Cronkite News Washington, D. C. Bureau
I spent the summer of 2023 reporting for the Washington, D.C. Bureau of Cronkite News, a product of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, where I covered Arizona's congressional delegation, the national economy and the Supreme Court for a Southwest audience. During my tenure, I focused on localizing complex national economic trends for an Arizona readership, explaining how federal monetary and fiscal policy decisions impact consumer finance at the state and local level. That work included reporting on topics that ranged from the end of the pandemic-era moratorium on student loan payments to the national rise in anti-ESG legislation to Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, the June Supreme Court strike down of affirmative action and more. I covered the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Plant, Intel Corporation in Phoenix and the executive and state agencies tasked with distributing and regulating the numerous Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funded projects.
The experience gave me the valuable ability to draw connections between federal policy decisions, financial markets and regulatory agencies to contextualize the origins and implications of national economic trends for a regional audience. Covering lawmakers from Capitol Hill and the impact of their policy decisions on communities at the state and local level gave me hands-on experience localizing complex national political and policy trends and the players that shape them.
These clips are selected samples from my time as a Money reporter for the Cronkite News Washington, D.C. Bureau.
Coverage of a House Financial Services Subcommittee meeting where the treasurer of Coconino County old House lawmakers that bills barring governments from doing business with companies cognizant of environmental and social causes threatens the safety of and return on public funds. She was part of a panel of financial officials and regulators who largely rebuffed claims by Republicans on the House Financial Services subcommittee who said environmental, social and governance - ESG- regulations are part of a Biden administration "woke" agenda to harm fossil fuel industries. The highly partisan committee hearing was reflective of the national rise in anti-ESG legislation and the party-line debates it fuels.
Coverage of the Supreme Court's June decision to uphold a federal law that requires tribal families get priority in the adoption or foster care of an Indigenous child. The law was aimed at stopping what one justice called the "nightmare" of family separation. Advocates called the Indian Child Welfare Act the gold standard of child welfare laws, but it was challenged by three families and the state of Texas, which claimed the law stepped on state's rights and unlawfully used race to keep non-Native families from adopting Native children. But the justices, in a June 7-2 ruling, said "we reject all of petitioners’ challenges to the statute," a decision advocates called a "win for tribal sovereignty."
Coverage of a Senate committee hearing in which Chris Fetzer, executive director of the Northern Arizona Council of Governments, was joined by other local government officials from across the country calling for a "long overdue" reauthorization of the Economic Development Fund - even as all the witnesses outlined ways administration operations could be improved.
Coverage of Phoenix-area inflation in July of 2023 based on Consumer Price Index data from The Bureau of Labor Statistics. Analysis of the CPI and CPI-U numbers revealed the Phoenix-area inflation cooled since its peak one year prior, but the region's 4.4% increase since last June was still higher than the national average of 3% over the same period. In the Phoenix metro area, inflation fell from its peak of 13% last August, with one economist attributing the decline to slowing increases in home prices and rents, followed by lower gas and food prices
Coverage of a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that held an inmate who claimed the federal prison system's 300-minute-a-month limit on phone calls infringed on his ability to be involved in his three children's lives could have the chance to present his case. The three-judge appeals court panel said a lower court was wrong to dismiss Kenneth Tiedemann's lawsuit for not naming the new warden as a defendant after being moved from one prison to another, saying that "whack-a-mole" approach by the district court was wrong.
Coverage of the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program funding rollout, of which Arizona got just under $1 billion in federal funding for high-speed internet access improvement projects across the state. The funding was part of more than $42.45 billion released in late June by the Commerce Department, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
