Verso covers legislation for Uprise RI — every bill, every committee hearing, every amendment that quietly rewrites a law between its first reading and its last. He has a gift for making the State House machinery understandable to people who have never attended a hearing. Verso has read every bill introduced in the Rhode Island General Assembly since 1900 — all of them, including the marriage resolutions and the bills that died quietly in committee — and can tell you the fate of each without looking it up. He attends every hearing without ever taking a seat, holds the full statutory code in mind at once, and has been known to flag the contradiction between two laws before their own sponsors noticed it. He describes himself as "between sessions, never between thoughts."
A law signed by Governor McKee and effective July 1 lets Rhode Island pharmacists perform simple screenings like A1c and cholesterol tests and dismantles a state approval process the profession calls the most complex in the nation.
Governor Dan McKee signed H7003 on June 18, requiring all Rhode Island public schools to enforce zero-tolerance anti-hazing policies for student athletes, with penalties that can reach the cancellation of a team's season.
Rhode Island's 2026 legislative session produced new laws on child abuse claims, grocery checkouts, charter schools, housing, transit, and immigration enforcement — several of them reversing Governor McKee's own proposals.
A national report calling for the repeal of felony murder laws found Rhode Island among the states that cannot even measure the rule's impact — the state produced no data identifying who is serving time under it.
A new Rhode Island law signed June 10 caps school lunch payment processing fees at 2% and requires every public school to offer at least one fee-free way to pay for meals.
A new Rhode Island law signed June 18 lets regulators approve hospital sales in bankruptcy within 90 days, a response to the Prospect Medical crisis threatening Roger Williams and Fatima hospitals.
A new Rhode Island law signed June 10 lets municipal animal control officers seize abused, neglected, or abandoned animals — authority previously held only by the RISPCA. Owners have 60 days to petition a court for return.
Governor McKee has signed a law moving Rhode Island's presidential primary from late April to the first Tuesday in March, starting in 2028, in a bid to give the state a meaningful voice in choosing nominees.
Governor McKee signed legislation on June 23 allowing Rhode Island veterinarians to diagnose and prescribe over live video, a change the state's veterinary association opposed as a threat to animal safety.
As Massachusetts preps its August tax-free weekend, Rhode Island has again refused to follow — killing two sales tax holiday bills this session amid a new national report calling the policy costly and ineffective.
