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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In the plan, service providers will provide technology to combat a practice known as spoofing to aid state attorneys general in locating and prosecuting the fraudulent robocallers. -
While much of the farm bill draft mirrors current law, there is a major change coming for farmers: Industrial hemp will be legalized. Forestry and food stamps became sticking points. -
Rep. Raul Labrador, who was swept into Congress on the 2010 anti-establishment wave, is throwing his hat in the ring to replace Eric Cantor.
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Terri Lynn Land, a Republican running for Senate in Michigan, says she knows more about being a woman than the male Democratic congressman who's attacking her. -
There's never been a better time for black Republicans seeking office, yet even as some black candidates are hitting their stride, the party's support among blacks is still at rock bottom. -
It's not every day that three long-serving House members announce their retirements within hours of each other. It's rarer still that two of those seats have a distinct possibility of being filled by an African-American Republican. -
As the new chair of the Republican Governors Association, the New Jersey governor's duties will have him crisscrossing the country for photo ops, fundraisers and stump speeches 鈥� fueling speculation he's readying a White House run.
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The conservative firepower behind Mississippi senator's primary election opponent suggests Cochran will need to take the race seriously. -
For more than a year, supporters of the movement rallied behind a common goal: Make sure George Zimmerman stood before the bar of justice. But after Zimmerman's acquittal, that united front has splintered. -
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is out with his first ad of the 2014 election cycle. It's a three-minute, Web-only spoof that pokes fun at President Obama and an array of Democrats who might challenge the five-term Kentucky senator.
