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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Far-flung billionaires played a big role in the Virginia gubernatorial race. San Francisco environmentalist Tom Steyer and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent more than $2 million each to help elect Democrat Terry McAuliffe as governor.
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Tax-exempt social welfare groups have become the vehicle of choice for big political contributions.
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The reversal of a conservation law court decision to protect Michigan's Au Sable River is an unintended outcome from large donations by anonymous funders funneled through tax-exempt organizations. Known as 501(c)(4)s, these groups are becoming a vehicle of choice for big donors to hide large political donations. -
Tens of millions of dollars are pouring into Virginia in hopes of swaying the governor's election there. If Democrat Terry McAuliffe wins, it could be a strong indicator that the once red, now purple state is shifting into the blue column.
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When Congress voted to end the shutdown, the measure also included $2 billion for a troubled lock and dam project on the Ohio River. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a supporter of the project, has been attacked by hard-line conservatives who call it pork-barrel spending, but he says he didn't put it in the bill. -
A sales tax on medical devices was passed to help pay for the Affordable Care Act. Manufacturers have been waging a persistent campaign to get rid of it. Now it's one of the bargaining chips being tossed around in the budget crisis on Capitol Hill.
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The congressional hearings about the IRS's handling of Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status raise the question of why and how tax-exempt groups engage in politics in the first place.
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On Wednesday, Lois Lerner, the IRS official overseeing the tax-exempt organizations office, refused to testify during a hearing on Capitol Hill, and was attacked by some Republicans on the House committee. Her brief appearance was the beginning of a five-hour session marked by angry outbursts and allegations of political motives.
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The House Ways and Means Committee became the first oversight panel in Congress to weigh in on the IRS tax-exempt group controversy on Friday morning.
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The Justice Department is investigating the IRS's flagging of grass-roots conservative groups that sought nonprofit status. But some lawmakers want the debate extended to look at the well-financed activities of existing 501(c)(4) groups that spent millions in the 2012 elections.
