- [Jim] This week on "A Lively Experiment," demolition of the Washington Bridge comes to an abrupt halt.

But why?

And the latest in the race for president.

- [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 in Rhode Island PBS.

- [Jim] Joining us on the panel, Joe Larisa, attorney and former chief of staff to former governor Lincoln Almond, Boston Globe Reporter and Rhode Island PBS weekly contributor Steph Machado, and Democratic strategist Rob Horowitz.

Hello and welcome.

I'm Jim Hummel.

The nearly year-long saga of the doomed Washington Bridge took another turn this week when the Rhode Island Department of Transportation unexpectedly told demolition crews to stop working.

Officials say they need to preserve evidence for the legal case against 13 companies they say contributed to the deterioration of the westbound lanes.

Steph, a lot of us are scratching our heads like, did we not discuss this before the demolition began?

- Oh, they absolutely did.

They sent letters to the defendants, gave them a deadline to come inspect the bridge before it got knocked down.

So this was very much thought of in advance.

That was back when the case was being run by the outside lawyers.

It has now been taken over by the Attorney General.

He has not answered my calls, emails, inquiries since this decision was made on Tuesday.

But there's clearly some sort of gaping hole in the story here.

Some of the companies did inspect the bridge before the demolition started, some of the defendants did.

My assumption is that someone asked, "Hey, can you pause this so we can make sure that we're preserving the evidence?"

It's just that no one is giving us any explanation about what prompted this change in plans.

- Joe.

- I think Stephanie's right.

I think the legal intricacies on this is that some of the defendants wanted more time.

And rather than risk what's called spoliation of evidence and having the state's case dismissed or curtailed because the defendants didn't have enough time, they just decided to give 'em more time.

And on the issue of this secrecy, there's been a lot of questions about where's the DOT actions against its own people for their negligence in any of this.

And why haven't we seen that?

Well, there's a good reason, because you'd basically be making the defendant's case for them.

In this state, a lot of people don't know, we have what's called true comparative negligence.

So if DOT was 90% responsible for this mess, I'm not saying they are, but if they were, in many states, you couldn't recover anything because they'd be more than half responsible.

In Rhode Island, we'd recover 10% of the damages.

So if this is a $100 million case, and it turns out DOT was majorly involved in this mess, we'd recover $10 million.

So that's why we don't see any of the actions against DOT employees because you'd be making the case.

Similar to those who follow the Karen Read case, the lead investigator had major problems.

He wasn't disciplined until after the case ended.

So that's probably what will happen here, and it'll remain secret what DOT's involvement of this is.

- Can you define spoliation?

- No way.

No way.

Above my pay grade.

But I'd say that, and Jill makes some very apt points, but that's the problem with the whole way this is being approached is we're putting the legal stuff ahead of the public's right to know.

And still, in my view, much more important to get to the bottom of, are there systemic problems with the Department of Transportation, given the sheer amount of money involved, and much more important to be open and disclosive with the public.

And if we recover a little less money in a $14 billion budget, that's the price you pay.

These kinds of cases, when it's an opioid case or a tobacco case that don't involve the direct functioning of state government, they make a lot of sense.

In this, I'm not saying they shouldn't sue, but I think we are putting the recovery of money, and also the search for a scapegoat, candidly, in the governor's interest ahead of the public interest here and the public's right to know.

And this is another thing where, given that we don't have a contractor to actually do the job after the demolition, this delay isn't gonna matter much.

But it's another case where you can't get straight answers outta anybody.

And what it does is it doesn't just hurt the credibility around the bridge.

It has really hurt the credibility of the McKee Administration broadly and the Attorney General, respectfully, who's I think done a very good job needs to be careful to not get folded into all this.

- Yeah, I mean if you had told me that nine months after the bridge shutdown, we would still have absolutely zero information about whose fault it is and what exactly, we don't even know what happened, we don't even know what caused it, I wouldn't have believed you.

So the legal case has really caused the state to believe that they can't release any information about what happened.

And you know, hopefully they get a lot of money out of it because they really are putting the legal case ahead of the public's right to know.

- Joe, you look at it with an attorney's lens, but you've been in and outta politics for years, state government, local government.

And I think going off Rob's point, people are frustrated because, in effect, this gives the politicians cover.

'Cause they can say, "I can't talk about this because we have a legal case going."

We want some responsibility.

We want to know.

And so I wonder from a political lens how you see this playing out over the last nine months.

- Well, when I was chief of staff to the governor, we would largely reject the "we can't talk about it because it's in litigation."

And we talk about it all the time.

The usual reason is is you don't wanna box yourself into a position in public before you have to disclose it to the court.

This is a little bit different and it's a delicate balance, because disclosing what really happened here in the state's theory of the case would be admitting liability.

Let's say DOD was 50% at fault.

You don't wanna get out there and help the defendant say, "Oh look, this person did, this inspection went wrong," and have the press release the defendant's defense to the case.

Everybody will know about this.

It's just not gonna happen until the trial.

Because, as Rob says, they're putting the legal case, which is not just a legal case.

It's tens of millions of dollars of public money that could come back that will be jeopardized if it's disclosed the wrongdoing that we have on the files.

They know already what DOT did, what the defendants did.

They know, they've already done it, but they're not gonna disclose that until the trial.

- Right, and my argument would be then, if that's the price of these kinds of lawsuits, we shouldn't do these kinds of lawsuits.

Because I think recovering, you know, say we recover $50 million, and by the way, after we pay Savage and Wistow whatever their fee's still gonna be.

- 16 and- - 16 and a half.

- Yeah, and everything else.

- Two thirds.

The public policy costs here, both in terms of trust and I'm skeptical, candidly.

I think Joe's right from a, and I defer completely on the legal point.

I think some of this is also excuse.

But if we put that ahead of the public interest and also if getting to any systemic issues that there may be, I'm not saying there are.

My guess is there probably are 'cause they're in any big bureaucracy, at DOT, which could arguably be be more cost savings if we can figure those out.

We've got lots of other roads and bridges here.

Rhode Island's got one of the worst roads and bridges in the country, they've gotten somewhat better.

We should get to the bottom of that.

That seems to me that's job one recovering a bit of money, easy for me to say, but we're recovering a bit of money seems to me a much lower priority here.

- Yeah, especially when you have a $14 billion budget.

And every time over the last nine months, particularly since the suit was filed over the last month, when we try to get answers, it's a deflection of well we really can't talk about that.

- Oh yeah, Director Alviti won't do interviews- - And he used to be the most accessible guy in the market.

- Yes, I never had a problem getting an interview with him before the bridge closure.

Now I cannot get an interview with him.

And the DOT, when you ask them questions they say, "Oh, well you'll have to ask the legal team."

The legal team won't answer, especially since the AG took over, I would say.

And you know, I asked a question of, "Okay, well have any defendants come to inspect the bridge since you stopped doing demo on Tuesday?"

And they said, "Well, you'll have to ask the legal team."

And I'm like, "I'm asking you, you, the DOT whether you escorted anyone to look at the bridge."

That should be a yes-or-no question.

And I think they should be able to answer that.

- I agree.

And to support your point, I keep saying that the truth will come out at trial.

Guess what, folks?

It's probably not gonna be a trial.

- Right.

- This is gonna settle for 30 to 50, and then nothing will come out.

And then a year or two later, we'll see all the evidence come out and you'll have to get- - Well, like the station nightclub fire.

That was one of the reasons there was a settlement.

So people were frustrated that we didn't get- - How would it take if there were a trial?

Like, are we talking two years?

I mean... - It could be as quick as a year or as long as two.

- [Stephanie] There's so much discovery, right, in a case like this?

- Yeah.

And it'll probably follow the 38 Studios model.

It'll be a lot of discovery, lot of back and forth.

And then Max will announce with Savage and the AG big settlements of the defendants, and there may be one or two left.

- And there's so many defendants.

So it could be like 13 different settlements, maybe one goes to trial, something like that.

- Yeah, and one will never go to trial.

- Right, right.

- So they'll try to get the big settlements first and then go after the little guys later and say, "You're really gonna try this case by yourselves when these guys have settled?"

- So it's gonna be a lengthy process.

- And we may not get answers for a long time.

- Yeah, so one last quick point, and it's just a sign of, and it's separate but similar issue.

They were supposed to do some public hearings or at least public outreach to the community around when they were gonna schedule the demolition.

It's written into the Aetna contract.

I think it's Aetna.

If I got the name wrong, I apologize.

And they don't do it, and it's crickets.

- Those poor people in Fox Point.

- I know!

- They got a wake up call at two in the morning, right?

- And it's crickets, like, no one can explain why it didn't happen.

And there's no real public comment.

DOT's not on top of that.

Maybe every decision they made about it was right, but since they promised public input, they provide no public input.

- Well here's a big question for you reporters.

In the contract as we read, Aetna gets a bonus or gets a certain dollar amount for getting it done by this date and they built in wiggle room.

Well now that the state is preventing them from doing it, how is that provision going to work?

- Yeah, and I think that's probably why companies were skeptical of the solicitation to build the bridge as well because it had penalties for not getting- - If they found stuff in the- - in time, and they really don't know.

There's so many unknowns, and there's so many things that the contractor doesn't control, such as the whole demo getting shut down, that I think signing, agreeing to pay penalties based on timeline is risky.

- I would suspect though, if it's a few days or a week, then they just move the clock.

And then they say you still get the bonus.

I mean, if this goes on for a long time, and I don't get the feeling that it will, you think it's a- - No, I mean I think my first question was, "Oh my God, are they halting the demolition until the legal case is over?"

(all laughing) - Was that a bad dream you had?

- Yes, and we call them newsmares.

(all laughing) I know, I don't think it's gonna be, I don't think the demo is halted until the legal case is over.

Director Alviti said on the radio, quote, "Soon it will restart."

And they have restarted preparing for demolition, but they haven't actually restarted tearing things down.

We haven't been given, I don't know if it's days or weeks before they resume, but I don't think it's going to be an extended period of time.

- All right, we'll be talking about this for a while.

All right, I received this in the mail this week.

This is your handy dandy Voter Information Handbook from the Secretary of State's office.

Apparently you guys not have not received it, but it'll be coming soon.

- No.

- One of the issues, we've been talking about this a lot on "Lively," in addition to a bunch of bond issues, we're gonna be asked whether we want to have a constitutional convention once every 10 years.

How fortuitous that we have Mr. Larisa here, because not only does he know about the constitutional convention, he sat on the legislative preparatory commission that issued a report on it.

So Joe, tell us about that and where you are in this process.

- Well, Jim, the constitution requires that every 10 years the question of a constitutional convention go on the ballot if one hasn't already been called, and this is year 10.

The last one was 2014, and it failed by about a 55 to 45 vote.

Back then, common cause, former Chief Justice Flanders, and a group was put together to push for a constitutional convention for reform.

Nobody's pushing for it now.

Instead you've got groups against it.

My Democratic friends taught me a long time ago, "You either run unopposed or run scared."

And since there's an opposition on this question either side, they run scared, and they're spending tens of thousands of dollars to try to stop a convention.

But since there's no pushback on that, I don't think there's going to be a convention at all.

I will say that one of the ways other states deal with this, we have either the legislature acts and puts an amendment on the ballot and the people vote it up or down, or you have a full blown constitutional convention which can rewrite the whole constitution or just a little portion of it, which the people vote for, and then they vote for their representatives for the convention.

Between those two is voter initiative.

So if the people see legislature's not acting, they want one issue addressed, they can get petitions.

And that's the way the abortion ballot questions have gotten on the ballot.

We don't have that here.

- Ohio, Kansas.

- Yeah, we don't have that here.

So you either have a constitutional convention or you trust the legislature.

And the legislature oftentimes there's a bunch of issues out there, right to a minimum education- - Inspector General.

- Inspector General that they're not gonna act on.

And so you don't have a choice to go get signatures to put it on for a vote.

You've gotta go the constitutional convention route, which scares the ACLU and the labor leaders because it's an open convention.

- Well, and they also think now with social media and dark money and, you know, all of a sudden something's gonna hijack.

But ultimately we should know, and we've made this point, the voters get to vote on it, ultimately.

It's not like the constitutional convention's gonna decide.

Then the next year it would go on the ballot.

- Yeah, and I tend to agree with that, which is why I don't have strong feelings.

Joe clearly does, but I think it would be a good idea.

We haven't had one since '86.

I do think there's an outside chance that we'll pass for just two reasons.

One is it's presidential year so you can get high turnout.

And two, it's a yes, not a no.

So Joe's probably right.

- Right, bond, bond, bond, yes, yes, yes.

- [Rob] And you're gonna get a lot of less- - That's a good point.

- Not gonna just get the usual suspects voting.

You can get a very, very big turnout.

Which is probably why the people that are opposed to it are putting such energy into it, 'cause they probably realize that as well.

- Yeah, it's a good point.

Ballot questions tend to pass.

I have not seen people campaigning for this ballot question.

It's not something that I'm getting mailers about.

I'm not seeing commercials about it on TV.

So unless the vote yes crew gets really active- - But there's no organized- - If the vote no people are really organized and start getting active, then I could see it getting voted down pretty easy.

- Yeah, what about that, Joe?

Rob makes a great point.

It's one of five questions.

I think five, you have four bonds, which always, I mean, I think maybe one bond issue, the Heritage Museum years ago didn't pass, everything goes.

If you're going in there, check, check, check, check, check.

What about that?

- I'm neutral on whether we should have one or not.

But I think the opposition is gonna spend a six-figure amount, and you're gonna see the commercials still early.

You're gonna see the ads against, and you don't have a common cause, which is neutral also, coming out and saying we need to address this.

So, I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't think that, without an organized group in favor, and it failed last time with an organized group in favor, because labor and the ACLU and special interest killed it.

And the dark money concern, check the dark money.

You've got Soros on one side, you've got the Koch brothers on the, it's pretty even.

- [Jim] They balance each other out.

- So if somebody came in with a right to work initiative, you'd have the other side, abortion, you'd have the other side.

So they kind of balance each other out.

But the bottom line is the people get to vote.

They get to vote for the convention they're against, then they get to vote for the candidates in the district, which won't be sitting members of the legislature.

Then they get to vote on each amendment.

So it's the same way the constitution was passed, yeah.

- And that's some, full disclosure, he's a client of mine.

But that's Senator Zurier's point, 'cause he's one of one of the few Democrats I think that's come out for- - Oh, I thought you said George Soros was a client of yours.

(panelists laugh) I just wanna make sure we're clear on that.

- I'd have a much nicer suit if that was the case.

- (laughs) There you go.

- You know.

But that's his point, is the point Joe is making, is there's safeguards in the process, and the public's gonna ultimately get to vote up or down.

And there are things like the line item veto.

Rhode Island's won only five states that doesn't have it, that probably aren't gonna ever happen 'cause the legislature's not gonna voluntarily give up some power.

I agree with you, the likelihood is it's not gonna pass, but I think it's got a better chance to pass than people may think.

- Maybe 10 years ago.

And the other thing, Steph, that we've talked about here is the one thing, you know, we had somebody who opposed this who said, "You gotta go through the legislative process and work the process."

The one thing that most Rhode Islanders want that's never gonna get through, because Joe Shekarchi doesn't want it, is Inspector General.

- Oh I was gonna say the constitutional right to an education.

- Well that also.

- Which he'd also oppose it.

- Yeah.

- He won't be the speaker forever.

So if he's the, I don't know if he's the only impediment to the Inspector General.

I haven't done any reporting on that, but things change.

- Okay, we are now just a little over six weeks out, it's unbelievable, before we go to the polls, not only to vote on the constitutional convention, but to decide our next president.

Now, the last time, I had forgotten you two were on together.

The last time, Rob, you were on, you were strongly for President Biden to drop out of the race.

And apparently the White House was watching "Lively Experiment."

- They watch closely.

- As they do each week.

- Yeah.

- As they do each week.

- Piped in.

- They called me right after.

- We have some Rhode Islanders down there, so Mike Donald- - They changed those Donlands.

You know, we were all on the phone together, no.

But it's all worked out very well, I think for the country, A, and B for as, you know, as a occasionally practicing Democrat, for the Democratic party.

Went for a race where President Biden was likely to lose.

Can never tell 'cause do Donald Trump was unpopular, still is unpopular, unfavorable is about 53, 54%, but likely to lose to a race where, today, it's gonna be very close.

You'd rather be Kamala Harris, and you'd rather be than Joe Biden.

And Kamala Harris has distinguished herself as a really good candidate.

And the country now has a real choice.

- What do you think, Joe?

- To segue from another topic, Jim, this race is about as close as the car next to you on the Washington Bridge.

(all laugh) And I think it's gonna come down to that at the end.

Tim Russert famously said, "Florida, Florida, Florida."

And was right in the Bush-Gore election.

This one is Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania.

Almost inevitable, whoever wins Pennsylvania is gonna be the next president of the United States.

Kamala and Trump are spending enormous amounts of time there with good reason.

And the sad part is for democracy is, if that is true, we're not gonna have a winner on election night.

Pennsylvania's gonna be razor thin.

It's gonna be really close in the- - [Jim] And they don't count very quickly, do they?

- They don't count quickly.

I remember in Philadelphia last election, poll watchers wanted to see inside what they were doing, and they put blinds up, fueled a bunch of conspiracy theories.

We can't have that this time.

I hope Pennsylvania's on the ball, and gonna be really transparent 'cause we're probably not gonna have a winner on election night.

Still too early to tell that, but we really need to have everybody feel comfortable with how this is going.

- Harris has some pass without Pennsylvania, but Joe is generally correct, that's the most important state.

Wouldn't be surprised to see her win either Georgia or North Carolina or both.

But she may not.

It's close.

I would say this, the reason why we had conspiracy theories running around the last election wasn't that one poll watcher in Pennsylvania, it was Donald Trump who spent three or four months trying to overturn the results of a free and fair elections.

Gonna do the exact same thing this time, no matter what happens in Pennsylvania if he loses.

'Cause he has, there's only two options, is, "I win or it means it was rigged."

Those are the two options he knows.

We're gonna be in this movie afterwards, probably even if Harris wins relatively convincingly.

- Yeah, I saw some poll that said 46% of the Republicans, in wherever they were polling, said that unless Trump wins, it's gonna be a rigged election.

So we have totally gone off the rails.

- Yeah, and I gotta say, thank your poll worker because they are the most, I mean, they're being attacked all over the country.

I think it's a really tough job to have right now.

Some of them are volunteers, I think some of them are paid.

But it really is, I think, a difficult time to be an election worker because of all of the, you know, people that have already prejudged that something nefarious is going on.

And I think Joe makes a good point about we might not have a result on election night.

I think with the more and more people vote by mail, the less and less common it will be to have a result on election night if the election is close, because it takes more time to count those ballots.

- You know, with the whole Mark Robinson thing, he's a lieutenant governor running for governor of North Carolina, big CNN thing about a scandal and whether that's gonna hurt in North Carolina.

I was watching the local broadcast, WRAL in Raleigh for that.

But they had a sidebar story on election workers, like you had talked about.

They're having to bring in bulletproof glass, they have panic buttons.

And it just, I was really sad because it's hard enough to get good election workers to begin with.

What about North Carolina, hasn't gone blue since 2008?

And I know Pennsylvania has a lot more electoral college, but if Harris can take North Carolina and Georgia, how does that change the dynamic?

- Well, Rob's right, that's the other path.

She's opened up north Carolina and Georgia.

So the Trump team knows this.

So the three states that everybody's concentrating on are those three.

If Trump can cut her off of two of those states, he's gonna win.

Pennsylvania, she's gotta take the other two.

So, and Jim, I'd like to add that the election issue on election night, I don't think is limited to Republicans.

I think we're gonna see Trump Derangement Syndrome times 10 more than we did in the last election Trump won.

Democrats are not gonna accept the result either.

We're at a scary point in the country where both sides are very wary.

- Hillary Clinton conceded.

Hillary Clinton conceded.

- Hillary Clinton still contest the results of- - She didn't.

- No.

- She didn't.

- Here's the difference.

Here's the difference.

Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump that night, conceded, showed up at the inaugural.

Yeah, she got asked a couple questions about Russian interference, which, by the way, did happen.

I don't think it would've changed the outcome of the elections.

And she had a comment about it.

She doesn't contest the results of that election any day.

And by the way, Trump Derangement Syndrome is simply a way to say, if you dislike Donald Trump with some good reason, because as far as I know, he's the only president in American history who attempt to overthrow an election by any means necessary, didn't show up at the inaugural, and has said this election's gonna be rigged from day one.

So I don't think that's derangement syndrome.

I think that's a legitimate look if somebody, that's why you have Dick Cheney, by the way, from your party endorsing Kamala Harris, who would've never done, Liz Lynne Cheney.

That's why you had a hundred former Reagan officials.

This isn't, the Trump Derangement System is another way of saying if you're anti-Trump, there's something wrong with you.

- [Jim] Last word before we go to- - Oh, I'm not gonna get into a debate over that, but there's plenty of Democrats who've left the party because they consider the socialist policies of the Kamala Harris and what she's gonna do with illegals and inflation and the other issues just too much to bear.

So I think it goes on both sides.

- All right, let's go to outrageous and/or kudos.

Mr. Horowitz, let's begin with you this week.

- Speaking of Donald Trump and JD Vance, my outrage of the week, let me just announce this first.

America, your cats and dogs are safe.

They have advanced this lie about, which is by the way was the same slur that was made about Italians in the 1920s, that Haitians who are here legally, by the way, in Springfield, Ohio, are eating cats and dogs.

They kept knowing it.

It's thoroughly debunked.

The congressman says it, the Republican governor says it, the Republican mayor of the town says it.

They keep doing it.

We've had bomb threats in Springfield.

We've had schools closed, we've had hospitals locked down.

JD Vance is still on the case.

He's supposed to represent Ohio.

It's outrageous.

It's his way of othering immigrants.

And it's an example why both of these folks are manifestly unfit to serve.

- And apparently one of the cats that was missing was found in a basement, I heard.

It lived in somebody's basement.

So just want to get that on the record.

Joe, welcome.

This is your first time on "Lively."

It's hard to believe, given your record, we haven't had you on, but so happy to have you here.

We give your official welcome.

And do you have an outrage or a kudo this week?

- I have both, but I'll go with a be nice and go with the kudos with the Democrats and Republicans working together on two fronts.

One is to give both candidates presidential-level security details now, not just candidate level.

And I will say only one of the candidates has been a victim of attempted assassination on multiple times.

So when I say it goes both ways in that way, it's only going one way.

And they've got together, they agreed on that, and they're both together on the outrage of Homeland Security withholding documents on what happened with their first assassination attempts in President Trump.

They wanna get to the bottom of it.

We know there was bad stuff that happened there.

We know there were leadership failures, systemic possibly that have gotta be fixed.

And people like Senator Blumenthal and others are joining Republicans' outrage.

They want information and both parties are joining together to get it, and I think that's a good thing.

- Yeah, I think the problem with that is particularly with the Secret Service.

Everybody says we need more troops.

You know, troops, colloquially.

- Officers.

- Officers, right.

Agents.

- [Stephanie] Agents.

- But you're trying to fix a long-term systemic problem in the moment.

And that's always difficult to do.

What do you have?

- I would say my outrage this week is just stonewalling coming from every government agency, from the DOT, Governor's Office, the Attorney General, the Providence Public Schools with the security breach that we didn't get a chance to talk to.

But the level in which these government agencies hire PR people who then completely stonewall- - Pretty well paid.

- Very well paid, who then stonewall the press, and when I say the press, I really mean the public because I'm asking questions on behalf of the public.

This week in particular was really on high display.

- And they're being enabled by their bosses.

- Yes.

- Because I know years ago when you were with the Governor's Office, it would be, "Hey, you need to talk to this reporter and get the word from the top down."

So if that was happening and the governor or the AG or the superintendent or the commissioner disagreed with that, that would change, wouldn't it?

- Yeah, now the word is, "Well, my boss won't let me tell you."

Right?

They're not being allowed.

I don't blame the PR professionals, but they're apparently not being allowed to release information that the public deserves to know.

- Like that company that was hired to put in the weight management on the Washington Bridge.

They said, "We would love to tell you how it goes, but the DOT's telling us that we can't talk about it."

It's outrageous, and we're spending two and a half million dollars on it.

- Mm-hm.

- So, all right, folks.

That is all the time we have.

We appreciate your spending time with us.

Joe, nice to have you, hope you can come back.

- Thank you.

- And Rob and Steph, great to see you.

- Thank you.

- If you don't catch us Friday at 7:00 or Sunday at noon, we archive all of our shows at ripbs.org/lively.

You can find us all over social media and wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

So take us along with you wherever you go.

Come back here next week, whatever news is happening, we'll have a full recap and analysis next week as "A Lively Experiment" continues.

Have a great weekend.

(lively music) - [Presenter] "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 in Rhode Island PBS.