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 Office2011, 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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The Founding Fathers were willing to be edited, it seems, but they did not want it to be easy. So they made the amending process a steep uphill climb, requiring a clear national consensus to succeed.
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Congress has many rules and precedents that are documented on paper. But what about those traditions and folkways that persist unwritten?
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Mitch McConnell's status stems from his post as the Senate majority leader. But few who have held this office have been able to wield it with this kind of result.
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To secure enough votes in 1994, the ban's sponsors in Congress accepted a "sunset provision" — meaning it would last 10 years but need to be reauthorized. Politics in the U.S. changed.
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No president of the United States has ever been removed from office by impeachment. But efforts to impeach presidents date back to the 1840s.
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President Donald Trump speaks at the White House in response to two weekend shootings — one is El Paso, Texas, where a gunman opened fire at a Walmart, The other was in Dayton, Ohio.
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The candidates' preparation level was high for this event in part because the stakes have risen so far, so fast.
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In format and style, the second CNN debate was almost a clone of the first. Once again, the emphasis was on finding points of contention and stoking the tension between candidates.
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President Trump's Sunday tweets, his doubling down and then his attempt to distance himself dominated the political news cycle.
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By repeating that these immigrants are "not ... you," the president defined them as "the other" in stark terms. The battle lines could not be more clear in a conflict nearly as old as America itself.