Ayesha Rascoe
Ayesha Rascoe is the host of Weekend Edition Sunday and the Saturday episodes of Up First. As host of the morning news magazine, she interviews news makers, entertainers, politicians and more about the stories that everyone is talking about or that everyone should be talking about.
Known for her southern roots and signature wit, Rascoe has been a mainstay on NPR's programs since joining the outlet in 2018.
Prior to her role as host, Rascoe was a White House Correspondent. She covered three presidential administrations, gaining a reputation for her sharp questioning in the White House briefing room. Rascoe's reporting included a number of high profile foreign trips, including President Trump's 2019 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, and President Obama's final NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland in 2016. As a part of the White House team, she was also a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast.
She's also guest hosted NPR's It's Been a Minute podcast and radio show and been a frequent guest on Pop Culture Happy Hour.
Before joining NPR, Rascoe spent the first decade of her career at Reuters, rising from a news assistant to an energy reporter to eventually covering the White House. While at Reuters, Rascoe covered some of the biggest energy and environmental stories of the past decade, including the 2010 BP oil spill and the U.S. response to the Fukushima nuclear crisis in 2011. She also spent a year covering energy legal issues and court cases.
She graduated from Howard University in 2007 with a B.A. in journalism.
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We reached out to business owners who paid those Trump tariffs that have been struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. The question on their minds: will they get their money back? How will they get their money back?
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The 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics wrap up today with key events like men's ice hockey and women's gold medal curling.
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Drones capture the dramatic turns of skiers and bobsleds on the ice at the Winter Olympics, but have they become a distraction?
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In a series of profiles of members of the civil rights generation, we visit JoAnne Bland in Selma, Ala. Bland marched for voting rights on "Bloody Sunday" in 1965 when she was just 11.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Mick Mulroy about possible American military action against Iran.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks to Colleen Shogan, former Archivist of the U.S., about an initiative to "debrief America" in its 250th year with essays by prominent Americans, starting with George W. Bush.
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President Trump says he will raise global tariffs by 15% days after the Supreme Court ruled he doesn't have the emergency power to raise tariffs. And the world waits to see if Trump will strike Iran.
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to actress and comedy writer Paula Pell about her role in the new show, "The 'Burbs."
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Plastic from Canada that dates from the 1960s recently washed up on the shores of a Scottish island. NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to David Warner from Orkney, Scotland who made the discovery.
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Republicans and Democrats in state capitols across the country agree on some things when it comes to regulating Artificial Intelligence and data centers.