It can sometimes feel like being the general manager of the Yankees (or the Red Sox these days, sorry Bres) when we get to add more talent to an already loaded team. So, we’re thrilled to announce two new additions to our Hill lineup — Andrew Desiderio and Melanie Zanona — and a new position for a veteran Politico, Nolan McCaskill.
— Andrew is currently The Daily Beast’s congressional reporter, covering everything from national security and immigration to politics and elections. Earlier this year, he was part of the team that exposed Russian hackers’ attempts to target Sen. Claire McCaskill as she kicked off her re-election campaign and was first to reveal the Trump administration’s secret campaign to weaken the Russian sanctions package that Congress passed last year. He also distinguished himself on the campaign trail, covering House and Senate races everywhere from Alabama to Indiana to Florida. Andrew started covering Congress before he had even graduated from The George Washington University, where he studied Italian language & literature in addition to journalism. He hails from Philadelphia, the City of Champions, and is eager to meet fellow Eagles, Phillies, Sixers and Flyers fans.
— Melanie joins us from The Hill, where she is a congressional reporter focused on House leadership. She has written extensively about big legislative battles, internal party dynamics and the relationship between Congress and President Trump. She broke the news last year that the House chaplain was forced out by Speaker Ryan and about House Republicans considering new punishments for dissident lawmakers after the immigration fight. A Chicago native and University of Illinois graduate, Melanie got her start in Washington as a features writer for Roll Call in 2010, later becoming a legislative and policy reporter for Congressional Quarterly. In her spare time, Melanie likes to cook Italian food, play with her two-year-old boxer puppy and keep up with her favorite Chicago sports teams (which also boasts a few championships). She will take the helm of the Huddle newsletter where we expect her to break news and provide smart analysis on the new Congress.
— Nolan, who has had an impressive run as a congressional reporter and the author of Huddle, is turning his attention to the 2020 campaign as a national political reporter. He is a versatile writer and reporter who breaks news — like he did when a bloc of House Democrats called for an ethics investigation into the practice of lawmakers sleeping in their offices — and write elevated stories, like the one he did on Lindsey Graham’s unique role as a John McCain acolyte and Trump ally around the time of McCain’s death. Nolan came here in 2014 as an inaugural member of the POLITICO Journalism Institute and later became a breaking news reporter during the 2016 presidential campaign. He is a graduate of Florida A&M University and a 2017-18 National Press Foundation Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow. Nolan was an all-state sprinter and jumper in high school who could do backflips and dunk a basketball. Though his sprinting and flipping days are over, he still tries to play basketball at least once a week.
Adding these three journalists to the strongest congressional and political reporting teams in town makes us even more bullish about the year ahead.
Paul Zapler