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.
-
"We will work with everyone involved to facilitate testing as quickly as possible. There will be no matches at Melbourne Park on Thursday," Australian Open officials said in a statement. -
Detective Joshua Jaynes, who secured the search warrant for Taylor's apartment, and Detective Myles Cosgrove, who federal investigators said fired the shot that killed her, have been terminated. -
Much of Dickey's work, including 1996's Sister, Sister, was centered on strong Black female characters. He wrote 29 books and sold more than 7 million copies worldwide. -
The suspect is accused of shooting three protesters in Kenosha, Wis., during unrest in the city following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Two of his alleged victims were killed. -
Kenosha, Wis., police Officer Rusten Sheskey, who is white, shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, seven times in the back in August after Blake slowly walked away from officers and toward a parked vehicle.
-
Cuomo says the patient is recovering. The governor also pledged not to receive the vaccine until Black, Hispanic and poor people do. -
The NBA postponed the Wednesday game after three Rockets players had positive or inconclusive coronavirus tests and four others were in quarantine. It left the team without enough players to play. -
Thirty-six people stationed at the General Bernardo O'Higgins Riquelme Antarctic base had tested positive for the virus, Chilean officials said this week. -
The Kansas City Star noted it "disenfranchised, ignored and scored generations of Black Kansas Citians" for much of its 140 years of existence. -
"Scientifically, it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine also can deal with the new virus variant," BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said Tuesday.
