I just finished the latest Politics This Week segment with John DePetro, and in the course of the live conversation, I made a point that came out not as I intended, and I owe House Minority Leader Michael Chippendale an apology.
I was pointing out how advisors seem to keep Governor McKee away from negative or controversial matters, such as the high cost of the pallet shelters for the homeless. This, I suggested, is not just a matter of controlling the issues with which he’s associated, but also reflects the fact that the governor does from time to time say mean, dismissive things about people.
Thinking of an example on the spot, I imagined him saying something about the representative’s disability. I meant it fully from the stance of a friend who would find such a comment petty and irrelevant coming from a non-friend; indeed, it’s a reference to a conspicuously heroic example of overcoming a challenge. But as soon as I said it, I worried I’d missed the mark. I hope my intention was clear, but regardless, I don’t want to wait for somebody to object before I acknowledge an error that I would have edited out if it were written commentary or something similar.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- A Providence Council chief of staff we’re not allowed to find objectionable
- A Brown doctor whose foreign connections we’re not allowed to question
- Political insiders whose health we’re not allowed to worry about
- A housing compound we’re not allowed to view
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40.
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This effort from Republican State Representative Mike Chippendale is worthwhile:
Drawing attention to the mandates state and federal law impose on local school districts has the healthy effect of encouraging people to learn about education funding, generally, and rationalizing the budgets in this way should have broad electoral support.
BUT this entirely misses the fundamental point, as I understand it. The people who run local schools generally want the same things as the higher governments imposing the mandates. They especially like having a ready-made (while also vague) villain to blame for increasing spending and taxes.
In short, education mandates are part of the elaborate scam Rhode Island insiders run on us all. Unless Rep. Chippendale and his fellow Republicans intend to pivot toward exposing the scheme, then their plan is not fully formed.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Whitehouse funds his wife with our money
- McKee knocks Hasbro, which forgets his phone number
- Foulkes commits to the Left
- GOP’s mixed response to the Providence Chamber
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40.
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Maybe it’s just me, but X doesn’t appear to be working on my computer or phone. I was only looking for a moment of distraction, but the experience is a helpful reminder not to rely too heavily on a single platform for communication and information access.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- McKee’s re-election ad
- A jibe at Hasbro
- A GOP tree falling in the woods
- Republican legislators on stage
- An MIA Senate president
- Accustomed to obvious corruption
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40 and Photoshop AI.
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Rhode Islanders should take legislation like this much more seriously than they do, because it exposes how little Democrat legislators respect our rights, understand the workings of those rights, and/or are willing to place our rights above their political ideology and interest groups:
State Rep. Karen Alzate isn’t waiting for federal immigration raids in Rhode Island to try to protect unauthorized immigrants living here.
In response to President Donald Trump’s call for mass deportations, Alzate has proposed legislation, H5225, that would create “protected spaces” in Rhode Island where immigration enforcement and border patrol agents couldn’t enter without a warrant signed by a judge.
The bill specifically states that “schools, places of worship, health facilities and public libraries shall not grant access to their premises, for any federal immigration authority to investigate, detain, apprehend, or arrest any individuals for potential violations of federal immigration laws,” absent a warrant. That is, Alzate would be forbidding such organizations from cooperating with ICE even if they want to. She is conscripting the properties of these organizations to further her political ideology.
Maybe she assumes all such groups share her extreme views and doesn’t intend to force anybody to do anything, but either way she’s made herself an example of a type of politician who should under no circumstances be trusted with elective office.
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Something about this tweet from Bill Bartholomew is more striking than it should be:
I’m not sure whether it’s better or worse if Bartholomew actually believes what he says or is just playing a role. The absolutely most negative interpretation that actually makes sense about the people Bartholomew dislikes is that they don’t care about you, which leads me to conclude he’s got a bad case of projection. He’s the one who hates, and it’s so ingrained that he thinks other people must act from the same emotion.
Note, in particular the phrase “using near-meaningless culture war nonsense.” I remember when Bartholomew was pretending to be a fair broker on his podcast and interviewed Matt Allen. Matt flipped the interview table and asked him if there was anybody he wouldn’t have on his show. We now know that list is long, but at the time, I think he said something about a person who is strongly anti-trans.
In other words, the “culture war” issues are definitely not meaningless nonsense to him. He just thinks it’s illegitimate to hold opposing views, and anybody who dares to stop the progress of his radical march must be doing so out of irrational hatred.
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One could pick apart on its own terms Nicholas Ferroni’s commentary suggesting that most states can’t be trusted to run their own education systems and “education is not an expense; it’s an investment”:
For context, Ferroni is a teacher in New Jersey who calls himself an “activist” (apparently for left-wing social causes) and moonlights as a paid speaker. He takes it as written that the federal government is a net positive to education, which many of us would dispute. Indeed, his case that there is already a wide gulf in the success of schools from state to state brings his assumption into question. His faith in the value of teachers unions amplifies the need to question his assumptions. In Massachusetts, which he calls out as an exception where the state government can be trusted with education, the success is directly attributable to reforms decades ago that reduced the unions’ power (which have been softened with predictable results).
The problem with insisting that “education is an investment” is that many institutionalized and powerful people believe it should be a unique form of investment whereby the simple fact of adding money increases profit, and wherein demanding accountability from the people who take that funding on the promise of making the investment bear fruit is an affront.
Education needs more accountability and less meddling from activists inside and outside of government.
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The great DOGE Authority Panic of 2025 appears to have passed, but in case you’re still interested (and to have it searchable on this site for future reference), lawyer Tom Renz’s review of the legal basis for the Department of Government Efficiency is worth a read.
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