Politico Congress executive producer Zachary Warmbrodt, senior Congress editor Mike DeBonis, and congressional policy editor Emma Dumian sent out the following on Thursday:
Good morning. Big news here for our Capitol Hill and economic policy coverage.
I’m thrilled to announce three major hires: Riley Rogerson, Benjamin Freed and Michaela Ross.
Riley is joining the Congress team as a House leadership reporter focused on Democrats — a critical story line as they fight to retake the chamber. Riley joins us from NOTUS, where she impressed us and kept us on our toes with her record of scoops and enterprise stories. Riley will work closely with Meredith Lee Hill, Jordain Carney and Mia McCarthy to make sure we continue to own every twist of the leadership agenda on both sides of the aisle. Before NOTUS, Riley covered the Hill for The Daily Beast and the Anchorage Daily News.
Benjamin will be our next tax editor. Benjamin comes to us from Bloomberg Tax, where he was the editor for state tax news and financial accounting. In that role, he managed award-winning investigative projects and directed coverage of how states are implementing changes brought about by last year’s “big, beautiful bill.” Before Bloomberg, he was managing editor at StateScoop and had a strong run in local journalism as a reporter at Washingtonian, DCist and Washington City Paper.
As our deputy tech editor John Hewitt Jones put it after working with Benjamin, “He can turn opaque Delaware courts copy into a compelling story, or write you a treatise on modernist French cinema.”
With Benjamin on board, he and the tax team will report to Zach as we continue to beef up coverage of economic policy on Capitol Hill, including the tax-writing Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees.
Michaela is joining POLITICO as a Congress editor focused on the Inside Congress newsletter, which has seen a major increase in Capitol Hill readership since a revamp last year. Michaela comes to us from Bloomberg Industry Group, where she was deputy team lead of its newsletter and congressional policy reporting teams. Before becoming an editor, she covered the Hill with a focus on homeland security and technology. Earlier in her career she reported for several outlets in New York, including Money Magazine and NPR.
Playbook editor Giuseppe Macri, a former colleague of Michaela’s, calls her “a rock-solid editor who won’t miss anything, can work across teams, is highly organized and has excellent management skills.”
Please join us in welcoming Riley, Benjamin and Michaela when they start later this month.
