Alan Greenblatt
Alan Greenblatt has been covering politics and government in Washington and around the country for 20 years. He came to NPR as a digital reporter in 2010, writing about a wide range of topics, including elections, housing economics, natural disasters and same-sex marriage.
He was previously a reporter with Governing, a magazine that covers state and local government issues. Alan wrote about education, budgets, economic development and legislative behavior, among other topics. He is the coauthor, with Kevin Smith, of Governing States and Localities, a college-level textbook that is now in its fourth edition.
As a reporter for Congressional Quarterly, he was the inaugural winner of the National Press Club's Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism, which is given to outstanding reporters under the age of 35. Sadly, he no longer meets that requirement.
Along the way, Alan has contributed articles about politics and culture for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is happy to be working for an outlet where he has been able to write about everything from revolutions in the Middle East to antique jazz recordings.
Alan is a graduate of San Francisco State University and holds a master's degree from the University of Virginia.
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Faced with a long ballot on Tuesday, Texas Democrats chose a complete unknown with an agreeable name as their favorite in a down-ballot statewide race.
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The tipped minimum wage has been stuck at $2.13 an hour since 1991. In states where servers make more than the federal minimum wage, restaurants haven't been hurting.
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President Obama is staying home from next year's Winter Games, sending openly gay athletes instead to scold Russia for its anti-gay policies. This isn't the first time politics has intruded on the Olympics. Although the games are intended to be an apolitical athletic gathering, they have frequently provided a platform for protest.
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Announcements of legal settlements worth hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, including Tuesday's $13 billion U.S. settlement with JPMorgan Chase, have been common in recent years. Often, though, only a fraction of the amount ends up in consumers' pockets.
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Voters in 11 Colorado counties may approve secession resolutions next month. It's largely a symbolic gesture, but the idea of splitting off and creating new states is taking root all over the country.
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If Congress can't agree to raise the debt ceiling before Thursday, it's not necessarily the case that Treasury will immediately be unable to pay bills. But if there's no agreement, financial markets might panic at any time, doing real harm.
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Across the country, leaders of local chambers of commerce are irate that Washington can't reach agreement on the budget. They worry debt default could wreck consumer confidence ahead of the holiday shopping season. Yet many on Main Street aren't yet reacting by putting much pressure on politicians.
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A variety of government agencies — some all but shut down at the moment — play a large role in real estate. So far, their absence from the game is causing more inconvenience than real problems. But soon the effects on housing and the broader economy could become pronounced.
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In a wide-ranging interview with New York magazine, the conservative justice says the devil is "a real person," the situation in Washington is "nasty" and that he's "not a hater of homosexuals at all." He also says he's glad his method of interpreting the Constitution has become more mainstream.
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As the president tries to convince the public that Republicans bear the blame for budgetary gridlock, he faces an entirely different political and media landscape than in the last government shutdown nearly 18 years ago.