American newscaster and commentator Rachel Maddow was BOTD in 1973. Born in Castro Valley, California, she attended Stanford University where she was outed as lesbian in the college newspaper. She won a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University, where she wrote a PhD thesis on HIV/AIDS healthcare reform in British and American prisons. She began her broadcasting career in radio in 1999, launching a weekday news programme in 2005. After several guest spots as a political commentator during the 2006 US Elections, she was given her own TV news programme The Rachel Maddow Show in 2008, becoming the first openly queer primetime news host. An old-school liberal, her news interests include the Russian government’s dissemination of information, the role of the military in post-Cold War American politics and the boundaries between church and state. In recent years she has been a prominent critic of Donald Trump, winning the 2025 Walter Cronkite Award for excellence in political journalism. She lives in New York and Massachusetts with her partner Susan Miluka.