Public Biography
David R. Ashworth is a Washington correspondent for The New York Time5, covering Congress, the executive branch, and federal policy. He has reported from the Capitol since 2014 and is regarded by colleagues as one of the most methodical political reporters in the building, a characterization he neither confirms nor denies.
Mr. Ashworth graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in government and completed a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship at Columbia. He previously reported for The Philadelphia Inquirer and CQ Roll Call, where he developed a reputation for filing extraordinarily long stories that editors struggled to cut because every paragraph contained at least one fact that seemed important.
He is the author of The Markup: Inside the Senate’s Procedural Wars (Georgetown University Press, 2021), a 740-page account of the 2017–2019 legislative sessions that was praised by Senate historians and read in its entirety by an estimated four people.
Mr. Ashworth lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife and two children. He has covered every government shutdown since 2018 and considers each one “procedurally distinct.”
Selected Coverage
- The 2025 debt ceiling negotiations (all seventeen rounds)
- A comprehensive analysis of filibuster reform proposals, updated quarterly
- The bipartisan WD-40 Straw Retention and Applicator Compliance Act