Help your child live a longer, healthier life

Too much screen time in youth may set the stage for future heart and metabolic diseases.

American Heart Association

Research Highlights

• More time using electronic devices or watching TV among children and young adults was linked with higher cardiometabolic disease risk, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol and insulin resistance, based on data from more than 1,000 participants in Denmark.
• The association between screen time and cardiometabolic risks was strongest in youth who slept fewer hours, suggesting that screen use may harm health by "stealing" time from sleep, researchers said.
• Researchers said the findings underscore the importance of addressing screen habits among young people as a potential way to protect long-term heart and metabolic health.

Screen time tied to early heart and metabolic risks

Children and teens who spend many hours on TVs, phones, tablets, computers or gaming systems appear to face higher chances of cardiometabolic problems, such as elevated blood pressure, unfavorable cholesterol levels and insulin resistance. The findings are reported in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association.

A 2023 scientific statement from the American Heart Association reported that "cardiometabolic risk is accruing at younger and younger ages," and that only 29% of U.S. youth ages 2 to 19 had favorable cardiometabolic health in 2013-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data.

Trump wants to zero out this anti-terrorism program

White House Calls This 9/11-Era Fund ‘Wasteful.’ Red and Blue States Rely on It.

Don Thompson 

Boston Marathon bombing, 2013

Donald Trump’s push to eliminate a federal disaster preparedness program threatens a fund used by state health systems from Republican-led Texas to the Democratic stronghold of California.

The Hospital Preparedness Program was created more than two decades ago in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the deadly anthrax attacks that began days later. The fund has provided nearly $2.2 billion to states, territories, major cities, and other entities over the past 17 years to ready health care systems for the next pandemic, cyberattack, or mass-casualty event.

Recently, that money has been used to combat the bird flu that has sickened at least 70 people in the United States, killed at least one, and remains a threat. The funds also have been used to respond to crises such as hurricanes, tornadoes, mass shootings, floods, and heat waves.

But the budget request sent to Congress by Trump’s budget director, Russell Vought, proposes eliminating the program, saying the effort “has been wasteful and unfocused” and that cutting it would allow states and cities to “properly” fund their own preparedness plans. Any action is currently stalled by the government shutdown, which stems from a partisan dispute over expiring health care subsidies that affect many of the 24 million Americans who buy coverage from Affordable Care Act marketplaces.

Red and blue states say the hospital preparedness funds are essential and could not be readily replaced with local funds. It’s an example of how the White House’s efforts to reduce its role in responding to public health and natural disasters have imperiled state and municipal reliance on federal resources to meet community needs.

The program “is the main source of government funding for disaster preparedness among hospitals, EMS providers, and other parts of the health care system,” Texas Department of State Health Services spokesperson Chris Van Deusen said.

There is Still Time to Call in the Mental Health Doctors!

Trump's impairment is irrefutable

Bandy X. Lee

“Emotional overstrain” is the phrase the official spokesperson of the Russian president used to describe Donald Trump’s state. How diplomatic!

Russian and Chinese leaders are very careful with the language they use in public, quite the opposite of the mentally- and emotionally-disturbed American president.

Yet, there is no doubt they, and so many other world leaders, are well aware of the dangerous psychological disturbance in the Oval Office—and consulting their own experts! There is no doubt that these leaders have their own psychiatric consultants who have very seriously profiled, thoroughly assessed, and even diagnosed Donald Trump. We would do so if we were dealing with any other such leader in the world.

There is no doubt that these leaders have been professionally counseled on how to manipulate and maneuver a man so emotionally vulnerable—who they should also rightly fear is, in addition to everything else, the commander of the most powerful military on the planet who has instant control of the second largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

As I have been writing and speaking about for years, persons with mental issues such as Donald Trump are extremely manipulable—and malleable if managed in the right way. We may have taken advantage of this and convinced him to step down voluntarily early in the first Trump presidency (many do not believe this, rightfully so, but it is true!). Or we may have imposed severe limits on him and forced him to step down early in this presidency (harder to do, but more possible than many believe!).

Instead, we yielded to corruption and cowardice, not minding the inevitable catastrophe that lay ahead, and enabled and emboldened his weaknesses instead of managing and remedying them. To this day, we are controlled and conned, rather than making use of medical expertise to control and take charge of an all-too-common condition, well-known in forensic psychiatric settings.

When the mentally-impaired are at the helm, they are by definition capable of actions that are tremendously irrational, inconsistent, incompetent, and endangering, and no matter how they wish to believe otherwise.

I have therefore emphasized for many years that, unless such a person is properly understood, the danger assessed, and the violence risk contained, they will proceed to do things that are more and more dangerous, outrageous, and unstoppable.

The Pedo Protection Squad at your service

Can't pay? Off with his head!

"Community Conversations" in Wakefield

 

Dashka Slater Accountable - Google Docs Hosted by SK School Social Worker Jonathan Sigman and Compass School Counselor Katie Garvin.  Funded by a grant from NEA South Kingstown. FREE to attend! FREE snacks! FREE book! FREE childcare (age 3-10) Registration link

Why Cats, Dogs, and Even Whales Are Getting Human Diseases

Look to human causes

By Society for Risk Analysis

Across the globe, animals from household pets to marine wildlife are developing chronic diseases once thought to primarily affect humans. 

Dogs, cats, dairy cows, and sea turtles are showing increasing rates of cancer, obesity, diabetes, and joint degeneration. 

Understanding what drives this rise in non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is essential not only for protecting animal health but also for improving human well-being.

Despite the growing urgency, comprehensive and interdisciplinary research on animal NCDs remains limited.

HIV knows no borders, and the Trump administration’s new strategy leave Americans vulnerable

Protecting public health abroad benefits Americans.

Robin Lin Miller, Michigan State University

In a globalized world, diseases and their social and economic impacts do not stay within national boundaries. Increased rates of untreated HIV in any part of the world increase the risk of transmission for U.S. citizens.

Changes made in the first year of Donald Trump’s second term to address the global HIV epidemic, however, may not keep Americans safe.

In September 2025, the U.S. Department of State announced its America First Global Health Strategy, a plan that aims to make “America safer, stronger, and more prosperous” by encouraging other governments to take responsibility for their citizens’ health and to promote U.S. commercial and faith-based interests. 

It includes the commitment to purchase and distribute the breakthrough HIV preventive drug lenacapavir for up to 2 million people – principally pregnant and breastfeeding women – in 10 countries heavily affected by HIV.

However, the plan does not ensure the most vulnerable will be able to access HIV care. It comes on top of eliminating billions of dollars of U.S. financial support to global health programs. And it undermines one of the most effective foreign assistance programs in U.S. history, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.

I have spent four decades evaluating HIV programs and have studied barriers to HIV prevention and care in the U.S. and in other countries. The Trump administration’s strategy not only reverses decades of progress toward international targets to end AIDS by 2030, I believe it also puts Americans at risk.

Trump Pardons His Co-Conspirators in 2020 Coup Attempt

If you are a Republican, you can do anything

Stephen Prager for Common Dreams

Donald Trump has given a “full, complete, and unconditional” pardon to a long list of allies who conspired to help him overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

Late Sunday night, Justice Department attorney Ed Martin posted a list of over 70 people who would receive pardons. Many of the figures included were named as unindicted co-conspirators or charged at the state level for their roles in the plot to knowingly spread false claims of widespread voter fraud in an attempt to push states to reject former President Joe Biden’s victories in key swing states and pressure Vice President Mike Pence into stopping the certification of the election.

Among those pardoned are Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who publicly promoted baseless claims of a vast conspiracy against the president to the public, claiming that the election was stolen by a cabal of foreign infiltrators and scheming election officials. They later faced defamation lawsuits for these claims, and in legal proceedings, Giuliani conceded he made false statements about election workers, while Powell’s lawyers argued that “no reasonable person” would conclude her public claims were statements of fact.

Trump also pardoned former chief of staff Mark Meadows, who acted as a facilitator between the president and state officials he attempted to bully into saying he won the election. Aside from the president himself, Meadows was the highest-ranking White House staffer on the phone call in which Trump asked Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him enough votes to be declared the winner of the election.

Also receiving pardons were attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro. They were part of what Pence called Trump’s “gaggle of crackpot lawyers,” who concocted the tortured legal theory that the vice president could declare Biden’s victory in swing states illegitimate and anoint Trump as the winner. Eastman privately admitted to Trump that the scheme was illegal but pressed ahead with it anyway, culminating in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, during which Trump supporters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” and tried to stop the election results from being certified.

Charlestown Town Council Candidate Jill Fonnemann tells Patch what she stands for

Along with commitment to the environment, Fonnemann wants to focus on small business, fair taxes, affordable housing and the economy

By Will Collette

Endorsed Democrat Jill Fonnemann gave an extensive interview to Joseph Hosey, local Patch Staff. Without the CCA’s non-resident cash reserve to pay for glossy mailers, this was a welcome opportunity for Jill to tell us more about why she is the best candidate running in Charlestown’s December 2 special election to fill the Town Council seat vacated by the untimely death of CRU’s Rippy Serra.

Here are some key excerpts from Jill’s interview, edited for clarity.

Age: 42

Party affiliation: Democrat

Family: Mother-Christine Fonnemann, Father- Francis Fonnemann III, Brothers-Mark Fonnemann, Brian Fonnemann. I live with my beloved animals being my dog Zsa Zsa, Vega my cat, my bearded dragon Javier and my elderly adopted corn snake Raphaello who had a rough start in life.

Education: 2001 Westerly High School Graduate-Senior, Superlative-Class Individualist

Occupation: Beverage director at the Charlestown Rathskeller Tavern

Previous or Current Elected Office: Charlestown Parks and Recreation Commission, January 2023-Present, as well as The Parks and Recreation Office Subcommittee

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform. The most time sensitive issue facing our ward is the repair of the western wall of our breachway. This will avoid future damage to our aquatic life, estuaries, oyster farms and ecosystem.

The reconstruction of the breachway is imperative to the people of Charlestown and to the economic health of our town. We rely on summer vacationers to visit while supporting local restaurants, shops, beaches and all of our other adjacent businesses. This directly hits home given my work in the restaurant industry.

The other issues that also define my campaign platform are:

• Work to maintain Charlestown's low tax rate through fiscally responsible policies
• Support affordable housing initiatives that will allow Charlestown’s seniors and children to afford housing in our town
• Make our children a priority by supporting our schools, quality education, sports programs, and extracurricular activities.
• Continue to support our local businesses
• Work to protect our environment, open spaces and restoration of the Charlestown Breachway.
• I am a big supporter of our environment and dark skies. I am an avid hiker, camper and lover of the outdoors. I feel like I can actually breathe and be at complete peace when I am surrounded by nature.
• I will also promote rehabbing run down, vacant, eyesores of buildings in town.
• Preserve the historic aspect that the town encompasses. I live in one of the 10 oldest houses in town built in 1732

What are the critical differences between you and other candidates seeking this post? 

One example that sets me apart from the other candidates is that I am the only candidate that is known for organizing/executing large scale, well attended events that directly give back to our residents, more often than not, single handedly.

I realize that I don't have as much experience as the other two candidates possess, as they have been involved in commissions/councils and organizations much longer than I have. But I should say that one of the two candidates is 37 years older and the other 28 years older than I. I truly hope my past precedes me at my 42 years of age. I am a quick study and will delve into research to be well informed. I am not afraid of a challenge either.

I have a large presence in our community and am known for being kind and staying true to my word. I am a natural mediator/peacemaker, I will always fight for what I think is right

I refuse to join in on any nonsense that may rear its head in the next month. I am not intimidated and will refrain from fueling any upcoming negative tactics that may rear their ugly head in the next month. But I do know that if you give into being scared and freezing, you will never know how to learn and grow.

I feel like I have the ability to see different sides of a story by actually listening to people. These days everyone is shouting so loudly at each other, instead of hearing what people actually have to say. It costs nothing to be respectful of the fact that we are all different and people feel differently about things.

People know that they can continue to rely on me to lend a helping hand/shoulder to cry on/offer advice to anyone in need.

Nothing in life has ever been handed to me and I know what it is like to struggle. Everything I have achieved, I have earned myself through self teachings. I have to say that the person I have grown to be makes me proud. I strive to be the best version of myself that I can be, which of course is a lifelong practice.

I have the drive, motivation, creativity and unstoppable energy to put 100% into this endeavor. I am not afraid of a challenge, no matter how big or small and refused to be classified as a quitter. I am a quick study and will delve into researching a topic and educating myself. Working in the restaurant industry for over 28 years will teach you how to deal with every kind of person of all walks of life and grow the thickest skin.

I can talk to, relate, listen and create an instant rapport with most people. I am constantly putting out small fires through rational thinking, strategy, empathy and grace. I work well in high stress/hectic situations and thrive in that environment. I am a natural leader, my own person and dance, (not walk,) to the beat of my own drum. I have never been one to fold or conform to what social society teaches us to be if I don't agree with it. My high school superlative was class individualist and I haven't lost any momentum since.

Long story short, I truly hope to add to the existing positive momentum that we have seen with the Town Council for the past two years. I aim and very much look forward to working for the people in our town and working cooperatively with the Charlestown Town Council and the State of Rhode Island. If given the chance to be elected, I vow that I will ensure that all of this happens.

The Election has already begun

Early voting, in person at Town Hall, began on November 12. Mail ballots will soon be arriving for those who requested them. Mine arrived on Saturday, meaning Cathy and I will proudly vote for Jill.

Special elections like this rarely draw many voters – I’d be surprised if more than 1000 ballots get cast. Those of you who pay attention to town politics, such as most Progressive Charlestown readers, will make the difference.

While the Charlestown Residents United (CRU) will continue to hold at least four of the five Town Council seats, adding Jill will give Charlestown an excellent shot of new blood. As I’ve made plain HERE and HERE and HERE, returning CCA spokesperson Bonnita Van Slyke to the Council would be a terrible mistake.

While I am 76 and not dead yet, I often do feel my age and recognize that though Charlestown has a rapidly aging population, we need younger leaders. Jill has that youthful enthusiasm and drive to serve that are, for me at least, a distant memory.

I’m glad Jill brought up the issue of age. Typically, no one ever does in Charlestown elections given that, with some exceptions, most candidates are Boomers like me. Age cost Joe Biden the 2024 election and age is currently causing mayhem and chaos in our nation. It’s an issue that can’t be ignored.

I’m voting for Jill and for Charlestown’s future. Hope you will, too.

Thank you for your attention to this matter

Good and evil

Want to make America healthy again? Stop fueling climate change

Bobby Kennedy Jr. used to believe in climate change, but his master King Donald doesn't

Jonathan Levy, Boston University; Howard Frumkin, University of Washington; Jonathan Patz, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Vijay Limaye, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Bobby's co-authored book is still on Amazon but
he's out of the climate fight

If you’ve been following recent debates about health, you’ve been hearing a lot about vaccines, diet, measles, Medicaid cuts and health insurance costs – but much less about one of the greatest threats to global public health: climate change.

Anybody who’s fallen ill during a heat wave, struggled while breathing wildfire smoke or been injured cleaning up from a hurricane knows that climate change can threaten human health. Studies show that heat, air pollution, disease spread and food insecurity linked to climate change are worsening and costing millions of lives around the world each year.

The U.S. government formally recognized these risks in 2009 when it determined that climate change endangers public health and welfare.

However, the Trump administration is now moving to rescind that 2009 endangerment finding so it can reverse U.S. climate progress and help boost fossil fuel industries, including lifting limits on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles and power plants. The administration’s arguments for doing so are not only factually wrong, they’re deeply dangerous to Americans’ health and safety.

Health risks and outcomes related to climate change. World Health Organization

As physicians, epidemiologists and environmental health scientists who study these effects, we’ve seen growing evidence of the connections between climate change and harm to people’s health. More importantly, we see ways humanity can improve health by tackling climate change.

Here’s a look at the risks and some of the steps individuals and governments can take to reduce them.

Study challenges advice to avoid coffee for those with atrial fibrillation

Coffee may help protect against A-Fib

by University of California, San Francisco

Edited by Andrew Zinin

Drinking coffee can protect against atrial fibrillation (A-Fib), a common heart rhythm disorder that causes rapid, irregular heartbeat and can lead to stroke and heart failure.

Doctors typically recommend that people with heart issues like A-Fib avoid caffeine out of fear that it will trigger symptoms. But a study by UC San Francisco and the University of Adelaide has concluded that drinking a cup of caffeinated coffee a day reduced A-Fib by 39%.

"Coffee increases physical activity which is known to reduce atrial fibrillation," said Gregory M. Marcus, MD, MAS, who holds the Endowed Professorship in Atrial Fibrillation Research and is an electrophysiologist at UCSF Health. Marcus is the senior author of the paper, which appears Nov. 9 in JAMA. "Caffeine is also a diuretic, which could potentially reduce blood pressure and in turn lessen A-Fib risk. Several other ingredients in coffee also have anti-inflammatory properties that could have positive effects."

A-Fib has been increasing in recent years along with obesity and the aging population. A-Fib, which has been diagnosed in more than 10 million U.S. adults, is estimated to affect up to 1 in 3 people.

Researchers named their study DECAF for Does Eliminating Coffee Avoid Fibrillation? It is the first randomized clinical trial to investigate the link between caffeinated coffee and A-Fib.

Mass Deportations Aren’t Helping Workers. They’re Tanking The Economy.

But Trump himself is hiring immigrants as waiters, kitchen staff and farm workers

By A.J. Schumann

Trump companies are
hiring 566 immigrant workers in 2025
at their hotels, golf courses and vineyards 

Donald Trump rode back into office by leaning on the same faux populist refrain he weaponized a decade ago: immigrants are “taking your jobs!”

Since then, Trump has launched an immigration crackdown of historic proportions. Yet rather than turning things around for American workers, we’re seeing the weakest labor market in years.

The Department of Homeland Security claims that 1.6 million undocumented immigrants have left the country voluntarily since Trump took office. Another 527,000 have been deported as a result of sweeping and often brutal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.

That should mean more job openings for U.S.-born workers, right? Wrong. Over the same period, employers announced more than 946,000 job cuts — the highest year-to-date total since 2020 — while hiring plans have fallen to a 14-year low.

The forced removal of so many workers is projected to shrink the nation’s gross domestic product by as much as 6.8 percent — a deeper hit than the one sustained during the Great Recession.

In key industries, the results will be even worse.

For instance, with immigrants accounting for nearly a third of long-term care workers, half of all nursing homes have stopped taking new residents. Meanwhile, family farms, already thinly staffed, have been watching their immigrant workforce dwindle — a trend with worrying implications for food production.

Trump’s brand of right-wing populism twists economic pain into a national grievance. It insists that ordinary people struggle not because of billionaires, lobbyists, and political insiders — all of whom the president golfs alongside — but because of migrants.

It’s a narrative that’s gotten global mileage.

For Trump, There Is No Rock Bottom

The regime’s depravity will continue to shock the world until it is removed.

Paul Street for Common Dreams

“For anyone holding their breath,” someone said online a couple weeks ago, “waiting for this fascist Trump regime to hit rock bottom: There is no rock bottom. Their depravity will continue to shock the world, week after week, for as long as they hold power.”

It is a good time to reflect on how true this statement is as we approach the one-year anniversary of Donald “Poisoning Our Blood” Trump’s second presidential election.

Mad “king” Trump is now blowing up random boats, slaughtering innocents in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, claiming without a hint of a wisp of a scent of evidence that the people he is massacring in cold violation of international and national law and basic decency are “enemy combatant” narco traffickers “at war with the United States.”

Trump is gathering major military forces off the coast of Venezuela in preparation for a likely regime-change war on that nation. He may also attack Colombia, whose president has angered him by criticizing his extrajudicial executions in international waters.

Trump and the key people around him... are dedicated sociopathic fascists eager to stamp out the last embers of American democracy, decency, deliberation, and rule of law by any and all means “necessary.”

He is sending $20 billion to Argentina to back his fellow far-right president there as 42 million US Americans face hunger because he is cutting off their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

Former SNAP recipients will join masses of federal workers Trump has thrown out of work on food lines as Trump demands $230 million from his Department of Justice as “compensation” for its (badly belated) indictment (under former President Joe Biden) of Trump for… you know, trying to overthrow electoral democracy and the rule of law at the end of his first horrific administration (and for absconding with classified documents and obstructing efforts to retrieve them).

Trump has just maniacally torn down the East Wing of the White House, planning to replace that former historic landmark with a gargantuan, gaudy ballroom funded by some of his favorite capitulating corporations, including the tech giants Google, Meta, and Palantir and the leading “defense” firm Lockheed Martin.

Where the Epstein files went

How ICE’s plan to monitor social media 24/7 threatens privacy and civic participation

The end of even the pretense of online privacy

Nicole M. Bennett, Indiana University

When most people think about immigration enforcement, they picture border crossings and airport checkpoints. But the new front line may be your social media feed.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has published a request for information for private-sector contractors to launch a round-the-clock social media monitoring program. The request states that private contractors will be paid to comb through “Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, VK, Flickr, Myspace, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Reddit, WhatsApp, YouTube, etc.,” turning public posts into enforcement leads that feed directly into ICE’s databases.

The request for information reads like something out of a cyber thriller: dozens of analysts working in shifts, strict deadlines measured in minutes, a tiered system of prioritizing high-risk individuals, and the latest software keeping constant watch.

I am a researcher who studies the intersection of data governance, digital technologies and the U.S. federal government. I believe that the ICE request for information also signals a concerning if logical next step in a longer trend, one that moves the U.S. border from the physical world into the digital.

Here's a surprise: New research finds no clear link between acetaminophen (Tylenol) and autism debunking Trump and Bobby Jr. false statements

DO NOT take medical advice from Trump or Bobby Jr.

BMJ Group

An extensive review of existing studies, published in The BMJ on November 10, finds no clear evidence that using acetaminophen (Tylenol) during pregnancy increases the risk of autism or ADHD in children. The new analysis was conducted in response to growing public debate about the safety of acetaminophen use while pregnant.

Researchers reported that the reliability of earlier studies and reviews on this topic is rated as low to critically low. They noted that any apparent associations observed in past studies may be influenced by factors shared within families, such as genetics and environmental conditions, rather than by the medication itself.

Community health centers provide care for 1 in 10 Americans, but funding cuts threaten their survival

Groups like our local Wood River Health Center provide vital service

Jennifer Spinghart, University of South Carolina

Editor's Note: Group like 49-year-old Wood River are chronically underfunded and, in these times, face harsh cutbacks. 

That makes them even more dependent on community support, which is a lot of work. Recently, Wood River held its major annual fundraiser and raised $125,000. But it takes a lot more than that to stay open, so please give them your generous support.  - Will Collette

Affordable health care was the primary point of contention in the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, which hit 43 days on Nov. 12, 2025.

This fight highlights a persistent concern for Americans despite passage of the landmark Affordable Care Act 15 years ago.

In 2024, 27.2 million Americans, or 8.2% of the population, lacked health insurance entirely. A significant number of Americans have trouble affording health care, even if they do have insurance. The tax and spending package signed by President Donald Trump into law in July 2025 puts a further 16 million Americans at risk of losing their health care insurance by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Many people who lack or have insufficient health insurance seek health care from a network of safety net clinics called community health centers. Even though community health centers provide care for 1 in 10 people in the U.S. – and 1 in 5 in rural areas – many people are unaware of their role in the country’s medical system.

As an emergency physician and the director of the student-led community health program at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Greenville, I collaborate with the community health center in Greenville and am closely familiar with how these types of providers function.

These clinics often operate on razor-thin margins and already function under continual demands to do more with less. Slated cuts to health care spending from the tax and spending bill and funding uncertainties that were driven by the shutdown threaten to destabilize them further.

Bannon Tells GOP: ‘Seize the Institutions’ of Government Now or We’re ‘Going to Prison’ After 2028

Trump advisor calls for MAGA to mount fascist takeover

Jon Queally for Common Dreams

Far-right podcaster and former top presidential advisor Steve Bannon told a crowd of aspiring conservative staffers on Capitol Hill this week that the job of Republicans between now and the midterm election next year is to seize complete control of government institutions and turn as many of Donald Trump’s executive orders as possible into law as a way to avoid politic defeat in the coming years and, ultimately, keep MAGA loyalists from being tried and sent to jail.

“I’ll tell you right, as God as my witness, if we lose the midterms and we lose 2028, some in this room are going to prison,” Bannon told the crowd Wednesday at an awards event hosted by the Conservative Partnership Academy. This group offers training and certifications to aspiring right-wing ideologues working in politics and government.

Bannon, who has already served time in prison for refusing to submit to a congressional subpoena related to his role as a top aide to Trump during his first term, included himself among those who might be targeted if Republicans lost power.

In his remarks, Bannon said Tuesday’s election results in New York City, Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere—where Democrats swept the GOP—should be seen as a warning to Trump’s MAGA base, but called for an intensification of the agenda, not a retreat.

Ready, set, GO!

Trump's economic fantasies

Now he wants to give every American a $2000 payment from the trillions of dollars he has imagined the US has collected in tariffs charged to American companies for imported foreign goods...
 

South County Hospital used to be consistently rated "A" for patient safety - rating drops to "C"

South County, Roger Williams hospitals slip in new national ranking while Westerly Hospital continues its "A" streak

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

Four of Rhode Island’s nine acute care hospitals earned the highest marks in the latest report by a national nonprofit that ranks patient safety. But three slipped one grade.

Rhode Island Hospital and the Miriam Hospital in Providence, Newport Hospital, and Westerly Hospital all earned an A grade from the Leapfrog Group in results published Thursday.

Landmark Medical Center in Woonsocket received a B. Kent Hospital, South County Hospital in South Kingstown and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital in North Providence all received a C. Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence received a D.

None of the Ocean State’s hospitals received the lowest grade of F. 

VA hospitals, children’s hospitals, psychiatric hospitals are excluded from the report.

The Washington, D.C.-based Leapfrog Group assigns letter grades to hospitals based on its surveys plus safety data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The ratings are updated twice a year, in spring and fall, and calculated across over 30 measures related to errors in care, infections, injuries, and how effectively hospitals minimize and prevent harm to patients.

Rhode Island hemp industry faces uncertainty amid federal crackdown on THC products

Republicans snuck surprise ban into bill to reopen the government

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

Mike Simpson is one of Rhode Island’s biggest cheerleaders for hemp cultivation and the plant’s derivative products — remedies, he believes, that may help where pharmaceutical medicines cannot. 

It’s that very reason Simpson helped co-found Rhode Island’s only outdoor hemp farm, where he says many of the business’ products ship all across the country.

But Lovewell Farms’ may cease operations now that Congress has approved reopening the federal government under legislation that would effectively ban hemp products containing more than 0.4 milligrams of THC. If approved by President Donald Trump, the ban will go into effect in a year.

“This might be the final straw,” Simpson said in an interview Wednesday. “I may have to shut my whole company down.” 

Simpson doesn’t sell intoxicating products, but said crops grown at his Hopkinton farm can contain up to 1 milligram of THC in it, as is allowed under existing Rhode Island hemp regulations.

“I have 700 to 800 pounds of flower that I grew this year that under that law would not be legal,” he said.

Simpson said he would grow crops with lower concentrations, but as a USDA-certified organic farm, there aren’t that many seed suppliers he can buy from.

“We’re really at the whim of what those folks are providing,” he said.

The provision in the shutdown-ending appropriations bill was championed by GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky in order to close a loophole in the 2018 Farm Bill that legalized hemp but inadvertently paved the way for the proliferation of hemp-derived THC products like infused drinks — products which states have since scrambled to either regulate or ban.

THC drinks derived from hemp were illegal in Rhode Island until August 2024, when the state’s now-defunct Office of Cannabis Regulation began allowing the sale of products containing low levels of delta-9 THC at licensed retailers, including vape shops and liquor stores.

The presence of hemp-derived drinks has led to a debate on whether such drinks should even be legal in Rhode Island. Members of the state’s recreational cannabis industry for the most part have been against allowing THC products to be sold outside licensed pot shops. 

Since the start of the fiscal year on July 1, regulators in the newly-established Rhode Island Cannabis Office have crafted recommendations on dosage limits, packaging standards, labeling requirements, licensing conditions, and other ways to ensure children don’t accidentally consume the intoxicating drinks.