Carrie Johnson
Carrie Johnson is a Supreme Court and Justice Correspondent for NPR.
She covers a variety of stories about justice issues, law enforcement, and legal affairs for NPR's flagship programs and podcasts.
In recent years, Johnson has exposed misconduct by federal judges and uncovered systemic problems with internal accountability systems in the judiciary that fail to protect its most vulnerable employees. She's also reported widely on tensions between the executive branch and the federal bench, including a rise in threats against district court judges.
Johnson has followed the work of the Justice Department through the past four presidents, from a renewed focus on national security and civil rights into the norm-breaking tumult of the second Trump administration. She's adept at finding the vivid anecdotes at the heart of major news stories, from federal workers caught up in political sting operations, to the memes around the sandwich thrower in Washington, D.C.
Her work has been honored with awards from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, the Society for Professional Journalists, and SABEW. She served as a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University from 2019-2020. In 2021, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers honored Johnson with a rarely-bestowed Champion of Justice award for her journalism work.
She has been a finalist for the Loeb Award for financial journalism and for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news for team coverage of the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas.
Prior to coming to NPR in 2010, Johnson worked at the Washington Post for 10 years. Earlier in her career, she wrote about courts for the weekly publication Legal Times.
Johnson is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Benedictine University in Illinois.
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The Trump administration asserts a nearly 50-year-old law requiring the preservation of federal government records is unconstitutional. Historians warn important papers could be destroyed.
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President Trump has an opportunity to add to his legacy on federal judges by filling more key vacancies this year.
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President Trump announced Thursday that Pam Bondi will no longer serve as attorney general. Her departure comes amid frustration over her leadership and handling of the Epstein files.
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Pauline Newman's story shines a light on the aging judiciary, where judges are getting older and lifetime tenure is raising thorny questions about retirement. -
Robert Mueller, the former FBI director and special counsel who led the high-profile investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, has died. NPR looks back at his legacy.
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NPR's justice correspondent Carrie Johnson speaks with Adrian Ma about Robert Mueller. The former FBI Director and special counsel has died at the age of 81, his family said.
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Mueller's family told The New York Times in August that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. -
The case of Khalil, who was detained last March, sits at the vanguard of a battle of immigrants' due process and civil rights, and the Trump administration's mass detention and deportation policies. -
The case accuses the Trump administration of ignoring legislation designed to stop the spread of Chinese propaganda — and instead helping to broker a partial sale to businessmen close to Trump. -
Federal employees have been losing their jobs after sting operations engineered by political provocateur James O'Keefe. Now some of them are fighting back in court. -
In an abrupt reversal, the Justice Department said Tuesday that it will continue to defend President Trump's executive orders targeting four big law firms.
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The Justice Department reversed course and took back an effort to abandon an appeal against four big law firms that challenged President Trump's punitive executive orders.
