Patience was thin and the Rhode Island Senate calendar heavy on the afternoon of June 12 as lawmakers sprinted toward the end of the 2025 legislative session.
Time was running out to change the fate of a proposed assault weapons ban, the biggest policy question hanging over the Rhode Island State House.
So Sen. Pam Lauria made it quick. Reading prepared remarks from her phone, she asked to move the bill to a different committee, prompting an outcry from Senate Republicans. Senate President Valarie Lawson quickly interjected, commanding the lawmakers to let Lauria continue.
Undeterred, Lauria finished and looked up and let her request sink in. The chamber fell into a second-long, stunned silence. Then, protests and procedural questions poured in.
The Senate Committee on Judiciary, assigned to vet the controversial gun safety policy, appeared unlikely to advance the legislation. Rerouting the bill to the Senate Committee on Finance would have guaranteed a floor vote, where it was likely to pass.
Lawson ruled Lauria’s procedural request “out of order.” The Senate narrowly upheld Lawson’s conclusion by a 20-17 vote.
For Lauria, it was about gun safety. But it was also a bold move that forced her colleagues to confront the implicit expectations of loyalty above lawmaking. In just 30 seconds, she had recast the conversation and her own reputation — from quiet workhorse to change agent.
“It’s never been about relationships for me, as much as about the policy,” the Barrington Democrat said in a recent interview. “At the end of the day, I am the one who has to live with myself.”
It’s never been about relationships for me, as much as about the policy. At the end of the day, I am the one that has to live with myself.
Changing which committee first vets and advances legislation to the full chamber is nothing new on Smith Hill. In 2019, the Senate rerouted the Reproductive Privacy Act, which codified federal abortion protections in state law, from its Judiciary Committee to the Committee on Health and Human Services, which subsequently forwarded it to the full chamber for passage. In 2022, after a proposed ban on high-capacity firearm magazines stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee under a tied vote, Senate leaders advanced the House version of the legislation directly to the floor, where it was approved.
“Procedures are important, the process is important, but also, the reality is, we make that up,” said Sen. Alana DiMario, a Narragansett Democrat, who voted against Lawson’s out-of-order ruling. “If 19 people in that room agree on something, that makes it real.”
Lawson said she ruled Lauria out of order because the Judiciary Committee had already heard hours of impassioned testimony on the bill.
“Senator Lauria’s motion violated Senate Rules and the legislative process, which is at the heart of our work in the Senate,” Lawson said in an email.
The Senate’s adopted rules, however, suggest Lauria’s request was allowed. The chamber’s procedural guidebook lets senators object to the committee assignment of any House bill received during the previous legislative day.
“Upon objection being made, the presiding officer shall assign the transmittal to the committee requested by the senator making the objection,” the rules state.
Five days later, the Judiciary Committee ultimately advanced an amended bill banning the sale — but not the possession — of assault-style weapons. Proponents defended the watered-down version, noting the legislation still prohibited the transfer of firearms, thus reducing the number of assault weapons in circulation in Rhode Island.
Lauria reluctantly voted for the scaled-back version of the legislation on the final night of the legislative session, signed into law by Gov. Dan McKee on June 26.
Lawson and Lauria became friends after Lauria won state office in 2022. The two East Bay lawmakers texted often, Lauria said. They shared meals in their free time and hotel rooms at legislative conferences. Lauria canvassed for Lawson ahead of the 2024 Democratic primary. Lawson ascended to the president position after the death of former Senate President Dominick Ruggerio in April. She donated $300 to Lauria’s campaign on June 8, according to the most recent campaign finance statements filed with the Rhode Island Board of Elections.
Four days later, Lauria asked to move the assault weapons ban to a different committee. The two have not spoken since.
A lawmaker who wears a white coat by day
Lauria’s commitment to safer gun laws is rooted in her experience as a trauma nurse at Rhode Island Hospital. Now a nurse practitioner for Brown University Health’s primary care office in East Greenwich, she loved the frenzy, the technicalities of wound care, the chance to help. But the memories of treating patients with gunshot wounds linger decades later.
As a freshman senator, Lauria sponsored legislation mandating safe storage of firearms, shepherding the contested proposal through two years of late-night committee hearings and behind-the-scenes negotiations until it became law in 2024.
“Statistically speaking, the safe storage bill will save more lives than the assault weapons bill will,” Lauria said. “But that’s what terrifies people, assault weapons. It’s truly terrorism, and also enormously lethal. We don’t allow cars on the road that can go 150 miles an hour.”
Lauria, who grew up in East Providence, earned both her bachelor’s degree and a master’s of science to be a nurse practitioner at the University of Rhode Island.
Her political career almost ended after a single campaign season. She lost a bid for a seat on the Barrington School Committee in 2016 after vigorously campaigning against a proposal to start the school day earlier. Her position was informed by her professional and personal experience as a mom trying to get her then-teenagers to get out of bed earlier in the morning.
She lost by 50 votes, finishing fourth in a four-way race for the three open seats on the nonpartisan school board.
Lauria turned down an offer to chair the town Democratic Committee three times before she said yes.
“Why would it be me?” she said of her reluctance. “I hadn’t been on the committee before. I had no idea what the job would entail. And, I think like a lot of women, you need a few times before you say ‘yes.’”
After five years of helping recruit and train candidates for local office and galvanizing voters as head of the Barrington Democratic Town Committee, Lauria still never saw herself on Smith Hill. When Rhode Island Sen. Cindy Coyne opted not to seek a third term in 2022 and asked Lauria to run in her place for the seat representing parts of Barrington and East Providence, she declined.
Lauria’s husband, David, a music teacher at Mount Hope High School, urged her to reconsider.
“You have to do this,” David recalled telling his wife. “This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.”
Lauria agreed to try. She succeeded, trouncing a primary opponent and a general election competitor.
Procedures are important, the process is important, but also, the reality is, we make that up. If 19 people in that room agree on something, that makes it real.
Months into her first term, in April 2023, longtime senator and former majority whip Maryellen Goodwin died of cancer. Goodwin’s death began a period of grief and instability that would plague the upper chamber for the next three years as Ruggerio’s health also worsened. Ruggerio died on April 21.
The part-time position as state lawmaker consumed Lauria’s evenings and weekends throughout the six-month session. Lauria used three hours of vacation each week, working without a lunch break, to accommodate the Senate’s biweekly afternoon sessions with her day job.
Many of the bills Laura has sponsored or advocated for directly reflect her experiences in the exam room, like a 2023 bill signed into law requiring insurance providers to cover the cost of EpiPen refills.
“I don’t know how she did it, to be honest,” said Dr. Kristen Hubbard, lead physician and Lauria’s longtime colleague at Brown University Health. “You would see her run from here to there each week, and she was always 100% focused when she was at our office, and 100% focused when she was there. She’s tough.”
A growing distance
Lauria voted “present” at the November 2024 caucus to elect new Senate leaders. Lawson, recently tapped by Ruggerio to be his second in command, voted for Ruggerio to serve another term as president.
That was when Lauria felt something shift in their friendship.
Six months later, after Ruggerio’s death, Lauria voted for Sen. Ryan Pearson, not Lawson, for president. When senators were asked to vote on the chamber floor later that day, Lauria voted for Lawson because she knew Pearson could not win.
They continued to meet to talk through legislative solutions to critical health care issues like primary care reimbursements and the abrupt closure of Anchor Medical Associates.
“I don’t think punishment is Val’s MO,” Lauria said.”I’ve always been given the opportunity to be heard, and I hope that continues.”
She maintains faith in Lawson as a leader.
“I think that she could, she will, be a good president,” Lauria said. “It’s really always just been about what I thought was best for the chamber.”
Lawson declined to comment on her personal relationship with Lauria, but stressed her respect for Lauria’s advice and expertise, especially on health care.
DiMario, a friend and confidante to Lauria throughout the chaotic 2025 session, said Rhode Island politics could use more perspectives like Lauria’s. DiMario was unsurprised by Lauria’s stand on the assault weapons ban.
“I think we share an ability to deal with uncomfortable things head-on,” DiMario said. “Honestly, I think our chamber and the General Assembly overall would benefit from more people approaching the work like she does.”
You wouldn’t know it from watching the Capitol TV recording of Lauria calmly delivering her June 12 speech, but she admits her heart was racing and her mouth was dry.
Looking back more than one month later, Lauria said she doesn’t regret her procedural request and would have made it regardless of who was Senate president. But, she acknowledged she might have opted to give Lawson a heads up beforehand.
“I wasn’t trying to make it difficult for her,” Lauria said. “I was actually trying to make it easy for her. In hindsight, would I go back and tell her about it? Maybe. I don’t know what would have happened. I can’t say what would have happened.”
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
