STORY OF THE WEEK: The Rhode Island Senate remains the more fractious of Smith Hill’s two legislative chambers as lawmakers kicked off a new year on Tuesday afternoon. Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, 76, has the votes to maintain his position, and there are a lot of well wishes as he seeks to bounce back from recent health challenges that kept him away from the State House. But even if the timing remains unclear, a leadership transition will inevitably happen at some point in the future. Ruggerio moved to round out his leadership team last week by selecting Sen. David Tikoian (D-Smithfield) as the new Senate majority whip, the number three position in the chamber. Tikoian will take over the role held by Sen. Val Lawson (D-East Providence), who was expected to formally win election Tuesday as the majority leader, or number two, in the Senate. The outgoing majority leader, Sen. Ryan Pearson (D-Cumberland), had been Ruggerio’s heir-apparent until a falling out last year. During an interview on Political Roundtable, Pearson defended his decision to press his leadership challenge against Ruggerio in November -- even with fallout such as the expected loss of committee chairmanships for his supporters -- and he said he intends to seek the presidency again in the future. “I think it’s important for us to make a stand and also clearly delineate the issues that are important for us to work on, which we did,” Pearson said. Asked whether his concerns about the functioning of the Senate will be put to rest in 2025, the Cumberland Democrat said the proof will be in the pudding, although he said communications have so far come from John Fleming, Ruggerio’s chief of staff, with the president remaining silent on some key questions: “He’s not communicated to the senators at this point, if we’re going to meet one day a week like we had been. We had a lot of complaints about that. Or if we were going to be meeting more often, who the chairs are going to be, what his priorities are, the policies, none of that has been communicated to the members of the Senate.” (Asked for comment, Ruggerio spokesman Greg Pare pointed to the president’s remarks from the November caucus, when Ruggerio pledged in part to work in partnership with all the members of the chamber “as a strong and unified Senate.”)

BUDGET BLUES: The roughly $330 million deficit facing Rhode Island for the fiscal year beginning July 1 -- one of the top issues greeting returning lawmakers -- is manageable in the context of a $14 billion budget. But the return to perennial annual deficits, after a string of surpluses in recent years, impedes the state’s ability to make strategic investments.

MARK THE DATE: Gov. Dan McKee’s State of the State address is on for 7 p.m. on Jan. 14 -- and typically the governor’s budget proposal emerges later in the week. One thing to watch with the approach of an election year is how McKee tries to expand his support with overtures to the progressive element within the Democratic Party.

PARTY POLITICS: Joseph R. Paolino Jr., the former Providence mayor and ambassador to Malta who serves as Rhode Island’s National Democratic Committeeman, is running to become national vice chairman of the Democratic Party. Paolino told me he’s frustrated that the identity of other candidates is not yet public; he plans to take part in a series of upcoming forums (including a virtual one on Jan. 11, and an in-person version, in Detroit, on Jan. 16), with the vote scheduled in Maryland for Feb. 1. Paolino said he’s running for the vice chairmanship because he thinks Democrats need to return their focus on kitchen table issues and to being more centrist. “A lot of us are disappointed in the election. We really didn’t have a message other than ‘Trump’s bad,’” he said. “The party has gone too woke … I want for us to get back to representing working people.” Paolino said he is not endorsing a candidate for DNC chair, but he likes former Gov. Gina Raimondo as the Democrats’ candidate for 2028, arguing that she can bring some of the outsider appeal that Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton used to win the presidency.

NEW YEAR, SAME PROBLEM: Speaking last week on Paolino’s ABC6 public-affairs show, House Speaker Joe Shekarchi said he thinks it’s more likely the new westbound Washington Bridge will not be complete until 2028.

CYBER-BREACH: Gov. McKee revealed earlier this week that cyber-criminals followed through on a threat to release the personal data of an unknown number of Rhode Islanders. Deloitte -- the company held responsible by the state for the breach -- did not respond to a request for comment. The Rhode Island Current’s Alexander Castro spoke with Connor Goodwolf, an Ohio-based cybersecurity expert who said he was examining the leaked data and fowarding his findings to the FBI. Castro also noted the hackers’ criticism of Deloitte’s putative defenses: “The Brain Cipher ransom post alleges that Deloitte had virtually none of the requisite security measures in place, with ‘NONE’ written in red text alongside a list of necessities like software and operating system updates. The group first came to prominence with an attack on an Indonesian government data center, and security experts believe the group operates out of the country. Brain Cipher alleges that the default administrative account for the RIBridgessystem was secured with an easily cracked password. Plugging the alleged eight-character password — achieved by typing the first two number or letter keys moving from top to bottom on the left side of a keyboard — into an online password security tool produces an estimate of how long it would take to crack: 1.39 seconds.”

PRESIDENT CARTER: Scott Wolf, the director of Grow Smart Rhode Island, is among those remembering Jimmy Carter after his death this week at age 100. Wolf said he got to meet Carter and his wife Rosalyn and to work indirectly with them when he was director of political research at the Democratic National Committee during the first two years of the Carter administration and as first research director for the Carter-Mondale re-election effort. “From both my encounters with him and my observations of him, he was very much a man with a steel fist underneath a velvet glove -- tenacious, relentless, highly intellectually curious, disciplined, spiritual and deeply committed to  tolerance and what in Hebrew we call ‘Tikuun Olam’ -- repair of the world,” Wolf said via email. “At a time when cynicism and mistrust of politicians and government is pervasive, President Carter is an inspiring Northstar we can all try to emulate, and from whom we can secure inspiration and resolve to uphold the dignity of all human beings and help them reach their full potential.”

NIXON AND THE NAVY: Carter’s election in 1976 was a response to the Watergate scandal and the presidency of Richard M. Nixon. Both men served in the U.S. Navy -- and Nixon even got aviation training in Rhode Island. But that didn’t stop Nixon in 1973 from relocating the Atlantic destroyer fleet from Newport to Virginia -- a move that dealt a debilitating economic blow to the Ocean State.

FAREWELL SALUTE: Christopher Dodd, a Providence College alum and former Senate colleague and confidante of President Biden, was among 20 people receiving the Presidential Citizens Medal this week. Dodd is also the uncle of Helena Foulkes, who has been raising money for another run for governor.

ANTI-SOCIAL: In the first few months after Elon Musk took over Twitter, it didn’t seem like a lot had changed. But I can tell you chapter and verse about how frustrating X has become, after being unable to regain access this week to the account I established way back in 2009. Along the way, my following had grown to more than 20,000 people (and bots). Now, it’s back to square one with a new account on X, since that seemed like the only sensible course forward. You can find it here.

PAWTUCKET: One of the big local stories to watch in 2025 is Hasbro’s decision whether it chooses to move its longstanding headquarters out of Rhode Island. Alexa Gagosz has details on the effort being made by elected officials to keep the company in the Ocean State. If Hasbro leaves Pawtucket, it will be another rough blow for the city after losing the PawSox and Memorial Hospital. But Pawtucket continues to be a source of additional housing, with mill conversions fueling growth in the area near the train station on the border with Central Falls. On Monday, Grebien and other officials took part in a groundbreaking for a project known as Dexter Street Commons, which is expected to add more than 150 units and some retail.

CLOSING TIME: President Biden took office as the guy who ousted Donald Trump. Biden will soon leave the White House as the POTUS who preceded Trump’s return. While assessing the legacy of any president takes time, here are some of the questions that reporters would have liked to ask Biden about his presidency.

MOB MYSTIQUE: A long time ago, when I wound up on jury duty and solicited a series of guest dispatches, WPRI-TV’s Tim White wrote an item for this column on his favorite organized crime movies. The “Ghost Dog” edition is no longer online, but my memory recalls White either omitting or downgrading The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic, since, White said, it was unrealistic to depict an old-school boss like Vito Corleone as shunning the narcotics trade. For a different take, consider how an episode in Season 6 of The Sopranos, depicts the Mob expanding into the lucrative pharmaceutical business. As the authoritative SopranosAutopsy sitenotes, “There is some irony in the fact that Tony had earlier barred Corrado and Richie Aprile from dealing cocaine on their garbage routes (because it was too risky despite the profits, the same reason Vito Corleone resisted trafficking hard drugs in The Godfather) but he now jumps at the opportunity to sell FDA-approved, legal drugs manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry.  During the decade in which The Sopranos first aired, there were beginning to be contentious debates and concerns about Big Pharma’s lobbying power, pricing strategies, marketing practices, and influence over doctors and healthcare professionals.”  

RETAIL BUSINESS: I tend to procrastinate with my holiday shopping, so CVS came in handy when I needed to acquire stocking-stuffers for my wife on the day before Christmas. There were a variety of things that fit the bill, making for easy shopping. But Axios reports that fewer impulse purchases are among the challenges facing CVS and other big drugstore chains: “CVS and Walgreens long boosted their margins by selling tempting products on the way to the pharmacy in back. That model is no longer working … Both brands report declining retail sales, with Walgreens citing a ‘challenging’ retail environment — which reads like code for locked-up items and ‘Amazon.’ ”

KICKER: A new year means new babies. The Rhode Island Department of Health reports that the preliminary most popular names for Rhody newborns in 2024 include Charlotte, Mia, Amelia, Emma and Olivia, for girls, and Liam, Lucas, Noah, Theodore and Luca, for boys. Welcome, one and all!