Tag: Rhode Island

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent, @StacyBrownMedia American politics appears to have hit a new low. According to reports, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has beefed up security following the vicious attacks she’s received and even news reports that paint her as un-American. “It is trafficking in Islamophobia, and should be condemned by everyone,” Booker said. Some media favorable to the president have also attacked Omar and despite death threats made against her, Trump has continued his assault by calling her –without any supporting evidence and against her denials – “anti-Semitic,” and “anti-Israel.” Booker noted that Trump has also attacked other African American women leaders like California Rep. Maxine Waters. That Trump claims he’s not racist isn’t satisfactory, Booker said. “It’s not enough to say, I’m not a racist. Matthew Haviland, 30, of North Kingstown was charged after sending approximately 28 threatening emails on March 10 to a college professor, whose name and affiliation was withheld by federal officials. The professor, who had been friends with Haviland for about 11 years, believed Haviland’s views changed because “of the way the news media portrays” President Donald Trump, Laft wrote. Authorities said Omar was among the Democrats whom Haviland threatened to kill. “We, as a people, cannot allow our Black leaders to be attacked for their advocacy.

Thanks for stopping by for my weekly column. 1) Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza has a little less than four years left in his second term at City Hall. But now that he’s pulled the plug on his proposal to shore up Providence’s pension system by monetizing the city’s water supply, Elorza basically concedes he’s given up hope of resolving the pension issue during his time as mayor. He still believes that monetizing the city’s water supply is the key to chipping away at the pension crisis, but Elorza said it’s virtually impossible to build political support while a looming crisis remains off in the future. The big question is whether the House would take up an amended bill. In a statement this week, the Rhode Island Coalition For Reproductive Freedom said it was firmly opposed to any amendments in Senate Judiciary. Yet will it be worth the Globe’s growing investment to harvest more clicks from Rhode Island? Brown alum Te-Ping Chen (’07), who did some freelance work for me during Providence Phoenix days, and is now a Philadelphia-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal, is set to publish a novel and short-story collection …. Meanwhile, the Brown Daily Herald reports on how four people with Brown connections won Pulitzers this week, including Rebecca Ballhaus (’13) of the WSJ and Peter Kovacs (’78) of The [Baton Rouge] Advocate, for their contributions to journalism. That prompted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to ask how the trademark office defines what is scandalous, shocking or offensive.

Wicked Local @Eli_Sherman Here we go again. He wouldn’t comment on whether the citizenship question adds any value to the census, but Behler told Wicked Local that mistrust in government was already a challenge before the question was even introduced. Population growth in Massachusetts over the last decade means the state isn’t likely to lose a congressional seat once the census count is complete in 2022. “In this environment, there’s a much more elevated distrust in government than what I’ve seen in the past.” The mistrust could translate into lower participation in the census, especially among immigrant communities, which is concerning to local and state officials. In Massachusetts, federal funding directly affected by census data in fiscal 2019 includes $290 million for special-education grants, $244.4 million for Title 1 grants to local education agencies and $79 million for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, along with many other programs, according to the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. In 2010, the last time the census was taken, a half-million temporary workers were hired by the Census Bureau to collect the outstanding information. Behler expects it will require 350,000 workers in 2020, and the hiring process has already begun. “Being in the business of being the CEO and mayor of the city, dollars matter,” said Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch at the kickoff event. According to the Donahue Institute at the University of Massachusetts, the number of people living in the Bay State grew 4.8 percent to 6.8 million between 2010 and 2017, representing the largest increase among Northeastern states. How much politics play into the process in Massachusetts, along with the government’s ability to accurately count a distrusting population, will ultimately be answered over the next few years, and municipal leaders are not blind to its significance.

Angela Xiao State attorney-general hopeful William Tong knows the Elm City’s votes are a must for Democrats running for office in Connecticut. As midterm elections near, Tong opened with an appeal to Yale’s voters — telling attendees about his own background and political career. He then delved into a discussion about the race, his plans for the position and an interpretation of the legal field’s current atmopshere, before ending with another appeal to vote. “That’s true in cities across the country because Democrats stand for, in general, fairness and equity and social change. “I was surprised by how personal [Tong] was,” attendee and YULAA member Nathalie Beauchamps ’21 said. He was the first Asian-American to be elected to a state-level position in Connecticut’s history. Tong also highlighted his hope of holding the petroleum industry accountable for damage to the environment and climate change. Tong told attendees that “the next frontier for us is to join Rhode Island in suing Big Oil for climate change.” He noted that Rhode Island’s pioneering attempt to challenge the petroleum industry is rooted in an argument credited to former Yale Law School professor and former Law School dean Harold Koh, who also served as the State Department’s Legal Adviser under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton LAW ’73. Tong won the three-way Democratic primary with 57.8 percent of the vote and faces Republican state attorney Susan Hatfield in the general election. Residents of Connecticut will go to the polls to vote on a plethora of state-level positions on Nov. 6.

Image Good Thursday morning. Here are some of the stories making news in Washington and politics today. • The Food and Drug Administration put electronic cigarette makers on notice to prove they can keep their devices away from minors. [Read the story] • A year after Puerto Rico, the Trump administration is preparing for a test of its ability to do better during Hurricane Florence. [Read the story] • Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island defeated a liberal challenger in a Democratic primary election, but she remains vulnerable in November. [Read the story] • Lawmakers dismissed a new White House effort to punish foreign election meddling as inadequate. [Read the story] • Scott Pruitt is in discussions to work as a consultant to the Kentucky coal mining tycoon Joseph W. Craft III. [Read the story] • Members of Congress pressed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to impose limits on the sale of certain technologies to Chinese companies amid human rights abuses. [Read the story] • The income of the median American household has finally rebounded from the damage caused by the 2008 financial crisis.

Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. That’s because if she wins, and other seats hold, control of the state legislature flips to the Democrats. Besides Colorado, there are a half-dozen states where Democrats are a few seats away from winning control of the state senate: • One seat away in New York, Maine and Minnesota. “For state legislatures, it’s the number one race in the country,” Ms. Winter told me in a phone interview this week. There has been lots of talk about the “blue wave” that could break over Congress, turning over control of the House to Democrats. Former President Barack Obama has made it a central political priority of his post-presidential years. A former city councilwoman, this is her fifth political race. Slavery is on the ballot in Colorado. Image On Politics will occasionally check in with The Times’s national correspondents, who live across the country and hear about local issues that might not otherwise rise to our attention. Amendment A, a question on the state ballot, asks voters if they’d like remove similar language in the Colorado Constitution and replace it with the following: “There shall never be in this state either slavery or involuntary servitude.” The amendment’s architect is Jumoke Emery, 31, an organizer I’ve known since 2016, when I interviewed him at a vigil for minority men and women killed by police.

Written by Olivia Paschal (@oliviacpaschal), Elaine Godfrey (@elainejgodfrey), and Madeleine Carlisle (@maddiecarlisle2) Today in 5 Lines Forecasters expect Hurricane Florence to make landfall around the North and South Carolina border and then stall in the region, which could produce catastrophic flooding and widespread power outages. Pope Francis has summoned bishops from around the world to a meeting in February to address the sexual abuse of minors. Just days after CEO Les Moonves left CBS amid allegations of sexual assault, Jeff Fager, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, is also leaving the network due to violations of company policy, CBS said. The Race We’re Watching Voters are headed to the polls in Rhode Island, where incumbent Gina Raimondo is running against former Rhode Island Secretary of State Matt Brown for the Democratic nomination. Brown has positioned himself as to the left of Raimondo, who is one of only two female Democratic governors in the country. Polls close at 8 p.m. E.T. Today on The Atlantic Economy Up, Trump Down: A strong August jobs report didn’t help President Trump’s approval rating, which dropped below 40 percent in three polls this week. (Olivia Paschal) When The Polls Are Wrong: From Andrew Gillum to Ayanna Pressley, pollsters have failed to predict a slew of upsets in Democratic primaries. (Elaine Godfrey) A Moral Catastrophe: A lawsuit filed against Michigan State University alleges that the university knew more about former sports doctor Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse of athletes than they let on. (Caroline Kitchener and Alia Wong) James Madison’s Nightmare: The factionalized, mob-driven political society we live in would have been abhorrent to the Founding Father, writes Jeffrey Rosen.

One of those opportunities came last spring, when Lee started selling herbs to Sanctuary Herbs of Providence. For co-founders Eliza Sutton and Christina Dedora, launching Sanctuary Herbs of Providence was about more than just starting a new business. Once fresh herbs are dried, blended and packaged into teas, no refrigeration is required and tea has a longer shelf life than other fresh, locally grown products. Last year, Sanctuary Herbs of Providence worked with eight farmers. Thanks to demand for the tea, the number of farmers supplying herbs to the company has doubled. Sutton hopes to continue increasing the number of partner farms as business grows. He grows several varieties of herbs, including spearmint, peppermint, chocolate mint, lemon balm, basil and turmeric for the tea company. "Some people make fun of me for growing herbs but I ignore them; those people are closed-minded," he says. As the brand gains recognition, several farmers who are not immigrants and some refugee farmers have reached out about selling herbs to the startup. The community, he says, is one of the best things about being involved with Sanctuary Herbs of Providence.

So what does this mean for Rhode Island? Trump's low approval numbers in RI do not trump Raimondo's incompetence in voter's minds. Voting for Raimondo will have no impact on President Trump. But voting Raimondo out will put an end to the incompetent Raimondo administration." Last week, Democratic Gov. This week, Republican Allan Fung became the target after WPRI-TV reported on a series of questions involving Fung's campaign headquarters at Chapel View. Fung's better half took the lead in responding to a comment by rival GOP candidate Patricia Morgan: "When Allan becomes Governor, he'll be the first Chinese Republican Governor in the history of the United States & the first Asian American and racial minority Governor in the history of Rhode Island, and I'll be so proud of him shattering all of those glass ceilings. UPDATE: Perez and a spokesman for House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello say Perez has Mattiello's support in the race. He had a great relationship with Republican Nikki Haley when she was governor and still texts with her now that she’s at the United Nations, and has a good one as well with new Gov. Disruptions in local news coverage are soon followed by higher long-term borrowing costs for cities.

Lincoln Chafee, left, debates Sheldon Whitehouse in 2006. On Wednesday, a series of events unfolded that rewrote the outlook for November and shook up one of the state’s largest cities. On the face of it, it was all very good news for Democratic Gov. You could even call it a hat trick: 1. Former Secretary of State Matt Brown announced he will not run as an independent for governor, but as a Democrat. Lincoln Chafee, no fan of Ms. Raimondo, stunned everybody by expressing an interest in running in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, not for governor. That’s one less headache for the governor, and one more for incumbent Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat who already potentially faces a reasonably strong Republican challenger in former state Supreme Court Justice Robert Flanders. Virtually all of the party’s establishment, including Governor Raimondo and Senator Whitehouse, lined up behind Mrs. Clinton. (She ended up getting more Rhode Island delegates than Senator Sanders because of the party’s rules.) Mr. Chafee, a Republican-turned-independent-turned Democrat, noted that Sanders supporters are upset with Senator Whitehouse for backing Ms. Clinton in 2016.