Brandon Tensley

National Political Writer, CNN Politics

Brandon Tensley is a CNN Politics national political writer, covering the intersection of culture and politics.
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Naomi Ackie plays Whitney Houston in Kasi Lemmons' new biopic about the late megastar.
Emily Aragones/CTMG/Sony Pictures
What the Whitney Houston biopic reveals
Dec 23, 2022
How racial expectations loomed over Whitney Houston, what the recent spate of new work about the singer says about the current pop-cultural landscape and why it’s a mistake to overlook the Black, feminist work she did in her post-“Bodyguard” years
A family holding hands at the park.
FG Trade/E+/Getty Images
Why chosen family is even more important during the holidays
Dec 22, 2022
A conversation on the significance, the joy, of bucking kinship norms, especially during Christmas
Tribal councilman Wendsler Nosie, Sr. speaks with Apache activists in a rally to save Oak Flat, land near Superior, Ariz., sacred to Western Apache tribes, in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 22, 2015. The land sits on top of a large copper deposit and Resolution Copper Mine enlisted the help of Sen. John McCain. McCain, R-Arz., who attached a provision into a defense bill in December 2014 that transferred 2,400 acres of federal land to them in exchange for 5,300 acres of land owned by the company. McCain heralded the bill as a compromise that protects 800 acres of sacred land along Apache Leap, allows access to Oak Flats campgrounds and requires the mine to undergo an Environmental Impact Statement before it receives the land.
Molly Riley/AP
What happens when the most sacred site of your religion is slated to become a copper mine? This activist is trying to stop it
Dec 15, 2022
“We’re arguing that our religion is just as important as other religions,” one Apache activist says.
Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, walks on stage during a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia, US, on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022. Former President Barack Obama returned to Georgia to campaign for Warnock in the closing days of the runoff election with Republican Herschel Walker.
Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Sky-high Black turnout fueled Warnock’s previous win. Will Georgia do it again?
Dec 5, 2022
Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young rode his scooter alongside Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, Martin Luther King III and a fervent crowd of marchers on a recent Sunday through a southwest Atlanta neighborhood. The group stopped at an early polling location to vote, forming a line with some waiting as long as one hour to cast their ballots.
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs holds a hearing on Freedmen provisions in tribal treaties, July 27, 2022.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Black Creeks expelled from tribe finally get their day in court, 43 years later
Dec 1, 2022
Here’s a closer look at the citizenship struggles dividing the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
Alex Clemons, left, and his daughter Epifania, 11, hug while paying their respects at a makeshift memorial near Club Q on November 20, 2022, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post/Getty Images
How America’s unique violence continues
Nov 24, 2022
The Colorado Springs shooting is one recent illustration of how violence – or the threat of violence – can turn a place that was once a source of comfort for a particular vulnerable group into a site of fear, even anguish.
The former Atlanta Medical Center, November 9, 2022
Austin Steele/CNN
The loss of Atlanta Medical Center is part of a larger pattern of urban hospital closures devastating vulnerable communities across the US
Nov 12, 2022
The closures will disproportionately burden Black communities and low-income communities.
Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Herschel Walker (L) and U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock D-Ga.
John Bazemore/AP
How Georgia’s looming runoff election evokes America’s segregationist history
Nov 11, 2022
Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker must battle at the polls on December 6. The upcoming contest has sparked conversations about the troubling history of the runoff system
Chittenden County State's Attorney Sarah George, Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton and Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry
What critics of progressive prosecution get wrong about crime spikes and the reform movement
Nov 6, 2022
Joaquin Ciria knows firsthand the power of the so-called progressive prosecutor movement, which seeks to make the US criminal legal system less harsh and more ethical.
Jay Chen and Michelle Steel
Reuters/Getty Images
Battle over House seat in California is a wake-up call about the importance of Asian American voters
Nov 3, 2022
Experts say that the Asian American vote is big enough to make a difference.
102622 gop rhetoric
illustration: CNN
How age-old homophobic language is being used to miseducate voters
Oct 27, 2022
Here’s a closer look at examples of anti-LGBTQ language as the midterm elections approach and political leaders test out their values.
Gathering at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood, November 2, 2018.
Justin Merriman/The Washington Post/Getty Images
As Tree of Life massacre anniversary nears, recent antisemitic rhetoric proves too many Americans learned nothing from attack
Oct 22, 2022
Why American Jewish ought to inform our present day
Emmett Till is pictured with his mother around 1950.
Everett/Shutterstock
Exploring the many forms of justice for Emmett Till nearly 70 years after his murder
Oct 13, 2022
Justice can look like anything from legal justice to justice to Till’s memory.
Led by Martin Luther King Jr, people line up in front of the Dallas County Courthouse in Selma, Alabama, to register to vote.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Supreme Court case on Alabama’s voting maps is a ‘pivotal moment in history’
Oct 5, 2022
Merrill v. Milligan could allow states more latitude to constrain Black and brown Americans’ political power.
National Guard troops line Beale Street, in Memphis, Tennessee, as protesters wearing placards reading "I Am a Man" pass by, March 29, 1968.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Instruction about race may be under siege across the US, but this course is empowering students at a Southern high school
Oct 2, 2022
Ridge View is one of about 60 high schools across the country piloting AP African American Studies in 2022. The course arrives at a moment when instruction about race is under siege.
Brett Favre
Michael Owens/Getty Images
Brett Favre’s latest scandal revives debate about how Black and White athletes are treated differently
Sep 29, 2022
The issue has revived discussions about an age-old pattern: how, in the wake of scandal, White athletes seem to be treated differently from their Black peers.

About

Brandon Tensley is a CNN Politics national political writer, covering the intersection of culture and politics.

Prior to joining CNN, Tensley was the associate editor at New America, a co-host of Slate magazine’s Outward podcast, and a contributing writer at Pacific Standard magazine, where he covered culture. He was also the advocacy and communications associate for the Poverty to Prosperity program at the Center for American Progress.

In 2018, Tensley was selected as a fellow for the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Taiwan-U.S. Policy Program, which brings together experts to bolster their understanding of Taiwan’s role in the world. He was also a 2015-16 Luce Scholar in Southeast Asia, ricocheting between Myanmar and Thailand as an editor at The Irrawaddy, and a 2012-13 Fulbright Scholar in Germany.

Tensley has a bachelor’s degree in German and political science from Furman University and a master’s degree in politics from the University of Oxford, in England.