URI-based Global RIghts Project report spotlights continued troubling trends in worldwide inhumane treatment

US is at high risk for mass atrocities

James Bessette

Global human rights are in decline according to the findings of a recent study from researchers at the University of Rhode Island’s Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies. 

As governments around the world are increasingly using surveillance or legal pressure to discourage journalists and citizens from criticizing top officials, data shows that the number of state-committed atrocities reached an all-time high in 2022—the most recent data available.

In the United States, nearly two-thirds of surveyed Americans could not fully define “human rights” when asked, with one-quarter either incorrectly defining the term or giving unserious or uncertain responses. Also, the risk of atrocities occurring in the U.S. are quite high.

These findings, detailed in the 2025 Global RIghts Project (GRIP) report released today, notes continued troubling trends in inhumane treatment across the globe. This is the third annual human rights report, which draws on the world’s largest quantitative human rights dataset—the CIRIGHTS Data Project—and the CNVP work. 

Save your brain? Wreck your liver?

Two contrasting research reports on eating high-fat food

By Will Collette

Like most Americans of my generation, I grew up savoring foods with high-fat content. As time went on and I aged, I started learning to temper the cravings for fatty foods and began making healthier choices.

I pay attention to the latest research and often re-run journal summaries of interesting new research in Progressive Charlestown. With so much bullshit being spewed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about health and nutrition, heeding the findings of real scientific research is becoming a necessity for anyone who wants to live a long and healthy life.

I was somewhat surprised to see two journal reports come out within a day of each other (December 21 and 22) addressing the health effects of high-fats diets. Putting aside Bobby Jr.’s advice to use tallow or lard for cooking instead of most cooking oils, these reports convey two very different signals about the connection between what we eat and our health.

On December 21, the American Academy of Neurology released a report showing a correlation between eating high-fat dairy products and a lowered risk of dementia. They caution that a correlation (a statistical analysis) is not the same as finding there is cause and effect.

The next day, December 22, MIT released a report that looked at how high-fat diets cause physical changes in the liver. As they bluntly put it:

Eating a diet high in fat is one of the strongest known risk factors for liver cancer. New research from MIT explains why, showing that fatty diets can fundamentally change how liver cells behave in ways that make cancer more likely to develop.

During the holidays, we tend to cast away all restraints on what we eat. But come January, the bill for the debts we accumulate during the holiday season come due.

I have reprinted the research summaries for both research studies below.

Not surprisingly, ending federal housing support raises homelessness

Ending "Housing First" program is putting 100,000 back on the street

by University of Colorado Anschutz

edited by Gaby Clark, reviewed by Robert Egan

Eliminating federal funding for Housing First programs, initiatives that provide people experiencing homelessness (PEH) with stable housing without requiring sobriety or treatment, could lead to a sharp rise in homelessness nationwide, according to a new study published today in JAMA Health Forum.

Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz estimate that ending support for federally funded permanent supportive housing (PSH) and rapid rehousing (RRH) programs would result in 44,590 additional people experiencing homelessness within a single year, a roughly 5% increase from 2024 levels.

Housing First programs have been a cornerstone of national homelessness policy since federal pilots began in 2003, demonstrating improved housing stability and reduced dependence on health care systems. A July 2025 Executive Order sought to eliminate discretionary federal spending on these programs, prompting researchers to quantify the immediate impact of that decision.

Penguins must go

With every passing day, it becomes harder to satirize Trump. This is not satire - it's real

URI natural resources faculty offer screen-free suggestions for an active new year

Make a resolution to engage more with the natural world

Kristen Curry

Lots of Boomer kids (like PC's editor) got these
for Christmas

As youth social media time remains a worldwide topic, faculty in the University of Rhode Island College of the Environment and Life Sciences offer some last-minute shopping suggestions for family activities or pastimes that get children — and their family members — off devices and out of the house.

Mindful gift planning can build science literacy and future scientists as well as offer connection and benefits for adults looking to minimize their own screen time in the year ahead, say faculty members, drawing on not only professional expertise, but also their off-campus roles as parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.

“There are a number of ways to encourage science interests in young people from an early age,” said Becky Sartini, the college’s associate dean. “We don’t have to wait for kids to be in high school to give them opportunities to try science or explore.”

Looking at the world around you

Scott McWilliams, professor of natural resources science, says a simple pair of binoculars is a great idea for a holiday gift. “It changes the way kids see the world and also makes them feel like a real birder,” he said.

McWilliams, an expert in birds and their migratory patterns, says the first foray into birding can start in one’s own backyard. He likes the bird feeders that come with a camera so children (“and adults that behave like kids”) can see their feathered friends up close. Likewise, he says a dissecting microscope can open up a whole new world for a young person. He also is a fan of collection display cases; future geologists might use them to store rocks — McWilliams’ grandson uses one for bugs. Bug boxes are fun to get or give, too.

Other gift suggestions from faculty include microscopes, mineral kits, a bird field guide, nature journal, a plant or tree ID guide, a lupe magnifying tool, nature notebook, or a plant press to start a dried plant collection (heavy books and old newspapers can also be used).

Michelle Peach, a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Natural Resources Science, enjoyed many outdoor activities with her own children and says that nets make a fun gift for younger kids to catch insects or frogs. Children might also find the idea of a butterfly garden appealing, she says, and can learn about which plants attract butterflies by contacting the University’s Cooperative Extension Gardening Hotline at gardener@uri.edu.

Faculty members also suggested ways for Rhode Island families to be more active or set adventures in the year ahead that don’t require shopping.

RI windfarm again blocked by Trump - back to court?

The reason for the stoppage - national security

By Bonnie Phillips / ecoRI News staff

Maybe Trump would approve the project if we add
lasers, cannons, lots of gold leaf and name it after him.

The Trump administration on Monday ordered a halt to construction on five East Coast offshore wind projects, including Rhode Island’s Revolution Wind.

The Interior Department said it is pausing all leases for large-scale offshore wind projects that are currently under construction, affecting the Vineyard Wind 1, Revolution Wind, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind 1 projects.

U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island, a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said Monday, “At a time when working people in Rhode Island are struggling with high costs on everything, Trump should not be canceling energy projects that are nearly ready to deliver reliable power to the grid at below-market rates and help lower costs.”

The Revolution Wind project, located 15 miles off Rhode Island’s shore and 85% complete, was expected to deliver enough electricity to the New England grid to power 350,000 homes, or 2.5% of the region’s electricity supply, beginning in 2026. Revolution Wind was projected to save Connecticut and Rhode Island ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars over 20 years.

Christian Roselund, co-leader of Climate Action Rhode Island’s Yes to Wind campaign, said Monday, “Donald Trump is getting desperate. The Trump administration’s new attempt to freeze offshore wind projects under construction – after courts quickly threw out the last stop work order on Revolution Wind – shows again that he doesn’t understand what it means to be a U.S. president and that he wants instead to be a dictator.”

Work on the project was initially halted Aug. 22 when the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) issued a stop-work order for what it said were national security concerns. It didn’t specify those concerns, but Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told CNN that he worries offshore wind turbines distort radar detection systems and therefore could allow a “drone attack through a wind farm.” 

Burgum again Monday claimed his department’s decision is aimed at protecting the American people.

“Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our East Coast population centers,” he said in a statement.

Deception and lies from the White House to justify a war in Venezuela?

We’ve seen this movie before in run-ups to wars in Vietnam and Iraq

Betty Medsger, San Francisco State University

Are Americans about to be led again into a war based on misrepresentations and lies? It’s happened before, most recently with the wars in Iraq and Vietnam.

Donald Trump and his administration have presented the country’s growing military operations against Venezuela as a war against drug trafficking and terrorism. Trump has designated the government of Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro as a foreign terrorist organization, the first country to ever receive that designation.

The U.S. military has killed at least 99 crew members of small boats that Trump claims, without presenting evidence, were carrying illegal drugs destined for the U.S. The New York Times reports, however, that “Venezuela is not a drug producer, and the cocaine that transits through the country and the waters around it is generally bound for Europe.”

Trump’s administration has justified the bombing of these boats by declaring they are manned by combatants. U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, told the Intercept news outlet that the administration “has offered no credible legal justification, evidence or intelligence for these strikes.”

If not Venezuela, then Greenland

There is no war. Yet.

On Dec. 12, 2025, Trump said, “It’s going to be starting on land pretty soon” and announced four days later a “total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into, and out of, Venezuela.”

As Trump increasingly sounds like he is preparing to go to war against Venezuela, it might be helpful to examine the run-ups to the wars in Iraq and Vietnam – two wars based on lies that led, together, to the deaths of 62,744 Americans.

As an investigative journalist who has written about the vast, secret operations of the FBI and the man who ran it for decades, I am well aware of the dangerous ability the government has to deceive the public. I also covered the opposition to the Vietnam war and the release of information years later that revealed that lies were at the heart of the start of both the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

Author Betty Medsger speaks about her story on Donald Trump’s targeting of his perceived enemies and its connection to her book on the FBI.

“The United States Is No Longer a Functional Democracy” — And Trump’s America Deserves Every Inch of It

When the world stops seeing you as a democracy, maybe stop acting like a dictatorship.

Dean Blundell

America woke up today with a new global label — one normally slapped on countries with collapsing institutions, criminalized dissent, and governments that treat journalists like contagions.

Bottom of Form

The United States has officially been downgraded from “narrowed” civic space to “obstructed.”

Let that sink in.

Obstructed.
That’s the category where democracies go to die.

And here’s the part that should terrify everyone — this isn’t just an academic downgrade or a bunch of international policy nerds wagging their fingers. These civic ratings are the same tools used by governments, investors, international courts, and security alliances to figure out which countries are stable… and which ones are sliding into authoritarian rot.

For the first time in modern history, the United States is being treated as a country in structural democratic decline.

Not temporary. Not atmospheric. Structural.

And spoiler alert: that decline has one author. His name is Donald Trump.

Christmas in America

 

Who is smarter? Cats or humans?

 

Is Male Infertility Contributing to Falling Birth Rates?

Trump and Bobby Jr. messages on declining birth rates has racist undertones

By Joshua Cohen

Musk says what RFK Jr. and Trump imply

For decades, U.S. marriage rates have been on the decline while the average age at which Americans have children has risen. Alongside this, birth rates have dropped — a phenomenon the Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has called a “national security threat.” Within Donald Trump’s administration’s Make America Great Again movement, pro-natalists opine that society’s existence could be at stake.

Kennedy issued a warning at a White House press briefing in October, arguing that the fertility rate is not high enough to ensure the American population remains stable. The rate dropped to a historic low in 2023 and continued to slide in 2024. The total fertility rate that year was less than 1.6 live births per woman of childbearing age. This is well below the replacement rate of 2.1, at which population size remains constant from generation to generation.

Many women are proactively choosing to have no or fewer children. But for those who do wish to get pregnant, yet struggle with infertility, President Trump has announced that he will work with a drugmaker to offer several fertility medications at a heavy discount and make it easier for employers to offer fertility benefits.

The administration has not, however, spoken publicly about specific treatments geared toward men. And until recently, the topic of male infertility was somewhat taboo, even though it plays a role in roughly half of all cases in which a woman struggles to get pregnant.

A man’s age, health, and weight can all contribute to infertility. Research suggests this is because these variables influence sperm count and testosterone levels — both of which appear to be on the decline. Kennedy has repeatedly expressed alarm about these declines, with exaggerated claims such as this, from an October press event: “Today, the average teenager in this country has 50 percent of the sperm count, 50 percent of the testosterone as a 65-year-old man."

But what role does male biology play in declining birth rates? Could addressing this help the administration meet its fertility-boosting goals? The answer, it turns out, is complicated.

Over the years, researchers have asked if sperm counts really are on the decline. More recently, one group developed what some critics now call the “sperm count decline hypothesis,” which posits that sperm counts are falling and that a low sperm count is an indicator of sub-optimal health, which could impact fertility.

Why risk illness or death, loss of income and posing a danger to others?

Fewer people are being vaccinated against respiratory diseases

Liz Szabo, MA

Although this year's flu season could be challenging, fewer adults have been vaccinated against influenza, a new study shows.

Much less than half of US adults have been immunized against any respiratory virus, according to a survey of 1,015 adults released this week by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID).

Just 34% of adults have gotten a flu shot; 25% have had a COVID-19 shot; 8% have received a vaccine to prevent pneumococcal disease, caused by bacteria that can lead to pneumonia, meningitis, and sepsis; and 6% have been vaccinated against respiratory syncytial (RSV), a leading cause of hospitalization in infants and older adults.

New data from IQVIA, which provides health care statistics, show similar declines over the past year. Retail pharmacies have seen falling numbers of vaccinations for three major respiratory viruses:

• 34% decline in RSV vaccinations
• 27% drop in COVID-19 vaccinations
• 6% reduction in flu shots

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.