Documentary

Filmed, produced and edited mini-documentary features

I got the idea for this story because I couldn’t stop watching AOC’s Instagram stories. The newly-elected representative was sharing all the bureaucratic but totally fascinating behind-the-scenes moments of how you become a member of Congress, and I thought it would be fascinating to follow this new wave of congresswomen coming to Washington. Alice Li, my co-producer/editor, had the same idea, and she worked her sources from reporting on the midterm elections to convince Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and then-Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) to let us follow them around for a month. The Post was known for covering politics, but we always struggled with finding younger audiences. From the beginning, we wanted this doc to appeal to that type of viewer/reader — someone who was younger who might not otherwise be interested in politics but was suddenly paying attention because of this new wave of charismatic members of Congress.

I started covering Capitol Hill at the end of 2016 after Donald Trump was elected for his first term. The first few months was a constant whiplash of navigating new spaces, figuring out where I could film and trying to get members of Congress to react to the President’s latest tweet. I knew we had to produce a story that encapsulated what those first 100 days were like, because they were chaotic and exhausting to live through. I used existing footage from reporting on Capitol Hill and had a spreadsheet logging every single Trump tweet. Alice Li and I worked to interviews most of the political reporters covering Trump to piece together the narrative of Trump’s first 100 days in office.