Kate Woodsome covered the January 6 Capitol attack as part of The Washington Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Her reporting examined not just what happened that day, but the political, social, and neurobiological conditions that made it possible — how collective stress, information ecosystems, and democratic erosion converged into violence.

The work came at a cost. Covering political trauma inflicts its own toll, and Kate developed Complex PTSD from her frontline experience and its aftermath. What followed was a reckoning with the state of American democracy, with the extractive nature of traditional journalism, and with what it actually takes to sustain people doing this work.

Her coverage explores both dimensions — the systemic forces destabilizing democracy and the personal aftermath of bearing witness. It's reporting informed by trauma science and a commitment to understanding not just what's broken, but what repair might require.