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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A judge has granted the Justice Department's bid to drop a landmark case against leaders of the Oath Keepers, as former prosecutors warn about the dangers of denying the violence of Jan. 6. -
Congress created the Alien Terrorist Removal Court in 1996 to make it easier for the Justice Department to use classified evidence to deport people from U.S. soil. -
The former special counsel led two criminal investigations of President Trump and has been a frequent target of Trump's ire on social media. -
Descendants of Dred Scott and Chief Justice Roger Taney spoke about reconciliation at a church in the shadow of the Supreme Court last week as the high court wrestled with race and who can be an American. -
The central issue in the Roundup case, filed by Missouri resident John Durnell, was who decides what should appear on a pesticide or insecticide label and whether a federal law overrides state claims. -
Anthony Bailey's case is one of about a dozen that could be directly affected by a Supreme Court ruling limiting how prisoners can use the compassionate release program to get out early. -
With judicial clerkships and internships coveted by law programs, a group of Emory Law School students asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the judiciary's system for policing its own bad behavior. -
Three judges are facing misconduct allegations in three different states, putting pressure on the federal judiciary's system for policing bad behavior in its own ranks. -
The president sued the IRS and the Treasury Department in January, demanding $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns years ago. -
The Justice Department has indicted former FBI Director James Comey, months after its first case against him collapsed. President Trump has been demanding retribution against his critics.
