St. Louis on the Air

The Violence Against Women Act was originally passed by Congress in 1994, spearheaded by then Senator Joe Biden.  But when the act expired in 2011, it took more than a year of wrangling before Congress could come to terms on its reauthorization.  When President Obama signed the reauthorization of the act on March 7, several additional groups of women were covered.  Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons, Native American women on tribal land and immigrants are now protected.

When Mary Beth Tinker was a middle school student in Iowa, she never dreamed that she would one day see her name attached to a Supreme Court decision in her college text book.  But that’s exactly what happened.

Ari Shapiro is a White House correspondent for NPR.

His stories about ongoing political negotiations in Washington, D.C. are familiar to public radio listeners as is his recent guest hosting of Talk of the Nation.

Shapiro, a graduate of Yale University, began his journalism career in 2001 in the office of NPR Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg.  He would go on to cover the Justice Department and serve reporting stints in Atlanta, Miami and Boston.  The award-winning journalist was the first NPR reporter to be promoted to correspondent before age thirty.