Trump screws Rhode Island again by denying FEMA funding to cover state costs for historic blizzard

McKee calls FEMA’s denial of Rhode Island’s blizzard relief request ‘a new low’

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

Gov. Dan McKee and Rhode Island’s congressional delegation are blasting the Trump administration after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) again rejected the state’s request for $19 million to cover recovery costs associated with February’s historic blizzard.

McKee’s office appealed FEMA’s initial denial of the state’s April request for funding relief  under the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act on July 15. The law allows governors to either request support for disasters caused by severe weather or if “the situation is beyond the capability of the state.”

In a letter to McKee on Wednesday, FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton wrote the agency reviewed Rhode Island’s initial request and appeal only to determine financial aid was not warranted for the hurricane-strength blizzard that buried the state in over 3 feet of snow.

Hamilton’s letter did not explain why Rhode Island failed to meet the criteria for federal aid. But in a post on X around 5 p.m. Wednesday, he elaborated on the denial, which also applied to similar requests from New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

“Winter weather is not new to the Northeast,” Hamilton wrote. “Federal disaster aid is not a backstop for routine state & local budgeting.”

Sen. Whitehouse blasts Trump for killing yet another vital research program

Worden Pond invasive weeds will be chemically treated on Friday

DEM says treatment will affect nothing but the weeds

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

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

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

They don't want you to know the REAL reason Social Security is in trouble

But I'm going to tell you anyway

Robert Reich

The trustees of the Social Security fund said Tuesday that the fund will be depleted by late 2032, a year earlier than the trustees’ projection last year of 2033. If nothing is done, benefits will automatically be cut six years from now.

The common understanding is that Social Security’s shortfall is due to the huge postwar baby boom, now retiring, and to America’s increasing life expectancy. The usual recommended fix is to reduce Social Security benefits or raise the age of eligibility. As Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, warned Monday, “entitlement programs” like Social Security “have to be adjusted and fixed.” He said Republicans will introduce a plan to do that. Brace yourselves.

I used to be a Social Security trustee, and I call bullsh*t.

The baby boom can’t be blamed for Social Security’s shortfall. The Greenspan Commission, which in 1983 recommended the reforms that Congress then made — raising Social Security payroll taxes and also raising the eligibility age for collecting Social Security benefits — knew all about the baby boom and figured it into its calculations. (Early boomers like me can now start collecting full benefits at age 66; late boomers born after 1960 have to wait until they’re 67 to collect full benefits.)

Americans’ increasing life expectancy isn’t at fault, either. While wealthier Americans are living longer, that’s not the case for lower-income Americans. The Urban Institute estimates that life expectancy in the top 20 percent of income-earners is 91 years for people born in the 1990s, four years more than people born in the 1950s. Yet the life expectancy in the lowest 20 percent of income-earners is fewer than 80 years.

So what’s the real cause of the Social Security shortfall? What did Greenspan’s commission fail to predict? Widening inequality.

Remember, the Social Security payroll tax applies only to earnings up to a certain cap. This year, that cap is $184,500. Earnings at or below this amount are taxed at 12.4 percent. The cap rises every year according to a formula roughly matching inflation.

For first time, Americans are getting more of their electricity from solar than coal

This is despite Trump's push for more coal use and his war on green energy

Tik Root, Senior Staff Writer

"This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here."

Solar energy just provided more electricity in the United States than coal for the first time on record — marking a milestone for the rise of renewables in America. 

While gas and nuclear plants still lead the country’s energy mix, solar contributed 12.8 percent of the nation’s electrons in May, according to an analysis of government data by Ember, an energy think tank. Coal, meanwhile, provided just 12.2 percent. Just five years ago, solar was less than half of its current levels and coal was at 20 percent. 

What ever happening to the Green New Deal (besides Donald Trump)?

The Green New Deal has evolved. Now it’s all about ‘affordability.’

Kate Yoder, Senior Staff Writer

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

Eight years ago, three little words took hold of the environmental movement: Green New Deal. Part popular slogan, part political philosophy, the phrase described a sweeping agenda to create jobs, advance social justice, and combat climate change through major public investment inspired by the New Deal of the 1930s. 

The term made its way from hats and protest signs to the halls of power, where it shaped local and national policy. Progressives even pressured future president Joe Biden to adopt plans to address the crisis in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

Congress eventually whittled his ambitions down to the Inflation Reduction Act, a package of green tax credits and incentives that became the nation’s first comprehensive climate policy. That is, until Republicans dismantled the law last year. 

Under Donald Trump, the national policy wins Democrats had scored by leveraging the Green New Deal’s momentum all but vanished. The party was left soul-searching, wondering how it should talk about climate change, or if those calling for solutions should even talk about it at all.

Progressives seem to have settled on an answer: Make everything about affordability. A new climate agenda released by the Climate and Community Institute, a left-leaning think tank, aims to lower costs for everyday people through home insurance rate caps, bans on utility shutoffs, and other measures. 

It promotes “green economic populism,” a framework to provide relief for the working class through policies that also happen to cut carbon emissions (such as free transit or a moratorium on data centers), while regulating the corporations contributing to climate change and the cost-of-living crisis. 

The architects of the so-called “working-class climate agenda” say they’ve learned lessons from the Green New Deal and the Inflation Reduction Act: One lacked political will, while the other failed to deliver tangible results to working-class voters quickly enough. 

Definitely. Arrest Bezos

Sen. Whitehouse translates "TrumpSpeak"

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse on fired Attorney General Pam Bondi

March 8, A Conversation with Senator Whitehouse

 

Sponsored by the South County Social Justice Coalition

Sunday, March 8, 2026 • 2:00 PM
South Kingstown High School Auditorium

Wakefield. The quarterly meeting of the South County Social Justice Coalition will take place on Sunday, March 8, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. in the South Kingstown High School Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

This meeting is an opportunity to meet with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who has represented Rhode Island since 2007. Senator Whitehouse has long been recognized as an international leader on climate change, being the only federal representative who attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Brazil in November 2025.

His advocacy has also helped strengthen programs such as Medicare and Social Security, ensuring stability for millions of Americans. Senator Whitehouse places a strong focus on combating corruption in government, pushing for transparency, accountability, and reforms, particularly in the Supreme Court.

Alex Nunes, formerly of The Public’s Radio and now executive editor of The Westerly Sun, will moderate the conversation, followed by an open Q&A session, offering audience members the opportunity to engage directly with Senator Whitehouse on any issue.

The South County Social Justice Coalition is comprised of faith groups, individuals, and helping organizations who address issues of equity, diversity, access and support at any level in South County. The Coalition provides a weekly newsletter of local social justice events and resources. Quarterly meetings are intended to connect neighbors, activists and organizations, plus state leaders and Congressional representatives.

For more information about the South County Social Justice Coalition, please visit https://bit.ly/scsjc_website or email info@scsjcoalition.org.

Pete Hegseth toasts war-fighting manufacturing in Quonset

Hegseth touts speed and innovation in tour of Quonset Point facilities

By Christopher Shea and Laura Paton, Rhode Island Current

Photo by Steve Ahlquist. There are lots of great
photos and video in his coverage of this event well
as in Rhode Island Current's article.

On his first official visit to Rhode Island Monday morning to celebrate and inspire workers at America’s shipyards and defense manufacturing facilities, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth kept about 250 of them standing around waiting for him.

Hegseth was over 45 minutes late for a scheduled 10:15 a.m. tour of Anduril Industries’ Quonset Point factory, the third stop on his morning visit to the North Kingstown port and business park after first swearing in 40 new military recruits at the Seabees Museum and then speaking to a crowd of 3,000 employees at General Dynamic Electric Boat’s manufacturing hub. His motorcade took him past a crowd of about 100 protestors at the entrance to the memorial park that is home to the museum honoring the U.S. Navy’s elite construction battalion.

Hegseth’s visit to Electric Boat’s facility for building outer hulls and interiors for nuclear-powered submarines was closed to the press because it was in a classified area, Myra Lee, spokesperson for General Dynamics Electric Boat, said. He arrived at Electric Boat at around 9:30 a.m. 

“He was originally only supposed to spend 45 minutes — he spent a lot longer speaking with our employees and crew members that were there,” Lee said in a phone interview. “He was late to everything after that.”

Sec. Hegseth celebrates ‘Bath built’ as he touts Trump administration’s offensive military strategy

Electric Boat’s hub is two miles away from Anduril, a manufacturer of unmanned submarines, where the press was allowed inside to wait in a designated area on the factory floor while employees were talking among themselves. Silence fell over the crowd when Hegseth and a wall of security officials finally arrived at 11:07 a.m. for a 25-minute tour, followed by a nearly eight-minute speech.

His morning visit to Rhode Island before heading to Maine’s Bath Iron Works in the afternoon was part of his nationwide “Arsenal of Freedom” campaign highlighting the defense industry’s “manufacturing might” and the need to cut red tape. 

Donald Trump signed an executive order last April to bolster the shipbuilding industry, which faces a critical shortage of skilled workers, aging infrastructure, and limited capacity to meet U.S. Navy demand. America’s shipyards would need to substantially ramp up production in order to build another 100 or so battle force ships over the next three decades, particularly for nuclear-powered submarines, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Navy’s 2025 shipbuilding plan.

Trump on Jan. 7 signed an executive order that blocks “underperforming” defense contractors from paying dividends or buying back stock until “they are able to produce a superior product, on time and on budget.”

Hegseth told Anduril’s workers that production is “too tethered to an existing pipeline that has become too slow.”

“We don’t get what we need when we need it,” Hegseth said, before invoking the new name for the federal government’s largest agency. “I can assure you inside this War Department, we’re committed to ensuring the best of the best can run as fast as possible.”

No members of Rhode Island’s Congressional delegation were present for Hegseth’s stop in the Ocean State.

Rhode Island’s U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had been invited to join Hegseth but declined because of a previously scheduled 10 a.m. engagement in Woonsocket. He joined fellow Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Gov. Dan McKee and other officials for a ribbon cutting at Millrace, a 70-unit affordable housing development with 23,000 square feet of commercial and community space in a renovated three historic mill complex. Reed had secured over $1 million in federal funds to expand affordable housing in downtown Woonsocket.

Reed, who voted against Hegseth’s appointment to lead the Pentagon last year, citing his lack of experience and past conduct, saw the secretary’s Rhode Island visit as a positive development.

“I hope the secretary comes away from this visit with a keen appreciation for the skill, dedication, and innovation of our talented defense workers and an understanding of the need to invest in our Submarine Industrial Base shipbuilders, shipyards, and critical suppliers,” he said in a statement.

Hegseth appeared to be impressed as he saw the various stages of development of Anduril’s Dive-LD autonomous submarines, which can be used for seabed mapping, establishing communications relays, and infrastructure inspection.

The California-headquartered company landed an $18.6 million U.S. Navy contract in 2024 to prototype distributed, long-range, persistent underwater sensing and payload delivery in contested environments.

“You’re on the frontlines of ensuring we stay ahead,” Hegseth said. “And every day we stay ahead is a day that we deter conflict.”

Hegseth is the third Trump cabinet head to visit Rhode Island after Secretary of Education Linda McMahon toured Exeter-West Greenwich Regional Junior High and High School last month and Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez DeRemer stopped at a Cranston fire station last August.

Hegseth commended employees for showing up on the heels of the New England Patriots’ Super Bowl 60 loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

“I hear there was a game on Sunday, but we won’t talk about that,” Hegseth told the crowd. “Thanks for showing up on Monday for work. That shows you’re motivated.”

After Hegseth finished his remarks, he walked off to “Got to Hurry” by the Yardbirds as it played over the factory’s speakers.

Rhode Island ‘unwelcomes’ Hegseth

The temperature outside was about 14 degrees. But the cold couldn’t keep away at least 100 protesters lining the north side of Gate Road, flanking the entrance to the Seabees Memorial Park where the Seabees Museum is located. Some passing cars honked at the protesters in the cold, which seemed to warm their spirits, eliciting clapping and cheers. 

“If Minnesota can do it, so can we,” Lucy Christie of East Greenwich said in an interview about 10 minutes before Hegseth’s motorcade passed by. She held a brown cardboard sign reading “HEALTH CARE NOT WARFARE.”

“We were so upset and embarrassed about the war crimes committed by the Department of Defense and we just needed to take this opportunity to bring that up to Hegseth and his entourage,” she added.

Her husband George Christie stood next to her holding a U.S. Marine Corps flag. George said he thought Hegseth promotes “his false and fake machismo as a veteran” with little appreciation for history.

“I respect the fact that he was in the service,” George Christie said. “I don’t respect the lessons he learned while he was in the service. I don’t respect the person he works for. I believe what he needs to understand if he reads his history that it was Athens that eliminated the Persian threat, not Sparta.

“His business of degrading scouting because it tries to upgrade the lives of women and gay people is violently offensive to anybody that actually fought for this country or cared for this country, for all the people of this country, and he doesn’t and that needs to be changed.”

Dubbed “Rhode Island ‘Unwelcomes’ Hegseth,” the protest was organized by West Bay Blue Wave. Carol Schimmelpfennig of Brooklyn, Connecticut, who is in her mid-70s, said the cold couldn’t keep her away.

“Think about what these people are doing to this country, and this is how we have to show our support to come out in the cold,” Schimmelpfennig said.

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Rhode Island Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com.

Rally tomorrow (Tuesday) to call on Senators Reed and Whitehouse to oppose funding for ICE

Indivisible RI wants a commitment

On Tuesday, January 27, at 5:30 pm outside U.S. Senator Jack Reed’s Providence Office, located at 1 Exchange Terrace in downtown Providence, Rhode Islanders organized by Indivisible RI will rally to demand that Senators Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse commit to opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) funding and push to rein in the agency. You can commit to attending the rally at this link.

From an Indivisible RI press release:

“On Saturday, President Donald Trump’s fascist attack squads murdered Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA nurse whose only crime was trying to help a woman ICE goons had assaulted. This assault on Minneapolis is out of control.

“It’s time Democrats stand up to stop it – and they have that power! In the coming days, the Senate will vote on whether or not to fund DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and ICE. Republicans need 60 votes to pass this bill, so if Democrats stand together, they can block it.

“A growing list of Democratic senators has announced they will oppose this funding bill unless ICE is brought under control and ends its assault on Minneapolis. But Rhode Island’s senators, Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, have not yet announced their commitment to joining with their colleagues to stand up to ICE. So Indivisible Rhode Island is rallying Tuesday outside Sen. Reed’s office to send a message loud and clear that we expect our senators to vote against funding Trump’s Gestapo.”

Federal judge grants Rhode Island wind company reprieve from Trump pause

Court rules Trump is wrong on wind - again

By Ariana Figueroa and Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

A federal judge gave a temporary greenlight Monday to a mostly constructed $5 billion Revolution Wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island, reversing a late December order from the Trump administration that halted work.

Judge Royce C. Lamberth rejected the Trump administration’s national security arguments, finding they didn’t provide “a sufficient explanation” for issuing a Dec. 22 stop work order on Revolution Wind, a 65-turbine project already 87% completed.  He found the entire 704-megawatt project would be imperiled if he did not order work to resume and issued a preliminary injunction to block the administration’s pause.

Lamberth was nominated by former President Ronald Reagan.

Project developers along with state attorneys general in Rhode Island and Connecticut filed new motions in an existing federal lawsuit in January after the Interior Department last month suspended construction. Four other projects off the coasts of Massachusetts, Virginia and New York were also subject to the stop work order. Rhode Island’s is the first to be overturned.

Construction will resume “as soon as possible,” Meaghan Wims, a spokesperson for Orsted A/S, project co-developer, said in a statement Monday.

Going after the source of spikes in homeowner insurance costs

Homeowners Sue Oil Companies as Climate Damage Drives up Insurance Rates

By Dana Drugmand

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

Two homeowners in Washington state who have seen sharp increases in their home insurance premiums in recent years have brought a new lawsuit against major oil and gas companies—the first of its kind aiming to hold Big Oil responsible for climate-related spikes in insurance costs. 

The case, filed last week in U.S. District Court in the state’s Western District, alleges that deception and fraud on the part of oil industry defendants around the impacts of fossil fuels on climate has substantially contributed to the climate crisis, which in turn has resulted in a homeowners’ insurance crisis as rates soar and access in especially high-risk areas starts to decline. 

In Washington state, for example, homeowners’ insurance rates have risen by 51 percent over the last six years. 

For Richard Kennedy, a resident of the Seattle suburb of Normandy Park, premiums have more than doubled since 2017, rising from $1,012 to $2,149. Margaret Hazard, who resides in Carson, Washington, has similarly experienced a doubling in her homeowners’ insurance premiums over the last eight years. They are now turning to the courts, filing a class action on behalf of all homeowners who have or will purchase insurance after the year 2017 in both that state and nationwide.

Climate change, which is supercharging damaging extreme weather such as hurricanes, flooding and wildfires, is a key factor driving rising home insurance rates. As climate-related disasters and their associated costs mount, homeowners’ insurance is becoming costlier and harder to obtain, according to a January report from the Department of the Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office. The report found that average home insurance premiums increased nearly 9 percent faster than the rate of inflation from 2018 to 2022. 

The lawsuit, Kennedy v. Exxon et al., is the first to target fossil fuel companies over these skyrocketing insurance costs. “This case is about holding the fossil fuel defendants accountable for the increased homeowners’ insurance premiums that their coordinated and deliberate scheme to hide the truth about climate change and the effects of burning fossil fuels has brought about and for their conduct contributing to climate change,” the complaint asserts. 

Republican Chas Calenda sworn in as interim U.S. attorney for Rhode Island

"MAGA stooge" will be Rhode Island's top federal cop for the next 3 months

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is not a Calenda fan

For at least the next 120 days, Rhode Island has a freshly appointed federal attorney who will prosecute criminal cases on behalf of the U.S. government and represent it in civil matters.

Charles “Chas” Calenda was sworn in as interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Rhode Island on Tuesday morning. Chief U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. presided over the ceremony at the federal courthouse in Providence. 

Calenda, a Republican, will act as Rhode Island’s top federal law enforcement officer, representing the U.S. Department of Justice, and work across the street from the courthouse at the DOJ’s local office. 

Calenda (left) bears quite a resemblance to "Newman,"
played by Wayne Knight on the Jerry Seinfeld Show.
Might be why Trump picked him.

“I am proud to be part of this team so we can keep Rhode Islanders safe from those seeking to do us harm,” Calenda said in a statement Tuesday. “I look forward to the important work ahead and will always remember that I served the people of Rhode Island above all else.”

Calenda did not respond to requests for additional comment. But he told The Boston Globe, which first reported his appointment on Saturday, that the interim term will last 120 days, or until someone is found to permanently fill the role. He also said that he will step down from his role as a West Greenwich town councilor. 

When asked Tuesday about the expected duration of Calenda’s term, Lindsay Lague, a spokesperson for the Rhode Island DOJ office, acknowledged the request but could not immediately confirm a definite timeline. 

Why the GOP Healthcare Plans Won’t Fill the Prescription

So is this the best they can do?

Dean Baker in Beat the Press

During his first term, after repeatedly promising the country a terrific healthcare plan, Donald Trump famously commented, “Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.” In fact, everyone who spent even a few minutes looking at the issue knew that healthcare was complicated. 

That is why Obamacare ended up being a hodgepodge that was pasted together to extend healthcare coverage as widely as possible. It is also the reason Trump and the Republicans never produced a healthcare plan in Trump’s first term.

The basic problem is that healthcare costs are hugely skewed. Ten percent of the population accounts for more than 60% of total spending, and just 1% accounts for 20% of spending. Most people have relatively low healthcare costs. The trick with healthcare is paying for small number of people who do have high costs.

Individual Choice, Cherry-Picking the Pool, and Screwing Cancer Survivors

The Republicans in Congress, along with Trump on alternate days, are pushing plans that are supposed to give choice to individuals and somehow take it away from insurers. It’s not clear what they think they are saying. They seem to still envision that people will buy insurance, as they do now in the Obamacare exchanges, but somehow that they will have more control in the Republican option.

There is one story they could envision, which would make it much easier for insurers to skew their pool. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) restricted what sort of plans could be offered in the exchanges in order to limit the ability for insurers to avoid high-cost individuals.

It would be possible to relax these restrictions to allow insurers to cherry pick their enrollees. For example, they could offer high-deductible plans, say $15,000 in payments, before any coverage kicked in.

No person with a serious health condition would buy this sort of plan since they know they would be paying at least $15,000 a year in medical expenses, and then a substantial fraction of everything above this amount, in addition to the premium itself. 

On the other hand, a low-cost plan with $15,000 deductible might look pretty good to someone in good health, whose medical expenses usually don’t run beyond the cost of annual checkup.

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.

MIDNIGHT UPDATE on the Brown shooting

Deadly Brown Shooting Spurs Calls for Action on Guns

Jessica Corbett for Common Dreams

With at least two people dead, several others in critical but stable condition at Rhode Island Hospital, and a suspect at large after a Saturday shooting at Brown University in Providence, gun violence prevention advocates and some US lawmakers renewed calls for swift action to take on what the nonprofit Brady called “a uniquely American problem” that “is completely preventable.”

A suspect ("person of interest") was arrested just before 5 AM at a hotel in Coventry. Shelter in place orders were lifted at 7 AM. Tonight, he was identified as Benjamin Erickson, 24, from Wisconsin. Police say they found two handguns in his hotel room. NEW: Just after 11 PM, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and police officials held a unscheduled briefing to say that Erickson was being released, noting that it was unfortunate his name was released. That means there is NO suspect in custody and the killer is still on the loose.

“Our hearts are with the victims, survivors, their families, and the entire community of Brown University and the surrounding Providence area in this horrific time,” said Brady president Kris Brown in a statement. “As students prepare for finals and then head home to loved ones for the holidays, our all-too-American gun violence crisis has shattered their safety.”

“Guns are the leading cause of death for youth in this nation. Only in America do we live in fear of being shot and killed in our schools, places of worship, and grocery stores,” she continued. “Now, as students, faculty, and staff hide and barricade themselves in immense fear, we once again call on lawmakers in Congress and around the country to take action against this uniquely American public health crisis. We cannot continue to allow politics and special interests to take priority over our lives and safety.”

THIS is the misinformation posted by Trump just two
hours after the shooting. Local and university officials
scrambled to correct this malicious interference. At 6 PM, 
he posted a retraction that blamed Brown University 
police for having "reversed their previous statement."
There was no such previous statement.

Despite some early misinformation ➡, no suspects are in custody, and authorities were searching for a man in dark clothing. 

The law enforcement response is ongoing and Brown remains in lockdown, according to a 9:29 pm Eastern update on the university’s website. Everyone is urged to shelter in place, which “means keeping all doors locked and ensuring no movement across campus.”

The Ivy League university’s president, Christina H. Paxson, said in a public message that “this is a deeply tragic day for Brown, our families, and our local community. There are truly no words that can express the deep sorrow we are feeling for the victims of the shooting that took place today at the Barus & Holley engineering and physics building.”

US Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said on social media that he was “praying for the victims and their families,” and thanked the first responders who “put themselves in harm’s way to protect all of us.” He also echoed the city’s mayor, Brett Smiley, “in urging Rhode Islanders to heed only official updates from Brown University and the Providence Police.”

In a statement, US Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) also acknowledged everyone impacted by “this horrific, active, and unfolding tragedy,” and stressed the importance of everyone listening to law enforcement “as they continue working to ensure the entire campus and surrounding community is safe, and the threat is neutralized.”

The state’s two Democratic congressmen, Brown alumnus Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo, released similar statements. Amo also said that “the scourge of mass shootings is a horrific stain on our nation. We must seek policies to ensure that these tragedies do not strike yet another community and no more lives are needlessly taken from us.”

Elected officials at various levels of government across the country sent their condolences to the Brown community. Some also used the 389th US mass shooting this year and the 230th gun incident on school grounds—according to Brady’s president—to argue that, as US House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.) put it, “it’s past time for us to act and stop senseless gun violence from happening again.”

New York City’s democratic socialist mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, noted that this shooting occurred just before the anniversary of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut:

This senseless violence—once considered unfathomable—has become nauseatingly normal to all of us across our nation. Tonight, on the eve of the anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting, we find ourselves in mourning once again.

The epidemic of gun violence stretches across America. We reckon with it when we step into our houses of worship and out onto our streets, when we drop our children off at kindergarten and when we fear if those children, now grown, will be safe on campus. But unlike so many other epidemics, we possess the cure. We have the power to eradicate this suffering from our lives if we so choose.

I send my deepest condolences to the families of the victims, and to the Brown and Providence communities, who are wrestling with a grief that will feel familiar to far too many others. May we never allow ourselves to grow numb to this pain, and let us rededicate ourselves to the enduring work of ending the scourge of gun violence in our nation.

Fred Guttenberg has been advocating against gun violence since his 14-year-old daughter was among those murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida nearly eight years ago. He said on social media that he knows two current students at Brown and asserted that “IT DOESN’T NEED TO BE THIS WAY!!!”

Students Demand Action similarly declared: “Make no mistake: We DO NOT have to live and die like this. Our lawmakers fail us every day that they refuse to take action on gun violence.”

Gabby Giffords, a former Democratic congresswoman from Arizona who became an activist after surviving a 2011 assassination attempt, said that “my heart breaks for Brown University. Students should only have to worry about studying for finals right now, not hiding from gunfire. Guns are the leading cause of death for young people in America—this is a five-alarm fire and our leaders in Washington have ignored it for too long. Americans are tired of waiting around for Congress to decide that protecting kids matters.”

John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, warned that “we either take action, or we bury more of our kids.”

The Associated Press noted that “Rhode Island has some of the strictest gun laws in the US. Last spring the Democratic-controlled Legislature passed an assault weapon ban that will prohibit the sale and manufacturing of certain high-powered firearms, but not their possession, starting next July.”

Gun violence prevention advocates often argue for federal restrictions, given that, as Everytown’s latest analysis of state-level policies points out, “even the strongest system can’t protect a state from its neighbors’ weak laws.”

Senator Whitehouse reports on his trip to the COP30 climate conference

Trump tried to block him from going

Steve Ahlquist

“Interestingly, we received no support whatsoever from the State Department, which is a first,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) at the start of his online press conference about his trip to Belém, Brazil, for COP30 as the sole representative of the United States Federal Government. “I’ve done a lot of codels [congressional delegations] and the State Department has automatically provided logistical support. [This time,] they wouldn’t even help get our badges. We had to do that through a private organization [the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC) Institute]. It was an interesting response from the Trump Administration, the first time.”

The United Nations’ 30th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP30) gathers heads of state, lawmakers, private sector leaders, environmental champions, and civil society leaders from around the world for what is advertised as the largest and most important venue for world governments to gather to solve the global climate crisis.

While at COP30, Senator Whitehouse participated in discussions on the future of offshore wind, clean shipping, and non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. He delivered a keynote at an SEEC Institute panel discussion with other global elected officials on the implementation of climate policies. Over the weekend, the Senator also participated in discussions on methane regulations, net-zero policy implementation, and the impacts of climate change on the world’s oceans, meeting with elected officials, international climate leaders, and business leaders.

“I went there to deliver four messages,” said Senator Whitehouse to reporters.

US Sen. Whitehouse links rising insurance costs to climate change at N.C. roundtable

Homeowner insurance cancellations, non-renewals and premium hikes driven by climate change

By Christine Zhu, Rhode Island Current

Rhode Island’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse held a roundtable in Raleigh on October 14 to address climate change driving up insurance costs.

Speaking at the Walnut Creek Wetlands Center, Whitehouse joined U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross (NC-02), the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters and Partners for Environmental Justice to address concerns from local experts, community leaders and residents.

Whitehouse, who has served as the ranking member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works since January 2025, said his home state of Rhode Island faces some of the same environmental challenges as North Carolina. Rhode Island is subject to rain bursts — sudden amounts of precipitation in a short period of time — that can flood rivers and overwhelm sewage treatment facilities. The Ocean State also has rising sea levels, coastal storms, and erosion.

“Those are familiar topics to you here in North Carolina – upland river flooding from rain bursts and coastal erosion and storms tearing away at your coastal communities,” Whitehouse said.