A woman is dead after she was hit by a car in a parking lot Saturday morning in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

Woonsocket police tell NBC10 Boston affiliate WJAR that officers responded around 10:30 a.m. to the incident at 1919 Diamond Hill Road, the listed address for Ocean State Job Lot, and found a 74-year-old woman with critical injuries.

The victim was taken to Landmark Hospital, where she was pronounced dead, WJAR reports. Her name has not been released.

Police say the driver remained on scene, according to WJAR.

There was no immediate word if charges would be filed in the deadly crash. An investigation is ongoing.

Pastor David Aucoin is not a well-known figure in Rhode Island, but his Christian Nationalist organizing, which has had trouble gaining traction for years, is starting to bear fruit. I wrote about Pastor Aucoin and his Rhode Island Family Institute (RIFI) here when he announced that RIFI was sending three Rhode Island Senate Republicans to a Family Policy Alliance (FPA) “Statesman Academy” in Washington D.C. to “help train and equip legislators to have a Christian Worldview as they carry out their legislative duties.”

RIFI is networked with a host of anti-LGBTQ extremist groups, and on their site, they claim Robert Chiaradio as a board member. Chiaradio last year conducted a tour of Rhode Island school committees and school boards to testify against the life-saving Transgender, Gender Diverse, and Transitioning Student Policies mandated by the Rhode Island Department of Education and federal law. Toward the end of Chiaradio’s year-long tour, he tapped into national Trump agenda trends. He targeted Title IX policies that allow transgender students to play sports on teams that reflected their gender identity. The Republican-controlled United States House of Representatives is currently targeting Title IX.

With Trump due to ascend once more to the Presidency, local Christian Nationalist extremist groups are poised to push the Rhode Island General Assembly to pass laws that target the rights of LGBTQ+ people (but especially trans children) and women.

In a newsletter to his followers, Pastor Aucoin outlined his agenda. [Note: Pastor Aucoin uses terms such as “gender confused” when describing queer, transgender, and gender-diverse children. Pastor Aucoin’s use of such terms is consistent with his bigotry.]

“As we move forward to the new year, we are optimistic that with a new administration in Washington D.C., there will be opportunities to pass legislation that will honor God nationally and in Rhode Island.

“Here are some plans that the Rhode Island Family Institute has to fulfill our mission and make Rhode Island a state where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive, and life is cherished.

“In January, I will be meeting with the Senate and House minority leaders to help them with support for passing pro-family legislation for 2025 in the following areas:

• Banning Gender surgery on minors;

• Removing counseling restrictions for gender-confused minors;

• Enforcing obscenity laws in schools and libraries;

• Promoting School Choice Options to help Private Schools and Home-Schoolers;

• Protecting minors from adult porn websites; and,

• Raising awareness of the dangers associated with recreational marijuana and the need to restrict ‘Pot Shops’ that are multiplying in RI neighborhoods.”

Some notes on the list:

• 97% of gender-affirming surgery on minors is breast reduction surgery, and it is performed on cisgender males. These are boys who identify as boys and who don’t want to have breasts.

• In 2017, the General Assembly passed a ban on conversion therapy – a range of dangerous practices that seek to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. RIFI seeks to reverse that ban when they call for “removing counseling restrictions.”

• “Enforcing obscenity laws in schools and libraries” is a call for book banning. Rhode Island has been the target of proposed book bans against books such as Genderqueer. Robert Chiaradio pushed for such a ban in his hometown of Westerly. Bills are being introduced in the General Assembly this year to protect librarians and libraries from these attacks. These bills have failed in prior years.

• School Choice is a nice-sounding name for policies that divert money from public education to private schools, homeschoolers, and religious schools. See here.

• No one wants children accessing inappropriate or misleading information about sex. But we have to be careful how we go about “protecting minors” when we take on complex First Amendment-impacting legislation.

• Currently, cannabis is legally available in Rhode Island. Public health notices about the potential dangers of cannabis use may be appropriate, but restricting so-called “pot shops” has to be done in a way that does not further the racist policies of the failed war on drugs.

Pastor Aucoin said he will meet with Senate Minority Leader Jessica de la Cruz and House Minority Leader Michael Chippendale to discuss RIFI’s priorities. One might hope these Republican legislators will be wise enough to reject most of RIFI’s ideas. Still, in the likely event that they are not so wise, I hope that the General Assembly will not only reject RIFI’s Christian Nationalist agenda but take action to protect Rhode Islanders from it.

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Bonus: Here’s a video of Pastor Aucoin calling for the reopening of churches during Covid:

Rhode Island’s homeless crisis has made headlines in recent weeks — and for good reason. In my 30+ year career in homeless services, I have never seen the levels of homelessness that we are seeing in our state today.

A recent report from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development confirms my own observations: Homelessness here has more than doubled over the last five years — and unfortunately, we expect Rhode Island’s homeless numbers to be even higher this year.

Even more alarming, the number of people who are staying outside in the Ocean State soared by 400 percent over the same period. As temperatures plunged to life-threatening levels this week, 650 people were living outside in Rhode Island according to local homeless advocates. Clearly, that is not acceptable.

In response to the urgent need, Crossroads quickly expanded our warming center capacity as dozens of people scrambled to come in out of the bitter cold. Providence City Hall also opened its doors to give cold-weary Rhode Islanders a safe place to stay, and I applaud them for their compassion.

But setting up a make-shift warming center in City Hall would not be necessary if the state had enough shelter beds. While I continue to believe that housing is the only proven long-term solution for ending homelessness, building housing takes time, often several years from concept to completion. With hundreds of Rhode Islanders currently staying outside in life-threatening conditions, it’s clear that we also need to meet the moment and scale up the state’s shelter capacity.

As the state’s leading provider of housing and services to those experiencing homelessness, Crossroads stands prepared to expand our current shelter services assuming adequate funding. We currently operate five temporary emergency shelters, including the state’s largest men’s shelter, a women’s shelter, a domestic violence shelter, a family shelter and the state’s only couples shelter. Last year, more than 1,500 people stayed in one of our shelters while we worked with them to help them secure stable homes.

While we ramp up shelter capacity, however, it’s critical that we also continue to stay focused on addressing the most urgent underlying issue contributing to the current crisis: a lack of affordable housing.

Governor Dan McKee, Speaker Joseph Shekarchi, and Providence Mayor Brett Smiley all deserve credit for prioritizing housing in recent years. Thanks in part to their investments, construction of our Summer Street Apartments in Providence is currently well underway, and when complete later this year, will provide affordable one-bedroom apartments for more than 176 formerly homeless adults.

This spring, Crossroads will be breaking ground on nearby 371 Pine St. in Providence, a 35-unit, innovative health and housing complex for medically vulnerable adults experiencing homelessness. A complete renovation of our Travelers Aid Housing at 160 Broad St. is also in the pipeline, and will add more than 80 studio and one-bedroom permanent supportive apartments to the state’s inventory.

When complete in 2027, these three affordable-apartment buildings will help reduce homelessness in Rhode Island, but of course, more is needed. That’s why, in what is expected to be a tough budget year, I urge state and local governments to continue to prioritize basic human needs.

State and local officials have tough decisions to make in the months ahead. Expanding shelter capacity is not optional — it is a life-saving necessity this winter. But shelter alone won’t end homelessness. Housing is the only proven long-term solution, and continued investment is absolutely essential to reducing homelessness throughout Rhode Island.

Michelle Wilcox is president & CEO of Crossroads Rhode Island.