I wonder how many people in Rhode Island and New England have any idea that not only is it not proven that “medical gender reassignment” helps people psychologically, but that the evidence strongly suggests it makes things worse:

Yes, I know it may be another small indicator, but it’s an indicator nonetheless that WPRI publishes its news according to a strip.  I’m referring to this headline:

Providence councilors pass historic rent control ordinance in first vote

“Historic” is a term used for positive things.  The editors wouldn’t use it if the council were, say, removing the requirement for any educational activities in Providence schools or adding a special tax on projects that improve rental properties.  (Although, I’ll admit that’s not far from what the council is doing, here.)

At least we can salvage a little humor from the situation.  After all, rent control has historically been a disaster wherever it’s tried, so maybe that’s the outcome WPRI wants.

The condition Cynical Publius describes nationally has long been apparent in Rhode Island:

So what does it take for a Good Guy or Gal to step up to the plate as a true conservative reformer and enter the arena of government or politics? Right now I see only three categories of people who can do this:

1. The truly brave with truly brave families and friends.

2. Those who can’t be touched because they are so far beyond the rest of us in terms of resources: Donald Trump, Elon, e.g.

3. Others who have little to lose. They don’t have families, or they are already poor, or they are old enough and well established enough, with grown kids and some level of financial independence, that the risk is lower for them (i.e.—retired people).

This is a REALLY REALLY BAD phenomenon. Our system encourages the worst Americans to govern the rest of us and the best Americans to stay home to protect their friends and families.

While the insiders feel safe, the pressure remains vague and soft.  Maybe you get audited, but more likely, you’re ignored or anonymous people make threats against your business or creepy comments about your family.  What we’re seeing now, nationally, is what happens when reformers actually push through and show no signs of backing off, and it’s scary.

What’s needed is the dynamic in some ’80s movies (shout out to Gotcha!) when the establishment goes after the little guy/gal and his rough, street-smart local friends back him/her up.  This could also take the form of financial backing, although then the backer has to be brave, too.

You don’t have to look very closely to observe a pattern that cuts across all sorts of issues.  Here’s one instance, in a commentary about energy by Geeta Chougule of the Independent Women’s Network:

The Independent Women’s poll also found that Rhode Island women support reliable energy sources like natural gas, with 62% expressing support for it. An inconvenient truth: Despite what McKee and climate-first politicians say, there is no green energy transition happening in Rhode Island. Per the Energy Information Administration (EIA), 87% of Rhode Island’s current energy mix is chiefly natural gas, with renewables only accounting for about 6%. That’s why Governor McKee, a climate hawk, conceded last year that natural gas and nuclear energy will play a role in the Ocean State’s energy future.

Keep in mind that women tend to be more in line with progressive and Democrat Party policies than men, and even they support a more rational energy policy by a substantial majority.  The pattern is that Rhode Islanders and Americans more broadly seem unable to use democratic means to get the policies we want.

This shouldn’t be difficult.  Our system should create incentive for binary choices that pull in different directions (left versus right, to simplify) but still attempt to stay near the center of the population’s politics.  When one party goes too far away from center, the other should benefit, and its adjustments should be incremental so as not to lose that majority.

Something is severely broken, and recently it’s hard not to see mail ballots and massive illegal immigration at the center of it.  Of course, the longer-term problem is that government is involved in so many areas of our lives that we can be manipulated to oppose each other even when we agree on many individual issues.

It may be a sign that everybody’s living in their own information bubbles, or it may be that Helena Foulkes is just another politician willing to say whatever she thinks will help her win her primary election, but I find it hard to believe a well-informed and well-meaning person genuinely holds this view:

The former CVS executive counters that Rhode Island can bump up investments in solar, batteries and other clean technologies while still lowering electric rates that are among the highest in the nation. Diversifying energy sources and reducing the region’s reliance on natural gas can only help in that cause, she says.

“I don’t think it is a choice between cost and protecting the climate,” Foulkes told The Journal. “I think we can do both at the same time. And by leaning into renewables we can make a real difference in people’s pocketbooks and keep Rhode Island on a path towards protecting our climate.”

The state’s Renewable Energy Standard (net-zero emissions by 2050) is ridiculous, harmful policy.  Adding tens of millions of dollars to the tax burden to subsidize “green” energy may or may not lower rates a little, but it’s not a solution.

Even if one accepts the climate catastrophe narrative, Rhode Island is way too small to move the needle.  It is nothing short of malicious, therefore, to insist that our already-struggling economy must hobble itself for at least the next 14 years in order to hit an arbitrary goal that won’t matter for the planet, anyway.

Gary Sasse makes a great point I haven’t seen elsewhere:

Progressives are like old-time bigots saying, “We don’t want your kind or your values around here.”  They are lavish with their empathy, but only for people who contribute to their power.  If you’re only going to be a neighbor, and not a co-ideologue, you’re of no interest.  If you do things that make you and those around you independent, like starting and operating successful businesses, they’ll be downright hostile.

In fairness, that’s probably not what he thinks he’s admitting, but it’s not a far cry:

Speaking at the Rhode Island rally, U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner said not enough attention has gone to the proposed requirement, that a voter present the same level of documentation, to obtain a mail ballot, “but only if they showed up to their board of canvassers in person to prove their citizenship.

“What is the purpose of getting a mail ballot if you have to show up and prove your citizenship in person, right?”

Before COVID opened the door wide for fraud, the purpose of mail ballots was that you couldn’t make it to a polling place on election day.  Now that’s not even an issue, because we have election month.

So Magaziner asks a good question:  What is the purpose of getting a mail ballot?  If he were an honest person, he might acknowledge that it’s so people don’t have to do things like prove their citizenship and prove the person filling out the person is the person in whose name the vote is cast.

It’s an excellent example of how their compassion is abused by the radicals who take advantage of them.  Matt Walsh is not being too extreme when he explains it this way:

When I first commented on this now-unconstitutional legislation in Rhode Island back in 2017 (see here, here, and here), it seemed to me that supporters had in mind a Stephen King-esque scene in which fundamentalist parents held down their son as a preacher attempted to burn the gay out of him with glowing-hot irons.  That is not what the legislation bans.

Rather, it creates a one-way slide on which people are permitted to seek counselling services to move their sexual identities away from traditional norms but prevented from seeking counselling to move in the other direction.

And but for Mayor Brett Smiley’s promised veto, Providence would be failing.

There will always be people who will push harmful policies so uninformed people help them win power.  There will always be a market for promises of handouts.  And there will always be people for whom it is less important to implement the best policies than to prove that they can make other people do what they want.  The civic intelligence test is whether the local electorate is able to stop these people from destroying the region, as they’d stop some natural disaster, epidemic, or invading army.

David Salvatore of The Providence Foundation is trying to make the case, but a majority of the city council is all onboard.  This suggests the larger question Providence must address is not related to housing, specifically, but:  What is going on that the civic adults can’t keep control of their government?

This is good, as far as it goes, but we shouldn’t have any illusions about what it actually means:

There’s no achievement in building buildings with taxpayer funds.  It’s only spending money.  With no changes to what’s happening inside the buildings, the benefits will be minimal.

Meanwhile, once such a goal is articulated, the hands start reaching out, as if to say, “You want to be able to say you didn’t fail?  Well, here are the costs and work limitations you’ll have to fund with other people’s money to get there.”

This excellent report from CCN-RI points to exactly the sort of gap Rhode Island’s politics and civic society are leaving open to exploitation:

THE TRANSPARENCY TRAP

When $11M in state settlement money moves to a private foundation, the public loses its seat at the table. Last week’s $7.9M payout to four nonprofits happened behind closed doors—outside the reach of public records laws.

RI Republicans are sounding the… pic.twitter.com/E9T53dqL1B

— CCN – Rhode Island (@ccnrhodeisland) March 25, 2026

The state won $11 million in a legal settlement.  Contrary to law, Democrat Attorney General Peter Neronha decided where to send that money and chose the Rhode Island Foundation. As the video points out, that moves the money outside of the reach of public records law.

Neronha is implicitly taking cover under the fact that the Rhode Island Foundation is a charity with a long reputation for good works, but if it ever was only that, circumstances have become corrupted.  The Foundation is currently run by an ideological and hyper-partisan former Congressman whose father was a mob lawyer, whose brother was convicted of corruption, and two of whose sisters have been in the public eye within the last decade for controversies related to substance abuse… and who makes nearly $1 million on the job.

Meanwhile, the Foundation, itself, has morphed into a progressive shadow government, funding things like ideological racist teacher grants and pro-prostitution grants (explicitly fighting “tired old ethics”).  Meanwhile, it’s also become a funding source for journalists and is enjoying a soft-focus lens one would expect when a moneyed interest is a major source of funding for the media.

This is the sort of thing that should obviously be controversial, but it’s interwoven with the dominant Democrat Party and aligned with progressive politics, so the organization is treated as if its moral standing is beyond question.

The spotlight has moved on from Attorney General Peter Neronha’s latest social media explosion, but one detail from a Rhode Island Current article about the matter is worth highlighting:

Neronha had no regrets about spending part of his weekend firing back on social media.

“My wife was traveling and it was a rainy day anyway,” he said.

It’s not just that he’s cavalier about the distrust he’s sowing among the public for whom he’s supposed to be the top law enforcement officer; he’s being aggressively unserious.  He feels like doing this, he expects not to face any consequences, and so he’s doing it.

On a grand scale, it’s often difficult to know whether left-wing activists are consciously operating under the logic of their Marxism or are just caught up in a mania spun by other people.  Looking at the picture and assessing the circumstances of this example, I think the latter is much more likely for the great majority:

Police were called Monday morning to disperse roughly two dozen protesters who briefly entered the lobby of the downtown Citizens Financial Group branch at One Citizens Plaza. …

The group held a prayer circle and sing-along in the lobby while others picketed outside and handed out flyers, after a March 9 request for a meeting with the bank’s CEO went unanswered.

One can almost get to the point of being angry at the manipulators for riling up these people to advance their malicious goals.

It’s an indoctrination center:

Some students may learn, there, and some professors may do genuine academic work, but if that were its defining reason for being, at least some of those people would be outraged that progressives have swamped their institution with another mission.

Julia Steiny asks an important question:

Demographic trends, demand for school choice are clear as daylight. Why do RI leaders look away?

The answer is more obvious than many people like to admit.  Our government does not primarily represent the people, and the schools do not exist primarily for the students.  Steiny notes this while describing one of the two paths the state can take: “One direction will continue winning the battle to use schools to benefit and protect adults, at kids’ expense.”

Here’s the key part, though:

You would think that districts would ramp up efforts to change how they do business, perhaps looking to charter success. Instead, districts protected by unions wage fierce battles fighting to stay the same. For the second year, they are fighting reforms recommended by the Senate’s 2024 education commission, the subject of a bill by Sen. Sam Zurier, a Providence Democrat, that would end moldy, anti-education 1960s laws. Zurier’s bill eliminates mandated hiring by seniority in the case of enrollment decline, partly to avoid wiping out district efforts to recruit and keep a diverse staff who are often the most recently hired (LIFO, last in, first out).

Look, the president of our state Senate is literally also the president of one of the two teacher unions in the state.  The unions run the state, and the unions run the schools.  Districts and the state government see our children primarily as cash cows to milk for taxpayer dollars, and the self-identified professionals who run both don’t care if your children have their lives stunted to keep their business model going.

COVID killed it off, but my kids’ high school used to host bingo nights in the cafeteria.  Parents volunteered to run it, and the money would go to school programs.  Participants had formed a regular community, and the event got them out into an environment connected with the community and its children.

Let’s stipulate that it was arbitrary and silly to make bingo illegal outside of senior centers and charities.  That doesn’t mean this development, reported by Christopher Shea and Nolan Page in Rhode Island Current would not be a governmental act worth noting:

Lawmakers on Smith Hill are now taking a serious look at expanding the options for bingo in Rhode Island, where state law permits only charitable organizations and senior citizen housing or centers to operate bingo.

A bill sponsored by Sen. John Burke, a West Warwick Democrat and chair of the Senate Labor and Gaming Committee, would make it legal to operate bingo games at the state’s two existing casinos in Lincoln and Tiverton.

The government will allow its casinos to offer higher stakes and more-regular games.  The community of local bingo games will be diluted, and the risk of gambling away needed income will go up.  And what’s the motivation?  Apparently, to “offset any potential losses that might arise when the state’s ban on smoking at both the Lincoln and Tiverton casinos takes effect Jan. 1, 2027.”

There is no profitable enterprise (even profit itself, as we see with the “tax the rich” push) that the special interests who control government will not co-opt when then feel they need it.  This is not a society with a representative government that serves the people, but a ruling elite that allows people to do things independently only until the government decides otherwise.

After a certain number of years (decades?), the observant citizen has to begin concluding that neither activists nor politicians nor journalists really want to understand how the minimum wage interacts with the economy.  All three groups just want to keep running the same play over and over again — for credit from their base or donors for cheaply won votes and for easy stories that don’t rock the boat.

But there are two lessons in stories like (to pick one almost at random) this one by Wheeler Copperthwaite in the Providence Journal.

First, Rhode Island keeps raising the floor for wages, and affordability keeps getting worse in the Ocean State.  These things are not unrelated.

Second, consider this:

For a single parent of one child, the living wage is $45.41 an hour ($94,453 a year), and for two working parents with a child, it’s $25.64 per person ($53,331 per year).

The salary needed to get by for each member of a married couple is much, much lower.  Our society used to treat coupled households as an ideal, and now progressives are treating it as a right for single-adult families to be compensated for their own contrary decisions.  (Interestingly, the bottom really fell out of the encouragement toward marriage after it was redefined to be any couples, without regard to their biology.  Some of us predicted that.)

Yet, one never sees advocates encouraging healthy lifestyles or reforms in business, healthcare, energy, and so on that would genuinely improve affordability without politicians pretending like they have the power to make people give goodies to other people.

This is important when evaluating anything, especially in the social and political realms:  Keep an eye on the assumptions being exposed and what the speaker must believe to be true for the statement to be logical.  Here’s a great example in an article by Wheeler Cowperthwaite in the Providence Journal, about legislation to expand overtime requirements to cover more employees:

In an interview, [Democrat State Representative Brandon] Potter said he wrote and introduced the bill in response to the Texas judge striking down what were to be higher salary thresholds under President Joe Biden’s tenure. He also wanted to make sure the bill would phase in the salary floors to give business owners time to adjust.

“If employers have a problem with it, they should give their employees fair time off, choose to not overwork them, or compensate them fairly,” he said. “No one should be getting free labor.”

What must Potter’s understanding of the employer-employee relationship be for him to make a statement like that?  Well, essentially something like master-slave, with some element of voluntary submission on the slave’s part.  His phrasing describes a situation in which a person assents to be “the labor” for another person (“the management”).  The labor must do what the management instructs, and the management has the authority to set the level of work.  Otherwise, “the government” is justified to step in to defend the employee.

This is an understanding of employment out of an antique children’s book.  The relationship is between one person providing the value of his or her work and another person providing the value of financial payments.  If done well, both participants also enjoy other sources of value, such as a better brand and workplace and improved prospects for future careers.

Viewed this way, the justification for a third person — a politician — to interfere in the relationship of the two free adults.  Indeed, if the politician wants to improve the situation, he or she should promote policies that increase the number of people able to hire others and the number of people available with the skills to do work.

What’s surprising is how cheap it is.

In our ridiculously short-lived news cycle, this story made the rounds in Rhode Island for a day or two:

Newly sworn-in Rhode Island District Court Judge Michael McCaffrey continues to operate a political campaign committee with a political fund with a balance of approximately $230,000, according to state campaign finance records.

The balance of that account is $229,927.95, according to McCaffrey’s most recent filing.

The Rhode Island Code of Judicial Conduct specifically prohibits judges or judicial nominees from engaging in political activities.

The linked GoLocalProv article quotes a section of the Rhode Island Code of Judicial Conduct indicating that this sort of thing is forbidden, but there’s apparently some loophole, because donations are common.  When Judge McConnel was in the news as an anti-Trump activist from the bench, I traced the massive donations to politicians from him and his family.

The loophole might be the phrase “except as permitted by law,” or it might be this:  “These Rules do not prohibit judicial nominees from seeking support or endorsement on their own behalf.”

Whatever the case, of the $105,495 McCaffery handed out to Rhode Island politicians in the five years leading up to his appointment as a judge, most beneficiaries received less than $1,000, and only the Democratic State Committee received more than $1,000 per year.

So, it’s no surprise that our politicians are for sale (at least those in the Democrat Party), but their souls are awfully inexpensive.

At bottom, the problem socialism runs into again and again is that the designers of heavy-handed policy can never have all the information needed to be so heavy handed.  A recent commentary by “Environmental scientist and land use planner” Scott Millar exposes one instance of that problem:

The failure to adequately plan a long-term, safe, steady supply of drinking water for new housing can have catastrophic impacts. Watersheds for public surface water and groundwater drinking water supplies are not appropriate for high-density development. Once drinking water is contaminated or overdrawn, it can’t easily be restored and must be protected for both current and future generations.

For these reasons, I strongly support legislation to amend the Rhode Island Low and Moderate Income (LMI) Housing Act (45-53-4). This legislation would eliminate the existing state mandated housing densities in lands that are used for drinking water supplies. Moreover, the current law only requires developers to cite that public water or sewer systems are available. The legislation adds language that the capacity of public water or sewer be documented to support the proposed increase in residential density before a development proposal can be approved.

These problems become easier to see at the local level and among those who are directly involved in individual decisions.  Even as somebody who is comfortable with change and reluctant to tell people when they can and can’t develop their property, I’ve worried that the multiple housing developments in the works within a mile or two of my house could create problems for water infrastructure.  The water pressure is already terrible.  I know this because I live here.  Such are the reasons for local zoning authority.

But progressive legislators in the state — some from urban areas where density has already been accommodated and some from rural areas where wells are common — have decided it’s simply time to force dense housing from border to border as a blunt tool for “affordability,” and they’re too arrogant to ask themselves what they don’t know they don’t know.

Vincent Marzullo makes good points in a recent Providence Journal commentary, but his lens is off in an important way:

Civil society’s first responsibility is to rebuild the habit of human connection. Division thrives in abstraction. It is easy to demonize “the other side” when the other side is a caricature on a screen. Community organizations can counter this by intentionally creating spaces where people with different views work on shared, tangible goals: mentoring children, ending homelessness, supporting veterans, better care for our older adults, or responding to disasters. Cooperation around practical needs does not require ideological agreement, but it does build trust, which is the foundation of a healthy democracy.

You can tell by the way all of Marzullo’s examples are in the narrower range of “civil society” that covers charity that he has a particular vision in mind.  He’s seeing these as non-governmental organizations that pursue public goods.  But civil society shouldn’t be construed so narrowly; it’s important to include activities that people pursue for other motives, including self-interest.

Given his vision, Marzullo lists five things “civil society must” do to help unite and heal our country:

• Provide space to cooperate toward practical needs.
• Model respectful disagreement.
• Counter economic and social isolation.
• Promulgate accurate information.
• Reclaim moral leadership.

He errs in charging such groups with these tasks.  The appropriate way to understand the mechanism is that civil society does these things naturally, simply as a function of bringing people together to based on common interests that are different from their political leanings.

Tasking civil organizations with socio-political goals and emphasizing a narrow range of their activities will limit their reach to those who are nearly of like mind in the ways most relevant to politics.  Rather, what we need is a society that encourages engagement in a broad range of activities — politics and charity, yes, but also business, sports, religion, hobbies, and more — so that people interact and find commonalities that have nothing to do with politics or the other areas of their lives.