CQ

After getting her bachelor's degree in history at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York, Melissa moved back to Northern Virginia.

She worked as an assistant editor of the Congressional Quarterly Researcher and as a desk assistant at the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

From there, she decided to pursue her ambition to become a reporter, and that meant moving back to upstate New York, Melissa completed her master's degree in broadcast journalism at Syracuse University in 2008.

And today, Melissa is here to talk to us about the Aaron Strotman case.

[upbeat music] From Washington, this is the CQ Budget Podcast, your leading Capitol Hill source on how Congress allocates federal taxpayer dollars.

[upbeat music] And welcome back to the CQ Budget Podcast.

I'm David Lerman, the budget team editor at CQ Roll Call, and Congress is now back for a very abbreviated fall session as lawmakers prepare to leave town again soon to campaign for re-election.

For this week's show, we wanna let you hear part of a webinar that was conducted Monday for CQ subscribers that outlines the fall agenda.

In that conversation, moderated by CQ Roll Call managing editor Peter Cohn, reporters Savannah Behrmann and Aidan Quigley assess the legislation that could make headway in coming weeks, how lawmakers are positioning themselves for the midterm elections, and how much of the legislative agenda may get punted to a lame duck session after the midterm races.

Here now is part of that discussion.

[upbeat music] Thanks for being with us today.

This is our, uh, CQ 2026 fall legislative preview.

It was the white kids, the young white people that had the connections, the parents that had campaign contributions to give their bosses.

They were the ones featured in Roll Call and The Hill most often, Congressional Quarterly.

We weren't.

But BET was a safe haven for that for us.

She graduated from Northwestern University and earned a master's degree with honors in English literature at the University of Chicago.

In Washington, D.C., Roberts was a top editor at the National Journal and Congressional Quarterly before moving into television as news director of America's Most Wanted.

In 2010, Roberts edited the prison memoir Deadly Secrets, which is Timothy McVeigh's account of the Oklahoma City bomb plot, as told to fellow death row inmate David Hammer, an exclusive source for Blowback.

Her book is called Blowback, the untold story of the FBI and the Oklahoma City bombing.

She graduated from Northwestern University and earned a master's degree with honors in English literature at the University of Chicago.

In Washington, D.C., Roberts was a top editor at the National Journal and Congressional Quarterly before moving into television as news director of America's Most Wanted.

In 2010, Roberts edited the prison memoir, Deadly Secrets, which is Timothy McVeigh's account of the Oklahoma City bomb plot, as told to fellow death row inmate David Hammer, an exclusive source for Blowback.

Her book is called Blowback: The Untold Story of the FBI and the Oklahoma City Bombing.

We're going to try something a little different this week.

I'm going to be talking to my colleague here in the newsroom, CQ Budget podcast host David Luhrmann, the budget tracker emeritus for CQ.

We're going to talk about what we have observed this sort of

special week, interrupting all the different recesses that Congress wants.

The house came in for a few days to take care of some housekeeping and they did a lot, mostly budget related stuff in terms of its significance.

And so this is the, you know, maybe the first of a CQ budget political theater collaboration.

David, welcome back.

You've been on the podcast before, but we didn't call it a collaboration before.

She graduated from Northwestern University and earned a master's degree with honors in English literature at the University of Chicago.

In Washington, D.C., Roberts was a top editor at the National Journal and Congressional Quarterly before moving into television as news director of America's Most Wanted.

In 2010, Roberts edited the prison memoir, Deadly Secrets.

which is Timothy McVeigh's account of the Oklahoma City bomb plot, as told to fellow death row inmate David Hammer, an exclusive source for Blowback.

And it's six years old this month.

Before going independent in 2020, he wrote the Spy Talk column at Newsweek and the Washington Post, and earlier founded the CQ Homeland Security at Congressional Quarterly, where the column began.

He's the author of three books, including A Murder in Wartime and Saddam's Bomb Maker.

From 1968 to 1969, Jeff served as a case officer with the 525th MI Group in Vietnam, running a network of spies against communist forces and was awarded a Bronze Star.

I mean, we have material that we're seeking to verify, get further confirmation of right now.

So that's our job.

Plus, I started Spy Talk way back in 2005 when I was at Congressional Quarterly because I just thought there's a lot of stuff that goes under the radar that needs to be mentioned You know, committee reports, you know, that don't really get much mention or any mention at all as the intelligence committees or the armed services committees, GAO reports, congressional research reports, all this stuff that really needs to be swept up and put out there in the given amplification.

So that's what I've specialized in since I started SpyTalk back in 2005.

That's around 20 percent of the 300 billion barrels that the country is thought to have.

Earlier today, we talked to CQ Roll Call White House correspondent John Bennett about this.

The idea that this is going to bring down gas prices before the midterms is just pure fantasy.

The president is clearly putting a message out there to trying to help Republicans.

It's very risky.

So as Republican candidates want to simplify an affordability and a midterms message, President Trump keeps making moves that just makes their message harder and harder to sell.

CQ Roll Call, White House correspondent John Bennett on this morning's Washington Journal.

According to AAA, U.S. drivers are paying $4.08 on average per gallon nationwide.