Tamara Keith
Tamara Keith has been a White House correspondent for NPR since 2014 and co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast, the top political news podcast in America. Keith has chronicled the Trump administration from day one, putting this unorthodox presidency in context for NPR listeners, from early morning tweets to executive orders and investigations. She covered the final two years of the Obama presidency, and during the 2016 presidential campaign she was assigned to cover Hillary Clinton. In 2018, Keith was elected to serve on the board of the White House Correspondents' Association.
Previously Keith covered congress for NPR with an emphasis on House Republicans, the budget, taxes, and the fiscal fights that dominated at the time.
Keith joined NPR in 2009 as a Business Reporter. In that role, she reported on topics spanning the business world, from covering the debt downgrade and debt ceiling crisis to the latest in policy debates, legal issues, and technology trends. In early 2010, she was on the ground in Haiti covering the aftermath of the country's disastrous earthquake, and later she covered the oil spill in the Gulf. In 2011, Keith conceived of and solely reported "The Road Back To Work," a year-long series featuring the audio diaries of six people in St. Louis who began the year unemployed and searching for work.
Keith has deep roots in public radio and got her start in news by writing and voicing essays for NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday as a teenager. While in college, she launched her career at NPR Member station KQED's California Report, where she covered agriculture, the environment, economic issues, and state politics. She covered the 2004 presidential election for NPR Member station WOSU in Columbus, Ohio, and opened the state capital bureau for NPR Member station KPCC/Southern California Public Radio to cover then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In 2001, Keith began working on B-Side Radio, an hour-long public radio show and podcast that she co-founded, produced, hosted, edited, and distributed for nine years.
Keith earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master's degree at the UCB Graduate School of Journalism. Keith is part of the Politics Monday team on the PBS NewsHour, a weekly segment rounding up the latest political news. Keith is also a member of the Bad News Babes, a media softball team that once a year competes against female members of Congress in the Congressional Women's Softball game.
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Education issues took on an outsized role in this week's elections in Virginia and elsewhere. The question for politicians of all stripes is whether education will remain an important topic into 2022.
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The Biden administration is lifting its ban on international travelers on Nov. 8. On Monday, it released some of the details of the new rules.
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This year, typically sleepy school board elections have become fraught with fights over masks, vaccines and diversity curricula. Could this affect races higher up the ballot in 2022 and 2024? -
Dayton, Ohio, was desperate for COVID aid to help with basic services. Now the city finds itself awash in funds, and it's looking at creative ways to spend some of the largesse. -
Separately, the select committee investigating the Capitol riot indicated that former Trump strategist Steve Bannon is not planning to comply with the subpoena it issued to him. -
President Biden's legislative agenda hangs in the balance, in large part due to disagreements among Congress members within his own party. Democratic leaders are trying to chart a path forward.
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Rural hospitals want to see their workforce get vaccinated against COVID-19. But they're worried Biden's new mandate will cause staff shortages, and they're asking the administration for help.
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President Biden will announce the U.S. is buying 500 million more doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. That would bring the total promised U.S. vaccine donations to more than 1.1 billion.
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President Biden announced a reset of his plan to tackle the pandemic, with tougher new vaccine rules for federal workers and contractors and more testing.
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The president outlined a forthcoming federal rule that all businesses with 100 or more employees have to ensure that every worker is either vaccinated for COVID-19 or submit to weekly testing. -
Putting words to the pain of loss has become a recurring theme of Joe Biden's presidency. There may, however, be limits to Biden's empathy and how it is received.
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President Biden on Tuesday will survey damage from the remnants of Hurricane Ida in New York and New Jersey, which killed more than 40 people. The visit comes after a few tumultuous weeks for Biden.
