While McKee turns against the environment, Foulkes steps up
By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff
With less than six weeks to go until
September’s primary, some environmental groups are getting off the bench and
making their political endorsements in the governor’s race.
The Providence Streets Coalition, a grassroots activist
organization devoted to increasing funding, safety, and reliability in the
state’s transit network, announced July 21 that it is backing former CVS
executive Helena Foulkes for governor.
“For far too long, this community has advocated for our
state leaders to care about improvements and investments for safer streets and
a transit system that works for all,” said Nichole O’Loughlin, political
director for the Providence Streets Coalition, at the group’s endorsement
announcement. “Unfortunately, our current governor has repeatedly done the
opposite, and we need to change that right now.”
Transit and the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority have
not fared well under Gov. Dan McKee. Thanks to a persistent $32 million budget deficit and a lack of
support from the governor’s office and the General Assembly, RIPTA had to make
deep operational cuts to balance its budget, reducing bus service or frequency,
resulting in fewer and worse rides for the agency’s regular users.
The cuts have particularly hit hard in the state’s metro
area, where it sees the bulk of its riders, many of whom cannot afford to own a
car or come up with transportation alternatives outside of RIPTA. Foulkes,
meanwhile, has pledged to fully fund and invest in expanding RIPTA’s bus
service, as well as the state’s network of roads, bridges and bike
infrastructure.
In her remarks accepting the Providence Streets Coalition
endorsement, Foulkes said she had spent hours attending listening sessions when
the cuts were first proposed, recalling riders gathering in small rooms to
share their personal stories of what cuts to bus service would mean to them.
“Owning a car costs over $11,000 a year in this state, and
riding a bus is less than $1,000 a year,” Foulkes said. “If we want to attract
young people and keep them here, this is the wave of the future.”
The group didn’t endorse a gubernatorial candidate in 2022.
Other endorsement announcements from the Providence Streets Coalition are
expected later this summer.
Tuesday’s announcement was far from the first endorsement
Foulkes picked up from an environmental organization. Last month Climate Action
Rhode Island announced it was endorsing Foulkes, citing her policy
platform of investing $40 million for residents and businesses to install solar
and battery storage, and her pledge to hold Rhode Island Energy accountable for
its rate hikes.
A major long-term study linked coffee consumption with lower
risks of cirrhosis, liver cancer, and death from liver disease. Coffee drinkers
also showed healthier liver scans and blood protein patterns, with less fat,
inflammation, and scarring. Benefits appeared even at one or two cups daily and
were strongest around three to four cups.
One of the largest investigations yet into coffee and liver
health has found that people who drink more coffee tend to have lower risks of
cirrhosis, liver cancer, and death related to liver disease.
The Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University study, published
in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, also uncovered
biological patterns that could help explain why coffee consumption has
repeatedly been associated with healthier livers.
"Previous studies suggested that coffee might benefit
the liver, but most were smaller or looked at only one piece of the
puzzle," said hepatologist Hyunseok Kim, MD, MPH, PhD, assistant professor
of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai and corresponding author of the study. "We
followed hundreds of thousands of people for more than a decade and looked at
their health outcomes along with liver MRI scans and blood protein analyses.
Together, those findings help explain the biological mechanisms behind coffee's
association with better liver health."
Most Americans don’t read the rules that govern the federal grants funding science. Those rules, called the Uniform Guidance, shape how cancer research is funded, graduate students are trained, clinical trials are sustained, universities stock their labs and discoveries from those labs move into broader society.
When the Trump administration announced on May 29, 2026, its intentions to revise these rules, many researchers were alarmed.
The Office of Management and Budget – the White House agency tasked with implementing the president’s policies across the executive branch – proposed requiring political appointees to review grant decisions for whether research projects advance the president’s policy priorities. These political officials would also have greater authority to override the decisions of the research agencies managing the grants.
The OMB said these changes are intended to improve transparency and oversight of federal funds. However, scientists worry that several of these revisions could make research less predictable, harder to share and more expensive to do.
Beyond concerns about political influence over funding decisions, there are also more practical issues: What happens when the federal grant system becomes less stable for the people involved in the work of research?
Deprioritizing scientific merit
The first issue is peer review. Federal science agencies already use peer-review systems to assess which research projects will receive federal funding.
These systems generally involve scientists and other specialists with expertise relevant to the proposed work. Grant proposals typically undergo several rounds of review, one involving external experts and one involving agency officials. I am a scientist who has served for many years on federal grant review panels, including within the National Institutes of Health.
Reviewers like me assess the scientific merit of a research proposal through several factors. These include the rigor and feasibility of the work – that is, whether the study design can appropriately answer the research question. We consider whether the investigators have the expertise and institutional support to conduct the work. We also assess the overall impact of the project, examining whether the research could meaningfully advance the field and benefit science and society.
On July 21, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Joint
Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine appeared
before the Senate Appropriations Committee, hats in hand. The war in
Iran has depleted key weapons stockpiles, reducing U.S. inventories of interceptor
missiles and stealth
cruise missiles to less than half and costing over $37 billion to
date.
To the naked eye, these expenditures against a nominal force reflect
waste and incompetence: disastrous mismanagement of an undefined, intractable,
and escalating war.
Hegseth expected lawmakers to correct his urgent shortfall,
but wouldn’t correct, clarify or explain his own obviously false claims about
Iran. Hegseth’s early-in-the-war
announcements that Iran’s military had been dismantled, “destroyed
and made combat ineffective,” while claiming “historic and overwhelming
victory” were obviously untrue,
but on July 22, the
GOP-led House put another $1 trillion in Hegseth’s
hands anyway.
Arming a blowhard who delivers culture
war braggadocio instead of sober analysis is not confidence inspiring,
it’s irresponsible. It’s also dangerous as hell.
Turkey pecking at his reflection in the back of my car. Photo by Will Collette
After wild turkeys attacked an 83-year-old woman in May 2026, sending her to the emergency room for stitches, police warned residents of Alameda, California, to avoid interacting with the animals.
Wild turkeys can be particularly aggressive
during mating season. They can also damage property: digging up gardens, staining decks with their droppings and occasionally attacking cars and windows when they mistake their own reflections for rival turkeys.
Turkeys may be a nuisance to Alameda’s human residents, but they have also been highly valued by multiple cultures throughout the history of North America. Given these threats to human safety and property, is it fair to call this quintessentially American bird a pest?
If Turkeys decorate American dinner tables and are pardoned by presidents, are they still pests?
Labeling an animal a pest typically justifies the use of harmful or deadly methods to remove undesirable species from human spaces. But these methods can lead to costs that far outweigh their benefits, causing unnecessary suffering for not only the so-called pests, but also for humans, other animals and entire ecosystems.
Understanding why people label certain animals pests can help society respond to potential conflicts while minimizing harm to both humans and animals.
Although
routine screening generally begins at age 45 for adults at average risk,
warning signs can appear earlier and should be discussed with a health care
provider at any age.
To help people recognize possible symptoms and speak with
their doctors sooner, the American College of Surgeons (ACS) has
introduced free public education
resources and a checklist designed for use before primary care
appointments.
It’s an intriguing plan. But once you factor in the whole life cycle, from water and rocket fuel used to launch these satellites into space, to keeping them cool and eventually disposing of old satellites, the environmental case becomes less clear.
Outer space, out of mind
Off-worlding polluting industries is not a new idea. In the 1970s, when the last Iranian oil crisis caused rocketing fuel prices, Nasa kicked off a plan to build huge solar plants in space. The idea flopped when the oil began to flow again.
Since data centers need so much energy, much of it for AI, such astronomical ideas are back on the table. Regular Earth-based data centers were responsible for around 5% of all electricity used in the US last year, for instance, mostly using fossil fuels. Their share of US power demand will likely triple by 2028.
The fragile frontier
That’s why the cold vacuum of space, with its endless supply of solar energy, is being pitched as a more sustainable alternative to big, noisy, hot data centers in our back yards.
Meanwhile, a recent petition from environmental law charity Earthjustice, is calling for a comprehensive review. They argue these proposals fail to acknowledge any environmental impact. “This is not just poor planning and a missed opportunity”, the petition states, “it violates federal law”.
Indeed, SpaceX’s planning applications come with assurances of no meaningful environmental impact. “It’s always sunny in space,” according to Musk, who says orbital data centers are “obviously the only way to scale”.
Yet data centers in space would be even more prone to overheating than those on earth. That’s because, like a Thermos flask, space keeps things hot. There’s no water or air to carry excess heat away. Instead, keeping powerful AI chips cool in orbit requires massive ammonia-filled radiators that let heat escape as infrared radiation. This isn’t very efficient and those radiators are much larger than the computers they cool. Lifting these huge structures to orbit would require a lot of rocket fuel.
Donald Trump’s administration has admitted in
court that it chose to cancel certain grants for clean energy projects because
they were set to benefit Democratic-voting states.
The New York Timesreported that attorneys representing the US
Department of Energy (DOE) acknowledged in court documents filed earlier this month that decisions
about canceling grants were based “solely on the political identity of the
grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of
performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”
The Times described this as a “stunning admission” that
“offered an unvarnished glimpse into the way President Trump has weaponized the
provision of federal education, energy, health, housing, and infrastructure aid
in his second term.”
According to the Times, the DOE last year recommended
canceling more than 600 grants awarded for energy projects under former
President Joe Biden’s administration.
However, the White House Office
of Management and Budget only
made 284 of the recommended cuts while leaving the rest of the grants in place.
Hidden beneath the water’s surface is a botanical world that is among nature’s most innovative and ecologically important.
As I highlighted in a recent paper, an extraordinary range of adaptations have evolved in aquatic plants for life beneath the water’s surface. Some flower underwater, others capture animals in ingenious traps. Here are seven facts that show how these remarkable organisms challenge our assumptions about what plants are and how they survive.
Many people think of plants as nice-looking greens. Essential for clean air, yes, but simple organisms. A step change in research is shaking up the way scientists think about plants: they are far more complex and more like us than you might imagine. This blossoming field of science is too delightful to do it justice in one or two stories.This article is part of a series, Plant Curious, exploring scientific studies that challenge the way you view plantlife.
1. Plants can’t stop returning to water
When we think of plants, we often picture life on land: forests, grasslands and meadows. Yet throughout their evolutionary history, plants have repeatedly returned to the water, where they first evolved. Around 500 million years ago, plants moved from water onto land. Since then, many have moved back. Scientists estimate that the aquatic lifestyle has evolved independently more than 100 times across different plant groups.
Water lilies float their leaves on the surface, duckweeds drift freely and seagrasses live entirely submerged in the ocean. Some of these groups made their return over 100 million years ago. The repeated evolution of aquatic plants is one of nature’s most striking examples of convergent evolution.
During eight respiratory illness seasons, estimated
influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) against death in US children was 80%
overall, 77% in those who had underlying medical conditions, and 87% among
those without such conditions, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
researchers report today
in Pediatrics.
The team used data from the US Influenza Associated
Pediatric Mortality Surveillance System and survey data to estimate VE against
death and assess vaccination status in children aged 6 months to 17 years who
died of their infections from August 2016 through July 2025. The study excluded
the 2020-21 flu season.
“Seasonal influenza vaccination has been shown to reduce the
risk of influenza and severe complications among children aged 6 months
and older,” the study authors noted. “Since 2010, reported numbers of
influenza-associated pediatric deaths among children younger than 18 years
have ranged from 37 during the 2011 to 2012 season to 289 during the 2024 to
2025 season.”
Over half of flu deaths were in otherwise healthy
children
In total, 1,234 children aged 6 months to 17 years died
of flu. Overall, 48% of pediatric deaths occurred in children with one or more
underlying medical conditions and 52% in those without such conditions.
Of deaths in children with at least one high-risk condition,
the greatest proportion of flu vaccination was in those with non-asthma lung
disorders (35%), followed by immune-weakening conditions (33%) and genetic and
mitochondrial disorders (29%) and was lowest among those with obesity (18%),
diabetes (11%), and hemoglobinopathies such as sickle cell disease (8%).
Among 1,086 deaths with flu vaccination data, only 23% of
530 children with chronic conditions and 13% of 556 children without these
conditions were fully vaccinated against flu. By season, the proportion of flu
deaths in children vaccinated in the current year ranged from 26% in 2018-19 to
9% in 2024-25.
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As a Fox News commentator, Hegseth
lobbied hard for presidential pardons for war
criminals, leading Trump to
fully pardon a Lieutenant convicted of murdering two
Afghan civilians, and a Major who admitted to the CIA that
he killed someone off base in 2010 and
buried his remains. .webp)
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AI companies increasingly want to move their operations into space. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has applied to launch over a million AI data centre satellites and ultimately build them on the moon.
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