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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Boeing statement: "The Board of Directors decided that a change in leadership was necessary to restore confidence in the Company." More than 300 people have died in Boeing 737 Max plane crashes. -
The Health and Human Services Secretary tweeted a reminder: "If you decide that purchasing coverage through healthcare.gov is the right decision for you, make sure you select coverage by this Sunday." -
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 idea is to try to 'depressurize' Instagram, make it less of a competition," the company's CEO Adam Mosseri announced on Friday. -
A string of Jehovah's Witnesses have been convicted since Russia's Supreme Court banned the Christian denomination as an "extremist organization" in 2017. -
This will be Trump's second sporting event in the span of a week. The president's connections to UFC go back to at least 2001. -
Michael McKinley says he quit his job and then testified to House investigators because of the use of ambassadors "to advance domestic political objectives." -
The New Jersey senator sat down for NPR's interview series Off Script and was asked by an undecided voter why some residents in his hometown of Newark don't see him as "the voice" of black youth.
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Major broadcasters say ads for vaping will no longer be accepted on their airwaves. Meanwhile, in Washington, there's growing consternation and calls for action over youth vaping. -
A dozen patients' deaths were ruled homicides. They died after Irma knocked out power to the air conditioning system at the South Florida center in 2017.