PUC Considering Cuts to R.I. Energy’s Efficiency Programs

With Trump cuts, end of tax credits, why do this?

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff

Is it time for the state to cut its energy efficiency programs?

That’s the question state utility regulators are considering as the year draws to a close. Rhode Island Energy, the main utility company and sole administrator of the programs, says it’s time to cut the budget and “right-size” the amount of money Rhode Islanders are charged.

Environmental groups and advocates, however, including the state council on energy efficiency programs, say it’s not the time to downsize key initiatives that let Rhode Islanders use less energy and save money.

Under Rhode Island Energy’s proposal, the budget for electric energy efficiency programs would be cut from $82 million to $62.9 million for the next calendar year, a $19 million decrease year over year. For gas, the utility company proposed trimming its budget by more than $2 million, to $33 million.

Opposed to Rhode Island Energy’s proposed cuts is the state’s Energy Efficiency Council, which declined to endorse the utility company’s proposal earlier this year. The council is instead proposing its own plan, which also contains cuts, although not as severe as Rhode Island Energy’s.

Under the council’s plan, electric energy efficiency programs would be cut to $67.7 million for next year, and on the gas side, the council proposes the same budget as 2025 — $35 million.

The state Public Utilities Commission, which has final say over the program’s budgets, has spent the past week having evidentiary hearings for the budget proposals. It’ll be up to the PUC to decide what the final budget will look like, and if it’s time to downsize the budgets.

Arrest Mark Zuckerberg for Child Endangerment

Even though Zuckerberg, if convicted, would probably get a Trump pardon

Aaron Regunberg

Should Mark Zuckerberg be handcuffed—literally—for endangering millions of children? That’s the inescapable question raised by a legal brief filed last month in a civil case against major social media companies.

The litigation, which alleges that social media platforms have been purposefully cultivating addiction among adolescents, has been working its way through the courts since 2022. 

But the details laid out in this new court filing, and reported recently by Time, contain genuinely horrifying claims about Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. 

And they suggest that—in addition to the tort claims being pursued by the families, school districts, and state attorneys general behind this multidistrict litigation—the corporate executives responsible for these harms could and should be criminally prosecuted for child endangerment.

The brief alleges that Meta was aware that its platforms were endangering young users, including by exacerbating adolescents’ mental health issues. According to the plaintiffs, Meta frequently detected content related to eating disorders, child sexual abuse, and suicide, but refused to remove it. 

For example, one 2021 internal company survey found that more than 8 percent of respondents aged 13 to 15 had seen someone harm themself or threaten to harm themself on Instagram during the past week. The brief also makes clear that Meta fully understood the addictive nature of its products, with plaintiffs citing a message by one user-experience researcher at the company that Instagram “is a drug” and “We’re basically pushers.”

Perhaps most relevant to state child endangerment laws, the plaintiffs have alleged that Meta knew that millions of adults were using its platforms to inappropriately contact minors. According to their filing, an internal company audit found that Instagram had recommended 1.4 million potentially inappropriate adults to teenagers in a single day in 2022. 

The brief also details how Instagram’s policy was to not take action against sexual solicitation until a user had been caught engaging in the “trafficking of humans for sex” a whopping 17 times. As Instagram’s former head of safety and well-being, Vaishnavi Jayakumar, reportedly testified, “You could incur 16 violations for prostitution and sexual solicitation, and upon the 17th violation, your account would be suspended.”

The decision to expose adolescents to these threats was, according to the brief, an entirely knowing one. As plaintiffs allege, by 2019 Meta researchers were recommending that Instagram shield its young users from unwanted adult contact by making all teenage accounts private by default. 

Or HHS or Homeland Security. Maybe Vice President.

Just reading through the DOJ's new Epstein file dump....

Solving the problem of declining tourism

The Problem: Tourism to the US has dropped off dramatically under Trump:

Trump regime thinks this will help:

If that doesn't work, they'll try this:

Then there's this:

Hundreds of Sea Turtles Are Freezing in Cape Cod

Add this to climate change's tab

By Teresa Tomassoni

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.

Over the last few weeks, volunteers have braved bitter winds and freezing temperatures to patrol Cape Cod’s bayside beaches at night, sweeping their flashlight beams along the last high-tide line marked with mounds of seaweed, searching for signs of life.

“That’s where you’re most likely to find a turtle,” said Mark Faherty, science coordinator at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, which runs a sea turtle rescue and research program in Cape Cod. 

Every year, from November through early January, hundreds of juvenile sea turtles strand on these beaches when water temperatures drop below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, leaving them cold-stunned—a hypothermic reaction experienced by marine reptiles—and unable to swim. 

Disoriented and helpless, the animals drift until the surf deposits them on the beach, covered in algae and barnacles, so still and so camouflaged they often resemble rocks. Kemp’s ridleys—the world’s most endangered sea turtle—make up the majority, along with smaller numbers of green and loggerhead turtles.

HPV vaccines provide strong protection against cervical cancer

Cancer risk reduced by 80% when kids under 16 are vaccinated

Laine Bergeson

Two new Cochrane reviews by UK researchers provide strong, consistent evidence that human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination helps prevent cervical cancer, sharply reduces high-grade precancerous lesions, and is not linked to serious adverse events, especially when administered to young people who haven’t been exposed to the virus. The findings underscore the importance of early adolescent vaccination. 

The reviews span both randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and large population-level studies, drawing on data from more than 132 million people. 

80% reduction in cervical cancer

A population-level analysis included 225 studies from 46 countries and found an 80% reduction in cervical cancer among girls vaccinated by age 16 (risk ratio [RR], 0.20). Risk reductions were smaller among those vaccinated later in adolescence or in adulthood.

The review also reported moderate-certainty evidence that vaccination lowers rates of precancerous cervical lesions and the incidence of anogenital warts.

The review also found no evidence linking HPV vaccination to widely discussed harms, including infertility, chronic fatigue syndrome (also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis), Guillain-Barre syndrome, and complex regional pain syndrome.

A separate analysis of RCTs evaluated four HPV vaccines approved by the World Health Organization (WHO)—Cervarix, Gardasil, Gardasil-9, and Cecolin—across 60 trials including 157,414 participants. 

While the trials did not last long enough for cancers to develop, the vaccines reduced high-grade vaccine-matched precancerous cervical lesions 60% (RR, 0.40) in females ages 15 to 25 after six years. A pairwise analysis of 39 studies showed that rates of serious adverse events did not differ between the vaccine and control groups (RR, 0.99) at up to 72 months follow-up.

Merry Christmas, veterans. Trump VA to Eliminate Up to 35,000 Healthcare Jobs This Month despite chronic under-staffing

“We must expand the VA, not hollow it out.”

Jake Johnson

Before the end of the year, the Trump administration is planning to eliminate up to 35,000 healthcare jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, a chronically understaffed agency that has already lost tens of thousands of employees to the White House’s sweeping assault on the federal workforce.

The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the targeted positions—many of which are unfilled—include doctors, nurses, and support staff. A spokesperson for the VA, led by former Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), described the jobs as “mostly Covid-era roles that are no longer necessary.”

VA workers, veterans advocates, and a union representing hundreds of thousands of department employees disputed that characterization as the agency faces staff shortages across the country.

Trump Reveals Biden Lurks in White House, Raising Grocery Prices

Yes, Biden did it

Mitchell Zimmerman

At the end of his address to the nation on the economy, while fact-checkers were taking a break to avoid carpal-tunnel syndrome, President Trump revealed the real cause of the nation’s economic problems: Joe Biden never actually left the White House, and as the enemy within, has stealthily made the decisions that have caused prices to rise during Trump’s first year back in office.

“Biden is a master of disguises,” Trump explained. “Some days he pretended to be Steve Miller, countermanding my orders to deport only the worst of the worse and directing Kristi Noem to deport every farm worker she could find in order to raise the prices of groceries. Then he was Treasury Secretary Steve Bessent, urging the Fed to lower interest rates in order to overheat the economy.

“Then he was Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, an old fossil fuel guy, undermining renewable energy in order to cause electricity shortages to raise energy prices.

“One day he even snuck into the oval office while I was taking a much-needed nap. He removed the sharpie from my hand and used it to increase tariffs on everything Americans buy from overseas. He even raised coffee and banana tariffs.”

In a giant security failure, the Secret Service had failed to check whether Biden was actually on the departing helicopter when he supposedly left the White House last January. And FBI head Kash Patel admitted he still could not locate former and now-de-facto-acting President Biden. But officials concluded he had to be hiding somewhere in the East Wing, hence the desperate effort to root him out with bulldozers.

“We had to destroy the White House in order to save it,” observed President Trump during a waking moment. “Just wait until next year. Prices on everything are going to come down, and they’ll go down fast, starting on day three hundred and sixty-six.”

Mitchell Zimmerman is an attorney, longtime social activist, and author of the anti-racism thriller Mississippi Reckoning. He's also a longtime contributor to Progressive Charlestown. His writing can also be found on his Substack, Reasoning Together with Mitchell Zimmerman.

Subscriptions to Reasoning Together with Mitchell Zimmerman are free at this time. If you find my writing of value, please like, subscribe and recommend Reasoning Together to your friends. Thank you.

You may also be interested in my road-trip novel / social thriller Mississippi Reckoning. Read an excerpt. Read the Progressive Charlestown review HERE.

Silver lining

Then and now

Solar Program Designed to Help Low-Income and Environmental Justice Zone Residents Instead Leaves them Stranded

Louisiana contractor picked by McKee administration abruptly goes bankrupt

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff

Question: what due diligence did the McKee
administration do before giving out the contract? 

The program was supposed to put solar panels on roofs and help Rhode Island’s low-income families with their electric bills. Instead, it left homeowners dealing with a bankrupt company and nowhere to turn for help.

Nearly two years ago, Gov. Dan McKee announced the Affordable Solar Access Pathways (ASAP) program. The idea behind it was simple: provide cash incentives for homeowners in low-income and environmental justice zones to install solar panels on the roofs of their homes.

The state, using money from the Renewable Energy Fund, would give incentives to a vendor to provide solar panels, leases and power-purchase agreements to qualifying homeowners. Leases would be signed for 25 years. The state would also provide energy efficiency measures and a home energy audit to the homeowners, at no cost to them, as part of the program.

The idea behind the initiative was to spur solar panel adoption among low-income homeowners and lower their energy costs. Areas of Woonsocket, Central Falls, Pawtucket, Providence, Cranston, West Warwick, East Providence, Warren, Middletown, and Newport would be eligible to apply.

The only other requirement for households was to have a roof in good condition and have an income at or below 80% of the state median. There was no credit score required, and homeowners in default electric service could apply. The program, as designed, was guaranteed to provide savings for homeowners in the first year.

“Low-to-moderate income communities have been historically underserved in the solar marketplace and often experience the negative impacts of climate change firsthand,” McKee said in a January 2024 press release announcing the launch of the program. “Providing environmental justice communities with affordable access to rooftop solar is essential to ensure all Rhode Islanders benefit from the renewable energy transition.”

The state hired PosiGen, a Saint Rose, La.-based company, to administer the program, which was similar to the service PosiGen provided, except the state would subsidize a big chunk of the leases for enrollees in the program.

Why ultra-processed foods make teens eat more when they aren’t hungry

There's a reason why it's called junk food

Virginia Tech

Rates of excess weight are climbing among young people in the United States.

An analysis published in The Lancet predicts that by 2050, about one in three Americans between 15 and 24 years old will meet the criteria for obesity, putting them at higher risk for serious health problems.

Many influences contribute to this trend, including genetics and low levels of physical activity, but diet plays a central role.

Ultra-processed foods -- which make up 55 to 65 percent of what young adults eat in the U.S. -- have been associated with metabolic syndrome, poor cardiovascular health, and other conditions in adolescents.

Health insurance premiums rose nearly 3x the rate of worker earnings over the past 25 years

Health insurance inflation is a problem for almost everybody

Vivian Ho, Rice University and Salpy Kanimian, Rice University

Health insurance premiums in the U.S. significantly increased between 1999 and 2024, outpacing the rate of worker earnings by three times, according to our newly published research in the journal JAMA Network Open.

Premiums can rise if the costs of the medical services they cover increase. Using consumer price indices for the main components of medical care – such as services provided in clinics and hospitals as well as administrative expenses – based on federal data and data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, we found that the cost of hospital services increased the most, while the cost of physician services and prescription drugs rose more slowly.

Some of the premium increases can be attributed to an increase in hospital outpatient visits and coverage of GLP-1 drugs. But research, including our own, suggests that premiums have rapidly escalated mostly because health system consolidation – when hospitals and other health care entities merge – has led hospitals to raise prices well above their costs.

After all the noise, the Westerly School Committee does the right thing

Westerly School Committee votes down anti-transgender student athlete policy

Steve Ahlquist

Westerly is ready to compete

On a 6 to 1 vote, the Westerly School Committee voted down an Athletic Eligibility Policy that would be in violation of state law and discriminate against transgender, gender diverse, and transitioning students. School Committee member Lori Wycall had requested that Westerly Superintendent present a policy for consideration that would mandate that “boys stay in boys sports teams and stay on girls sports teams.”

Asked for his professional opinion, the School Committee Attorney, William Nardone, was unequivocal in his opposition: “…one of my roles in this position, probably my most important role, is to keep you out of trouble as opposed to getting you out once you get yourselves in. This is a perfect example of my opportunity to attempt to keep you from getting into some trouble.”

The effort to discriminate against transgender, gender diverse, and transitioning students seems to be led by a small group of bigoted Christian Nationalists, with the support of Committee member Wycall, who seems desperate to pass something that will somehow fit into Rhode Island’s strong laws protecting the rights of LGBTQIA+ students, while also discriminating against them. Unfortunately for Committee member Wycall, there is no squaring this circle. Any effort to pass and enforce such a policy would be bigoted, discriminatory, and against the law.

The Westerly School Committee has been wrestling with this right-wing manufactured “controversy” for months, even years. Even after the policy’s definitive rejection in last night’s meeting, proponents of discrimination promised to keep taking shots at it.

Here’s the relevant video from Wednesday’s Westerly School Committee meeting: Westerly School Committee - December 17, 2025

Trump unveils his Trumpcare plan

 

25th Amendment, anyone?

The next time you buy from Amazon...

Compassion tied to higher life satisfaction

Feeling happier starts with kindness 

By Linda Schädler, Universität Mannheim

edited by Lisa Lock, reviewed by Robert Egan

People who treat others with compassion often feel more at ease themselves. This is the key finding of a new study by Majlinda Zhuniq, Dr. Friedericke Winter, and Professor Corina Aguilar-Raab from the University of Mannheim. Their study was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Key findings from the meta-analysis

While the link between self-compassion and well-being is well established, this effect has hardly been researched with respect to compassion for others. 

In a meta-analysis, the research team analyzed data from more than 40 individual studies.

The results showed that people who empathize with others, support them, or want to help them report greater overall life satisfaction, experience more joy, and see more meaning in life. 

On average, these people's psychological well-being was higher. The link between compassion and a reduction in negative feelings, such as stress or sadness, was weaker. However, slight positive trends could also be seen in this respect.

Likely Brown University killer found dead in New Hampshire

Suspect in Brown University mass shooting found dead in New Hampshire

From a press release posted by SteveAhlquist.news

The above video still of Claudio Manuel Neves Valente was taken from Alamo Rent a Car on November 17, 2025. This shows Valente picking up the car.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley, the Providence Police Department, the Rhode Island State Police, the Boston Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Rhode Island are today announcing the death of Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the individual responsible for the murders of two students during a mass shooting at Brown University on Saturday, December 13, 2025.

You can watch the news conference video here.

“Our singular goal was to obtain justice for the victims of this senseless act, and tonight our community can begin to heal as we close the book on this unimaginable tragedy,” said Attorney General Neronha. 

“While we’ll never be able to prosecute this individual, I hope this result begins to provide some small measure of closure for the victims and their families. I want to extend enormous gratitude to all of our law enforcement partners for their outstanding work in this case. Since Saturday, these men and women have worked around the clock to achieve justice for the victims and restore a sense of peace to Rhode Islanders.”

On December 18, 2025, a Rhode Island state court, based on an affidavit from a Providence Police Detective, issued a state arrest warrant for Neves Valente, charging him with two counts of murder and 23 felony counts of assault and felony firearms offenses.

Earlier this evening, law enforcement located Neves Valente at a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire. After obtaining a federal search warrant for the unit, authorities entered and found Neves Valente deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Neves Valente (age 48) was born in Torres Novas, Santarem, Portugal, and was a Legal Permanent Resident of the United States. Neves Valente arrived in the United States in August 2000 as an F-1 student at Brown University and subsequently obtained U.S. lawful permanent residency in April 2017. While at Brown University, he enrolled in a doctoral program but later withdrew from the university.

Full details of the investigation and subsequent identification of Neves Valente can be found in this affidavit.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Valente is also believed by authorities to have killed MIT nuclear scientist Nuno F.G. Loureiro on Monday at his home in Brookline, MA. 

Predictably, Trump's Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has suspended the program that allowed Valente to be granted a green card.

Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Accusations of Mortgage Fraud by His Enemies

Classic Trump: He does what he accuses others of doing

by Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi and Alex Mierjeski for ProPublica

For months, the Trump administration has been accusing its political enemies of mortgage fraud for claiming more than one primary residence.

Donald Trump branded one foe who did so “deceitful and potentially criminal.” He called another “CROOKED” on Truth Social and pushed the attorney general to take action.

But years earlier, Trump did the very thing he’s accusing his enemies of, records show.

In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda style” home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property, attesting that it too would be his principal residence.

In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone used them as a principal residence. Instead, the two houses, which are next to his historic Mar-a-Lago estate, were used as investment properties and rented out, according to contemporaneous news accounts and an interview with his longtime real estate agent — exactly the sort of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud. 

At the time of the purchases, Trump’s local real estate agent told the Miami Herald that the businessman had “hired an expensive New York design firm” to “dress them up to the nines and lease them out annually.” In an interview, Shirley Wyner, the late real estate agent’s wife and business partner who was herself later the rental agent for the two properties, told ProPublica: “They were rentals from the beginning.” Wyner, who has worked with the Trump family for years, added: “President Trump never lived there.”

Mortgage law experts who reviewed the records for ProPublica were struck by the irony of Trump’s dual mortgages. They said claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time, as Trump did, is often legal and rarely prosecuted. But Trump’s two loans, they said, exceed the low bar the Trump administration itself has set for mortgage fraud.

Birthright Citizenship Is in the Constitution Plain As Day

Almost the entire Trump family, including Donald himself, are children of immigrants.

By Mitchell Zimmerman 

At least four Supreme Court justices recently signaled their apparent agreement with Donald Trump’s effort to roll back the Fourteenth Amendment’s definition of American citizenship.

The case at issue, Trump v. Barbara, involves birthright citizenship — the principle that you’re a citizen of the country where you were born.

In the United States, birthright citizenship was written into the Constitution after the Civil War. Following the end of slavery, the amendment confirmed that the fundamental rights of citizenship do not depend on white ancestry, but belong to everyone born in this country.

On Day One of his presidency, Trump issued an Executive Order to overthrow that principle. He ordered that babies born in the U.S. of undocumented immigrants should not be considered citizens.

If Trump’s order were deemed legal, he would have the power to annul the citizenship of tens of millions of Americans, deny their right to vote and other legal entitlements, and even deport them. Trump’s endorsement of racial targeting in ICE arrests confirms that, in revoking citizenship, he would focus on people of color.

The first judge to hear a challenge to Trump’s order, federal Judge John Coughenour, concluded it was plainly illegal. “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.”

“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades,” he continued. “I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”

Coughenour is no “radical liberal.” He was appointed to the bench by conservative Republican President Ronald Reagan. But any reasonable judge would reach the same conclusion — and many did, including judges of the Ninth and First Circuits.

Disturbingly, however, the Supreme Court may validate this “blatantly unconstitutional order.” Under Supreme Court rules, at least four justices must vote to take up a lower court ruling. So at least four decided Trump’s incredible claims were sound enough to put on the Supreme Court docket.

The decision is unsupportable. The Fourteenth Amendment begins with this plain statement: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Trump’s lawyers assert that children born in the United States of undocumented immigrants aren’t citizens because they aren’t subject to U.S. jurisdiction. That’s nonsense — jurisdiction has nothing to do with whether someone is legally in the United States.

“Jurisdiction” refers to the lawful authority a government exercises over individuals within its territory. If someone is not subject to U.S. jurisdiction, that means U.S. laws don’t apply to them.

Trump responds to Browning shooting and Reiner murders

Sunday protests in Westerly

Trump's "warrior dividend" lie

The Triple Tax on U.S. Scientific Research

Science relies on the shared, free flow of information

By James M. Smoliga

When Donald Trump’s administration abruptly canceled federal subscriptions to Springer Nature journals this summer, government researchers across the country suddenly lost access to some of the most influential publications in science. News reports framed the decision as part of a broader narrative about an attack on science — and indeed, journal access is essential to researchers.

What the uproar really revealed, however, was something subtler but just as corrosive: the hidden economics of how science gets published and accessed. 

Most Americans don’t realize they are paying not once, not twice, but at least three times for the same body of research. 

Inside universities, this academic triple tax, as I think of it, is so normalized that faculty barely notice it, and they feel paralyzed to do anything about it. It’s woven into the daily routines of professors, grant writers, peer reviewers, and librarians. Yet it quietly drains billions of public dollars each year, enriching a handful of for-profit publishers while eroding the budgets of the very institutions that produce the research.

Restaurant angst

If you're looking for a distraction from real problems, here it is

By City St George’s, University of London

Restaurants and dinner hosts may be able to create more comfortable dining experiences by ensuring that everyone at the table is served at the same time, according to a new study.

Most people recognize the familiar moment at a restaurant or dinner party when their meal arrives, yet they hesitate to begin eating because others are still waiting. This long-standing custom was the focus of new research co-authored by Bayes Business School. The findings show that individuals tend to worry more about breaking this norm themselves than about others doing so.

The study, conducted by Irene Scopelliti, Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science, and Janina Steinmetz, Professor of Marketing at Bayes, together with Dr Anna Paley from the Tilburg School of Economics and Management, explored how people judge their own behavior compared with what they expect from others in the same situation. Their work drew on six separate experiments.

Participants were asked to imagine sharing a meal with a friend. In some scenarios, they received their food first; in others, they watched their dining partner receive a meal before them. Those who were served first rated, on a numerical scale, how long they felt they should wait or whether they should start eating. Those who were still waiting evaluated what they believed their companion ought to do.

The results showed a clear gap between how people judge themselves and how they judge others. Individuals served first thought they should wait significantly longer than their dining partners actually expected them to.

High winds (20-50 mph) forecast for Charlestown tonight through tomorrow

 

Trump Economic Approval Hits All-Time Low as White House Official Insists ‘Nothing Bad Is Happening’

Two-thirds of the public don't believe him and he's pissed

Brad Reed

A new poll shows US voters’ approval of President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy has hit an all-time low, even as the president and his officials insist the economy is the best in the world.

The latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Thursday found that only 31% of voters approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, the lowest figure in that survey throughout either of his two terms in office. Overall, 68% of voters said that the current state of the economy was “poor.”

What’s more, Trump’s approval rating on the economy among Republican voters now stands at just 69%, a strikingly low figure for a president who has consistently commanded loyalty from the GOP base.

Despite the grim numbers, the president and his administration have continued to say that the US is now in the middle of an economic boom.

During a Thursday morning interview on CNBC, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the US now has “the greatest $30 trillion economy in the world.”

“We are doing great,” Lutnick said. “Nothing bad is happening. Greatness is happening. We grew at 4% GDP! Come on!”

Lutnick’s message echoes the one Trump delivered earlier this week during a rally in Pennsylvania, where he said that voters’ concerns about being able to afford basics such as groceries, electricity, and healthcare were a “hoax” concocted by Democrats.

“Prices are coming down very substantially,” Trump falsely claimed during his speech. “But they have a new word. You know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability.”

School shootings dropped in 2025 - but schools are still focusing too much on safety technology instead of prevention

US owns almost half of all the guns in the world, around 500 million

James Densley, Metropolitan State University

Wrong questions. Wrong answers

Active shootings represent a very small percentage of on-campus university violence.

But among those that do happen, there are patterns. And as law enforcement officials continue to investigate the Dec. 13, 2025, Brown University shooting, similarities can be seen with other active shooter cases on college campuses that scholar James Densley has studied. “They tend to happen inside a classroom, and there tends to be multiple victims,” Densley explains.

The Brown University tragedy, in which a shooter killed two students and injured nine more, marks the fourth deadly shooting at a U.S. university in 2025.

The Department of Education in Rhode Island, where Brown University is located, said on Dec. 16 that it is urging local elementary and secondary schools to review safety protocols.

Amy Lieberman, the education editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with Densley about how schools have been given what he describes as an “impossible mandate” to try to prevent shootings.

What is the overall trajectory of school shootings over the past few years?

K-12 school shootings appear to be trending downward, at least in the past two years. But we actually saw the largest jumps in this type of violence in the three to five years leading up to 2024, which trends closely with the broader rise in homicide and violent crime we saw in the pandemic era.

In 2025, there have been 230 school shooting incidents in the U.S. – still a staggeringly high number. This compares with 336 school shootings in 2024, 352 in 2023, 308 in 2022, and 257 in 2021.

How this relates to an increase in schools trying to institute security measures to prevent shootings is an open question. But it’s true that many schools are experimenting with certain solutions, like cameras, drones, AI threat detection, weapons scanners, panic apps and facial recognition, even if there is only weak or emerging evidence about how well they work.

Schools are treated as the front line, because the larger, structural solutions are too difficult to confront. It is much easier to blame schools after a tragedy than to actually address firearm access, grievance pathways – meaning how a person becomes a school shooter – and the other societal problems that are creating these tragedies.

Incentives

An example of truth being stranger than fiction, here is an actual Homeland Security recruitment ad

How To Have a Plastic-Free Holiday Season

Some suggestions

By Sonali Kolhatkar

Our world is awash in plastic. From single-use water bottles and food packaging to synthetic clothes, shoes, and even nail polish, our overreliance on plastic is spreading a toxic, chemical-laden material all over the planet — including in our own bodies.

Most Americans are sick of plastic use, but manufacturers continue to push the product on us. This holiday season, is it possible to have a plastic-free celebration?

There’s no substitute for systemic policy change to regulate plastic use, but individual actions on a mass scale can have an impact. They can also be a dinner table conversation, potentially spurring cultural shifts and inspiring local activism.

“None of us voted for more plastic,” says Judith Enck, founder and president of Beyond Plastics. Enck, who served as regional administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency in 2009, adds that “the reason we have so much plastic is because there is a glut of fracked gas on the market.”

Enck says it’s entirely possible to have a plastic-free holiday season. She suggests forgoing disposable dinnerware for your Christmas, Hannukah, or Kwanzaa meal. “You can rent glassware and plates and beautiful reusable tablecloths and napkins from local vendors,” she says.

Trump Administration asking universities to provide lists of Jews.

This is never a good thing.

Beth Kissileff

(RNS) — Timothy Snyder, a historian of the Holocaust and Eastern European tyranny, has a tip for dealing with authoritarianism: “Don’t obey in advance.” 

So, when the university that granted me my doctorate and educated four generations of my family was asked by the Trump administration in July for lists of Jewish faculty members, I held my breath. Would I be able to continue to be proud of the University of Pennsylvania, the place I learned so much from?

In the past year, universities have varied widely in their responses to demands from the Trump administration to fall into line on ridding their campuses of wokeness and antisemitism. Columbia University (my undergraduate alma mater) settled with the administration, paying $21 million in return for restoring its federal research grants. 

It’s hard to see how cutting basic science research will help reduce antisemitism. It will likely only cause Jews’ presence at a university to be seen as somehow disruptive. (See the recent arguments that women ruined the workplace.)

Other universities have variously complied with administration demands or resisted, but a few, such as Barnard College of Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, acquiesced and shared personal cellphone numbers of Jewish faculty. (Penn refused, and is now being sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.) Nara Milanich, a Barnard history professor, said it reminded her of 1930s Italy, when lists of Jews were put together by the local government. “We’ve seen this movie before, and it ends with yellow stars,” she said.

It also troubled Milanich that the government appeared to be “fishing” for reports of antisemitism: According to the Forward, the University of California, Berkeley said it had provided the names of 160 individuals involved in cases of antisemitism. “Evidently, they don’t have sufficient people to file lawsuits, so they have to go shake the trees to find people?” said Milanich.

Lists of Jews are never a good thing. Amanda Shanor, a professor at the Wharton School and Penn’s law school, told The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper: “The history of government demands for lists of Jewish people is one of the most terrifying in world history. I hope that students, faculty, and staff — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — will tell their family and friends about the government’s demand for a list of Penn’s Jews.”