TGIF: Ian Donnis’ Rhode Island politics roundup for March 20, 2026

Yes, I admit it: The Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise is my guilty pleasure, and I’m mildly crushed that the latest season has been scrapped due to the star’s bad behavior. You can follow me through the week on Bluesky, threads and X. Here we go.

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The Pentagon is seeking an additional $200 billion to fund the war in Iran, after the first six days of the conflict cost the U.S. more than $11.3 billion. Considering this colossal spending, you might think the means exist to eliminate epidemic hunger here. But about 48 million Americans struggle to get enough to eat. Now, food prices are expected to continue climbing because of the war, exacerbating the problem of hunger in one of the world’s richest nations. The number of people seeking assistance from the Rhode Island Community Food Bank has climbed by more than 13,000 people, more than 102,000 each month. “We’re doing everything that we can to keep up and we now see ourselves as sort of the safety net of the federal safety net,” Food Bank CEO Melissa Cherney told me this week on One on One. “And I wish I could tell you that we’re able to keep up, but we’re not.” Cherney attributes the latest squeeze to changes in SNAP benefits – and that situation may get worse when states have to begin paying an additional 25% of administration expenses for the program starting in October. So would you believe there was a time when America did a much better job dealing with the problem of hunger? Read on.

The expansive national network of soup kitchens, pantries and food banks has its roots in a 1983 recession. That’s when some of these entities got started as what was expected to be a temporary response. But although the economy got better, the need for emergency food assistance never went away. I reported on this issue for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette in 1995. At the time, J. Larry Brown, director of the Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy at Tufts University, credited Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, and bipartisan support in Congress, for expanding food stamps in the aftermath of the civil rights era and creating new federal programs for the elderly and single mothers with children. Brown said things took a turn for the worse after modest program cuts backed by President Jimmy Carter were followed by drastic reductions supported by President Ronald Reagan and a Democratic-controlled Congress. As Brown told me 31 years ago, the development of 100,000 emergency feeding programs across the U.S. since the early 1980s reflected volunteerism at its best and public sentiment to help the needy, but also how many Americans were being sustained with dregs of food-industry surplus: “We have to decide whether the richest nation on earth has to have an ad hoc system of handouts to try to protect the dietary status of its population,” he said. “It’s ludicrous as we begin to look toward the 21st century to be feeding so many Americans through handouts. These organizations’ very existence is a sign of national failure.”

The Senate dedicated its chamber Thursday to the late former President Dominick Ruggerio, who died in April 2025 at age 76. As Ruggerio’s successor, Val Lawson, said, “Donny meant so much to this institution and we all know how much the Senate meant to him. He was a friend to everybody in this chamber and a mentor to so many of us, and he is deeply missed.” Read my story here.

The more things change, the more they stay the same when it comes to the local legislative-judicial nexus. While the creation of the Judicial Nominating Commission 32 years ago was meant to offer more political insulation from the days when lawmakers voted on judges, former legislators often remain front and center. Former Senate President Joe Montalbano was in the Senate chamber for the Thursday dedication to Dominick Ruggerio – the same day Gov. Dan McKee named Montalbano the new presiding justice for Superior Court. The two other finalists, Richard Licht and David Cruise, are former senators. Also attending the Ruggerio event: former Senate Judiciary Chair Erin Lynch-Prata, now a state Supreme Court justice. In 2020, Lynch-Prata called the court a constitutional office and the Ethics Commission, to the dismay of critics, ruled the “revolving door” ban – imposing a one-year delay before a legislator can take a state job – did not apply to her. That will loom as a conspicuous precedent if House Speaker Joe Shekarchi pursues the SCORI opening left by the departure of Maureen McKenna Goldberg.

With Bravo’s Real Housewives of Rhode Island set to debut at 9 pm on April 2, a premiere event is being hosted at the Park Theatre in Cranston by U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner, state Rep. Jackie Baginski and state Sen. Hanna Gallo. No mention of whether a Cranston whine or big hair is required.

Colleague David Wright reports on the stirring story of how Colin Dorgan, 17, propelled his Blackstone Valley hockey team to victory just weeks after surviving the Pawtucket shooting that claimed the lives of his mother, brother and grandfather, at the hands of his father: “Not only did Colin Dorgan score the game-winning goal that advanced Blackstone Valley to the state championship in the first place, but also he scored the crucial goal that tied the championship game late in the third period, setting the stage for the victory. Blackstone Valley went on to beat Lincoln 3-2 in quadruple overtime, winning the Rhode Island Interscholastic League Division II Boys Hockey Championship. The title game took place Wednesday at the Amica Mutual Pavillion in Providence. ‘It’s been an emotional four weeks for this team,’ coach Chris Librizzi told reporters after the game. ‘And when the season came to a halt, the kids were obviously upset, as were the coaching staff and everyone who was in the building. And then when (Colin Dorgan) came back to the locker room and decided to play with us to end the season, our level of competition went from about 15% to about 90%.’ ”

Blake Carpentier/Ocean State Media

It’s not every day that someone with high-level state and federal experience becomes the head of a local nonprofit. That’s why Janet Coit is a noteworthy choice as the new executive director of Farm Fresh Rhode Island. Coit led the state Department of Environmental Management for a decade and served as administrator of NOAA Fisheries, part of the Commerce Department, when Gina Raimondo was Commerce secretary during the Biden administration.

Former state Department of Administration director Jim Thorsen this week offered his side of the notorious Philadelphia trip story (via Nancy Lavin) …. Best wishes to the peripatetic Ray Baccari Jr. as he gets set to move from WPRI to KGAN in Cedar Rapids, Iowa …. Robert Craven Jr. announced this week for the seat being vacated by his father in North Kingstown … The Rhode Island Black, Latino, Indigenous and Pacific-Islander Caucus unveiled its legislative response to the Trump administration’s immigration policies …. Happy belated birthday to Brown alum and former all-star Prov Phoenix contributor Jessica Grose, now a columnist at The New York Times …. Vanessa Lopez, a League of Rhode Island Businesses-backed challenger to Sen. Meghan Kallman (D-Pawtucket) held a kickoff event Thursday …. Michael “Mike” McDonald, a landscape maintenance tech at URI, was elected president of AFSCME’s Council 94.

While Ethan Shorey says he needs a break from the grind of journalism after 20 years at the Valley Breeze, he characteristically perked up in this conversation with Luis Hernandez while discussing the importance of the work. Excerpt: “I think my favorite story ever was on Canning Street in Cumberland. There was this property that the woman next door was worried about it being developed. And she wrote in her letter that, ‘You’re my last resort. This thing is 90% wetlands. How are they possibly developing it?’ I said, ‘If this is true, it’s 90% wetlands, there’s a real serious issue.’ So it ended up being my story that turned into a big statewide story and the chief of staff at the governor’s (office) ended up resigning because he was tied to the property. The development didn’t end up happening, and they ended up donating the property back to the town. The whole neighborhood was grateful, and people might say, ‘Oh, that’s just a few people impacted.’ For those people, if they’re getting flooded for the rest of their life and they have this home, that means the world to them.”

Almost $8 million from a settlement for dumping illegal fill will now go to provide much-needed dental care for Providence children, as my colleague Ben Berke reports. Republicans objected to the plan. Attorney General Peter Neronha reiterated that he was inspired to steer the money in this direction after reading a story in the ProJo: “Five hundred-twenty Providence schoolchildren had serious, serious dental issues,” Neronha said, recounting the article’s findings. “Abscesses. Deep infections. And it struck me that as a government, as a people, that’s something that we should just not allow to happen.”

Paul McCartney was just 27 when the Beatles broke up. How does one find their way forward in that moment? Documentarian Morgan Neville talked about McCarty’s post-Beatle journey, on Q with Tom Power – just one of the many excellent shows broadcast on Ocean State Media radio each week. One of my faves is Fresh Air, which features in-depth interviews covering subjects from the war in Iran to the tumultuous life of Stephen Sondheim.

If I don’t have The Bachelor to offer distraction from worrying about the Sox or tending to Mrs. TGIF’s honey-do list, The Sopranos stands up to repeated viewings and more peeling of the layers of the onion. Here’s a plausible case that Paulie Walnuts orchestrated the hit on Tony.