Camila DeChalus joins The Washington Post as a congressional reporter

Camila comes to us from the politics team at Insider, where she has reported on Congress, political campaigns and legal affairs since 2021. As a senior political reporter, she covered the investigations into former President Donald Trump, the Jan. 6 congressional hearings and the financial conflicts of interest of lawmakers. Camila was previously a homeland security and immigration reporter at CQ Roll Call, where she wrote about immigration policy and traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border to report on the high volume of asylum seekers.

At Insider, Camila was part of a team of journalists that produced “Conflicted Congress,” an investigative project that exposed how many members of Congress face possible conflicts of interest around their investments and stock trades. The series ultimately led to lawmakers introducing several pieces of legislation to ban individual stock trading and won a 2022 Sunshine Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

She also wrote pieces about how former volunteers for Rep. Madison Cawthorn backed his opponents amid mounting scandals, chronicled how federal lawmakers bought stock in companies that made coronavirus vaccines during the pandemic and interviewed federal prison workers about the staffing shortages and work conditions amid the public health crisis.

Camila has a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism from American University. She is also a 2016 recipient of the Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium International Reporting Student Fellowship, where she reported on how climate change is affecting coffee production in Colombia. Her work has also appeared in Westlaw and CNN.

Camila, who grew up in West Haven, Conn., is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists.

Please join us in welcoming Camila when she arrives on Oct. 10.