August 2023

Nancy Cordes is CBS News’ chief White House correspondent based in Washington, D.C. Her reporting appears across all broadcasts and platforms, including the CBS EVENING NEWS with NORAH O’DONNELL, CBS MORNINGS and the CBS News Streaming Network. Cordes has won numerous awards for her reporting, including multiple Emmy Awards, Edward R. Murrow Awards and an Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Award.

While on the White House beat, Cordes has covered some of the biggest stories out of Washington including the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and the 2023 debt ceiling crisis. She has covered President Biden’s diplomatic travels around the world, including his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, his meetings with world leaders at NATO, G7 and G20 summits in Madrid, Cornwall, Warsaw, Vilnius, Rome and Brussels, and his meetings with Asian leaders in Tokyo and Seoul. In 2023, Cordes won an Emmy Award and an American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for breaking news coverage on CBS EVENING NEWS following the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

In her previous role as CBS News’ chief Congressional correspondent, Cordes led coverage from Capitol Hill as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in January 2021 and as Donald Trump became the first American president in history to be impeached twice. During her 12 years covering Congress, she reported extensively on government shutdowns, COVID-19 relief legislation negotiations, five Supreme Court confirmations, the congressional investigation into Russian election interference, the 2017 tax cut bill, the battle over President Obama’s health care law, the rise of the Tea Party, and ongoing debates over immigration reform, gun control and many other policy issues.

Cordes has been a major contributor to CBS News’ election coverage since 2008. On Election Nights 2010, 2014, 2018, 2020 and 2022, Cordes was part of the in-studio anchor team and led coverage of House and Senate races. In 2016, she was the lead CBS News correspondent covering Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid and co-hosted a primary debate in Iowa. She covered President Obama’s bid for re-election in 2012.

Cordes joined CBS News in 2007 as Transportation and Consumer Safety correspondent. Previously, Cordes was an ABC News correspondent based in New York (2005-07), where she reported for all ABC News broadcasts and covered major news stories including Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq and the 2004 election. Before that, she was a Washington-based correspondent for NewsOne, the affiliate news service of ABC News (2003-04). Cordes was a reporter for WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C., from 1999 to 2003. While at WJLA-TV, Cordes covered the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon, the 2000 presidential race, the Washington, D.C.-area sniper attacks and peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia. She began her career as a reporter for KHNL-TV in Honolulu in 1995.

Cordes was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Hawaii on the islands of Kauai and Oahu. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. Cordes received a master’s degree in public policy from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.