
Ron Elving
Ron Elving is Senior Editor and Correspondent on the Washington Desk for NPR News, where he is frequently heard as a news analyst and writes regularly for NPR.org.
He is also a professorial lecturer and Executive in Residence in the School of Public Affairs at American University, where he has also taught in the School of Communication. In 2016, he was honored with the University Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching in an Adjunct Appointment. He has also taught at George Mason and Georgetown.
He was previously the political editor for USA Today and for Congressional Quarterly. He has been published by the Brookings Institution and the American Political Science Association. He has contributed chapters on Obama and the media and on the media role in Congress to the academic studies Obama in Office 2011, and Rivals for Power, 2013. Ron's earlier book, Conflict and Compromise: How Congress Makes the Law, was published by Simon & Schuster and is also a Touchstone paperback.
During his tenure as manager of NPR's Washington desk from 1999 to 2014, the desk's reporters were awarded every major recognition available in radio journalism, including the Dirksen Award for Congressional Reporting and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In 2008, the American Political Science Association awarded NPR the Carey McWilliams Award "in recognition of a major contribution to the understanding of political science."
Ron came to Washington in 1984 as a Congressional Fellow with the American Political Science Association and worked for two years as a staff member in the House and Senate. Previously, he had been state capital bureau chief for The Milwaukee Journal.
He received his bachelor's degree from Stanford University and master's degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of California – Berkeley.
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It should also be noted that making a show of presidential ambition early but then backing off has been an excellent way to get on the national ticket, albeit in the role of running mate.
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The memory of the speakership fights leading up to the Civil War remind us that the consequences of dysfunction in the national government affect us all.
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Both Kevin McCarthy and the nominee for speaker a century ago represented a party establishment regarded with hostility by a potent faction of the party. They became the embodiment of its grievances.
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The concept and practice of the U.S. government deciding what to recognize as a genocide is profoundly political, both in contemporary and historical cases.
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If America has another civil war, it is more likely to be a war within the states than between them. Citizens of any state of any size, red or blue, may not have to go far to find a fight.
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Increasing the debt ceiling used to be procedurally easy — and hardly newsworthy. That changed when control of Congress flipped to the GOP in 1994 and Newt Gingrich became House Speaker.
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Republicans are resisting the formation of an independent commission to look into the Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol. A key exchange from the 9/11 Commission investigation helps explain why.
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While the rancor facing our democracy did not begin with Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death — or even with the Trump presidency — having these events coincide has deepened the shadows on the road ahead.
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When the Supreme Court ruled this week on "faithless electors," Alexander Hamilton's name appeared five times. But the story is a little more complicated than that told by the Broadway show.
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As COVID-19 takes over the political conversation, Americans' ambivalence about science — and "experts" in general — is likely to come to the forefront.