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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The conservative group that has seen some corporate donors flee because of its involvement in pushing for voter ID and stand-your-ground gun laws, has new troubles. Common Cause has filed a complaint with the IRS that the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC, violated the limits of its charity tax status.
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Seven major companies, including Coca-Cola and McDonald's, have dropped their memberships in the American Legislative Exchange Council, which has advocated stringent voter-identification and "stand your ground" laws. But ALEC says it's being targeted because of its free-enterprise agenda, and that its allies are rallying.
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Two of America's best-known companies, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, have dropped their memberships in the American Legislative Exchange Council, a low-profile conservative organization behind the national proliferation of "stand your ground" gun laws. -
Libertarians say it's like watching dear friends in an ugly divorce, as the billionaire Koch brothers try to take control of the highly regarded Cato Institute. The head of Cato says the Kochs are out to politicize the think tank.
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Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney hopes he can firm up his front-runner status in the 10 Super Tuesday nominating contests. But that status, an NPR analysis shows, has so far involved his campaign and a pro-Romney superPAC burying the opposition with negative messages. -
The most powerful superPAC in this election may be one that hasn't visibly flexed its muscles yet. But the man who runs American Crossroads and its nonprofit sibling Crossroads GPS says the groups have a clear goal: Stop President Obama's agenda and replace him as president.
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Senate Democrats are calling for a probe into superPAC fundraising. The announcement comes a day after release of the new political action committees' fourth-quarter 2011 fundraising, and after Republican Mitt Romney's Florida primary victory — which was fueled in part by superPAC ads. -
The pro-Gingrich Winning Our Future received the contribution from Sheldon Adelson. He'd already given the legal limit to Gingrich's campaign, but under the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, and other recent changes in the law, he can give as much as he wants to a SuperPAC like Winning Our Future.
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Jackie Wilson was a singer's singer — admired by everyone from Elvis Presley to Van Morrison to Michael Jackson. His awe-inspiring falsetto powered 15 Top 10 R&B hits. But his stage show could make your jaw drop. -
The former president's foundation ended years of secrecy by naming its donors. The information dump came about to stave off problems that could sink Hillary Clinton's Cabinet job. The list included enough big money and enough big names to catch the attention of conservatives, journalists and bloggers.
