Kristen Holmes is a Correspondent for CNN in the Washington, D.C. bureau. She is currently covering the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential hopefuls. Holmes is an experienced reporter and on-air journalist with deep knowledge of America’s political landscape and a wide network of sources in Washington and around the country.

She has reported on some of the country’s most important news stories, including the Las Vegas shooting, and Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, for which she was nominated for an Emmy. As tensions escalated between the United States and North Korea, she was dispatched to Guam when Kim Jong-un threatened a missile strike against the U.S. territory.

During the 2020 election cycle, she was part of a small team that led CNN’s coverage on voter integrity, and how the pandemic dramatically reshaped the election process. During that time, Holmes broke a number of stories on state preparations for mail-in voting, internal deliberations at the US Postal Service, and the fraught transition of power, as President Trump thwarted the incoming administration’s access to documents and agencies. She was the first journalist to exclusively report that the GSA administrator had finally ascertained the election, after a 16 day delay that threw the country into turmoil.

As part of CNN’s election coverage, Holmes was also asked to help create and host Election 101, a popular 11-episode CNN Original Series/ iHeart Radio podcast that remains one of the network’s most popular political podcasts. The content was aimed at bringing a new and vital understanding of what’s at stake when Americans cast their votes. The unique concept was featured in numerous publications including Vogue magazine. It was nominated for a prestigious Webby Award, honoring excellence on the internet. Holmes is a regular guest host on CNN’s top political podcasts.

Previously, Holmes covered the White House during the Trump administration. In particular, Holmes focused on the contentious relationship between federal health agencies and the Trump White House as the pandemic ravaged the country.

Holmes broke stories on behind the scenes deliberations over the pandemic response, exclusively obtaining a number of internal documents that exposed political interference in the federal government’s response. She was also the first reporter to obtain the details of the Trump administration’s plan, presented to the nation’s governors, to reopen the country.

Holmes started her on-air career at CNN’s Newsource as their leading political correspondent during the 2018 midterm elections, creating a voter issue series that took her across the country to depict what mattered most to Americans. Before that, Holmes was an embedded producer on the 2016 campaign trail, and a White House producer for CNN.

Holmes graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and received a Master’s of Science from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. In between, Holmes spent two years as an elementary school teacher in South Chicago, as a member of the selective Teach for America corps.