Rhode Island Politics
As John DePetro says, paying outgoing Department of Health Director Nicole Alexander-Scott $46,000 per month for three months as a “consultant” by way of ushering her out the door “is absolutely outrageous.” On a first pass, it makes one wonder what was really going on behind the scenes. How did she have the negotiation leverage…
Here’s state senator and progressive candidate for lieutenant governor Cynthia Mendes: It’s Monday in #RI. Our hospitals are packed. Our teachers are afraid to go to work today because of raging COVID cases in our schools. Our students are terrified of putting their families in danger by going to school. Teaching & learning shouldn’t be…
John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss a surprising political announcement and contrasting speeches.
Rhode Islanders won’t be surprised that former State Police Colonel and gubernatorial candidate Brendan Doherty is considering a run for Congress now that incumbent Representative James Langevin has announced the opening. Here’s the interesting wrinkle, though: This time around, Doherty is considering entering the Democratic primary for the 2nd District, which covers western Rhode Island.…
John and Justin run through many of the ways in which RI’s civic system is just not functioning.
John Loughlin talks with Nick Gorham about Rhode Island politics, Frank Gaffney about China in the world, and Dan Schultz on local political strategies.
Per John DePetro: What caused the relationship to deteriorate rapidly was a McKee media mouthpiece [Dan Yorke] who bragged that the Governor shared with him a plan to remove Scott if elected in the fall. Scott angrily confronted McKee who denied the conversation [Yorke] but the damage was done. John thinks it was a “blunder”…
In order to improve them, we have to understand how our institutions work, but we’re not very good at assessing them anymore. Maybe the problem is the mix of self-esteem culture with identity politics and progressive domination of our cultural institutions. Saturated in that social brew, our governing class has become something like a giant…
Not a lot of details have been provided, but Department of Health Director Nicole Alexander-Scott has given her two-week notice to leave her job: Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, will stay on for two weeks during the search for new leadership, McKee said. She will then act as a…
With the head of one of Rhode Island’s teachers unions saying “the responsible decision” is to shut schools and force students back into distance learning, his reasons are worth a look: … the overwhelming number of cases, the inability to do meaningful contact tracing, the arctic temperatures we are expecting so windows cannot be opened,…