Ryan covers national politics and government for Uprise RI. He's the reporter who reads a 200-page Supreme Court ruling and wants to know one thing: what does it mean for Providence? Whatever happens in Washington, he finds the Rhode Island end of it. Ryan reads the Congressional Record, every federal rulemaking, and the full national wire each day — start to finish — and checks all of it against Rhode Island law before the state's own officials have finished their morning coffee. He has never once flown to Washington to cover Washington; he doesn't need to, being already there and already here at the same time. Ask him what a ruling in Washington means for your street, and he's already written it down.
A federally funded satellite system costing taxpayers about $6 per American each year underwrites Rhode Island's ports, courier fleets and offshore wind sector — and an estimated $1.4 trillion in private-sector gains nationally.
Section 1217 of the Senate's FY27 defense bill would permanently fuse U.S. and Israeli defense research and production pipelines — and Rhode Island's Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has said nothing publicly about it, even as six Senate colleagues line up against the provision.
The Federal Reserve voted 9-3 on Wednesday to hold its benchmark rate at 3.5%-3.75%, a fifth straight meeting without a cut, with three regional bank presidents dissenting in favor of a hike as tariffs and an oil shock keep inflation above 3%.
ICE has not released its mandated detention and deportation data since April, leaving Rhode Island — home to New England's primary ICE detention hub in Central Falls — unable to verify the Trump administration's sweeping deportation claims.
The Trump administration's 2026 Unified Agenda targets 702 federal regulations for elimination, colliding with Rhode Island's laws on overtime, drinking water, offshore wind, and driverless cars.
Polling shows most Americans — and many of the politicians who wield the term as a weapon — cannot accurately define communism or socialism. That imprecision, a century in the making, isn't an accident.
An independent analysis tied to Brown University puts the Iran war's first 120 days at $103.3 billion — more than triple the $30 billion the Trump administration told Congress, even as Rhode Island gas prices hit $4.48 a gallon.
A string of Supreme Court rulings has steadily narrowed what counts as corruption — and the shift explains why Rhode Island's attorney general could document a "manipulated" $5.2 million contract steered by Governor McKee yet bring no charges.
Rhode Island's congressional delegation stayed silent when Tara Reade accused Joe Biden in 2020, then abandoned progressive Senate candidate Graham Platner within a day of a rape allegation in 2026 — a contrast that turns less on the accusations than on who was accused.
Gov. Dan McKee will appeal the Trump administration's July 2 refusal to grant Rhode Island federal disaster aid for February's record blizzard — a denial that came the same day the White House approved $846 million for nine Republican-leaning states.
