Rachael Bade

Rachael Bade is an American journalist who is currently a Congressional reporter for The Washington Post and a political analyst for CNN.

Bade was raised in Tipp City, Ohio, and gained 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 with Pacific Northwest Ballet, Ballet Austin and American Ballet Theatre.

Bade started her journalism career in 2010 as a reporter at 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 GOP's investigation of the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack, then 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 quit Washington. She spent three years covering House Republicans and the party's transformation by Donald Trump, filing stories that illuminated GOP infighting over the future of their party and frequently dish behind-the-scenes details about how policy decisions were made.

Bade joined The Post as a Congressional reporter in 2019 to cover the House Democrats' oversight of the Trump Administration. She has broken a number of high-profile stories on the Trump impeachment inquiry and appears on CNN as well as CBS "Face the Nation" and ABC's "This Week."

Bade has also appeared on Fox News, including "Fox News Sunday," as well as MSNBC and PBS.

On December 18, 2019, the night President Donald Trump was impeached by the House, Bade tweeted a photo of herself and other Washington Post staff captioned with text “Merry Impeachmas!” The tweet was criticized on social media as celebrating the impeachment of Donald Trump. Bade deleted the tweet and said it was misinterpreted. Washington Post editor Marty Baron said the post was an "ill-considered" celebration of the end of a work day and not an endorsement of impeachment.