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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Protesters outraged over police brutality and systemic racism have spilled into the streets across the country, from Minneapolis to New York and in smaller cities such as Omaha, Neb. -
In Minneapolis, where Floyd died, a semitrailer drove into a crowd of protesters on an interstate. Authorities in Kentucky say a man was killed as security forces confronted a crowd early Monday. -
Richard Collins III was given the honorary promotion to first lieutenant, three years after he was stabbed to death on the campus of University of Maryland in 2017. -
The ceremony for the Class of 2020, which includes the late Kobe Bryant, could now be pushed to as late as next spring. -
A survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 25% of black respondents plan to get a COVID-19 vaccine when one becomes available, compared to 56% of whites. -
A black man says he asked a white woman in Central Park to leash her dog. In his video, which has gone viral, she tells 911 operators that an "African American" man is threatening her and her dog. -
William "Roddie" Bryan has said he was a witness. "I can tell you that if we believed he was a witness we wouldn't have arrested him," the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation says. -
President Trump's former attorney will be placed in home confinement. Thousands of federal inmates have been released to home confinement since March due to concerns about exposure to the coronavirus. -
Loughlin is facing two months in prison and a $150,000 fine, according to the recommendations of the plea agreement. Her husband is facing five months in prison and a $250,000 fine. -
A New Jersey woman is facing charges after five members of her patient's household got COVID-19. The aide went to work after taking a coronavirus test and being told to stay home, officials say.
