A blue tsunami just washed ashore in East Greenwich
The United States first went to war with Iraq, Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and parts of the Berlin Wall were still standing as the Soviet Union continued to collapse. Cheers was the most popular TV show in America, Home Alone had yet to be released on the big screen, and you were probably […]
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Political violence and elections in Trumplandia
That Kavanaugh victory party feels like it was so long ago. The GOP sounds nervous again. The mid-term elections are a referendum on Trump, so Trump declares. If the Trump-sympathetic doesn’t judge their well-being in stock market performances, it’s going to be hard to say they are better off now than 2 years ago. Hell, […]
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Feds mount last-ditch effort to stop children’s constitutional case
On Thursday, October 18, 2018, for the second time in three months, the Department of Justice asked the United States Supreme Court to circumvent the ordinary procedures of federal litigation and stop the constitutional case Juliana v. United States, involving the substantive due process and equal protection rights of children, from going to trial. Claiming […]
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Is #PINKWAVE letter fake? The person it purports to support says yes.
“The #PINKWAVE is here!” says a campaign letter that was mailed to East Greenwich voters last week. It purports to be from a feminist and in support of Justine Caldwell, a Democrat running to represent East Greenwich at the State House. But the House District 30 candidate – who has made #MeToo and reproductive freedom […]
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The antifa follies: why suppressing rights like free speech is a bad idea
Today, a group called Ocean State Against Hate (OSAH) is going to the State House in an effort to forcibly prevent the rightist group Resist Marxism from holding a rally. This is a sequel to a similar confrontation August 4, where OSAH managed to physically shut down Resist Marxism’s effort to inaugurate its Providence chapter […]
Beer, boofing, and devil’s triangle: Kavanaugh offers explanation to RI senator
“I like beer,” said Supreme Court hopeful Brett Kavanaugh when Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asked if his high school “ralph club” referred to alcohol-induced vomiting. “Do you like beer, Senator?” the potential justice then shot back at Whitehouse. “What do you like to drink?” It wasn’t the only time Kavanaugh, visibly angry throughout the […]
Flanders, Whitehouse now agree on Kavanaugh accusation
The accusation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh tried to rape a 15-year-old girl as a drunken high school student has captured the beltway’s and the nation’s attention. Here in Rhode Island, it’s also shed some light on the campaign between Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the incumbent Democrat, and Bob Flanders, a Republican and himself a […]
It was a good night to be an incumbent in Rhode Island
While the trend nationally has been to oust the incumbents, and the local pundits and politicos seemed braced for an upset, Rhode Islanders stuck by the status quo in the 2018 primary election Wednesday. Democrats roundly rejected Matt Brown’s upstart challenge to Governor Gina Raimondo, the more moderate incumbent. And they narrowly stuck by Lt. Governor […]
Voting for prison reform promises
It was three and half years ago, at the Roger Williams University Symposium “Sounding the Alarm on Mass Incarceration” (which I wrote about in RIFuture back in 2013), when Rhode Island started a difficult, ambitious statewide conversation about undertaking major criminal justice reform efforts. Now, at the end of another election cycle, voters that care […]
Breakfast with Sheldon Whitehouse
You wouldn’t know it by watching him work the crowd waiting for a breakfast table in Newport, but Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island’s junior senator who is facing re-election this year, says he’s uncomfortable in the public spotlight. “In the world of people in politics, way shyer than average,” is how he described himself over breakfast […]
Laufton Ascencao on how progressives can win campaigns
He may not have the Democratic Party’s endorsement, but Laufton Ascencao, running for state representative in District 68 (Bristol, Warren), knows exactly how to win races despite tall odds. He told me one of his first political litmus tests was during his time in Pittsburgh in 2013. There, while doing college organizing for the Obama […]
Providence, Central Falls sue Jeff Sessions and Justice Department
The cities of Providence and Central Falls—and in a separate suit, the state of Rhode Island—are taking the Department of Justice and US Attorney General Jeff Sessions to court over its manipulation of federal grant funds to support the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration agenda. The grant in dispute is the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice […]
Incumbent Democrats face two-front campaigns
Politics makes for strange bedfellows, observed Charles Dudley Warner in 1850, and it seems true enough this campaign season in Rhode Island as the highest-profile incumbent Democrats are each taking fire from not only Republicans, but also the progressive left. Sometimes even on the same issues. Governor Raimondo Governor Gina Raimondo faces the most-obvious two-front […]
Single-payer is better for businesses, says one expert
Dr. James Cowan has seen how health insurance works from multiple angles and both sides of the pond, consulting for the National Health Service, the United Kingdom’s public health-care system, to serving as an expert for the health-care insurer Aetna here in the United States. Now acting as an advisor for the Rhode Island Health […]
Raimondo’s pension cuts benefited hedge funds more than RI, says Brown
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Matt Brown attacked pension cuts for state employees dating back to Governor Raimondo’s previous role as state treasurer at a town-hall style “Restore Our Pensions” event at the WaterFire Arts Center in Providence on Monday evening. The event came mere hours after WPRI published polling results showing Brown lagging behind in name […]
Medicare for All would save RI money—and here’s the math
Would health care in Rhode Island cost less if everyone had access to it? The question, brought to the national stage in arguments surrounding Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All plan, came to Rhode Island repeatedly this week, whether it was when Democratic gubernatorial candidate Matt Brown announced his own Medicare for All plan, or in […]
Taxes
- Trump tax cuts a massive giveaway to the richest one percent of Rhode Islanders says report
- RI Progressive Democrats call for new House Speaker
- $12.5 million plunder of Energy Efficiency Fund threatens to hurt consumers and economy says environmental groups
- Providence City Council incentivizing the continued use and expansion of fossil fuels with Dominion tax deal
Articles in this series
- Raimondo secures financing for DACA renewals and free legal advice for recipients
- RI Legislative Black and Latino Caucus call for defense of DACA
- RI Democrats stand with Dreamers, oppose ending DACA
- RI delegation chides Trump for ending DACA
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