded ECHO Cohort combines data from pregnancy and pediatric cohorts to examine the impacts of early environmental exposures on child health and development. This study looked at samples of 201 children from four states (California, Georgia, New York and Washington).

The researchers looked for childhood exposure to common environmental chemicals, including:

• Phthalates and phthalate alternatives used in plastics like toys and food packaging, as well as personal care products and household items.
• Parabens commonly used in cosmetics, lotions, shampoos and pharmaceuticals.
• Bisphenols found in plastic containers, food can linings and thermal paper receipts.
• Benzophenones found in sunscreens, cosmetics and plastics.
• Pesticides used in agricultural and residential pest control.
• Organophosphate esters (OPEs) used as flame retardants in furniture and building materials and as plasticizers in food packaging.
• Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), byproducts of combustion found in vehicle exhaust, grilled foods and tobacco smoke.
• Bactericides found in antibacterial soaps and personal care products.

Children are exposed to these environmental chemicals through everyday activities, such as eating, drinking, breathing indoor and outdoor air and touching contaminated surfaces.

Frequent hand-to-mouth contact, playing close to the ground, and higher intake rates relative to their smaller body weight make kids especially vulnerable to chemical exposure.

Trends and disparities

In addition to the widespread exposure, the researchers noted some trends.

• Levels of triclosan, parabens, PAHs and most phthalates decreased over the years the samples were collected (from 2010 to 2021).
• An alternative plasticizer, DINCH (di-iso-nonyl-cyclohexane-1,2-dicarboxylic acid), and emerging pesticides, such as the neonicotinoid acetamiprid, pyrethroid pesticides, and the herbicide 2,4-D, showed an upward trend.
• Firstborn children had significantly lower chemical levels than their younger siblings.
• Chemical levels were often higher in younger children (age 2) than in 3- or 4-year-olds.
• Children from racial and ethnic minority groups had higher levels of parabens, several phthalates and PAHs.

Most of the children's mothers had provided urine samples during pregnancy. This allowed the researchers to analyze the chemicals in the mother's urine with the chemicals in the children's urine.

They found the children had higher levels of several chemicals than their mothers did during pregnancy. These included two phthalates, bisphenol S (often used as a BPA replacement) and the pesticide biomarkers 3-PBA and trans-DCCA.

Need for more monitoring and regulation

The researchers emphasize that further studies are necessary to comprehend the long-term health implications of these chemicals.

"Exposure to certain chemicals in early childhood -- such as pesticides, plasticizers and flame retardants -- has been linked to developmental delays, hormone disruption and other long-term health issues," said Jiwon Oh, first author of the study and a postdoctoral scholar in the UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences. "This new study highlights the urgent need for expanded biomonitoring and stronger regulations to protect children from harmful exposures."

A complete list of authors and funders appears in the paper.

How to limit chemical exposure

It is impossible to eliminate all chemical exposures. Yet, there are many simple steps parents can take to help reduce their children's contact with harmful chemicals.

1. Choose safer products: Look for "phthalate-free," "paraben-free" and "fragrance-free" labels.
2. Avoid plastics labeled #3, #6, and #7: These may contain BPA or similar chemicals.
3. Wash hands frequently, especially before eating.
4. Ventilate your home and use HEPA filters, when possible.
5. Limit pesticide exposure: Wash produce thoroughly and consider organic options.
6. Clean regularly: Use a damp cloth to reduce dust that may contain chemical residues