Cokie Roberts
Cokie Roberts was one of the 'Founding Mothers' of NPR who helped make that network one of the premier sources of news and information in this country. She served as a congressional correspondent at NPR for more than 10 years and later appeared as a commentator on Morning Edition. In addition to her work for NPR, Roberts was a political commentator for ABC News, providing analysis for all network news programming.
From 1996-2002, she and Sam Donaldson co-anchored the weekly ABC interview program This Week. In her more than forty years in broadcasting, she has won countless awards, including three Emmys. She was inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame, and was cited by the American Women in Radio and Television as one of the fifty greatest women in the history of broadcasting. In 2020, she was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in the Longstanding Network/Syndication (20 years or more) category.
In addition to her appearances on the airwaves, Roberts, along with her husband, Steven V. Roberts, wrote a weekly column syndicated in newspapers around the country by Universal Uclick. The Robertses also wrote From This Day Forward, an account of their more than 40-year marriage and other marriages in American history. The book immediately went onto The New York Times bestseller list, following Roberts' number one bestseller, We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, an account of women's roles and relationships throughout American history. Roberts's histories of women in America's founding era — Founding Mothers, published in 2004 and Ladies of Liberty in 2008 — also became instant bestsellers. Her most recent book, Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868, was published in 2015. In total, she wrote six national bestsellers that honored and elevated the role of women in American history.
Cokie Roberts held more than thirty honorary degrees. She served on the boards of several non-profit institutions and on the President's Commission on Service and Civic Participation. The Library of Congress named her a "Living Legend." Roberts was the mother of two and grandmother of six. She died on September 17, 2019, at age 75.
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Monday is the deadline to sign up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act. And the U.S. continues to try to find ways to diffuse the crisis between Ukraine and Russia.
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The camaraderie that veterans talk about used to be true in Congress too — partly because many members had served in the military. But today's Congress has very few veterans in its ranks, about 20 percent, compared with more than three-quarters in the post-Vietnam era. What does that number mean politically.
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This is Day 7 of the partial government shutdown, and there does not appear to be a resolution in sight. Why are the two sides so dug in?
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President Obama heads to New York on Monday for the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. The international meeting comes as, back in Washington, the U.S. Congress is once again heading into a possible government shutdown over spending priorities.
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After a week's vacation, President Obama is back at the White House planning a bus tour later this week to promote his economic and educational policies. The president comes home to increased pressure from both political parties to get tougher with the Egyptian military.
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Nineteen American diplomatic missions in the Middle East and North Africa will remain closed all week. That after U.S. intelligence picked up a threat of terrorist attacks by al Qaida and its affiliates. Over the weekend, the State Department issued a travel alert to Americans warning of planned attacks.
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There has been a lot of political reaction to the George Zimmerman verdict, announced Saturday night in Sanford, Fla. Also in the news, it appears the Senate is headed toward a historic vote on changing filibuster rules.
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Have Republicans finally succeeded in persuading the public at large that the Benghazi attack wasn't just a tragedy but actually a huge scandal? Another big problem for the Obama administration was revealed last week:the IRS was paying special attention to conservative political groups.
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The situation in Syria seems to have the Obama administration scrambling in the face of what appear to be no good options. Public opinion does not favor military intervention. On a different front, the president pushed for overhauling immigration while in Latin America last week.
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The Vatican is now under the control of the cardinals who will elect a new leader of the Catholic Church. On Thursday, Pope Benedict gave up his ring, cape and red papal shoes and became pope emeritus.