PBS News Hour Creators & Guests

Judy Woodruff is a broadcast journalist and host and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour.

Joshua Geltzer is a lawyer, legal scholar, and teacher. He is the founding Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, and Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He is also an International Security Program Fellow at New America and an Executive Editor at Just Security.Previously, Geltzer was Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council staff. Before that, he was Deputy Legal Advisor to the National Security Council and Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the U.S. Department of Justice. He also served as a law clerk to Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court and, before that, as a law clerk to Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.Geltzer's book, "US Counter-Terrorism Strategy and al-Qaeda: Signalling and the Terrorist World-View," was published in 2009. His worh has appeared in The Atlantic, the Berkeley Journal of International Law, Defense One, Foreign Policy, the Journal of Constitutional Law, the New York Times, Parameters, Politico, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, and the Washington Post. He has appeared on BBC, Bloomberg TV, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News, MSNBC, and National Public Radio.Geltzer received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, and his PhD in War Studies from King’s College London. He received his B.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Jeff Horwitz is a technology reporter. Currently, he reports for The Wall Street Journal. His work focuses on Facebook’s business and its impact on the world.Previously, Horwitz was a financial and enterprise reporter for the Associated Press in Washington, D.C. He has also worked for American Banker, Legal Times, the San Bernardino Sun, and the Washington City Paper.

Mark Salter is a speechwriter, known for his collaborations with United States Senator John McCain.Salter worked with McCain on political speeches and several nonfiction books. He also served on McCain's staff for 18 years, and was chief of staff.Salter's work has appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Esquire and Real Clear Politics. He co-wrote seven books with John McCain, and one memoir published after McCain's death.

Dr. Beverly Gage is a historian, specializing in American political history, government and political development, and ideology and social movements. Currently, she a Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University and a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine.Previouisly, Gage was the Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale.Gage's work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Nation, and the Washington Post. Her first book, "The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror," was published in 2009. Her second book, "G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century," was published in 2022.Gage received her B.A. in American Studies from Yale University and her Ph.D. in History from Columbia University.In September 2021, she announced that she would resign as director of the Grand Strategy program, effective December 2021, citing concerns about academic freedom and a "board of visitors" that was formed to oversee her work.[4] In an interview with The New York Times, she stated, "It’s very difficult to teach effectively or creatively in a situation where you are being second-guessed and undermined and not protected." On October 1, 2021, the Yale history department issued a statement in support of her.[5]

Hansi Lo Wang is a journalist who reports on the people, power, and money behind the 2020 census. He is currently working as a national correspondent for NPR.Wang received the American Statistical Association's Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award for covering the Census Bureau and the Trump administration's push for a citizenship question.His reporting has also earned awards from the Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Black Journalists, and Native American Journalists Association.Since joining NPR in 2010 as a Kroc Fellow, he has reported on race and ethnicity for Code Switch and worked on Weekend Edition as a production assistant.As a student at Swarthmore College, he worked on a weekly podcast about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jennifer Gersten is a writer, violinist, journalist, and music critic.

Amy Howe co-founded the blog SCOTUSblog, an essential resource for information about the Supreme Court of the United States, including upcoming cases, process decisions, and final decisions. She served as its editor and as a reporter until 2016 and she continues to report for it. Primarily, she writes full-time on the topic of the SCOTUS on the site "Howe on the Court."Before becoming a full-time writer, Howe was a lawyer in over two dozen cases at the Supreme Court and argued two cases there.Howe co-taught Supreme Court litigation at Stanford Law School and before that she taught Supreme Court litigation at Harvard Law School. She has also served as an adjunct professor at American University’s Washington College of Law and Vanderbilt Law School.Howe received her law degree from Georgetown University. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University.

Coral Davenport is an energy and environmental policy reporter for The New York Times.

Andrea T. Bernstein is a freelance political investigative journalist. She has covered government, transportation, politics, housing, environment, and other sectors since 1990.Previously, Bernstein was a Senior Reporter and Editor for Politics & Policy for WNYC News. She co-hosted the WNYC/ProPublica podcast "Trump, Inc." She has also reported for the New York Observer.Bernstein's her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, ProPublica, The Guardian, New York Magazine, The Nation, and the New York Daily News. Her first book, "American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power," was published in 2020.

Rebecca Leber is a climate journalist. Currently, she is a Senior Reporter for Vox.Previously, Leber covered the environment for Mother Jones magazine, edited environmental news and political coverage for Grist, and was a staff writer at The New Republic. She also serves on the board of directors for the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Sherrilyn Ifill is a lawyer, and expert on voting rights and judicial selection. Currently, she is a law professor at the University of Maryland Law School and also president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.Ifill began her legal career in a fellowship with the ACLU in New York. She then served as assistant counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, where she litigated Voting Rights Act cases. Her first book, "On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century," was published in 2008.Ifill was born and raised in Jamaica, Queens, New York. She received her B.A. from Vassar College and her J.D. from the New York University School of Law. She interned for Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. and at the United Nations Centre for Human Rights.

Paul Elie is a writer and editor. Currently, he is a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. He is a contributor to the American Catholic journal Commonweal.Elie's work deals primarily with the ways religious ideas are given expression in literature, the arts, music, and culture in the broadest sense. His first book, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage," was published in 2003. His second book, "Reinventing Bach," was published in 2012.Elie received his B.A. from Fordham University and his M.F.A. from Columbia University.

Jessica Huseman is a reporter whose work focuses on voting and elections administration. Currently, she is the elections reporter at ProPublica.Previously, Huseman was an education reporter at Slate, where she contributed to "The Teacher Project." Huseman is a former teacher herself.Huseman has also been a contributing writer for The Hechinger Report. Her freelance work has appeared in ProPublica, The Atlantic, and the Dallas Morning News.

Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein is a writer and lawyer. She currently co-directs the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program.Goitein has written reports for the Brennan Center and other publications. Her writing has been featured in the the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times. She has appeared on television and radio shows such as the Rachel Maddow Show, All In with Chris Hayes, PBS NewsHour, and NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. She has testified before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.Before coming to the Brennan Center, Goitein served as counsel to Senator Russ Feingold, and as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice.Goitein graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for the Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Scott Jaschik is the editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed. He co-leads the outlet’s editorial operations, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, resources, and interactive features. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and Salon.Jaschik is a member of the board of the Education Writers Association. From 1999-2003, he was editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education.Jaschik was raised in Rochester, N.Y. He received his B.A. from Cornell University.

Rukmini Callimachi is a journalist who currently works for The New York Times.Callimachi joined The New York Times in March 2014 as a foreign correspondent, covering Al Qaeda and ISIS. She is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, including in 2014 for her series of stories based on a cache of internal Qaeda documents she discovered in Mali. She is also the winner of the George Polk Award for International Reporting, multiple Overseas Press Club Awards and the Michael Kelly prize.

Caleb Melby is an investigative reporter, currently reporting on finance for Bloomberg News. His work focuses on conflicts of interest, how loopholes are exploited, and how the wealthy wield power.Melby's stories have been featured on Netflix’s Dirty Money, NPR’s Embedded, and WNYC’s Trump Inc. He frequently discusses his work on television shows such as PBS NewsHour, MSNBC’s Morning Joe and Rachel Maddow, and CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360. Prior to joining Bloomberg News, Melby covered billionaires for Forbes Magazine.Melby received his B.A. in Journalism from Northwestern University.