- [Host] This week on "A Lively Experiment," the Democratic presidential ticket is complete as the Harris-Walz campaign hits the road; and the heat is on for the former mayor of Woonsocket as a new report sheds light on a controversial land deal.

- [Announcer] "A Lively Experiment" is generously underwritten by... - Hi, I'm John Hazen White Jr. For over 30 years, "A Lively Experiment" has provided insight and analysis of the political issues that face Rhode Islanders.

I'm a proud supporter of this great program and Rhode Island PBS.

- Joining us on the panel, Ken Block, founder of Watchdog RI, retired URI political science professor, Maureen Moakley, and Ted Nesi, politics and business editor for WPRI TV.

Hello, and welcome, I'm Jim Hummel, and it is great to have you with us.

There is a lot to get to locally this week, but first, Kamala Harris raised a few eyebrows choosing Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, Tuesday, as her vice presidential running mate.

The ticket drew huge crowds this week, but Harris acknowledges she and Walz are the underdogs against Donald Trump and J.D.

Vance.

Maureen, I guess the question is how long can they keep up the momentum?

There's a lot going on.

We have this week, and then the convention next week, and then we really kinda get off to the races after Labor Day.

- Yeah, I mean, I think what they're doing now is they're just trying to make do with this environment in terms of the enthusiasm, and things like that, and I think that's the thing, getting around and introducing themselves.

I think they're gonna have to get to the point where they're gonna have to get more specific about policy, and I think, and I think that's gonna be a little bit of a challenge, because I think they're gonna have to move, sort of frame it a little less to the left, and try to talk about that, but I think it was, I think it was a good choice.

I think Shapiro had a lot of baggage because of Gaza, and I think, also, she disagreed with him on Gaza.

She's shown a lot more interest in the plight of the Gazans, and so I think there's a little space there, and so I think there would've been protests, you know.

So the party is united, it's a little to the left, I think they have to move it over, but I think, basically, Walz was a good choice, and I think they'll do well.

- I don't think there's gonna be a lot of policy that comes up in this election.

I think it's going to be a stark choice.

It's pro-Maga, anti-Maga, pro-Trump, anti-Trump, and I think that everyone's gonna dig in on that, and that's what we're gonna get the most messaging about.

Trump isn't really strong talking about policy, at this point, which is one of the reasons I don't think there'll be a lot of discussion about it.

The Democrats solved their lagging support issue that they were suffering from under Biden, and from my perspective, having gone through the data carefully in 2020, it looks to me like we are going have a very close outcome, very similar to what we saw in 2020, at this point.

- Where it comes down to that handful of swing states.

- It's going come down to moderate voters and which way they decide to go.

Trump lost their support in 2020, and that's why he lost the race, and he hasn't solved that problem, so that's one of the reasons I feel comfortable predicting, at this point, that I think the Democrats come away with a victory in terms of the presidential race unless Trump begins to change his messaging.

- And we got a long time between now and November.

- Yeah.

- We don't know what's gonna happen.

- We do, I mean, I've been astounded at the, you know, the polling shows the race has, I mean, Biden was collapsing by the end there, you know, and he was threatening to take down, I think, a lot of House and Senate seats, with him, if that had continued, but we have to remember, Kamala Harris had a, her numbers were lousy leading into the switch.

There had always been a lot of talk in Washington that there was a lot of staff turnover in her office.

No one was expecting the level of enthusiasm she generated so fast among the party base.

I mean, they're drawing these huge crowds at these rallies, and I think, I do think, there's a story in the Washington Post this morning, as we tape, that, you know, Trump is frustrated, because I think, A, he was playing to run against Biden, I think he thought he knew how to beat, especially, a beleaguered Joe Biden, and he's now found himself in a very different race against a considerably younger opponent.

I mean, just this week, it's been striking me that Trump's really mostly off the campaign trail, while Harris is doing this battleground state tour with Walz.

I mean, that's, you really have flipped.

There was a reason, you know, Biden was seen as too old, but Trump's only a few years younger than him, and he keeps a fairly, he's keeping a fairly low pace of activity right now, too.

- You know, I wonder, at some point, if the campaign, so the Trump campaign's having a hard time figuring out, I wonder, in the flipping of the script, whether you say, now, Donald Trump seems like a pretty vibrant 78-, 79-year-old, you know, he rambles a little bit at times, whether the Harris campaign's gonna say, look, if Trump doesn't make it four years, do you really want J.D.

Vance - Well, that's it.

- as your president?"

I mean, it's not just he's filling the role in vice president, do you want him elevated?

What's gonna happen to Trump when he's 83 years old?

- I think that's a good point.

I also think, I also wanna ask you about what you talked about policy.

I mean, it isn't that they're gonna have policy discussions, but I mean, they are, you know, Trump is calling them communists, and I mean, they take specific things and specific issues.

It's not gonna be a debate, but it's gonna be a row in terms of questioning their positions, and I think that might matter.

- Well, I mean, as a centrist voter myself, messaging, like, someone, socialist, communist, the labels that extremists use to describe the other side aren't particularly effective for the voters in the middle, so that's one of the reasons I'm not, I don't think that either candidate should worry too much about that kind of messaging from the other side.

It's really, it's a stark set of choices here, and there's only probably a couple of million voters across the country who haven't made their minds already, and reaching them and convincing them which way to go is gonna be the story of this race.

- I do think, though, Jim, just to Ken's point there, I have been surprised that there was a measurable share of voters in the swing states who were not gonna vote for Biden, or were not saying they supported him, who actually were quickly gettable for Harris.

There was a Wisconsin poll yesterday, where, I wanna say, Biden was at, like, 43% against Trump if he had stayed in the race, they asked the same group of voters, but Harris was at 49 or 50, so that's, I mean, that's a 6, 7 points difference between if Biden had stayed on the ticket versus switching to Harris, at least right now.

That's a massive change in a country that's as 50-50 as this is.

- Yeah, but I also think, I'm worried about your prediction that it's gonna be close, because I really think, if it's going to be close, there's gonna be an aftermath in terms of questioning this, riots, and things like that.

Excuse me.

I mean, I think that's a real issue, so I hope the enthusiasm and the momentum carries off, and he could do better than close.

What do you think?

- It's going to be close.

(panel members laugh) I don't think, - Mr. Data.

I don't think there's, I guess there's always a chance that it won't be as close as it was in 2020.

The demographics are changing, younger voters have come in and older voters have died off.

That tends to help the Democrats.

Younger people tend to trend more liberal than older people, who tend to trend a little bit more conservative.

At the end of the day, it is going to be really close, and how we, as a country, prepare ourselves, talk about the claims that get made, there are gonna be claims that get made at the end of this race, there's no question about it.

- Final question about debates.

You know, so there was the ABC debate, and Trump waffled a little bit on that.

He says, "I wanna go to Fox News," what a surprise, and I wonder, I mean, if I'm Kamala Harris, I'm not going to a network that's been found to lie to its viewers, right, quite frankly.

- Plus the fact he wanted an audience.

I mean, he wanted a rally, - Exactly.

not a debate.

- But what do you think it's gonna wind up being, ultimately?

Are they gonna do more than one, do you think?

- I think a lot is, I don't even know if they'll do one, at this rate.

I think both, and I think, I think, think of how much has changed just in the last two months, right?

We've two switched candidates.

- Does the last two weeks feel like two years?

- Oh, I mean, it's astonishing.

I keep thinking about, you know, the debate was only five, maybe six weeks - It's been less than, it was a month ago was the assassination attempt.

- Yes, exactly, and so I think to have that much news that fast, I mean, you know, the 1968 comparisons are probably overdone but you can, it gives me a little feel for how people must have felt that year when the crush of news was happening so fast and things seemed so discombobulated.

- What about debates?

- I don't think we're gonna see a debate.

- Really?

- Biden was poorly advised to engage in that debate.

It was catastrophic to his campaign.

Trump was able to handle Biden.

I think he has his hands full with Harris, and the risk to his campaign is if he, comparatively speaking, comes across as poorly debating Harris, as Biden did debating Trump, his campaign could be over.

- Yeah.

- The only thing is, I mean, I think she's gonna show up at ABC, and I think that's gonna make him look really bad.

I mean, she's gonna show up, - The empty chair.

- the empty chair thing, - Right.

- and I think that's gonna matter, and I wonder if that will move him towards accepting the debate.

- Yeah, well, I guess we'll know a little bit closer to the time.

All right, former Woonsocket mayor, Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, was back in the news.

A big report came out about a land deal we all suspected that may have been why she left office, she cited health reasons, former US attorney Erin Wiseman, with a pretty scathing report about how it fell together that she really tried to keep it, and your team did a great job on this, Eli Sherman was reporting on it, that she tried to hide this deal.

It was with a former boss of hers, she's using federal money and trying to hide it from the city council, and kinda directing her underlings to do the same.

The report does not look good.

- It doesn't, and Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, I mean, she has yet to say anything substantive about this in her own defense.

- Probably smart (laughs).

- Well, and so she didn't talk to Wiseman.

When she briefly flirted with a comeback, I spoke with her in June, and she said she'd talk about all this at a later date, so we haven't heard any sort of mitigating version of it from her side, and the facts, as laid out by Wiseman, yeah, are very damaging to her, particularly, I thought, the, in Eli's story, he mentioned that staffers in Woonsocket City Hall suggested they either, they felt that their jobs were at risk if they communicated about this land deal with anyone outside of the mayor and her inner circle, the council, others, et cetera.

I mean, that, you know, now, I don't think they've alleged Baldelli-Hunt told them that, but it felt like they didn't need to be told, they knew this was not something that should be discussed.

- (sighs) It's so depressing.

Stories like this seriously depress me.

We hear way too many stories like this about the people that we elect to govern us, to lead us, ending up in getting jammed up, to use a Rhode Island term (laughing).

I don't know why this happens with the frequency it does here in our state.

It's a disincentive to people to serve, it's a disincentive to people to vote, and I just really wish that we figured out a way to deal with whatever dynamics create these sorts of situations, and remove them so that we can get a better form of government than we're getting right now.

- I agree, I mean, almost as bad as the deal itself was the actions that took place, in terms of what all went on, and, you know, it's depressing to think about the climate that these people are in.

My question is, how culpable is she?

- Well, and I'd love to ask her, right, and she won't (laughs) she won't talk about it.

- No, but I mean, even if we know that she behaved badly.

- but the money wasn't, if the money was spent, - That's my point.

the feds would come in, - Right.

- but the deal never got done.

- That's the point.

- 'cause it was reversed.

- Right.

I think it's just... To Ken's point about, you know, Rhode Islanders get so depressed by seeing these kind of, every 6 to 12 months, feels like they bubble up somewhere, but the flip side is, I mean, Baldelli-Hunt was so popular in Woonsocket.

Yes, she had very vocal critics, we can think of some of them, but she ran unopposed the same year she was removed from office.

I mean, - But that was because of the friends and family plan (laughs).

- But I think, - She had a lot of people on the payroll.

- but I think that raises the bigger question, which is how do you have checks and balances, particularly in municipal government, where, you know, where the mayor often, you know, can act pretty unchecked.

I think that's not just a Woonsocket thing, - No.

- and you see that here.

- There were checks and balances.

She went around the checks and balances.

In other words- - But the fact that she could do that, the fact that she felt strong enough that she could keep the council from having information, et cetera is- - So I did a story 10 years ago this summer about her son's baseball team getting unadvertised jobs when, when, I mean, think of this, unemployment was 10% at the time, she basically gave them the jobs, and I confronted her about it, and she, you know, I said, "Did you advertise?"

"You mean in the newspaper?

No, we just kinda spread the word."

And as I thought about that, and then we did some more stories about it, we titled it "Friends and Family."

She came from the House, and she was on the leadership, she was on Gordon Fox's team, kind of, and had cover, and I always thought that she kind of carried that, she carried that to City Hall.

- Yeah, I agree.

I mean, I just think that... By the way, I just wanna say, this happens everywhere, it's not just Rhode Island, please.

- I have had people who, like, lived and worked in Iowa say they think it's worse here (laughing) than they felt it was in Iowa, - Well, yes, sure.

- (laughs) so I also don't always wanna overdraw that, that, like, every single state's like this.

- Well, no, but I mean, I think, you know, we could get into data that suggests corruption and so forth, and then we come out in the middle range, so let's put it that way, but I think it's disgraceful, and at the very least, she is disgraced, and I don't know what else you can do about it.

- Well, and now the question comes, is will it get referred to law enforcement?

Would they do anything about it?

- Right, and so far, there's no strong sign that any of them are looking closely at it, which is the other question.

I mean, if there's, you know, as said, if the deal was reversed, is it just gonna be a political issue, or could it turn out to be more?

And that's just unclear to me as of today.

- Okay, what would a "Lively Experiment" be without a little Washington Bridge talk?

We still don't know when it's gonna be completed or how much it's gonna cost.

Ken, I know you lie awake at night thinking about this, now.

(Ted laughs) Well, you wish the governor spent more time lying awake.

- I wish the governor spent more time in the traffic jams that we all, who have to go back and forth to the East Bay, have to deal with.

It's extraordinary, the disconnect between what the professional engineering community has to say about what has happened, so far, about the bridge, a procurement that yielded no one competing to try to win the project, and frankly, the biggest problem of all that we have right now, and it's extraordinary to me, is the lack of transparency.

The Rhode Island government has locked down information about this procurement about what's happening, and it's utterly wrong.

There isn't a more important story to, and almost anybody who lives on the East Bay, than what's happening with this bridge.

and to take the RFI that's out there right now, which is asking vendors why they didn't bid, and to withhold their answers, it is outrageous, and it points to how desperately we need to change our open records laws.

- Yeah.

I wanted to ask you, what about the lawsuit?

Do you think that was proven?

- No, there's a small group of companies that do construction projects in Rhode Island, and just about all of them (chuckling) are being sued over the bridge, right now.

There's a massive disincentive to them to wanna get involved in a new project with the DOT, who's suing them.

- People have pointed out to me, the contrast between this, and the credit union crisis, and Bruce Sundlun.

Now, I don't wanna state this is as bad as that was, with people, you know, protesting outside the State House, but just the way that that was handled, Sundlun was brand new, so he could really be away from culpability.

He quickly had that Vartan Gregorian report done, which I think, not that it made people happy, but it did give a feeling that, like, what happened here has become quickly clear and we can move past that, and this, with the bridge, and the sorta dragging out of the day of reckoning, now we're more focused on lawsuits than a look at how government is operating and around, it reminds me of covering 38 Studios, where, again, I think part of why it lingered so long was because of the drib-drab of what had really happened and who had pushed it, which is why you have, like, an independent commission, but of course, people in power often don't want that kind of warts-and-all report to come out because they might look bad.

- And we've talked about this.

Wouldn't you want a little bit more accountability and put the lawsuit off to the side?

- That's what I thought.

- I mean, 'cause the, it's basically, all the reporters have gotten the Heisman now.

"Oh, we really can't talk about it 'cause it's in litigation."

Fine, just let's get some accountability.

Nobody, as far as I know, has been suspended, lost the job, lost the paycheck, and I think that's aggravating, particularly for the three of us who are on the East Bay trying to get back and forth.

- Whoever put together the RFP that nobody bid on should no longer be working on putting proposals together, because they clearly don't understand the marketplace, they don't understand what the vendors need.

There are millions of unanswered questions about how this bridge fell apart and nobody caught it before it did fall apart, right?

I mean, these are issues that land directly inside the Department of Transportation, and we're getting, there's been no accountability within that organization, and there hasn't even been an attempt to address any of these issues by either that organization or the governor, and it's a massive failure.

- I will say, Jim, I can see, to do the reporter thing, devil's advocate, for Governor McKee and his team, if they think about, frankly, the politics of this, in part, they say, look, he needs a message in 2026 about how he handled this.

Obviously, there are gonna be plenty of things to criticize.

- Ah, I held him accountable.

- Well, and I think if they're able to point to we sued these companies, the settlement money starts coming in that they hope to get, like happened with 38 Studios, I think they think that's something that might be more tangible to voters once that process has gone through than it is right now.

I don't know if that'll be the case, but I could see that argument being made.

(Jim laughs) - Look at your faces.

- Are you kidding?

This is going on for years.

I mean, when is this project, - It's gonna go beyond the election.

- Yeah, when is this bridge gonna be finished?

I mean, you're still gonna be extracting... - He has to have, his election's in 2026, whether he likes it or not, so they have to make the play, They have to make- - Well- - The more important question is when will this project start?

- Yeah - That is true.

- Or when will the bidding start?

- I mean, - We don't even know that right now.

- This is the gift that keeps on giving to opponents.

I mean, he's in hot water, as far as I'm concerned.

- But don't you also think, because of what you said, that, you know, they didn't know about the RFP, doesn't that give the construction companies leverage?

"Hey, nobody else is bidding.

We're gonna jack the price by 30%, and we're the only game in town, Nobody wants this, so if you wanna pay for it, we'd be happy to do the job for you."

- Yeah, well, this is why, to Ken's point, I'd love to see (chuckles) what they all told them, - What the questions were.

- when is the question - And elaborate on that - of completion, - a little bit, So it went out for the RFI, 11 companies said they gave them the feedback, but they won't announce that publicly?

- Right, they won't announce it publicly, which is outrageous, because the RFI is distinct and separate from whatever the next RFP is going to be, - request for information, which doesn't exist right now.

- Yeah.

- Some of those vendors hopefully told the DOT that "Your timelines were unreasonable.

Nobody could build this bridge in a, and over the course - I think that's important.

of two years, and we can't do it."

There was tons of risk that was put onto the shoulders of the winning bidder.

They had to remediate any environmental toxicity at the river bottom, and this and that.

- Yeah.

- I mean, there were, this RFP was unbiddable, as I understand it, to just about every company.

- And then the governor said, "Oh, we kind of knew that was gonna happen," right?

- Stunning and ridiculous.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- All right, there are an awful lot of uncontested races, We talked about this last week.

There is one contested race that's very interesting.

The Senate president, Dominick Ruggerio, is facing a challenge.

Lenny Cioe, who challenged him a couple years ago, he gave a little dig, Ted, you did this story, that, look, the Senate president has had health problems that are now documented, that Kathy Gregg had a story earlier, we all knew this around the State House, and he missed a lot of the session, and he missed a key fundraiser, so Cioe says, "The time might be for you to step aside, Mr, President."

- Yeah, and it's, you know, you can see, I mean, it is, especially after Joe Biden decided to step aside amid party pressure, I mean, there's certainly no out, other than Lenny Cioe, there's no no one saying publicly Dominick Ruggerio needs to step aside, but I think, you know, I think at some point, you understand that people aren't gonna say that, 'cause as long as someone is the Senate president, you can't go against him, but certainly, behind the scenes, there are concerns that, you know, is his health gonna be good enough to lead?

'Cause if you think about it, there's also, we talk about Democrats versus Republicans, there's also House versus Senate.

The Senate has its priorities that aren't the House's priorities.

They need a strong leadership team that's able to go toe-to-toe with... Joe Shekarchi's a very powerful house speaker right now, and so will Senate President Ruggerio, if he wins reelection, be in strong enough shape to lead the fight for senators on their priorities, next year.

Again, I don't imagine anyone's gonna make any frontal push against him, but I do think, as long as it's not clear that his health is fully restored, that those concerns are gonna linger.

- You know, it's interesting, when he started out, you know, when he was, when Teresa Paiva Weed was the president, he was really the back power person behind the scenes, and he seemed to like that role, and then when she left the presidency of the Senate, he came in to do an interview on the round table, and he was very halting.

I mean, he was, you could clear, he wasn't ready for this public exposure, so to speak, but he got through it.

- He's grown into it.

- That's what I'm, 2020, but then he grew into it, and I think he kind of likes it, and I think he's enjoying that position, - He definitely likes it.

- that public position, but it's funny how before that, he had talked to Ian Donnis, and he said "I think I'm gonna retire," and so he's, it's kinda like he wants to hang on, and that's the problem.

- Well, he is older, he's retired, and at some point, look it's like Joe Biden, they kind of get like, you know, the trappings of the office, what else is there?

If I leave, then what am I gonna do?

- And the Senate president said that kind of explicitly He's like, "I don't, you know, what am I gonna do, golf all day?

Like, what am I gonna do - Right.

all day?

- Yeah, I don't play golf, Right?

- Exactly, but, okay, sorry.

- Yeah, I mean, speaking, zooming out from Ruggerio's situation, we do have, especially in our federal government, we have a lot of octogenarian leaders.

- Chuck Grassley, 91.

- you can go on and on, right?

- [Jim] Right.

- and it's a problem because they simply don't represent the interests of the vast majority of the voters, and I think it's harmful in some ways.

I feel for Joe Biden, it took a lot to convince him to leave the race, and I'm sure that wasn't an easy choice for him to make, but we need new generations of leaders, and, you know, even my generation, Kamala Harris's generation, it still appears to be old to the younger voters who are just coming in at this point, so we, - My generation looks older to them (laughs).

- Yeah, we have, we have, we have a generational problem with how we govern ourselves, and, you know, from Ruggerio's perspective, I mean, I'm a skeptic of the Rhode Island legislature, they seldom do things that I think are right, proper, or necessary, or what we need to have done, so it almost doesn't matter to me who the Senate president is, they're unlikely to make me happy.

- Do you think, go ahead.

- I was just gonna say, but in counter distinction to Biden, the voters have a chance to do this.

- [Jim] Right, with Ruggerio in the fall.

- With Ruggerio, in the fall.

I mean, if enough is made of it, if the campaign goes on, I mean, at least the voters have a say.

- But if I was Cioe, I'd say, is he gonna make it the next two years and be a fully functioning, it's the same thing we talked about with JD Vance and the president, with Trump, so.

Let's do this, let's get to outrageous and/or kudos, and then we will get back, maybe, if we have a little bit more time.

Ted, what do you have this week?

- This is a classic complaint of a reporter, but I saw on social media yesterday, Democrats actually getting mad at reporters who very gingerly said they hoped at some point soon, Kamala Harris does an interview with somebody.

(panelists laugh) Like, she still hasn't actually taken in and sat down with, I dunno, "60 Minutes," or go on with Nora O'Donnell, or whatever.

- How about a press conference?

- That would be great.

- What a (indistinct).

Whatever you wanna talk about.

And what actually is, my outrage isn't even her not doing that, it's, you know, a strategy people can criticize and decide what they think, it's the criticism of reporters saying you should talk and answer questions as a terrible, horrible attack by the press corps on a candidate.

It's like this is just the 101 of what we should expect of public officials, that they will take questions, that they will sit for interviews.

She can choose who to be interviewed by if it's gonna be a one-on-one, but to say that it's out of bound for reporters to suggest someone should be taking questions seems just bananas to me.

- [Jim] Yeah, it is.

Ken, what do you have?

I'm gonna come back to transparency in government and Rhode Island's open records laws.

They absolutely need to be not just refreshed, I think they need to be rewritten from the ground up, and what we need to see in our government is better transparency.

The public shouldn't have to fight and prove to government that the records that they want, that we pay for, should be made available to us, in general, unless there is an overwhelming reason not to provide it.

- The default should be open.

- The default should be open and only closed under very narrow and specific circumstances.

I have tried to get data from different levels of government in Rhode Island for years.

It's always been painful, it's always been a delay game.

You ask, you never hear anything for 30 days at the, and then the charging on what everything happens.

We need much better, and the Washington Bridge debacle and how the Department of Transportation is conducting itself is exactly the reason we need to throw out what we have and build something else.

- Hear, hear!

Maureen, you get the last minute.

- Okay, I have last minute.

I have kudos for the Olympics, for the Paris Olympics.

I think the French did a wonderful job.

There's wrecks, a little raggedy on the end, - [Jim] The Seine River notwithstanding (laughs).

- the Seine River, no, no, but there were glitches but I thought the opening was wonderful, I thought the games were wonderful, and it was so refreshing to see this international group come together and be relatively supportive.

I mean, the Americans did well, but beyond that, I think it's important to see sportsmanship and the global nature of this.

It was just refreshing.

- Well, the other thing, too, is to see people in the stands, - Yeah.

- and you remember, Tokyo, it got delayed, right, and to see people, and I had forgotten, people had to watch from halfway around the world via Zoom it was awful then.

- Yeah, yeah.

No, it was very gratifying, it really was, and.

- Great, yep, and that'll end this weekend.

Folks, thank you for joining us.

We appreciate your time.

Ted, good to see you back, and Maureen, and Ken.

If you don't catch us Friday at seven or Sunday at noon, we archive all of our shows at ripbs.org/lively.

You can catch us on social media, and wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Every week, we have something amazingly new to talk about, even during the doldrums, the dog days of August, so join us back here next week, we'll have the very latest in politics, what's going on in Rhode Island, and anything else that's on our mind, Have a great week.

Join us next week as "A Lively Experiment" continues.

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