Vanessa Romo
Vanessa Romo is a reporter for NPR's News Desk. She covers breaking news on a wide range of topics, weighing in daily on everything from immigration and the treatment of migrant children, to a war-crimes trial where a witness claimed he was the actual killer, to an alleged sex cult. She has also covered the occasional cat-clinging-to-the-hood-of-a-car story.
Before her stint on the News Desk, Romo spent the early months of the Trump Administration on the Washington Desk covering stories about culture and politics – the voting habits of the post-millennial generation, the rise of Maxine Waters as a septuagenarian pop culture icon and DACA quinceañeras as Trump protests.
In 2016, she was at the core of the team that launched and produced The New York Times' first political podcast, The Run-Up with Michael Barbaro. Prior to that, Romo was a Spencer Education Fellow at Columbia University's School of Journalism where she began working on a radio documentary about a pilot program in Los Angeles teaching black and Latino students to code switch.
Romo has also traveled extensively through the Member station world in California and Washington. As the education reporter at Southern California Public Radio, she covered the region's K-12 school districts and higher education institutions and won the Education Writers Association first place award as well as a Regional Edward R. Murrow for Hard News Reporting.
Before that, she covered business and labor for Member station KNKX, keeping an eye on global companies including Amazon, Boeing, Starbucks and Microsoft.
A Los Angeles native, she is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University, where she received a degree in history. She also earned a master's degree in Journalism from NYU. She loves all things camaron-based.
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St. Vincent's National Emergency Management Organization announced Friday that the volcano had erupted amid ongoing attempts to evacuate nearby residents. -
"A healthy person subjected to what Mr. Floyd was subjected to would have died," pulmonary specialist Dr. Martin Tobin told jurors on Thursday. -
Senior Special Agent James Reyerson changed his own testimony on Wednesday, after first saying Floyd admitted, "I ate too many drugs." The reversal was a blow for defendant Derek Chauvin. -
The project involved 44 schools, the names of which a panel had decided honored figures linked to racism or oppression. -
"My own personal view that this is too extreme, it was too broad and did not grandfather in those young people who are currently under hormone treatment," he said, before apologizing. -
When asked if former officer Derek Chauvin's restraint of George Floyd followed proper protocol, Minneapolis Inspector Katie Blackwell said, "I don't know what kind of improvised position that is." -
Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, called the Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act, or SAFE Act, "a vast government overreach." The legislature could override the veto with a simple majority. -
"Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box," said Commissioner Rob Manfred. A new host city for the game was not named. -
Paramedics who treated George Floyd as he lay motionless in the street, testified at then-officer Derek Chauvin's trial on Thursday. They said Floyd was in cardiac arrest and "limp" when they arrived. -
The bombastic conservative, who became a popular talk show host, reveled in his reputation as a man willing to go to any lengths to reelect Nixon, saying, "I'd do it again for my president."
