Brakkton Booker
Brakkton Booker is a National Desk reporter based in Washington, DC.
He covers a wide range of topics including issues related to federal social safety net programs and news around the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.
His reporting takes him across the country covering natural disasters, like hurricanes and flooding, as well as tracking trends in regional politics and in state governments, particularly on issues of race.
Following the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, Booker's reporting broadened to include a focus on young activists pushing for changes to federal and state gun laws, including the March For Our Lives rally and national school walkouts.
Prior to joining NPR's national desk, Booker spent five years as a producer/reporter for NPR's political unit. He spent most to the 2016 presidential campaign cycle covering the contest for the GOP nomination and was the lead producer from the Trump campaign headquarters on election night. Booker served in a similar capacity from the Louisville campaign headquarters of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2014. During the 2012 presidential campaign, he produced pieces and filed dispatches from the Republican and Democratic National conventions, as well as from President Obama's reelection site in Chicago.
In the summer of 2014, Booker took a break from politics to report on the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri.
Booker started his career as a show producer working on nearly all of NPR's magazine programs, including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and former news and talk show Tell Me More, where he produced the program's signature Barbershop segment.
He earned a bachelor's degree from Howard University and was a 2015 Kiplinger Fellow. When he's not on the road, Booker enjoys discovering new brands of whiskey and working on his golf game.
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HUD says it is releasing more than $8 billion in aid to Puerto Rico. The deadline to do so was in September. The aid is for rebuilding after devastating Hurricanes Maria and Irma struck in 2017. -
Matt Bevin told Kentucky station WHAS Thursday: "If you had been repeatedly sexually violated, as a small child, by an adult, there are going to be repercussions of that physically and medically." -
In one case that has drawn particular attention, he pardoned a murderer whose family raised big money to pay off Bevin's campaign debt. -
Fewer than 50 people are believed to have been on or near White Island. Officials say some are still unaccounted for and it remains too dangerous for emergency services to access the island. -
The House intelligence chairman told NPR that President Trump should also be charged with obstruction: "It is difficult to imagine a more ironclad case of obstruction of Congress than this one." -
The 39th president has had a string of recent health challenges. He was released from the hospital last week after an operation to relieve pressure on his brain following two recent falls. -
Officials say Jerry Chun Shing Lee received more than $840,000 from Chinese officials in exchange for U.S. secrets. His Chinese handlers said they would "take care of him for life." -
Forecasters say an estimated 300 cold-weather records are expected to be tied or broken through Wednesday. The "arctic outbreak" is being blamed for four deaths so far. -
Maya Rockeymoore Cummings says she had talked with her husband about campaigning for Maryland's 7th District. The announcement comes days before she is set to have a preventive double mastectomy. -
A string of Jehovah's Witnesses have been convicted since Russia's Supreme Court banned the Christian denomination as an "extremist organization" in 2017.
