In the wake of a Supreme Court decision this week upholding the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, the Trump administration and fellow Republican immigration hardliners are exploring alternative routes to limit citizenship rights for children born within the United States to foreign tourists.
Markwayne Mullin, the head of President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, suggested on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday morning that this effort could include banning pregnant foreigners from traveling to the United States.
“There are tourist visas that they get to come into the United States or into our territories just simply to give birth; they’ll come in the eighth month, maybe one, two, three weeks left, give birth here,” Mullin said. He did not offer any evidence that the practice is widespread.
They “have a child who may move back to China, raise the person in a communist regime — even though they’re a citizen of the United States — and they come back over here, and in some cases, they go to universities, stealing intellectual property. It’s absolutely been a national security issue,” Mullin continued.
Mullin added that there was a “long conversation at the White House” on Tuesday after the Supreme Court ruled in the birthright citizenship case. He met with Trump; Stephen Miller, a top adviser to the president and the architect of many of his far-right immigration policies; and Tom Homan, the president’s “border czar.”
Rep. Megan L. Cotter has introduced
legislation to create two tax-free weeks each year for restaurants in the
state.
“This is a bill to help boost small businesses,” said
Representative Cotter (D-Dist. 39, Exeter, Richmond, Hopkinton). “Mom-and-pop
businesses make up a substantial portion of the restaurant industry. A tax-free
week is a great way to encourage people to visit a restaurant they’ve never
tried, hopefully one they’ll want to visit more often. This will put more money
directly into the hands of servers and small business owners alike and
encourage Rhode Islanders to enjoy the many fantastic restaurants we are fortunate
to have all over the state.”
The legislation (2026-H 8512), which Representative Cotter introduced May 1,
would establish one sales tax-free week in the summer and one in the winter for
restaurants statewide. The specific dates would be determined by the General
Assembly.
The tax holiday weeks could essentially create statewide
“Restaurant Weeks” which several communities in Rhode Island currently
organize. Such weeks usually include special menus and deals to entice
customers who might not otherwise visit.
The legislation is supported by the Rhode Island Hospitality
Association.
By Rep. Terri Cortvriend and Sen. Victoria Gu /
R.I. General Assembly
No matter how rich you are, you can't stop the ocean
In 2023, our state took a big step to enshrine Rhode
Islanders’ right to the shoreline: up to 10 feet above the last high-tide line.
But what happens as sea level rise pushes the high-tide line up to homeowners’
and businesses’ seawalls?
Our beaches and shoreline are fragile ecosystems that
naturally migrate upland as sea levels rise. But as homeowners and businesses
increasingly put up rock walls and fortify their property, the beach has
nowhere to go. When that sandy beach disappears, there goes one of our greatest
natural assets, and the tourism economy on which Rhode Island’s economy relies
erodes along with it.
Bottom of Form
Even seawalls, however, are not a permanent defense for
property in some places as sea levels rise and storm severity and frequency
continue to grow. On our coast and inland, several neighborhoods — most
recently some along the Pocasset River in Cranston and Johnston — in our state
have experienced such severe and frequent flooding that they qualified for
federal funding for buyouts. In those situations, both the government and the
property owners agree that the dangers and costs of continuing to live in those
areas are simply too high.
Planning to prevent disaster, however, is always safer and
less costly than responding to it.
“Managed retreat” is a planned effort to identify
disaster-prone areas and relocate homes, businesses, and infrastructure there
to safer places before they are destroyed.
Managed retreat can often protect other areas nearby, since
the removal of human-made structures can help reduce erosion and flooding, and
the restored area becomes a natural place for water to go.
Who would have thought our rural paradise would suffer from air pollution?
By Will Collette
The American Lung Association, that's who. For the past several years, I've been running pollution alerts from the state Health Department that warned that ground ozone pollution - mostly generated by cars - posed a danger to the health of the young, old and people with breathing problems such as COPD.
It seemed to me that air quality got worse in Washington County year after year. According to Lung Association data, that's actually been happening.
I blame the influx of summer people whose summer sojourns to Charlestown triple our population from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
As the chart to the left shows, more than 100,000 are at risk.
According to American Lung Association Advocacy Director Daniel Fitzgerald, “This air pollution is causing kids to have asthma attacks, contributing to chronic health conditions, and making people who work outdoors sick...To compound the issue further, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rollbacks of critical healthy air rules are impacting our residents."
During my slog through the Substack messages,
newspaper headline notices, and podcast reminders that hit my inbox every
morning, two stories drew my attention.
Both had to do with the fact that human
beings have always moved around this planet, beginning long before there were
any countries or maps to display the borders where one nation ends and another
begins.
I was reminded of a decades-old song by the Venezuelan singer Soledad
Bravo, “Punto y Raya”—“The Dot and the Dash”:
Entre tu pueblo y mi pueblo hay un punto y una raya,
la raya dice no hay paso el punto vÃa cerrada
“Between your people and mine,” says the song, “there’s a
dot and a dash. The dash says, ‘No entrance,’ and the dot, ‘The road is
closed.’” Bravo goes on to say that, with all those dots and dashes outlining
the borders of nations, a map looks like a telegram. If you walk through the
actual world, though, what you see are mountains and rivers, forests and
deserts, but no dots or dashes at all.
Porque esas cosas no existen, sino que fueron creadas
Two morning news stories brought that song back into my
mind, along with the human reality it expresses. Both appeared in the New York Times(and
no doubt elsewhere). The first reported that the “United States population grew last
year [between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025] at one of the slowest rates in
its history.”
Such a reduction in growth was in large part due to the Trump
administration’s immigration policies. In 2025, immigration rates to the United States dropped
by 50% compared to the previous year. Perhaps surprisingly, Trump’s vicious and
deadly deportation efforts accounted for only about 235,000 of the 1.5
million-person net decline in immigration.
Much more significant were the barriers to entry created
under Trump, largely through the influence of Stephen Miller, the
man Steve Bannon has
labelled the president’s “prime minister.” Those include the effective closing
of our southern border to undocumented arrivals. The administration has also
made legal entry to the US much more difficult in a variety of
ways, including:
Instituting
a $100,000 fee to be paid by employers seeking to
hire professional workers under
an H1-B visa;
Fully or partially restricting entry by the
citizens (including refugees) of 19
nations: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial
Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen (full
restrictions) and Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone,
Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela (partial
restrictions);
With an upcoming FIFA World Cup being staged across the nation, 2026 was supposed to be a bumper year for tourism to the United States, driven in part by hordes of arriving soccer fans.
Policy stances from the Trump administration on everything from immigration to tariffs, along with currency swings and stricter border controls, have seemingly proved a turnoff to travelers from other countries, especially Canadians – the single largest source of foreign tourists for the United States. Canadian travel to the U.S. fell by close to 30% in 2025. But it is not just visitors from Canada who are choosing to avoid the United States. Travel from Australia, India and Western Europe, among others, has also shrunk.
We are expertsin tourism. And while we don’t possess a crystal ball, we believe that the tourism decline of 2025 could well continue through 2026. The evidence appears clear: Washington’s ongoing policies are putting off would-be travelers. In other words, the tourism industry is in the midst of a “Trump slump.”
Fewer Canadians heading south
The impact of Donald Trump’s policies are perhaps most pronounced when looking north of the U.S. border. According to the U.S. Travel Association, Canadian visitors generated approximately 20.4 million visits and roughly US$20.5 billion in visitor spending in 2024, supporting about 140,000 American jobs.
The economic impact of fewer Canadian visitors in 2025 affects mostly border states that depend heavily on people driving across the border for retail, restaurants, casinos and short-stay hotels.
Winter-sun states, such as Florida, Arizona and California, are facing both fewer short-stay arrivals and an emerging drop-off in Canadian “snowbirds.” Reports indicate a noticeable increase in Canadians listing U.S. properties in Florida and Arizona for sale and canceling seasonal plans, threatening lodging, health care spending and property tax revenue.
Economic and safety concerns
Economic policies pursued by the Trump administration appear to be among the main reasons visitors are staying away from the U.S. Multiple tariff announcements – pushing tariffs to the highest levels since 1935 – along with tougher border-related rhetoric and an aggressive foreign policy have contributed to a negative perception of the U.S. among would-be tourists.
Meanwhile, exchange rates and inflation have further affected some aspiring travelers, especially Canadians. The Canadian dollar was weakened in 2025, making U.S. trips more expensive. This disproportionately affected day-trip and shopping-driven border crossings.
Scientists warn half the world’s beaches could disappear
Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
Photo by Will Collette
Coastlines around the planet are being steadily
"crushed" as climate-driven sea level rise combines with expanding
development in coastal zones. This ongoing process damages the diverse life
that depends on sandy environments, disrupts local economies that rely on
fishing and tourism, and leaves coastal cities more exposed to encroaching
waters.
The concern was raised by Uruguayan marine scientist Omar
Defeo, a professor at Uruguay's University of the Republic (UdelaR), during the
opening sessions of the FAPESP Day Uruguay symposium, which began on November
13 in Montevideo.
"Almost half of the beaches will disappear by the end
of the century. We in Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina share these resources.
Therefore, we must work in partnership with Brazilian scientists to manage and
conserve coastal ecosystems," Defeo said.
Nearly six in 10 of the 66 Rhode Island beaches analyzed by Environment America were marked by one or more days of potentially unsafe bacteria levels in 2024. (Courtesy Environment America)
Steven Spielberg never made a cult-favorite thriller about the dangers of sewage-infested waters.
But the amount of fecal matter lurking in the water surpassed federal safety recommendations at least one time in 2024 at nearly six in 10 of the 66 Rhode Island beaches tested, new data shows.
Even more alarming: 25 state and local beaches exceeded federal water quality safety thresholds on 25% or more of the testing days, according to a report published on July 7 by Environment America’s Research & Policy Center.
“It’s absurd in today’s society we need to be worried about crap in the water, literally,” said Rex Wilmouth, state director for the Rhode Island chapter of the nonprofit research and advocacy firm. “Even one day is one day too many.”
Wilmouth unveiled the disturbing findings at a press conference at Oakland Beach in Warwick Friday morning. The Rhode Island Department of Health closed the city-run saltwater beach on June 24 due to high bacteria counts, though it was reopened two days later. On Thursday, two other Warwick swimming areas, at City Park and Conimicut Point beaches, were closed due to high bacteria accounts detected by the Rhode Island Department of Health.
The state health department samples and tests water at state and local saltwater beaches during the summer season each year and notifies the public if unsafe bacteria levels are detected. Swimming in contaminated water can cause gastrointestinal illnesses, respiratory disease, eye and ear infections and skin rashes, with an estimated 57 million cases of illness nationwide each year. However, a majority of the illnesses go unreported.
Environment America’s report compares state and federally reported levels of fecal contamination against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s health safety threshold, or Beach Action Value, to determine which beaches may pose health risks to swimmers, and how often.
Of the 3,187 beaches tested nationwide in 2024, 61% showed unsafe levels of contamination on at least one testing day. And one in seven of those tested were marked by dangerous levels of bacteria at least 25% of testing days.
And that’s just on days when waters were sampled — suggesting infected waterways were contaminated even more often than data suggests, Wilmouth said. Take Tiverton’s Fogland Beach, for example, which surpassed the federally recommended bacteria cap on five of seven days it was tested in 2024.
“There were a lot more days it was probably unsafe as well,” Wilmouth said.
Other repeat offenders in 2024 included Matunuck Town Beach in South Kingstown and Jamestown’s Mackerel Cove Beach, which both exceeded recommended bacteria levels on roughly two-thirds of testing days, along with Narragansett’s members-only Dune’s Club. State-run beaches were not immune either: Scarborough State Beach North showed unsafe levels of bacteria on 38% of the 24 testing days, according to the data.
Healthy coastal ecosystems play crucial roles in the U.S. economy, from supporting multibillion-dollar fisheries and tourism industries to protecting coastlines from storms.
They’re also difficult to manage, requiring specialized knowledge and technology.
That’s why the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – the federal agency best known for collecting and analyzing the data that make weather forecasts and warnings possible – leads most of the government’s work on ocean and coastal health, as well as research into the growing risks posed by climate change.
The government estimates that NOAA’s projects and services support more than one-third of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet, this is one of the agencies that the Trump administration has targeted, with discussions of trying to privatize NOAA’s forecasting operations and disband its crucial climate change research.
As a marine environmental historian who studies relationships among scientists, fishermen and environmentalists, I have seen how NOAA’s work affects American livelihoods, coastal health and the U.S. economy.
Here are a few examples from just NOAA’s coastal work, and what it means to fishing industries and coastal states.
Warm water expands, raising sea levels, which worsens storm surge during hurricanes. It’s only one risk from warming oceans. AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
Ocean-related tourism and recreation supports more than 320,000 jobs and US$13.5 billion in goods and services in Florida.
But a swim in the ocean became much less attractive in the summer of 2023, when the water temperatures off Miami reached as high as 101 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius).
The future of some jobs and businesses across the ocean economy have also become less secure as the ocean warms and damage from storms, sea-level rise and marine heat waves increases.
Ocean temperatures have been heating up over the past century, and hitting record highs for much of the past year, driven primarily by the rise in greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Scientists estimate that more than 90% of the excess heat produced by human activities has been taken up by the ocean.
That warming, hidden for years in data of interest only to oceanographers, is now having profound consequences for coastal economies around the world.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Charlestown’s former
state Representative Blake “Flip” Filippi (R) shows up at Blue Shutters Beach
for one of the Mystic Aquarium’s frequent releases of rehabilitated seals.
Except unlike most onlookers, instead of a camera, he'll have a big
club to beat the newly healed critters to death before they hit the
water.
I’m not joking.
If you follow Flip on Twitter/X, you’ll notice that he’s
been campaigning against the growing population of seals in Block Island Sound
on the grounds that they will attract great white sharks.
And before you can
say “Jaws,” there goes tourism on Block Island where, not coincidentally, the
Filippi family has large business holdings catering to said tourists.
In his own words, here is what Flip has been saying:
From Flip's Twitter/X feed
Accompanying a photo (👉) of seals gathered on a beach, he
wrote: “Lots of Block Island shark bait!”
He wrote another post using the same photo and said: “Whoa – this is the most chum I’ve seen on Block
Island!”
Accompanying a ProJo article on the growing seal population
and Mystic Aquarium’s marine animal rescue program, he really got into his hatred of seals, writing:
“Rhode Island will rue the ongoing explosion of our
seal population when Great White Sharks take up residence alongside them. Cull
the year-round seal population before it is too late.”
He wrote another post on the same ProJo article:
“Gee – let’s see if great whites take up residence
off Block Island to follow the growing seal population. How about instead we
get rid of the damn seals and not have to find out.”
He also posted a phone photo of what may be a shark fin in the water,
saying the photo was taken south of Block Island.
There is a smidgen of truth in Blake’s anti-seal rants.
There are now roughly 200-300 seals in the waters between Block Island and
Charlestown, and seals are Great Whites’ favorite food, according to scientists.
Experts say that Cape Cod is a more popular
venue for Great Whites because there are even more seals there. However, just the
mere presence of sharks doesn’t lead, ipso facto, to attacks on humans.
While shark attacks on humans DO occur – and get big headlines – they occur far less often than you might think.
Last year, there were 36 shark attacks in all US waters.
Worldwide, 69 unprovoked bites were reported plus another 22 listed as
“provoked.”
Patch cited the Atlantic Shark Institute in Wakefield saying there have been two confirmed shark fatalities in Rhode Island waters in the last 200
years. That's once a century.
The first recorded fatality was a young boy killed in Bristol Harbor
in 1816. The second occurred at Watch Hill in 1895.
The last incident listed was a possible attack on a surfer
while returning to Moonstone Beach in 2019. He reported his leg was bloody from
punctures but could not identify what caused those lacerations.
It was NOT a Great White Shark. The Institute has tagged 30 Great
Whites in Rhode Island
waters but no shark fatalities by ANY species of shark in 129 years.
And that’s it. When I said Flip had a smidgen of truth in
his rants, maybe I was being too generous since there is no scientific or
historical evidence to support his fears of a Sharknado outbreak in Rhode Island. And no reason to start
killing seals en masse unless Flip thinks that would be a tourist draw.
But perhaps Blake has another reason for ranting about
killing seals: maybe Filippi, like his former MAGA-nut colleague Justin Price,
is planning a political comeback.
One necessary step for any 2024 Republican politician is to show how in-sync their thinking is with the GOP’s Supreme Leader, convicted felon Donald Trump.
It turns out Trump is also obsessed with sharks. Yesterday, June 19, at a campaign event in Nevada, Trump went on a tear where he linked his hatred of sharks with his equally fierce hatred of electric vehicles.
He conjured the image of being in a sinking, electric-powered boat. In his own words describing his "dialogue" with a guy he was watching on TV:
"I
say, what would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and you're in the
boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery is now
underwater. And there's a shark that's approximately 10 yards over there…
"By
the way, lot of shark attacks lately, I watched some guys justifying it today.
'Well, they weren't really that angry. They bit off the young lady's leg
because of the fact that they were, they were not hungry, but they
misunderstood who she was. He said 'there's no problem with sharks, they just didn't
really understand a young woman's swimming. She really got decimated and other
people too, a lot of shark attacks.
So
I said [To the guy he was watching on television],
there's a shark 10 yards away from the boat, do I get electrocuted? If the boat
is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking, do I stay on top
of the boat and get electrocuted? Or do I jump over by the shark and not get
electrocuted?
"Because
I will tell you he didn't know the answer. He said, 'you know, nobody's ever
asked me that question.' I said I think it's a good question. I think there's a
lot of electric current coming to that water. But you know what I'd do? If
there was a shark or you get electrocuted, I'll take electrocution every single
time. I'm not getting near the shark."
Got all that?
In today’s Republican Party, cruelty seems to be the point.
After all, Trump has great
plans for even crueler policies toward immigrants than we saw in his first term
when thousands of children were taken
from their parents. Trump had no plan to reunite those children with
those parents, and at the end of his term, almost a thousand were unaccounted
for.
That just one of many Trump acts of cruelty with many more
to come when he becomes “Dictator for a Day” and goes after his many enemies.
On policy matters, GOP governors work hard to show how
cruel they can be to those groups that their Orange Master dislikes.
For
example, there’s Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ new law banning mandatory water and
heat breaks for outdoor workers. Maybe Florida agri-business
sees dead farmworkers as good fertilizer for their crops.
Of course, this is only a tiny part of the list of cruelties that includes attacks on reproductive rights, women, workers, veterans, Medicare and
Social Security, domestic aid programs, help for Ukraine’s fight against
Russian aggression, vaccinations, books, the environment, civil rights,
education, the Constitution and democracy itself.
Charlestown is in the bracket for towns without curbside pickup, where trash is either brought to a transfer station or picked up by a private contractor. Compared to similar towns, Charlestown is not the worst, but is far from the best.
Nearly 12 years after the state imposed
recycling and waste diversion mandates on its cities and towns, most
municipalities still struggle to achieve them.
EDITOR'S NOTE: As early as 1986, Charlestown resisted mandatory recycling. According to a letter from Charlestown Public Works Director Alan Arsenault, Charlestown would be unable to comply because, he predicted, part-time and summer residents would not cooperate so the town should be exempt. The letter also makes the dubious claim that mandatory recycling would be bad for tourism. Read that letter HERE. - Will Collette.
The Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation (RIRRC),
the quasi-public state agency that operates the Central Landfill in Johnston,
recently released its annual report detailing
how much every city and town in the state is recycling, and how much waste they
are sending to the landfill.
Last year’s results were abysmal. Only 15 of the state’s
39 municipalities met or exceeded the 35% recycling rate mandated by a 2012 state law. Their
waste diversion rates were even worse. The same law requires municipalities to
divert at least 50% of overall waste sent to the landfill. Only two met the
minimum in 2023: North Kingstown and Portsmouth.
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