By Alexander Castro | Reporter
“One of America’s most iconic cities.”
That’s how Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor Xay Khamsyvoravong described Newport, the city he once mayored, during closing remarks at a WPRI 12 debate Friday.
Martha Stewart, who turns 85 today, reached a similar conclusion in 2014. “Newport is one of the most beautiful places in America!” the then-73-year-old media empress wrote about her visit to the city on her still-regularly-updated blog.
Returning in 2018, Stewart toured private gardens and exactingly catalogued her astonishments, including a clipped boxwood hedge “so perfect” that she “could not stop admiring it.”
She ended her Newport travelogue with a photo of two donkeys, a “mother and daughter” standing amid green so verdant it looked extraterrestrial, before turning the mogul’s philosophical gaze toward the reader and asking in the caption, “How are your gardens growing?” — a question worth carrying into the waning summer months.
Sen. Alana DiMario is a licensed mental health counselor who was first elected in 2020. Her Democratic primary challenger, Mark Mesrobian, is an entrepreneur and general manager of the Bonnet Shores Beach Club. (Contributed photos)
By Nancy Lavin
The first in a six-part series on state legislative races, Nancy Lavin takes a look at the race for the Senate’s District 36, where Sen. Alana DiMario and her Democratic primary challenger, Mark Mesrobian, live less than a third of a mile apart on the same Narragansett street. But the Tupelo Trail neighbors are miles apart in ideology and policy priorities for Senate District 36.
Tractor trailers sit parked in a row at a truck stop in Bloomsbury, N.J. (Photo by Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)
By Ariana Figueroa | D.C. Bureau
President Donald Trump announced an initiative Thursday for veterans to quickly obtain commercial driver’s licenses, as the administration attempts to fill vacancies in the industry after pausing license renewals for foreign-born truck drivers.
Flooding is shown on Redmond Street at Market Street in Warren, R.I., in 2019. (Photo by Warren Fire Chief James Sousa)
COMMENTARY
By Joe Broadmeadow
Former East Providence police captain Joe Broadmeadow argues that climate preparedness should be treated as a public-safety must rather the subject of endless ideological debate. Rising heat, flooding and simultaneous regional emergencies are already increasing strain on EMS, police and fire departments, Broadmeadow writes.
Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor, from left, former state Sen. Cindy Coyne, Newport City Councilor Xay Khamsyvoravong, Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos and Providence City Councilor Sue AnderBois stand behind WPRI 12’s new podiums during a debate taped in East Providence on Friday, July 31, 2026. (Photo by James Bartone/WPRI 12)
By Alexander Castro
By Rhode Island standards, the Democratic primary for the lieutenant governor’s job is a packed one. Yet the five-candidate contest for the seat currently occupied by Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos has received somewhat scant attention, WPRI 12 politics editor Ted Nesi remarked to four of the candidates shortly before the cameras rolled on a debate taped Friday morning at WPRI’s studios in East Providence.
ICYMI
Key legal resource for immigrant kids to expire with federal contract, advocates say | Ariana Figueroa, D.C. Bureau
Thanks for reading Swell. Did you know our weekend digest is also free? Sign up here. And if you enjoyed today’s edition, please forward to a friend. Increasing our readership helps us cover more news.