Khushboo Razdan
Khushboo Razdan is a politics journalist who writes for the South China Morning Post on regional and international power dynamics, with a particular focus on how alliances and diplomatic forums shape events. Her coverage follows how groupings such as the Quad evolve as strategic tools and what their meetings, joint statements and postponements signal about shifting priorities among member states. She tends to frame high-level diplomacy in terms of practical consequences for security, trade and influence across the Indo-Pacific. Her work highlights nuance in the relationships between major and middle powers rather than treating them as simple rivalries.
Quad foreign ministers and Indo-Pacific diplomacy
Razdan’s reporting on Quad foreign ministers centres on the gap between ambitious rhetoric and the realities of scheduling, domestic politics and diverging interests. In her coverage of the Quad foreign ministers’ efforts to stay relevant while a leaders’ summit remains elusive, she treats the absence of top-level meetings as a story in itself, using it to explore how much political capital each government is willing to invest in the format. She looks at how foreign ministers use travel, side meetings and coordinated announcements to keep the agenda alive when leaders are preoccupied elsewhere.
Rather than describing the Quad in isolation, she places it within a wider Indo-Pacific landscape that includes bilateral ties, defence arrangements and overlapping regional forums. Her pieces show how this grouping is pulled in different directions by members’ domestic concerns and other strategic partnerships, and how that tension shapes what the Quad can realistically do on security, technology and economic resilience. She pays attention to what foreign ministers choose to emphasise publicly and what they leave unsaid, treating those choices as signals to partners, rivals and domestic audiences.
Summits, ministerial meetings and strategic signalling
Across her politics coverage, Razdan uses summits and ministerial meetings as a lens on power and hierarchy in international affairs. She is interested in who shows up, who cancels, and how agendas are reworked to accommodate clashing priorities. The mechanics of diplomacy — from the timing of visits to the language of joint communiqués — become tools she uses to explain shifts in alignment and strategy, especially for countries that must navigate between larger powers.
Her reporting shows how foreign ministers and leaders use multilateral gatherings to test new positions, soften hard lines or reassure partners after contentious moves elsewhere. She often follows the same set of actors across different meetings, allowing readers to see patterns in their messaging and behaviour over time. This focus on continuity and change helps distinguish long-term strategy from one-off gestures, and gives her coverage a cumulative quality that goes beyond single-event reporting.
Explaining global politics for a regional audience
Razdan writes with an eye to readers who follow global politics but want to understand how it connects back to their region. She breaks down acronyms, formats and institutional histories that can make multilateral diplomacy opaque, turning them into accessible entry points rather than barriers. Background sections in her pieces tend to clarify why a particular forum matters, how it came about and how its role has evolved, so that new readers can follow without losing the thread of the news.
She often structures stories around the concrete stakes for each participant — strategic leverage, economic access, domestic political standing — and then sets those stakes against the broader narrative of competition and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. That approach keeps large, abstract themes grounded in specific decisions and trade-offs. Her tone is analytical but restrained, with a focus on clear language and precise description over dramatic framing, which makes her coverage particularly useful for readers who need to track diplomatic developments in a systematic way.
4 more politics journalists.
Adam Daly
Adam Daly covers politics for amNewYork with a focus on the inner workings of city and state government and the low-profile forums where power is exercised and negotiated. He reports on commissions and panels that shape how New York is governed, treating charter reform and government efficiency as central political terrain. His coverage of moves to replace an Adams-era charter commission with a new government efficiency panel foregrounds mandate, authority, and what “efficiency” means in practice for agencies and services. He tracks who gains and loses influence when one commission supplants another and which constituencies are being answered to. Daly explains dense procedural questions in clear, reader-facing terms, using specific institutional details and occasional wordplay to connect jargon-heavy reforms to public spending, service delivery, and mayoral power.
Alex Swoyer
Alex Swoyer covers national politics through the lens of the law, treating court cases and filings as core political documents rather than a separate legal niche. She reports for the Washington Times on the Supreme Court, federal courts and the justice system’s intersection with campaigns, Congress and the presidency. Her coverage follows political disputes as they move into courtrooms, focusing on cases that affect elections, executive power, immigration, religious liberty and gun rights. She explains opinions, dissents and procedural moves in plain language, grounding stories in briefs, oral arguments, orders and government records, then pairing them with reaction from officials, strategists and advocacy groups. She also reports on election rules, January 6 prosecutions, politically sensitive investigations, Republican Party dynamics and campaign‑trail narratives, using straight news, explainers and roundups to show how law, institutions and political ambition meet.
Alexander Mallin
Alexander Mallin stands out for turning dense Justice Department and federal court actions into clear, step-by-step reporting for ABC News. He covers politics through law enforcement and the courts, with a core beat on special counsel investigations, federal prosecutions, and clashes between the executive branch, Congress, and federal prosecutors. His reporting tracks interview transcripts, subpoena fights, indictments, plea deals, trial outcomes, and other court filings, especially in cases tied to President Joe Biden, the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and other high-profile political conflicts. He also covers transparency fights over investigative records and explains the statutes, rules, and institutional mechanics behind grand juries, redactions, and special counsel appointments. His stories are document-heavy, restrained, and focused on what prosecutors, defense lawyers, and judges are doing on the record.
Allie Kelly
Allie Kelly is a politics reporter at Business Insider who treats US politics as a story about personalities, performance, and the internet. She covers the intersection of political figures, online culture, and how power is exercised in public. Her work follows elected officials and rising players across parties, focusing on how they brand themselves, test messages, and respond to scrutiny. She often writes about memes, viral moments, and tools like meme coins as real campaign tactics and communication strategies. Her reporting explains how digital culture shapes electoral politics, party tensions, and governance. She favors short, accessible pieces built around vivid examples, like a lawmaker launching a DOGE-style coin, to explain broader trends. She uses clear, plain language, grounding each story in who holds power, what they are doing, and why their online choices matter.