By Janine L. Weisman | Editor-in-Chief
Good Wednesday morning,
Legislation passed last week by the Rhode Island General Assembly to impose a three-year moratorium on charter schools was transmitted to Gov. Dan McKee on Tuesday. That started the clock at midnight for how long the governor has to sign or veto before it would become law without his signature. The controversial measure would also reduce the statewide cap on charter schools from 35 to 28.
The state’s Constitution provides six days for the governor to act on legislation that has been presented to him. If no action is taken, the bill becomes law at the conclusion of the sixth day. Sundays are excluded, so McKee has until the end of Tuesday, June 23, to take action on the charter school legislation.
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High tide in East Greenwich is at 10:31 a.m. and 10:53 p.m. Low tide is at 3:42 p.m. Sunset is at 8:22 p.m.
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The Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority Board of Directors meets at 8:30 a.m.
The University of Rhode Island’s Horridge Conservatory is open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. so visitors can behold its resident corpse flower in bloom and take in its rotting-flesh scent. Enjoy the running livestream.
Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos and General Treasurer James Diossa attend a ribbon cutting on a new RI Small Business Village on the first floor of the Providence Place mall, across from the Apple store, at 2:15 p.m. The village is a retail marketplace featuring more than 40 Rhode Island small businesses, artisans, and entrepreneurs.
Gov. Dan McKee, with the Port of Providence in the background, touted his role in fighting the Trump administration on offshore wind in a new TV commercial that debuted on Wednesday, June 16, 2026. (Screenshot/Friends of Dan McKee)
By Nancy Lavin
A home field advantage proved insufficient for Gov. Dan McKee to win the backing of the Cumberland Democratic Town Committee, which endorsed Helena Buonanno Foulkes Monday night on the eve of the governor’s 75th birthday. The 30-11 vote for Foulkes over McKee marks the latest setback for the embattled incumbent, already behind in public polling and campaign fundraising and recently snubbed by other municipal party leaders.
The exterior of U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island in downtown Providence. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
By Christopher Shea
A federal prosecutor who didn’t tell a Rhode Island federal judge in late April that a man she was about to release from immigration detention had a homicide warrant active in his native Dominican Republic won’t face disciplinary action. Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. wrote in a letter Tuesday to Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Bolan that while the omission violated the duty of candor owed to the court, there was no evidence Bolan acted in bad faith or was part of an effort to mislead the judge who ordered the man’s conditional release.
Richard Charest is shown at a Rhode Island House Committee on Finance hearing on Feb. 3, 2026, related to the sale of Roger Williams Medical Center and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital to the Centurion Foundation. (Photo by Michael Salerno/Rhode Island Current)
By Nancy Lavin
Rhode Island Health and Human Services Secretary Richard Charest isn’t retiring on July 3, as Gov. Dan McKee’s office previously announced. McKee said he asked Charest, 74, to “stay as long as he could” in his $238,597-a-year job. Charest will be charged with keeping track of state spending of the $156 million federal grant for rural healthcare, along with implementing massive policy and funding changes for federal Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance programs.
Election workers sort ballots at Contra Costa County’s election operations facility on May 27, 2026 in Martinez, Calif. (Photo by Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)
By Jonathan Shorman | D.C. Bureau
As election officials across the country steel themselves for the midterm elections in less than five months, President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail threatens to upend their preparations. The executive order instructs the U.S. Postal Service to refuse to deliver ballots in states that don’t provide lists of voters or meet other requirements.
CEO of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk speaks last year at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland. Last week’s SpaceX IPO, which made Musk the world’s first trillionaire, is a vivid illustration of wealth concentration in the United States, which has been accelerating since 2022. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
By Tim Henderson | Stateline
The richest 1% of Americans held 31.9% of the country’s total wealth at the end of 2025, the largest percentage the Federal Reserve Board has recorded since it started monitoring the numbers in 1989. In 1990, the share was 22.5%. Extreme wealth inequality is likely to balloon further as a result of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and other pro-business policies.
ICYMI
T.F. Green concession workers authorize strike | Christopher Shea
Special ed, civil rights to be shifted out of Trump’s shrinking Department of Education | Shauneen Miranda, D.C. Bureau
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