Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater: MAD HOUSE

For its first patio event of 2025, The Ivy is excited to host Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater, congressional correspondents for The New York Times, to celebrate their new book Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, a Former Used Car Salesman, a Florida Nepo Baby, and a Man with Rats in His Walls Broke Congress. It’s a chuckle-inspiring title, which captures something of the book’s much more serious central message: The United States Congress has reached some kind of chaotic bottom.

Taking the reader into closed door meetings as House Republicans, in thrall to a cult of personality, bumble ever deeper into extremism, and sniping House Democrats lose faith in their President, the authors reveal a level of disorder that we have never seen before. Mad House is a searing, rollicking, and deeply reported portrait of a body at war with itself, riven by pettiness, egomania, and score-settling.

This book, and this event, will help us grapple with the dysfunction surrounding the next four years in the company of good, curious, thoughtful people. We think that’s the best way to do it. Join us!

Purchase Mad House here!

RSVP here!

Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The New York Times. She joined the paper in 2018 and was previously a White House correspondent, covering both the Trump and Biden administrations. Before that, she worked for Politico, where she covered the 2016 presidential election, and the New York Post and the New York Daily News, covering local politics. She has also written for New York Magazine and Vogue. She frequently appears on television and radio programs.

Luke Broadwater is a congressional correspondent for The New York Times, where he has profiled congressional leaders, investigated federal spending, and played a key role in the paper’s coverage of the Jan. 6th attack on the Capitol, for which the Times was named finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Prior to joining the Times, Luke worked for nearly a decade at the Baltimore Sun, where he was the lead reporter on a series of investigative articles that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and a George Polk Award for political reporting. He frequently appears on television and radio programs for interviews.