Rhode Island
She’s running for U.S. Senate and is trying to ban gender-affirming care for minors in RI
Gender-affirming care for minors banned despite Ohio governor’s veto
Ohio’s GOP-dominated senate voted to ban gender-affirming care for minors and bar transgender women and girls from competing on sports teams.
Straight Arrow News
PROVIDENCE – For Republican state Rep. Patricia Morgan, gender-affirming surgery or treatment for minors, and the participation of transgender athletes in school sports, are issues on which to mount a U.S. Senate campaign.
In an email recently sent by her campaign, Morgan, R-West Warwick, flagged a hearing taking place Tuesday on her legislation to ban – and prohibit the use of public funds for – “gender reassignment” treatments for minors. It would also require minors currently taking “puberty-blocking drugs or cross-sex hormones” to stop doing so by Jan. 1, 2025.
Morgan, who hopes to replace incumbent U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, wrote in her email: “Activist educators and health care workers, driven more by ideology than by genuine concern for well-being, are targeting our children.”
Rather than offering “proven therapeutic interventions” to children struggling with mental health, their self-image and their family situations, Morgan argues that “ideologues offer a dangerous and deceitful promise: that all their problems can simply be medicated or surgically cut away.”
What do the bills do?
The West Warwick legislator and two of her House Republican colleagues – Reps. Brian Rea and Robert Quattrocchi – have dubbed their bill, H7884, the “Rhode Island’s Children Deserve Help Not Harm Act.” It’s one of two gender-related bills they sponsor that will be considered by House committees this week.
The first bill:
- Bans any “gender-transition procedures” and hormone therapies on those under the age of 18.
- Opens any doctor who performs such procedures to civil suits and discipline by the state’s medical licensing board.
The second bill, called the “The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” (H7727), will be heard Wednesday in the House Education Committee and would:
- Ban “students of the male sex” from women’s or girls’ sports.
- In the event of a dispute, require a doctor’s note attesting to the student’s sex based on the “student’s internal and external reproductive anatomy,” hormone levels and genetic makeup.
Why is Morgan sponsoring the bills?
First up in the House on Tuesday is a hearing by the House Health & Human Services Committee on the gender-transition bill that has already drawn a heavy stream of comments for and against the legislation.
In an interview Tuesday, Morgan told The Journal that about two dozen parents have told her they believe their children – or others they’ve heard about – are being “manipulated” into seeking gender-affirming treatments.
She cited a pending malpractice lawsuit against the Thundermist Health Clinic by a former patient who alleges she was in “unstable psychiatric condition,” with eight distinct personalities, when she sought and received “transgender affirming treatment” from agenda-pushing doctors at the clinic.
But despite sending an email blast from her campaign account on the bills, Morgan says the issue is not central to her platform.
“No, it’s not going to be the thing that I base my run for the U.S. Senate on,” Morgan said. “But I do still think that it’s a very important issue that we must tackle to protect children.”
“Parents are being manipulated, emotionally blackmailed into agreeing to give their children puberty-blockers by this statement: ‘Do you want a dead child or a child with a different gender?’” she continued.
More: State Republican lawmaker Patricia Morgan is quietly running for the U.S. Senate
Testimony in favor of the bill
- “Please pass this bill,” wrote David and Theresa Casale of Lincoln. “What is being done to this generation of children is a disgrace. Evil is only way to describe it.”
- “This bill is not anti-trans; it’s pro-child. It’s about recognizing that children cannot, and do not, have the capacity to give informed consent to life-altering medical procedures. It’s about protecting them until they are of an age where they can make these decisions with a full understanding of the consequences,” wrote Kimberly Trow of Coventry.
- “Children do not have the mental capacity, especially when they are in crisis, depressed, suicidal or just angry at their parents or the world, to make the kind of alterations to their bodies that this bill would prevent. Allow them to make these crucial decisions as adults,” echoed Laura Rom of Charlestown.
Testimony against the bill
Most, though not all, who opposed the bill acknowledged a personal connection to the population it would affect.
- “My name is Eliza and I’m a cisgender, queer freshman in high school with many trans and genderqueer friends. Do not let H7884 pass. Many people close to me have not been able to access gender-affirming care, and for those who have had access to it, it has improved their mental health tremendously. If anything, we need more access to this life-saving care. Yes, life-saving. I have been extremely close to losing multiple transgender friends to suicide after their depression and dysphoria fed off each other,” the teen wrote.
- Writing as the “proud parent of a bright and beautiful transgender teen, Amber Ward, of Bristol, urged “swift and decisive action” to dispense with this “hateful and deeply harmful anti-transgender legislation.” “I appeal to your decency and your humanity,” she wrote the legislators. “It is well and credibly documented that anti-LGBTQ+ laws and policies adversely impact the mental health of youth.”
- And finally, Alice Kasumi Ellis, of Woonsocket, wrote as “someone who is a transgender woman and was prescribed Estradiol(Estrogen) and Spironolactone, an anti-androgen, at the age of 15 in conjunction with common medical practices for the treatment of Gender Dysphoria.” “In fact I would most likely not be alive today without receiving such treatment at that time in my life,” she wrote. “What contributes to struggles with my mental health are not [Hormone Replacement Therapy] or Puberty Blockers, but the exact societal stigma and bigoted language in this bill and others of its ilk that makes me feel alienated from society and afraid for my safety due to the constant harassment and violence I have personally faced, along with that of my community.”
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Rhode Island
Advocacy group says RI schools’ transgender policy puts federal funding at risk
![Advocacy group says RI schools’ transgender policy puts federal funding at risk Advocacy group says RI schools’ transgender policy puts federal funding at risk](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/authoring-images/2024/06/06/NPRJ/74003187007-thumbnail-education.jpg?auto=webp&crop=1023,575,x0,y0&format=pjpg&width=1200)
Trump signs executive order banning trans women from sports teams
President Trump signed an executive order barring transgender women and girls from playing on school sports teams.
- The R.I. Center for Freedom & Prosperity is demanding the Rhode Island Department of Education rescind its policy protecting transgender students from discrimination.
- The center argues that the policy, based on the recognition of gender identity, contradicts a Trump-era executive order asserting the existence of only two sexes.
- They claim this discrepancy puts schools at risk of civil rights violations, federal funding loss and lawsuits.
PROVIDENCE – An advocacy group is demanding the Rhode Island Department of Education rescind its long-standing policy on the protection of transgender students from discrimination in light of President Donald Trump’s executive order stating there are only two sexes.
The letter from the R.I. Center for Freedom & Prosperity asserts that “the RI Department of Education [RIDE] has placed itself and every member school district in this State at risk of civil rights violations, which are likely [to] lead to investigations by the US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, loss of federal funding, and/or discrimination lawsuits from aggrieved individuals.”
Bottom line: RIDE’s lawyers reject the arguments that lawyer Gregory Piccirilli made in his letter to state Education Commissioner Angélica Infante Green on behalf of the advocacy group, which views the state’s stance on transgender rights as a large issue.
What are the complaints against the policy?
“This is an issue of grave concern for … thousands of parents across our state,” the center’s CEO, Mike Stenhouse, said Thursday. The fact the most, if not all have “adopted RIDE’s recommended guidelines … puts RIDE and every one of those school districts at serious legal and financial risk.”
The group is chaired by Stephen Skoly. the Cranston dentist who defied Rhode Island’s COVID vaccine mandate during the pandemic and ultimately sued for the right to see patients again. Former state GOP Chair Giovanni Ciccione is also on the board.
What is RIDE’s policy on transgender rights?
Stepping back, RIDE’s long-standing policy was designed to protect students “from discrimination and harassment based on their gender identity and expression. The policy also ensures that students have access to safe and supportive learning environments.”
Titled “Protection for Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students,” it says, in part:
“Programs and activities operated by Rhode Island public educational agencies shall be free from discrimination based on sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. By July 1, 2018, each local education agency shall adopt a policy addressing the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming students to a safe, supportive and non-discriminatory school environment.”
Piccirilli, in his letter, contends there is no basis in state law for the regulation.
Beyond that, he cited the executive order Trump signed on his first day in office under the heading: “DefendingWomen from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
Summarizing, Piccirill said Trump ordered all agencies within the executive branch to enforce all laws that “promote [the] reality” that there are “two sexes, male and female,” and that “[t]hese sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
Two weeks later, he said, the U.S. Department of Education sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to K-12 schools and institutions of higher education advising them that the “Office for Civil Rights” intends to enforce a Trump administration interpretation of Title IX that bans “recipients of federal funds to issue policies prohibiting discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.”
The response from R.I. Department of Education spokesman Victor Morente: The regulations the center is challenging “have been adopted by the R.I. Council on Elementary and Secondary Education as well as by every school district in Rhode Island.” They are “supported by both state and federal law and will be enforced until the Rhode Island General Assembly and/or the U.S. Congress changes the applicable law.”He said every R.I. school district has a policy and most, if not all, are posted.
The state’s policy has gone through several iterations, but it began with this statement of principle: “All students need a safe and supportive school environment to progress academically and developmentally. … The purpose of this guidance is to foster an educational environment that is safe and free from discrimination for allstudents, regardless of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
Rhode Island
Judge says sale of RI hospitals can move forward – TPR: The Public's Radio
![Judge says sale of RI hospitals can move forward – TPR: The Public's Radio Judge says sale of RI hospitals can move forward – TPR: The Public's Radio](https://newspack-thepublicsradio.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2025/02/Roger-Williams-MC-by-Gretchen-scaled.jpg)
Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital in North Providence have been losing money for years. According to Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha, that’s because the California hedge fund that owns them has prioritized investor returns over patient care.
California-based Prospect Medical is now trying to sell these two Rhode Island hospitals to an Atlanta-based nonprofit called the Centurion Foundation.
But Prospect, a national hospital chain based in Los Angeles, ended up filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month before it could complete the sale. The company recorded debts up to $10 billion.
The bankruptcy filing meant a judge needed to approve the sale, and time was of the essence, because the company could not afford to keep running the hospitals.
Even so, various stakeholders opposed the sale for different reasons.
Rhode Island’s attorney general attached a list of 85 conditions that must be met before a new owner can take charge.
Federal regulators from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services attached a laundry list of conditions too, as did the United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP), the union representing 1,200 employees at the two hospitals.
At a hearing in Dallas Wednesday, Chief Judge Stacey G.C. Jernigan of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of Texas heard from state and federal officials, lawyers, bankers, and others before giving the green light.
“The court believes that all objections have been resolved, withdrawn, or overruled,” she determined. “So with that the court will approve the transaction.”
That means the sale can now go ahead, with a closing date set for 30-to-60 days time.
Centurion has not yet come up with financing for the deal, but Anne Wallace, an attorney for Sidley Austin LLC representing the hospital’s current owners, indicated that Centurion’s financing was contingent on a closing date.
Neronha said in a statement, “The bankruptcy court’s approval of this sale provides reason for cautious optimism.”
While Nehrona applauded the idea that the hospitals will no longer be owned by a private equity firm, he emphasized there is still work to be done to meet the conditions set out by the state.
“These safety-net hospitals are absolutely critical for maintaining delivery of safe, affordable and accessible health care services in Rhode Island. Roger Williams and Fatima provide services to largely underserved and underinsured communities, and we must maintain their viability. And in order for us to give these hospitals a fighting chance, our conditions must be met. If all parties meet our conditions as they say they intend to, today brings us one step closer to the finish line.”
Dr. Jerry Larkin, Director of Health for the Rhode Island Department of Health, issued a statement saying he was pleased by the court’s decision to allow the sale to go forward.
“While some steps in this transaction are still outstanding, we are committed to the two facilities having new ownership,” he said. “Rhode Island needs a stable network of hospitals that supports the health and wellness of every community in the state.”
Related
Rhode Island
RI Lottery Mega Millions, Lucky For Life winning numbers for Feb. 11, 2025
The Rhode Island Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big. Here’s a look at Feb. 11, 2025, results for each game:
Winning Mega Millions numbers from Feb. 11 drawing
07-30-39-41-70, Mega Ball: 13, Megaplier: 3
Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Lucky For Life numbers from Feb. 11 drawing
08-25-28-41-46, Lucky Ball: 05
Check Lucky For Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Numbers numbers from Feb. 11 drawing
Midday: 2-5-5-1
Evening: 5-1-0-9
Check Numbers payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Wild Money numbers from Feb. 11 drawing
11-15-16-17-28, Extra: 33
Check Wild Money payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
Are you a winner? Here’s how to claim your prize
- Prizes less than $600 can be claimed at any Rhode Island Lottery Retailer. Prizes of $600 and above must be claimed at Lottery Headquarters, 1425 Pontiac Ave., Cranston, Rhode Island 02920.
- Mega Millions and Powerball jackpot winners can decide on cash or annuity payment within 60 days after becoming entitled to the prize. The annuitized prize shall be paid in 30 graduated annual installments.
- Winners of the Lucky for Life top prize of $1,000 a day for life and second prize of $25,000 a year for life can decide to collect the prize for a minimum of 20 years or take a lump sum cash payment.
When are the Rhode Island Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 10:59 p.m. ET on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 11:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky for Life: 10:30 p.m. ET daily.
- Numbers (Midday): 1:30 p.m. ET daily.
- Numbers (Evening): 7:29 p.m. ET daily.
- Wild Money: 7:29 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Rhode Island editor. You can send feedback using this form.
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