Rhode Island
How you’ll know Dems are serious about dumping Biden • Rhode Island Current
With former President Donald Trump being rushed off stage after shots were fired at his Pennsylvania rally, the only thing that’s safe to say that nobody knows what’s going to happen next in U.S. politics or the 2024 election.
The events on Saturday are tragic and police have reported that at least one attendee is dead, as is the alleged shooter. It’s hard not to feel like we’re living through particularly unstable times.
For more than two weeks, the news has been dominated by more mundane matters, like growing calls from Democrats, donors and political observers for President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race after his shaky first debate performance last month. There’s been a steady trickle of stories about the president’s health declining and concerns whether the 81-year-old is up to the job, as well as some devastating internal polls for Dems in swing states.
Biden tried to allay those fears as he barnstormed through Northville and Detroit on Friday, joking about his age but also delivering a defiant message.
“You made me the nominee,” Biden declared at Renaissance High School in Detroit — where he notably held his last rally in March 2020 before winning Michigan’s critical Democratic primary. “No one else. Not the press; not the pundits; not the insiders; not the donors. You the voters, you decided. No one else, and I’m not going anywhere.”
It’s going to take more than lesser-known lawmakers taking a stand while bigger names fling passive-aggressive comments. It would seem to me that any real effort to get Biden to stand down would have to start with his former running mate, President Barack Obama, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), one of the few people Biden appears to consider an equal.
The crowd was definitely into it, waving “Motown is Joetown” signs and chanting, “Four more years!” and “Don’t give up!”
Biden’s energized performance seemed to calm the jangled nerves of some Democratic leaders and assorted critics, as did his Wednesday press conference after the NATO summit, where he continued to demonstrate his mastery of foreign affairs.
At the moment, it appears that momentum to give the president the old heave-ho from the ticket has stalled, but check back tomorrow, because it doesn’t take much to get Democrats to hit the ol’ panic button.
But even as the dump Biden furor appeared to hit a fever pitch post-debate, I’ve looked for three factors to assess if the president will be the nominee. And so far, I’m not seeing the path to derail the Biden train.
First of all, Biden has made it clear that he’s not leaving willingly, defiantly announcing in an ABC interview that only the “Lord Almighty” could make him quit.
“I’ve got to finish this job,” he proclaimed days later at the NATO press conference. “Because there’s so much at stake.”
If you’re a Biden ally, you’ll probably view this as the president seeing a second term as a moral obligation to the country. He’s long cast himself as an underdog who’s been counted out again and again and now he’s determined to win his last fight.
If you’re in the camp that believes he’s stayed too late at the party, you’re more likely inclined to view this as an exercise in egoism from a man more concerned about his place in history than the nation he’s supposed to be fighting for. Biden has always been stubborn, but this time millions could pay the price if he falls to Trump.
Next, since Biden isn’t planning to leave quietly, that means that Democrats have to have a clear plan in place to broom him from the ticket. So far, more than a dozen members of Congress (and actor George Clooney) have told Biden to withdraw, including vulnerable first-term U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Grand Rapids).
Dozens of other leaders have expressed their support for the president, but not-so-subtly left the door open to him dropping out.
While Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer posted on social media last week that Biden “is in it to win it and I’m damn proud to support him,” she also said on CNN that “I don’t think that it would hurt” if both Biden and Trump took cognitive tests. And yes, Whitmer knows how to shut down a question — nobody forced her to say that.
But it’s going to take more than lesser-known lawmakers taking a stand while bigger names fling passive-aggressive comments. It would seem to me that any real effort to get Biden to stand down would have to start with his former running mate, President Barack Obama, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), one of the few people Biden appears to consider an equal.
While there have been some reports of private discussions, neither Obama nor Pelosi have taken the dramatic step of making a public statement for Biden to step aside. Both are considered to be extremely measured, so it would seem that they’ve yet to assess that such an effort would be successful.
Nobody knows how to count votes like Nancy Pelosi, after all.
Lastly, the anti-Biden forces have yet to unite over an alternative. Most lawmakers’ statements have just focused on Biden withdrawing without wading into what happens next. They’ve only proposed half a plan, which seems obscenely irresponsible, given the stakes.
The logical choice to replace Biden — and indeed, at this late hour, perhaps the only logistically viable one — is Vice President Kamala Harris. After all, she’s been training for the job for the last four years and has emerged as the administration’s clarion voice on Democrats’ best issue: reproductive rights.
Yet there’s a palpable unease from pundits, who have long judged Harris as being too shallow and liberal to run the country. There’s a yearning to bypass to first female, Black American and Asian-American vice president for (white) governors with star power, like Whitmer, California’s Gavin Newsom or Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker.
Naturally, these analysts tend to forget that African-American women are the base of the Democratic Party.
But of course, it can get dumber.
Some analysts are hankering for an open convention that probably would result in boffo ratings, but it’s hard to see how the nonstop “Dems in Disarray” coverage of floor fights and screaming matches would help the party effectively unite around a new nominee and win in November.
Other pine for a “blitz primary,” which would certainly fuel the charges of “rigged” elections we’ve been hearing from extremists since 2016. In something that reads like a fantastical script rejected from the old series “Scandal,” the nation would turn its lonely eyes to Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Taylor Swift to moderate weekly forums with hopefuls in the runup to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month.
Yes, I’m sure that wouldn’t all veer wildly off the rails (and T. Swift would definitely take a break from the European leg of her stunningly successful “Eras Tour” to join that circus).
So as of now, Democrats find themselves in the uneasy position with a weakened nominee who’s dug in, a handful of elected officials calling for him to go while party leaders assess their options, and an endless stream of backbiting, palace intrigue stories dominating the news (at least before the Trump rally shooting on Saturday).
In politics, inertia usually wins out. That could well be enough to save Biden’s nomination — but it remains to be seen if he can demonstrate the forcefulness and fortitude to lead Democrats to another victory in November.
Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: [email protected]. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and X.
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Rhode Island
He grew up in the kitchen. Then he rewrote the menu, and the future of his parents’ restaurant – The Boston Globe
He became obsessed with driving around, searching for any local farm or fisherman on a dock and bugging them to see if they, too, wanted to help him with his vision.
His menu now, which reflects a reinvention, leans into a new way to present New England seafood for an old suburban fishing town, serving snacks like a smoked Rhode Island bluefish paté, raw New Bedford sea scallops with sesame and crispy shallots, chowder with quahogs and fermented hot sauce. He also makes his own pasta with milled local grains.
Today, Dion has largely taken over the business, although his mom can still be found in the kitchen.
“If you’ve had a piece of swordfish at S.S. Dion in the past 43 years, she’s grilled it. And she doesn’t want that to end,” said Dion. “She loves it, and wants to work forever.”
His father visits every day for an hour to keep track of “all of my numbers.”
“I do it all on a computer, and he’s got every, every penny of it on paper,” said Dion.
The reimagined version has had a lot of success, growing 300 percent over the last five years.
What to eat: Try any of the snacks to start with, but be sure to get at least one of their house-made pastas for the table to share: a black spaghetti puttanesca with fried squid, anchovies, Calabrian chilies, and braised tomato. A bowl of gemelli with house-made fish sausage, rapini, pangrattato, and aglio e olio. A roasted mushroom campanelle with sautéed leeks, Brussel sprouts, tarragon, and tender pea tendrils. A perfect bolognese. There are also comforting staples from S.S. Dion’s past life: “The chicken parmesan will be on that menu for my whole life,” said Dion. “But there’s a fermented hot sauce martini on there as well.”
“I want to have that spectrum of people who have always come into S.S. and ordered what they love and remember,” said Dion. “But also there might be something exciting for someone else in their party who is more adventurous.”
You can get three courses for just $40 per person if you order from their prix fixe menu. Your options include local crudos; a funky caesar with smoked Rhode Island bluefish and sourdough croutons, calamari from Point Judith, all sorts of scratch-made pastas, and plenty of desserts.
Dion said his fries take three days to prepare, and he makes every part of their burger from scratch (an “everything” milk bun, house bacon, crispy onions, a 21-day dry-aged burger bun from Blackbird Farm slathered in a special sauce) other than the cheddar cheese it is topped with.
“The world just seems to get more and more artificial, and there’s a really blurry line between what is human and what is manufactured,” he said. “It just feels good to be authentic to my place.”
What to drink: Start off with a bang and get the “Low Tide Hot N’ Dirty,” which uses a nori-infused Lime Rock gin, fermented green chili, yuzu, and topped with a spicy seaweed chip. Or their bacon fat-washed maple old fashioned. The beer list has a ton of local brews from around New England, while the wine list has some interesting choices for the area: a Primitivo from Puglia, an Austrian riesling, and a chenin blanc-viognier from Napa.
Don’t forget dessert: The bananas foster bread pudding is baked in a cast iron pan drizzled with rum caramel and topped with pecans and vanilla ice cream. The chocolate pot de creme uses miso caramel, beetroot meringue, salted cashew crumble, and fennel. Or you can order a basque cheesecake topped with flaky sea salt and orange zest, or a traditional affogato that’s drowned in a double shot of espresso from Borealis Coffee Company, a small-batch local specialty roaster.
Final say: S.S. Dion is one of those legacy restaurants that found further success after reinventing itself when the second generation took over. Dion has dreams of opening his own restaurant with a different concept and to potentially do it in Providence. He’s looking for locations, but isn’t ready to sign a lease yet.
“I’m really happy with where S.S. is now,” said Dion. “But what chef doesn’t have dreams of opening a dozen more restaurants?
“I’d say that’s what’s next,” he added. “I’d like to start something else soon.”
S.S. Dion, 520 Thames St., Bristol, R.I., 401-253-2884, ssdion.com. Raw bar $3.5-$165; salads $13-$18; snacks $9-$25; scratch pasta $14-$38; entrées $25-market price; Sides and sauces $1-$7.
Alexa Gagosz can be reached at alexa.gagosz@globe.com. Follow her @alexagagosz and on Instagram @AlexaGagosz.
Newest clergy sex abuse lawsuit bill gives victims ‘hope,’ Neronha says
A new bill gives clergy sex abuse victims a path to sue the institutions that may have been responsible for their abuse as children.
PROVIDENCE – Victims of clergy sex abuse scored a long-sought victory in the Rhode Island Senate on Wednesday, June 3.
Legislation to allow the victims to sue the Catholic Church – and any other institution that failed to protect them from molestation when they were children – won unanimous Senate approval and now goes to the House for final votes.
The fast action from Senate Judiciary Committee approval – to a full Senate vote – within an hour and a half was not unexpected after the announcement on Monday of a compromise backed by the Senate’s top-tier Democrats, including Senate President Valarie Lawson, Majority Leader Frank Ciccone and Senate Judiciary Chairman Matthew LaMountain.
If passed, as now appears likely, the legislation will allow the victims of sexual abuse by clergy to sue the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence and any other entity that knew, but failed to stop – or concealed – the abuse they suffered as children at the hands of trusted elders.
The legislation would also provide the long-ago victims – many of them now in their 60s and 70s – with a two-year window to revive claims currently barred by expired time limits.
The compromise – after years of pleas and inaction – follows the long-awaited release on March 4 of Attorney General Peter Neronha’s report detailing the systematic cover-up by the Catholic Church of the sexual abuse of more than 300 Rhode Island children.
His report laid bare, for the first time, the scope of more than a half century of alleged child sexual abuse by Rhode Island Catholic clergy and the breadth and depth of the alleged cover-up, which often included destroying key files or shuffling priests from parish to parish, where they would reoffend.
Sen. Mark McKenney, the lead Senate sponsor, told colleagues that the proposed new law not only states “this conduct unacceptable, but from now on, the institutions that have enabled it will be held accountable as well.”
As to whether the law would survive a legal challenge, McKenney said the Rhode Island Constitution “contains a provision that is somewhat unique in the United States: a victims’ rights clause. That provision has been largely overlooked in the debate that’s gone on about the constitutionality of this and … previous versions of this bill,” but retired U.S. District Judge William Smith drew attention to it when he testified.
He said Article 1, Section 23 “of our constitution provides that crime victims, including child sexual abuse victims, not only may receive compensation from perpetrators, but also, and this is a quote from the constitution, ‘Shall receive such other compensation as the state may provide,’ with that power ‘entirely committed to our authority as the General Assembly.’”
Co-sponsor Dawn Euer applauded “the victims and survivors, both the ones that we know of and the ones that we don’t, as well as the ones that we have lost. The strength and courage that it takes to go through what [these] people have gone through … is incredible.
“And then to be able to come up here and advocate …. for passage of this legislation over years [of] legislative turmoil and back again, it’s really incredible the strength and determination that you all have shown,” she said to the group of survivor-advocates in the Senate gallery.
“We get used to it,” she said of the process by which “the proverbial sausage is made. But for issues like this that have real impacts on people’s lives, it can be an additional trauma,” she said of the year after year of public hearings and testimony, followed by inaction.
On Wednesday, she said, the Senate sent the “strong signal that Rhode Island stands with survivors and victims.”
This story has been updated with new information.
A rising tide of beach garbage plagues local wildlife. Fortunately, there’s something you can do about it.
A wide array of beach trash found on Napatree Point, from balloons and ribbons to Styrofoam, cellophane, nylon rope, bottle caps and a hypodermic needle. Waves break plastic into tiny particles that mix into beach sand and are ingested by marine life. Photography courtesy of Robert L. Mitchell
It’s easy to overlook the detritus along Rhode Island’s shoreline, but as the amount of beach litter has increased over the last few years, its effect on seabirds, seals, fish and other wildlife has risen dramatically.
Between 2011 and 2023, the Mystic Aquarium animal rescue program admitted fifty-eight seals into rehabilitation due to entanglements.
“Between 2024 and 2025, we have already passed that number, with fifty-nine entangled animals reported in just a year and a half,” says MaryEllen Mateleska, the aquarium’s senior director of education and conservation.
During an early summer walk at Watch Hill’s Napatree Point, much of the litter wasn’t noticeable at first because it had been ground down into little pieces along the high-tide mark. So it came as a surprise when my wife and I, after picking up everything we could find on a milelong stretch of sand, came away with a grocery bag full of trash. Most of it wasn’t whole bottles or cans, but micro trash — bits of things that had been pulverized by the surf.
Our haul included fifty-seven pieces of cellophane, twenty-five balloons (many with ribbons attached), twenty-four bottle caps, twenty-four pieces of nylon rope and netting fragments, twenty-four hard plastic fragments and ten cigarette butts (the plastic-based filters are not biodegradable). We also picked up fishing line, rubber lobster claw bands, tin foil, a shoe heel, one plastic bottle, one toothpaste tube and a syringe — all in the off-season.
“We are seeing more smaller plastic particles make their way to the beach,” says Mateleska.
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The litter accumulates from trash left on the shoreline, refuse that blows in from cars, bins and local roadways, and garbage that travels to the ocean by way of rivers. Waves then break down the plastics into smaller pieces of micro- and nanoplastics.
“Plastic pollution is incredibly dangerous to aquatic species,” she says. Fish and other animals ingest the microplastics and can become entangled in ribbons, nets and fishing lines. Other items that entangle wildlife include six-pack ring holders, hair ties, fishing line, netting or pieces of netting, fishing lures, hooks and plastic bags.
Sea birds are especially vulnerable because they use those bits of fishing line, rope, string and other materials to build their nests. Balloons, in particular, are deadly to seabirds, which often mistake them for jellyfish or other prey.
“Plastics are now in every ecosystem, almost every seabird, and almost every human body,” Mateleska says, with the long-term health impacts unknown.
They also take an extremely long time to break down, which is harmful to the state’s delicate coastal ecosystem.
“[Plastic] material that is in the environment may present itself on a shoreline very far away many years or decades later,” says Dave McLaughlin, sustainability coordinator at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.
___________________________
What You Can Do
Beach walkers can help by picking up garbage wherever they go to enjoy the outdoors. But you don’t have to go to the beach to help. Better management of beach trash starts at home, Mataleska says.
“Refuse single-use plastics and look for sustainable alternatives, pick up trash wherever and whenever you see it, and support legislation that stops plastic at the source,” she advises.
Volunteer for coastal cleanups, use reusable materials, carry in and carry out your trash, recycle, and don’t litter. And consider joining a nonprofit group such as those sponsored by Coastodians (coastodians.org) or Save the Bay (savebay.org) that organize beach cleanups. When it comes to beach trash, even small groups can make a big difference.
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