- 11 out of 14 snow emergencies approved by Trump have been to Republican states.

They're trying to claim, "Oh, we don't wanna make snow an emergency."

They are making snow an emergency.

It's just, it has to be Republican snow.

- We don't have enough money for our vets.

We don't have enough money for our housing systems.

We don't have enough money for healthcare.

So the priorities need to be looked at- - Where is that 15 billion going?

- You know, and that's not a Republican question.

That's not a Democratic question.

That's just a taxpayer question.

(bright music) - And welcome into this episode of "Lively."

I'm Jim Hummel.

We're joined this week by our political contributor, Dr.

Pablo Rodriguez, and former state representative Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung.

- Hi, Jim.

- Rhode Island officials are crying foul after the Trump administration rejected a $19 million request to help with money spent on February's record-breaking blizzard.

It's a submission that has historically been approved by Republican and Democratic administrations, but Governor McKee says the rejection was political.

So Pablo, this did come a bit of a surprise.

And of course, the reporters who dug into it found, wow, 84% of these requests to red states are being approved, only 41 sent to blue states.

Do we think that might be political?

- I mean, it's completely and absolutely obvious that he's using FEMA funds, you know, to reward his friends and to punish his enemies.

And it's interesting because I dug a little bit more into snow emergencies because, you know, this was a snow emergency in Rhode Island.

11 out of 14 snow emergencies approved by Trump have been to Republican states.

So it's not about the snow, like they're trying to claim, "Oh, we don't want to make snow an emergency."

They are making snow an emergency.

It's just, it has to be Republican snow.

- Right, Republican snow.

- Yeah, and it's hard to argue with the numbers, okay, even the most sympathetic character, like, obviously, there seems to be a little bit of a skew here.

And this was a huge storm.

This is the biggest blizzard we've ever seen.

- In history.

- This wasn't a smaller snowstorm that we're asking for some help with.

So, you know, this is a zero-sum game.

And then both sides will play it.

It's being played right now by the Trump administration.

And nobody wins.

Nobody wins when this happens.

And many of the cities and towns that were... Their snow budgets were decimated not just for one year but for two or three, especially here in the urban core.

So it's unfortunate.

I wish, and again, this is always the most utopian thing, when you get in, you've got to govern for both, okay, both sides.

You have Democratic supporters, you have Independent, and you have Republicans.

You can't treat it like this, otherwise we all end up losing, and it's gonna hit those city and town budgets for the next year for sure.

- It's bad politics.

It's bad politics in the sense that there are Republicans that live in those states as well.

- This isn't Rhode Island of 30 years ago.

- Trump took 40%.

- That's correct.

- Absolutely.

- There's a whole red, you know, western part of the state, right?

- And you would, I would think you would win more support if you went above and beyond and became more magnanimous.

We know that that's not normally the trend on this.

But that's how we should see really good leadership flow.

And that's what I'd love to see in the future.

Unfortunately, both sides play this game.

And, you know, there's not enough bad things that Seth Magaziner can say about Trump, and then it comes back the other way.

I would tell both sides just to knock it off.

- You know, it's funny, I was doing talk radio earlier this week on WPRO, and I raised this question.

And there was somebody who's pro-Trump and is conservative and calls it regular.

And he said, "Look, the state should be doing this.

This shouldn't be a federal reimbursement.

It's snow.

It's not a tornado, whatever."

I said, "Well, even if I buy into that, then change the policy."

- That's right.

- Then you could say, "Look, going forward, we're gonna rely on the states to be ready."

You know, I don't agree with the argument, but his whole thing was this is a policy shift.

The problem with the Trump administration is they're just doing it in real time and spitballing as they go.

- Yeah, I have a question about, there was a place in Massachusetts that was approved, a tribe, one of the tribes.

- Is that true?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Oh, I didn't know that.

(Barbara Ann grumbles) - Yeah, and I never understood why they, in the same storm, got approved- - Got approved.

- and yet Massachusetts was not approved.

- And you realize it's just a game instead of about helping people.

And this is why people are so sick of both parties right now and where the majority of people in this country are just saying like, you guys are both behaving badly.

- Yeah, storms have usually been apolitical.

I mean- - Usually.

- You get in right there, and Trump has clearly gutted FEMA.

The larger issue that I wanted to talk about is, right from the get-go, Attorney General Peter Neronha and a cabal of other attorneys general have fought to claw back money that was appropriated by Congress but held back by the administration.

He sent us, and I gave you the information, more than a billion dollars they've gotten back.

They've really been working hard.

- Oh, no, absolutely.

Well, you know, they've been working hard, but also, some of the lawsuits are absolutely stupid.

I mean, there are things that were going to lose in court, you know, prima facie.

- Absolutely.

- You know, and I'm not a lawyer.

- But put the burden on the states- - But put the burden on the states.

- to have to do it, to bust chops.

- It's about cost.

It's about pain, you know?

And this is typical of Trump's behavior, even before he was in politics, where he would just threaten people with litigation.

And he knew that I'm paying lawyers by the, you know, by the hour, you know, so I don't have any problems.

- The taxpayers are paying the lawyers now, right?

- That's right.

That's right.

- It is, and sometimes we see this at the General Assembly.

They'll pass a law, and they say, "Oh, well, that'll get challenged and get thrown out."

"Oh, well, then let them challenge it."

Okay, it happens here locally too.

But nationally, you know, Trump likes the fight.

Even if he knows he's going to lose, he likes raising that issue, and he likes sticking it to the blue states.

What is, we call kind of venue shopping, okay, Republicans do it, when they want their things, they'll file it in a more Republican-friendly state, which usually has more Republican-friendly judges.

Obviously, if a Dem wants a more favorable, you're gonna choose a place like Rhode Island, where we have, you know, federal judges with a more liberal bend.

And that, over time, becomes wearisome.

It's great that they were able to claw back that money.

Some of it was just so obvious that this shouldn't happen anyway.

But it's almost like raising the issue to them means more than actually winning the case at the end of the day.

- And it is interesting, they're picking and choosing, 'cause it'll go up to an appeals court and then up from there.

And in a lot of cases, the administration have lost.

Now, they've won some.

But there's simple things like getting the voter rolls.

The federal government is asking the states to violate federal law.

And they cast the pall over elections, and we have to be worried about integrity.

They're asking the states to break federal law.

- Yeah, completely, and this is something that, you know, on its face, you can see that it is completely partisan, that they're looking to create more distrust in the electoral system by looking at this, at these rolls.

And this has been studied ad nauseum, you know, in terms of election fraud.

How many cases of- - A few aberrations, but nothing that would ever- - A few aberrations.

- flip an election.

- Nothing would flip an election.

- Flip an election, right.

- This is just a waste of time, a waste of money, but it makes for good politics for the faithful.

- It does increase like some grassroots involvement, gets people involved.

And I always like to have more people involved than less, okay, voter apathy drives me crazy, and there's that.

But some of these issues are really meant to gin up the base, and whether or not that's to help drive out, you know, turnout in an election or whatnot, it tends to fall right around that time too.

- I wonder, though, just to wrap this up, I wonder, if the Democrats take over, we'll see what happens in the midterms, whether Trump continues to flood the zone, or whether he's gonna be thinking about other things.

'Cause he keeps losing in court, and there's only so many times you can appeal.

- I would worry that he becomes more emboldened at that point because he'll be the lame duck, last two years.

- He gets irked.

- And there's nothing to lose for him, and that is a dangerous place for him.

- I agree 100%.

There's nothing to lose.

You know, all he wants is the attention.

(laughs) - And it would be slipping away from him at that point.

- And it would be slipping away, exactly.

- Yeah.

- And no better way to get it than to do something- - Absolutely.

- Yeah, of course.

- Crazy.

- Do something crazy.

- Absolutely.

- Okay.

Great.

The effects of President Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill are beginning to filter down to the states, including Rhode Island.

Did the General Assembly do enough this session to help with those cuts to healthcare?

Let's talk to the person who used to sit in the General Assembly.

- Yes, they're trying.

- And is- - They were trying.

- in healthcare, and again, we always wanna let people know, a lot of people see you as a politician, your day job is in healthcare.

- Yes, which is why we're taping on time today.

So I can get back to my work.

- Yeah, exactly, gotta get her off her job.

- Gotta get to work.

- Right?

- That's right.

- Absolutely, so H.R.

1, the Big Beautiful Bill, and the many names of it therefore, is lots of those provisions are starting to come into effect, okay.

Now, there were some good things as far as tax cuts, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime.

There's some better tax credits for seniors.

But Rhode Island is going to be hit significantly this next year with the Medicaid cuts and then cuts to the SNAP program.

SNAP, we call it, some people call it still food stamps, your EBT card, things like that.

So SNAP is one of the most successful programs the state has ever seen, especially when it comes to people with disabilities, children.

You know, the large portion of people on Medicaid are actually children, okay?

People think of it as, oh, we're paying for nursing homes.

That's a small percentage of people.

They tend to have a big financial impact on the program, but that's a small thing there.

We have got to look at this SNAP program as one of the things the General Assembly really could help fix.

So this program, for decades, I don't understand why Rhode Island can't get its act together, but it has a high what they call payment error rate, okay?

- Error rate, right?

- And they overpay.

This has been over a decade.

And we're hoping- - And you get penalized for that, right?

- Enormously.

- Oh, yeah.

- And now those penalties are gonna skyrocket, okay.

They need to get down to a 6% error rate.

They're currently at almost 13%, and they've been much higher.

At this point, it's almost willful.

I mean, you can't be this bad at just simply getting checks out for decades for that.

So the federal government's gonna come hard on them very quickly, and so somebody at that- - And hurt the people who need it most- - Exactly.

- because of government incompetence.

- Completely.

- Right.

- Yeah, if you could not tell which people are hungry, you know, with the technology that we have today, imagine trying to figure out who's working, who's not working, in order to get Medicaid.

You know, the work requirements on H.R.

1 are going to let possibly 25, 30,000 people without coverage in terms of the Medicaid.

The expectation is that the state as a whole is going to receive $333 million less in 2027 as a result of the full implementation of these cuts.

The hospitals are suffering right now, even with everything that we have.

So now they're gonna have another $150 million cut, you know, in terms of emergency aid.

And immigrants on TPS, immigrants that are here with asylum, legal immigrants are going to lose coverage, about 9,000 of them.

The Affordable Care Act, we lost 20% of enrollees in the new- - Because it was too high.

There were no subsidies.

- Too high.

- It's absolutely too high.

Everything is too high.

It's not just for the people in the Affordable Care Act.

It's for regular insurance.

The request for increase this year are absolutely astronomical.

So we have a lot of problems in Rhode Island.

The cost of delivering care is too high.

- Very, yep.

- And the money that we're gonna be receiving from the government is gonna be too low.

- And so those people who go uninsured still need care.

They still show up at the ER door with a heart attack.

They still show up having a stroke.

They get treated, okay, that is- - That's the law.

- Absolutely.

It's the law, and it's just, you know, what we do, it's what we do.

- It's the good thing.

It's a good thing.

- It's what we do.

- But no Memorial Hospital anymore.

- No Memorial Hospital, they- - Fortunately, the Roge and Fatima are still there.

- Are still there.

- But still tenuous, right?

- Tenuous, but they're there, and they can help hold.

Now, what you have to think of is, we cannot replace every federal dollar with a state dollar.

That just doesn't exist, okay, in terms of the revenue here in the state.

So you have to, as the General Assembly, say, what can we fix upstream so we have less expensive care?

Being in the ER is very expensive.

Going to a primary care doctor is much cheaper, quote, unquote, in comparing- - If you can find one.

- If you can find one, so that's, you know, the General Assembly has made some moves over the past few years to try to help stabilize the primary care, you know, the long-term, of course, with the medical school, short term with increasing some of the reimbursement rates and whatnot.

They need to keep focusing there.

If you can fix upstream, I know that we're standing downstream, and the dam's breaking, and we're just getting absolutely poured on.

But if you go upstream, and you fix there, and that's where the General Assembly needs to look at fixing outpatient care, increasing mental health access, increasing, you know, the primary care availability.

It doesn't matter if you have insurance if you have no doctors, okay?

So that's where the General Assembly needs to be next year.

- When they crafted the bill, I think it was politically probably smart, maybe not for, you know, the population, that a lot of these things were gonna take place after the midterm elections, but they're beginning... So you guys are the experts in the medical field.

Are these cuts starting now?

Has it happened already?

Or is the bulk of this gonna be coming next year?

- No, the bulk comes next year, and the real effect is 2027.

That's when the full implementation of the work moves.

- So after the midterms, but still in our fiscal year- - Fiscal year.

- for the state, right.

- We're not matched up.

We're not matched up.

- Of course, the funniest part about all this is that the state that cannot even keep track of the W-2s for their employees, okay, is going to now be re-certifying, you know, 300,000- - Hundred.

- Medicaid recipients every six months, you know, with the technology that can't keep track of W-2s.

- We've always struggled with technology in this state, and it's just, it's going to implode.

- So the General Assembly did do some things.

They're trying to prop up the hospitals a little bit, provide a bit more for uncompensated care, created the medical school, which we've talked about before.

That'll be down the line.

Good moves on their part, not enough?

Is it... I mean, it's never enough.

- It's never enough for it.

- But will it help?

- It will help a little, okay.

So if you didn't see any movement here, I think you would see more providers just get up and cross the border to Seekonk and to Attleborough and things like that.

Because, you know, if you're a young doctor right now, you're not staying where your salary is 60, 70, $80,000 less- - Less, yeah.

- than just going five miles over the border.

And so they're starting to see some movement.

I think John Fernandez at Brown University Health said, all right, like you've gone this far, but we really, we needed 70; we got, what was it, 20 or whatnot, okay?

- You need more.

- So you need more.

And Rhode Island is spending more money than ever, but we don't have enough money for things, which is a real weird paradox to be at.

We don't have enough money for our vets.

We don't have enough money for our housing systems.

We don't have enough money for healthcare.

So the priorities need to be looked at.

- Where is that 15 billion going?

- You know- - That's right.

- That's a really good question to ask, you know, and that's not a Republican question.

That's not a Democratic question.

That's just a taxpayer question, yeah.

- And I think, you know, this situation with the work rules for Medicaid, you know, people have this impression that people on Medicaid are just staying home eating bon bons, when 76% of Medicaid recipients are working today.

Okay, so the greater majority, full-time.

It's just the money is not enough in their salary.

- You bring up a good point.

One, you do need to target the group that's not and tell them to get going so that there's enough money for the others.

- Of course.

- Okay, absolutely.

- But spending millions to figure out who those people are, it just basically takes money away from services.

You know, this bureaucracy is going to cost millions of dollars.

And we don't have enough money today to be able to support the infrastructure that we have.

Imagine having to create a new infrastructure of determining who's working and who's not.

- I'll push back.

I do think it's a worthwhile investment.

But what I think we need to say is, for those people who really need it, and doing right, we do, we have this cliff.

So as soon as you make just $1 too much, then you lose a ton of services and whatnot.

I'd like to see a more gradual kind of weaning off of the Medicaid towards a more self-suffiency.

There's a lot of cliffs that as soon as you go right over it, you lose a lot.

And so it disincentivizes work.

- Yeah, no doubt about it, but this, only 10 months, that's the average time people spend on Medicaid.

- The average.

- So these are people that are working, lose coverage, get in and get out again.

10 months is the average stay on Medicaid.

- You know, I wonder, they were worried about, as the... It's been six months now since the beginning of the year that the Affordable Care Act subsidies were gonna go away.

A lot of people were gonna see spikes.

So we've seen the numbers go down.

I wonder, if the Democrats take the House and the Senate, does that change?

Can they roll that back?

- Yeah, sure.

Sure.

- Or is that baked in?

- Of course, no.

- Yeah, I mean- - That's not baked in.

- So start passing subsidies.

Clearly, they'd have to find the money to do it, but- - Well, they'll find it in defense.

(laughs) - But wouldn't you think they'd be campaigning on that, for people who were like- - If they were gonna do it, yeah, and I don't know, you know, crystal ball, midterms and whatnot, I bet we have a split government.

It's kind of where it's looking right- - You think the Senate stays Republican?

- Senate stays Republican while, you know, the Dems have the House.

- And then nothing gets done for the next two years.

- Exactly, for two years and whatnot.

- Right, it's more gridlocked.

- And the Democrats are gonna have the progressive socialists and the conservative Democrats fighting with each other as well to decide- - The Republican, yeah.

- which is gonna be the best health plan, Medicare for all or just basically expanding Obamacare.

- What about locally?

It's no surprise, again, General Assembly seats, the filing deadline was a couple of weeks ago.

Signatures have to be in on Friday.

So many uncontested seats, does that surprise you?

Or maybe not, because why in the world would you wanna be in the General Assembly these days?

- It's really nasty right now.

It's really, you know, to run in politics right now- - [Jim] More than when you were there?

- Oh, it keeps climbing.

And I think that the paralysis, and when people think that nothing is getting done, they're like, "I'm not gonna waste my time."

They'll still complain about it, and they should.

But we need to have a more active government.

If we know there's great people out there who are sitting on the sidelines because they can't afford, you know, maybe they can't leave their job to go up there, you know, the structure of the General Assembly is very difficult.

You have to be able to kind of pull out of your full-time job to work part-time.

Massachusetts has a full-time legislature.

People have thought about that before, where that becomes more of your life, and you can devote more to it.

But, you know, people right now, the social media impact and the impact it has on your families, Allan and I have been in it for a very long time.

Pretty much everything that could possibly be made up about us has been made up about us.

So we're used to it, but it does affect us sometimes too.

And it affects our families.

You know, my mom actually had to go on blood pressure pills 'cause she was just so frustrated by campaigning, I mean, this is a family thing.

- Did you tell her to put the phone down?

- I told her to turn off the TV, man.

Turn off the TV, yeah.

- We need a full-time legislature.

I mean, this is clear.

The conflicts of interest that occur in the legislature right now- - That's a good point.

- are just absolutely astronomical.

Bill Irons now looks like a Boy Scout compared to what we have now.

- But the only way that works is if you say you can't have a... I mean, what if you're a lawyer?

You're probably not gonna go be a full-time legislator if you're a lawyer, but the question is, the thought is, if you're a full-time legislator, then you're not gonna have your side gig, but can you really legally prevent somebody from doing that if that's their full-time job?

- No.

- And the conflicts of interest that you're talking about, it's not... I'm not convinced the full-time legislator is, legislature is going to preclude what you're talking about.

- It's gonna give 'em less time.

(laughs) - There's only 24 hours- - There's only 24 hours a day.

- in the day, right?

- There's a lot, and people do se that, you know, and the different stories that have come out, House and Senate side.

People get frustrated when they think the game is rigged.

They don't have a lot of trust in government right now.

And there's different ways to try to work on that.

But people, I sense there's a lot of just throwing their hands up and, like, I don't wanna be part of that right now.

- But I agree with you in terms of the social media.

The social media is what- - Can be so nasty.

- has created the change here.

- The cancer, yeah.

- You know, you can't even discredit people on social media that says lies about you.

- Oh, oh, overkill.

- You know, so it's like, what are you gonna do?

Are you gonna just continue giving it air by complaining about it?

Or do you just have to just sit and, you know, accept it.

- And take it.

- And take it, it's very hard.

It's very hard for somebody with children, especially when your kids- - Oh, it's so hard.

- are getting, you know, all these kinds of attacks on your parents.

- Kids are off limits, you have to... If that rule starts getting violated, we're off- - Yeah, but then, but the kids see what they're talking about with their parents.

- The kids, exactly.

That's what I'm saying.

- I mean, even if they're not talking about the kids.

- Yeah, absolutely.

The one last thing I wanna talk about before we get to outrages and kudos, this is the ongoing story we've been talking about.

Joe Shekarchi is applying to be for the Supreme Court.

The ethics commission said, we're gonna investigate on the revolving door.

He goes to court, and lo and behold, who is appointed to handle the case but Richard Licht.

Now, if those of you out there might not know, Richard Licht had his own revolving door question.

So I mean, I don't know whether this is a little joke, inside joke going on in there.

I don't think this really reinforces the public's faith that this is gonna be- - No.

It's a small family up there, we'll say that, but they're- - It is.

- Yeah, right.

So I've talked to some people in the House over the past week and that.

I think this, if you're Joe Shekarchi right now, this process is taking too long, okay, for him.

His- - Because they're on a timetable to choose the Supreme Court.

It has to be.

- They gotta get it on, right?

- They gotta get it on.

That's gonna end up being now around the time of the primary.

Now, Joe Shekarchi's stick was, you know, the Democratic Party endorsement.

Really, he could've controlled that one way or the other.

That went to nobody, so now, all right, so where is the juice now?

If you go all the way around September, say Dan McKee loses that primary, I could see him trying to stick it to Joe, you know, and being like, you know, you were diddling around in the primary here, and you know, we could take it out on you.

I don't know, even if Joe wins the legal argument, I wonder if this is just taking too long, and you know, none of the other candidates are being vetted like this in the public type of thing.

- Well, you know, court, Richard Licht said, "I'm setting a hearing down for July 20th," and I'm sure Shekarchi's hair's on fire, like, no, we need to go yesterday.

- Let's get it done.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, no.

- Right?

- I mean, and I think the problem here is that the constitution is a little bit ambiguous.

I mean, it's just one word ambiguous in terms of whether- - We need to fix that word.

- That needs to be fixed, or this, or the legislature needs to pass a law.

- Yeah, correct, yeah.

- And because that can fix it too.

- Absolutely.

- But they're not gonna pass a law that is going to prevent them from, you know, jumping out.

- Doing this too.

- Why should the larger... A lot of the audience in "Lively" is plugged in.

But for people who are just, like, tuning in and thinking, why should I care about this?

- (sighs) So I mean, I had to abide by the revolving door law and everything my year out too.

I think it's good in the sense that, you know, it helps to diminish somebody's influence, you know, and maybe unduly one way or not.

You know, there are rules.

Everybody should follow them.

The higher you get up, the more you should respect them.

The question is, this rule, as you say, there's a word that feels slightly ambiguous, and we should fix that word.

- Why should people care about this?

- Listen, I was a member of the initial judicial nominating commission.

- Oh, I didn't know that.

- And went through that process, you know, for a few- - Was that after '94?

- Yeah.

- Yeah?

- And it was hard.

- What was that like?

- We had 12 vacancies.

- Wow.

(group laughing) - So it was- - That's a lot of vetting.

- Oh my god, we spent an entire summer just reading through resumes.

- [Jim] Wow.

- So process was designed to be as apolitical as possible.

But the members of the commission were, you know, appointed by authorities.

- You can't take politics out of it completely.

- You cannot take politics out of it- - We're lying to you, if you think- - out of it completely.

But I think it is absolutely important for people to have faith in the system.

And when you see, you know, what's going on right now- - [Jim] The "I know a guy," right?

- Exactly, the "I know a guy."

It just reinforces that vision, and it creates people not running for office and people not going out to vote.

- I know you're not a lawyer, but you've been in the system, and you've been an observer.

Erin Lynch Prata, you know, when she was, four years ago, when she was a Supreme Court nominee, the staff said, "No, this is a violation," and the commission ignored it.

Does that precedent work in Shekarchi's favor?

or could the ethics commission say that was a different commission, different time?

- No, of course it can.

Of course, there's a precedent already, and that's why I'm saying that we need to either fix the constitution, or we have to pass a new law.

Because you cannot give that authority to a commission to be able to just basically ignore the law or ignore, you know, the recommendation of the professionals.

- And we say that knowing that, okay, that just gets him to the list, okay?

And then McKee is the eventual- - And there are people like Laureen D'Ambra, I mean, who would be great.

I mean, she's been in the system for... I'm not advocating for her, but I mean- - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- She's got judicial chops that would be good on the Supreme Court.

- Supreme Court.

- So whatever.

- And there will be- - Well, would you- - Oh, well, there will be openings.

- Yes, there will be.

- More than just this one.

Yeah.

- Yeah, because I mean, we have two justices who are older in age.

We're going to put you two on a commission to change that one word.

It'll be the easiest commission.

You'll be- - You'll have it in Spanish, right?

- You need 15 minutes and a pizza, and you'll be all set.

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

- All right, outrage or kudo this week?

- Oh, kudo, I always try to go with kudos.

Kudos, I know you're not a huge soccer fan, but I think the World Cup has been wonderful for this country in a time... The people who have traveled here have been wonderful, the Tartan Army and how much fun we've had in Providence.

I think it's been a great... Providence did a good job with the FanZone downtown.

I think, you know, Providence and Scotland, they were having a great time.

There was no drama.

Nobody was getting arrested.

- [Jim] No crime.

- Everybody was just having fun.

They donated to our local hospitals.

I think, wonderful kudos to a well-run experience here in Providence.

And I hope that starts to help out some like the Rhode Island Football Club in Pawtucket and help carry over for soccer.

- Soccer's not my thing, but I enjoyed watching the fans enjoy it.

I mean, I'm thinking, these people are, exactly.

- Cape Verde, Cape Verde, Democratic Republic- - People going crazy.

- of Congo.

- It was a huge deal, yes.

- Yes, yes, yes.

- It was awesome.

- Yeah, you know what I think?

Soccer's just a lot of running around, and then it's nil-nil.

- You and my husband, yeah, yeah.

- Right?

What do you got?

- Well, I always have an outrage.

I'm an outrageous person.

So a new study, 56% increase in maternal mortality in Texas after the passing of the law that made abortion illegal.

- Shock.

- Worse, they refused to evaluate the death between 2022 and 2023, because we don't have time to go into detail on the causes of those deaths, because we know what the causes of those deaths are.

It was the unavailability of prompt medical care when they needed abortions.

- It doesn't mean that people aren't gonna get abortions, right?

- Oh, I know, exactly.

- That's right, exactly.

And in this case, there were women that were just having miscarriages that died because their doctors did not want to face a hundred years in prison.

- Awful.

- Yeah, awful.

- Yeah.

- Awful.

- Do you think that's gonna change, if the midterms?

- Oh, there's no doubt about it.

The midterms can change absolutely everything.

And who knows, maybe we'll have- - But in Texas?

- a bigger Supreme Court.

- Yeah, well, I don't know.

Well, no.

(laughs) I don't, that's all- - Don't break the system.

Win the system.

- That's an aftershow.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- All right.

- Unfortunately, that is all the time we have.

Pablo, Barbara Ann, thank you.

- Always a pleasure.

- Appreciate it, and thank you for joining us.

Be sure and check us out on Facebook, X, Instagram, and on the Ocean State Media YouTube channel, and once again, wherever you get your favorite podcast.

We'll see you next time, right here on "Lively."

(bright music) - [Announcer] "Lively" is generously supported in part by John Hazen White's "Lookout."