Rachael Bade

Rachael Bade is an American journalist who is a co-author of the Politico Playbook newsletter and a former political analyst for CNN. She spent two years reporting on U.S. Congress for The Washington Post.

Early life and education
Bade was raised in Ohio, and received a BA in political science and journalism from the University of Dayton in 2010. Before her journalism career, she was a classical ballet dancer, training during summers with Pacific Northwest Ballet, Ballet Austin and American Ballet Theatre.

Career
Bade started her journalism career in 2010 as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Roll Call. She joined Politico in 2012 to cover taxes, a beat that launched her career when the IRS targeting controversy broke. Bade closely followed the House Republican investigation of the IRS's treatment of conservative tax-exempt groups and was the only reporter to interview Lois Lerner, the IRS leader at the heart of the scandal who asserted her Fifth Amendment right on Capitol Hill, refusing to answer investigators' questions.

Bade later covered the Republican Party's investigation of the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack and the party's subsequent probe of Hillary Clinton's private email use. She was promoted to Politico's Congress team in early 2016, where she wrote about Speaker Paul Ryan's leadership, winning an award for a magazine profile that first reported on Ryan's decision to step down from Congress.

Bade joined The Washington Post as a congressional reporter in 2019 to cover House Democrats' oversight of the Trump administration. She helped lead the publication's coverage of the Trump impeachment inquiry, and later wrote a book with reporter Karoun Demirjian about the impeachment titled Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump.

Bade left The Washington Post in December 2020 and rejoined Politico in early 2021.

Personal life
In February 2022, Bade announced that she was expecting a baby girl in the summer of 2022 after undergoing five rounds of in vitro fertilization.