Deirdre Walsh on Covering Congress and the STOCK Act

One minute you're chasing lawmakers through the Capitol; the next you're helping with homework or getting someone off to practice. That's a strange intersection of worlds, and it's one Deirdre Walsh and I have both lived in for a long time. We spent years covering Congress while raising kids, and this week's conversation was about what decades covering Washington teaches you—not just about politics, but about people, priorities, and how your perspective changes over time.

Deirdre and I became friends well before either of us had children, but we really grew up covering and working on Capitol Hill as parents. Today she leads a team at NOTUS—News of the United States—after years as a producer and reporter at CNN and NPR. She is exactly the kind of guest I love having on the show: someone who has watched the institution and the business of journalism transform around her, and who still loves the work as much as she did on day one.

"It changed the issues and the stories I would pitch"

I was curious whether becoming a parent changed the way Deirdre covers Congress, and she didn't hesitate. "I think it changed the issues that I or stories I would pitch as I got older and my kid got older," she told me. She pointed to a stretch at NPR when a group of senators was working on a bill about social media protections. "I was in the throes of battling my teenager about these issues," she said, wanting to know what sites her daughter was on and who was reaching out to her. "I learned a lot about Discord which I didn't know anything about before I had a teenager." What was happening at her kitchen table became a policy story she thought others would relate to.

I feel the same way about the work I do. So much of how we communicate is shaped by what's affecting us at the time. We look at the same institution through different lenses depending on where we are in our own lives—and that's true of life generally, not just journalism.

"Capitol Hill is the best beat by far"

When Deirdre started as a CNN producer around 2006, the team was small—a House producer, a Senate producer, a couple of on-air reporters—and she quickly learned she had to do it all. "I learned that playing as a team was the way to succeed and break news," she said, describing a genuine partnership with the on-air reporters she worked with, the kind who would give you a shout-out when a scoop was yours. "Not all on-air Capitol Hill reporters are like that," she noted. "I felt lucky."

The job itself has changed enormously. There were far fewer reporters on the Hill when she started; now there are digital reporters, broadcasters, newsletter writers, podcasters, and platforms that do all of it at once. "If you're reporting on Capitol Hill, the best way to success is to really think of yourself as a multi-platform reporter," she said, "because the audience is different on different platforms." Still, for all the change, her verdict on the beat hasn't budged: "Capitol Hill is the best beat by far. You have amazing access to newsmakers." You can walk down from the third-floor press galleries into the speaker's hallway and ask a question directly—access most of the press corps shares equally if they hustle to find lawmakers in the hallways.

The collegiality that COVID revealed

One thing that has always stood out to me about the Capitol Hill press corps is how it moves together. There's an exclusive, who's-got-it-first energy, but there's also a ton of collaboration. Deirdre agreed, and COVID crystallized it. Because the Hill—unlike the White House—doesn't have a dedicated pool covering it around the clock, reporters improvised. "During COVID there was an informal pool that was created for reporters that felt comfortable coming to the Hill," she said, while others who couldn't be there transcribed press conferences remotely or helped circulate material. "It was just life-saving."

At NPR at the time, she remembers colleagues who were new moms and didn't feel safe coming in. Deirdre, with an older, vaccinated kid, was up there a bit more than others. The ethic was simple: "If you were there, you helped contribute to the reporting; if you weren't, you helped support those who were up there who did." To her, it was "a testament to that kind of collegiality that's pretty much always been there on the Hill." I couldn't agree more—when I was in the speaker's office, reporters would come up into the communications office to check in on what was unfolding. That give-and-take is real.

The humanity behind the headlines

I asked Deirdre what quality in the members she covers has stayed consistent. "You sort of learn the people that are willing to talk and trust you," she said. "You have to build relationships." There has always been a group of members who, "no matter what time, what phase of my career… were the sort of trusted voices that would not spin you." Those people are harder to find now—"it's a pretty polarized place and with the margin so thin, especially in the House these days"—but she believes they still exist. The fighting she can't romanticize; it's always been there. What's changed is that "the fighting has gone way more public with social media," where it "can be really personal," which she finds an odd way for a lawmaker to operate. Her instinct is to stay out of those fights and talk to people one-on-one.

What would surprise people outside Washington? Some members are friends with people you'd never suspect, and some work quietly on things that get no coverage. She once met a spouse at an off-the-record event who chaired the Congressional Spouses Club and was leading a cancer-prevention initiative—Lisa McGovern, Jim McGovern's wife, working alongside Shelley Moore Capito's husband. Deirdre turned it into a story about research projects and cross-country events, and about relationships built entirely outside of Congress. Then there's the pickleball story: a court in the Dirksen Building where, she reports, Ted Cruz likes to play basketball and Kirsten Gillibrand likes to play tennis, before it gets converted a couple of mornings a week. "It was really fun," she said—and it's the kind of humanity that rarely makes the headlines.

Investing in the next generation—and in a newsroom

Part of what drew Deirdre to NOTUS was its fellowship program. "The fellowship program is just amazing," she said. These are early-career journalists who already have some experience, go through a competitive application process, and then "get jobs for two years with benefits," attend classes, and get sprinkled around the newsroom. She's had two fellows on her team; one just landed a full-time job elsewhere, and a new class is being announced. It sends her back to her own beginnings—giving reporters the same kind of informal training she got, telling them which of the 435 House members and 100 senators are good talkers and which will blow you off. "I want them to be Hill nerds," she said. "I want them to love it as much as I do."

That reinvestment is, to me, one of the few hopeful stories in journalism right now. Deirdre previewed more of it: local reporters covering a contested D.C. mayor's race, sports reporters on the Nationals and "the intersection of power and sports and politics," and coverage of the business of the city itself, not just the government. As someone who moved to Washington to cover Congress and now calls it home, she sees NOTUS building something a little different from the other outlets in town.

The scoop that made Congress change the law

Every journalist dreams of doing work that actually moves the institution. Deirdre has. Around 2012, Congress was debating the STOCK Act—the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act—after a bad run of stories suggesting members were profiting from information gathered on the job. After it passed, a source mentioned that the rules were being applied differently in the House and Senate. "How can that be? They passed the same bill," she remembered thinking. "That sounds like a loophole." It was: one chamber wasn't covering spouses or dependent children, meaning a family member could trade without ever disclosing it. Working with her longtime reporting partner Dana Bash, she confirmed it. "A couple days later I got this phone call," she said—watch the House floor. They "basically closed the loophole and changed the law because of our story." The broader debate over members trading stock is still alive today, but she was there at the very beginning. "You always dream of making Congress do something to react to your reporting."

For my last question, I asked how she balances it all—the career, the family, the mess of it. Her honest answer was that there's no perfect advice, but the lesson from her very first job, as a researcher for Judy Woodruff, has carried her: preparation. "Read up and be ready to know what questions you want to ask… be prepared when you go in and start reporting on a story." Being prepared is how she knows she's done all the work she can. "I can't control what happens next, because this is a crazy news cycle every day, but at least I can know that I've done what I can to get ready for the day—and then you just have to go and adjust along the way." That's good advice for any career.

Key Takeaways

- Becoming a parent reshaped which stories Deirdre pursued — including a social media protection bill she covered while navigating the same issues with her own teenager.

- Capitol Hill's press corps proved unusually collegial during COVID, running an informal reporter pool since the Hill, unlike the White House, has no dedicated press pool of its own.

- Success on today's Capitol Hill beat requires thinking like a multi-platform reporter — digital, broadcast, newsletter and podcast audiences all expect something different.

- Her and Dana Bash's reporting exposed a loophole in the STOCK Act that let lawmakers' spouses and dependents trade without disclosure — Congress closed it directly in response to their story.

- Her core rule for handling an unpredictable news cycle: you can't control what happens next, only how prepared you are before it does.

Find Deirdre Walsh

Deirdre Walsh is a veteran congressional journalist who has covered Capitol Hill since around 2006, with reporting and producing roles at CNN and NPR before joining NOTUS (News of the United States), where she now leads a team covering Congress, the White House, and Washington. You can follow her reporting and her team's work—politics, local coverage, and the business of power—at NOTUS.

The Friday Reporter is hosted by Lisa Camooso Miller. Listen wherever you get your podcasts — and subscribe so you never miss a conversation.