Deirdre Walsh
Deirdre Walsh is the congress editor for NPR's Washington Desk.
Based in Washington, DC, Walsh manages a team of reporters covering Capitol Hill and political campaigns.
Before joining NPR in 2018, Walsh worked as a senior congressional producer at CNN. In her nearly 18-year career there, she was an off-air reporter and a key contributor to the network's newsgathering efforts, filing stories for CNN.com and producing pieces that aired on domestic and international networks. Prior to covering Capitol Hill, Walsh served as a producer for Judy Woodruff's Inside Politics.
Walsh was elected in August 2018 as the president of the Board of Directors for the Washington Press Club Foundation, a non-profit focused on promoting diversity in print and broadcast media. Walsh has won several awards for enterprise and election reporting, including the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress by the National Press Association, which she won in February 2013 along with CNN's Chief Congressional Correspondent Dana Bash. Walsh was also awarded the Joan Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based Congressional or Political Reporting in June 2013.
Walsh received a B.A. in political science and communications from Boston College.
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Congress is in limbo as the race for speaker of the House plays out. Candidates to replace McCarthy are already campaigning for the job. Meanwhile, lawmakers are concerned about no work can get done.
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House Republicans are scrambling to coalesce around a small number of candidates to be Speaker of the House but the path to electing someone is unclear. -
Kevin McCarthy is now the first speaker in history to be removed by a U.S. House vote. The vote came less than a day after Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., made good on a threat to officially challenge his job.
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Members told reporters that they expect to hold a candidate forum next Tuesday ahead of votes on a speaker, possibly as early as Wednesday. -
The Senate voted 88-9 to approve a short-term spending bill to fund the government through Nov. 17. President Biden signed the bill into law shortly afterward. -
On Capitol Hill, time is running out and a government shutdown looks likely at the end of the day Saturday, Sept. 30.
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy rejected a bipartisan Senate proposal to keep agencies funded through November 17 and instead moved a GOP bill that linked another month of spending with border security. -
Government funding runs out at the end of the day on Saturday. House Republicans are trying to reframe the spending fight as a battle over the border, not a war within their own party.
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy still faces a bloc of conservatives who oppose any short-term funding bill to avoid a shutdown. He's trying to muscle through a partisan stopgap bill with border security. -
The Senate voted 77 to 19 to start the process for considering a stop-gap spending bill with funding for Ukraine and disaster relief. Even if the Senate is able to pass it, House action is unclear.
