News


ACA CPR

While the current administration crows about the ACA’s natural death while holding a pillow firmly over its face, we here at Motif work to ensure the old girl gets a little air. Yes, the (shortened) open enrollment period has ended. But that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck ’til next year. There are certain qualifications and life […]

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All Are Welcome: PVD continues to declare itself a sanctuary city

Rhode Island has been a sanctuary state since 2014, when then-Governor Lincoln Chafee made the official declaration. If you Google the words “Providence Sanctuary City,” you’ll see a host of conflicting information, but this is mostly based on how one defines a sanctuary city. If, like Trump, you define it as a place that harbors […]

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AltFacts: Kicking and Screaming: The adults in the room continue to ride out the presidential tantrum

Pt 1: Going Bye Bye There’s yet another controversy in the White House as the president stormed out of a meeting designed to reverse the ongoing government shutdown. Wearing the latest in presidential diapers, the Little Emperor-in-Chief threw a tantrum when his babysitters, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, stuck by their refusal to allow him to […]

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Local Allies: RI organizations support trans folk in our community

“Trans” is a wide-ranging umbrella term that applies to numerous identities: transgender, gender non-conforming/variant/creative, non-binary, genderqueer, intersex and others. It’s a wide spectrum enriched every day as we learn more about human gender and sexuality. If you identify as the gender you were assigned at birth, you are cisgender. It can also be defined as […]

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Phillipe & Jorge’s Cool, Cool World: Trump’s Bull Ish: Your superior correspondents aren’t being taken in and neither should you

Bullish Trump One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. […]

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News Analysis: RI to Legalize Recreational Cannabis

[See also “Opinion: Governor’s Proposal to Legalize Recreational Cannabis – A Self-Inflicted Wound”, Jan 16, 2019] Gov. Gina Raimondo will soon formally propose to legalize recreational use of cannabis, citing pressure from legalization already accomplished in Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont; and from legalization widely regarded as imminent in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. Norman Birenbaum, of […]

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