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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Adelson built a casino empire that stretched from Las Vegas to Singapore. His huge donations to conservative causes in the U.S. and Israel helped shape politics in both countries. -
With control of the House, Democrats now can fulfill promises to investigate wrongdoing in the Trump administration, and overhaul political money and ethics laws.
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A group of high-profile lobbyists and lawyers who worked for Ukraine's former pro-Russian government maybe under investigation for violating a law requiring lobbyists for foreign governments to register with the U.S. government.
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The aide said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt asked for help procuring a mattress while he was apartment hunting. Federal ethics rules prohibit staff from doing private work for their superiors. -
Selling access to power is an old business in politics, but leaked documents related to Michael Cohen, President Trump's personal lawyer, show just how lucrative and expansive that business can be.
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The presidential candidates and superPACS have raised a combined total of around $1 billion, but only three candidates have talked about repairing the campaign finance system, new analysis shows. -
The presidential candidates and superPACS have raised a combined total of around $1 billion, but only three candidates have talked about repairing the campaign finance system, new analysis shows.
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A U.S. Senate seat is up for grabs in Iowa, and the GOP has opened 11 field offices statewide. But there's also a new team working the state, the Virginia-based group Americans for Prosperity.
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Business groups are pleased with the Republican takeover of Congress. They say they were especially influential this year in electing pro-business candidates. Labor unions and their Democratic allies are, of course, not happy about election results. NPR's Peter Overby reports. (4:00)
