Peter Overby
Peter Overby has covered Washington power, money, and influence since a foresighted NPR editor created the beat in 1994.
Overby has covered scandals involving House Speaker Newt Gingrich, President Bill Clinton, lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others. He tracked the rise of campaign finance regulation as Congress passed campaign finance reform laws, and the rise of deregulation as Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions rolled those laws back.
During President Trump's first year in office, Overby was on a team of NPR journalists covering conflicts of interest sparked by the Trump family business. He did some of the early investigations of dark money, dissecting a money network that influenced a Michigan judicial election in 2013, and — working with the Center for Investigative Reporting — surfacing below-the-radar attack groups in the 2008 presidential election.
In 2009, Overby co-reported Dollar Politics, a multimedia series on lawmakers, lobbyists and money as the Senate debated the Affordable Care Act. The series received an award for excellence from the Capitol Hill-based Radio and Television Correspondents Association. Earlier, he won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for his coverage of the 2000 elections and 2001 Senate debate on campaign finance reform.
Prior to NPR, Overby was an editor/reporter for Common Cause Magazine, where he shared an Investigative Reporters and Editors award. He worked on daily newspapers for 10 years, and has freelanced for publications ranging from Utne Reader and the Congressional Quarterly Guide To Congress to the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.
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More than a dozen states have ballot measures aimed at putting stricter rules on candidates and officeholders. One activist says even Watergate didn't ignite such interest in enacting ethics rules.
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If Democrats win control of the House, they'll have the power to investigate alleged misconduct of the Trump administration. They have a long list of misdeeds they want to look into.
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Democrats plan to launch oversight investigations of the Trump administration — a congressional duty that House Republicans resisted.
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The president has been personally involved with the future of the FBI's Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters building, and Democrats say it is an abuse of power intended to help his hotel up the street.
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Three House and Senate committees have "the unqualified right" to request taxpayers' returns from the IRS. There's no provision exempting the president.
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One party celebrates its fundraising, while the other starts culling out the weakest candidates.
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After Kavanaugh called attacks on him "a calculated and orchestrated political hit," the advertising war escalated.
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In the 67 Republican-held House districts that Democrats have the best chance of winning this fall, male Democratic candidates raised an average of about $500,000 more than women candidates.
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Groups such as the NRA and Chamber of Commerce must disclose who paid for campaign ads they run this fall. A new report says such groups pumped about $600 million into elections between 2010 and 2016.
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Well-made videos can go viral and boost a candidate's popularity, and now they can bring in the cash for a viable campaign.