Ethnicity Irish Name Kirsten Powers Role Political analyst | Nationality American Religion Catholic | |
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Books The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech Education Georgetown University, University of Maryland, College Park, Georgetown University Law Center Similar People Marty Makary, Monica Crowley, Andrea Tantaros, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Megyn Kelly Profiles | ||
Alma mater University of Maryland | ||
Former Fox analyst: Bill O'Reilly was untouchable
Powers: 'They're drama queens'
Kirsten Powers is an author, columnist and political analyst. She currently writes for USA Today and is an on-air political analyst at CNN, where she appears regularly on Anderson Cooper 360°, CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, and The Lead with Jake Tapper.
Contents
- Former Fox analyst Bill OReilly was untouchable
- Powers Theyre drama queens
- Political positions
- Personal life
- References
Prior to CNN, Powers worked at Fox News as a political analyst and contributor, where she appeared regularly across the channel including Special Report with Bret Baier, Fox News Sunday, The Kelly File and The O’Reilly Factor.
Powers previously was a columnist for the New York Post and later The Daily Beast, which she left to join USA Today. Powers' first column appeared at The American Prospect and her numerous articles have appeared in USA Today, Elle, the New York Observer, Salon, and the Wall Street Journal.
Powers began her career as a staff assistant with the Clinton-Gore presidential transition team in 1992, followed by an appointment as Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Public Affairs in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1998. She subsequently worked in various roles, including press secretary, communications consultant and party consultant.
Political positions
Powers supports universal health care, believing it to be a moral imperative to supply health care to all Americans. Thus, she initially supported Obama's health care reform but later became critical of its implementation. She lamented that the laws resulted in a doubling of costs: "if I want to keep the same health insurance, it's going to cost twice as much." She later opined: "A lot of people who have really been screwed over by the law [and] are left without insurance or with extremely expensive insurance", and agreed with a Ron Fournier headline in National Journal, "Why I'm getting tired of defending Obamacare."
She opposed the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuals serving in the military, and supports civil unions for same-sex couples. She also believes that churches should be left "to perform the kinds of marriages that they want".
Powers opposed the Fairness Doctrine, and a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. She also supports comprehensive immigration reform and providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and favors gun control. She also supports closing Guantanamo Bay and transferring its prisoners to federal prisons.
Powers opposed the Iraq war and supports the right of countries to choose their own governments free of outside influence. However, in 2011 she criticized Americans' lack of concern about the Muslim Brotherhood rising to power in Egypt as "naivete". Her concern partly derived from her then-husband Marty Makary being of Coptic origin.
Powers opposes the death penalty. She opposes elective late-term abortions.
Personal life
Powers briefly dated former Congressman Anthony Weiner in 2002, and remained his close friend after their romantic relationship ended. After initially defending him when the story of Weiner's sexting scandal surfaced in May 2011, Powers later condemned his conduct and called for his resignation from Congress.
Powers married Marty Makary, Professor of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, in January 2010; the couple divorced in 2013.
Powers was raised as an Episcopalian but spent much of her early adult life as an atheist. In her mid-30s, she became an evangelical Christian. The process of conversion began when she dated a religious Christian man, who introduced her to the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and the teachings of its pastor, Tim Keller, and culminated in an experience in 2006 when, during a trip to Taiwan, she believes that she was visited by Jesus after waking up in the middle of the night. She has called her conversion "a bit of a mind bender" due to her political beliefs and former atheism, and prefers the term "orthodox Christian" over "evangelical" to describe herself, given the cultural baggage around the latter term. She has said that the biggest impact her new-found faith had on her political beliefs was that she came to "view everyone as God's child and that means everyone deserves grace and respect." On October 10, 2015, Powers was received into the Catholic Church.
On November 16, 2016, Powers announced her engagement to fellow journalist Robert Draper.