Background and career
Laura Anne Ingraham (; born June 19, 1963) is an American conservative television presenter. She has been the host of The Ingraham Angle on Fox News Channel since October 2017, and is the editor-in-chief of LifeZette. She formerly hosted the nationally syndicated radio show The Laura Ingraham Show. Ingraham worked as a speechwriter in the Reagan administration in the late 1980s. She earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia in 1991 and was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. She then worked for the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York City. Ingraham began her media career in the mid-1990s. Ingraham is known for her support for Donald Trump and acted as an informal advisor during his first presidency.
Ingraham grew up in Glastonbury, Connecticut, where she was born to Anne Caroline (née Kozak) and James Frederick Ingraham III. Her maternal grandparents were Polish immigrants and her father was of Irish and English ancestry. She has two brothers. She graduated from Glastonbury High School in 1981. Ingraham studied English literature and Russian at Dartmouth College, graduating in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts. After college, Ingraham spent several years as a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan's domestic policy advisor. She then attended the University of Virginia School of Law, where she was a notes editor for the Virginia Law Review. She graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1991.
In the late 1980s, Ingraham worked as a speechwriter in the Reagan administration for the domestic policy advisor. She also briefly served as editor of The Prospect, the magazine issued by Concerned Alumni of Princeton. After graduating from law school in 1991, Ingraham was a law clerk for Judge Ralph K. Winter Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1991 to 1992 and for Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas from 1992 to 1993. She then worked as an attorney at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. In 1995, she appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in connection with a story about young conservatives. In 1996, she and Jay P. Lefkowitz organized the first Dark Ages Weekend in response to Renaissance Weekend.
Ingraham has had three stints as a cable television host. She first became a host on MSNBC in 1996. In the late 1990s, she became a CBS commentator and hosted the MSNBC program Watch It!. Several years later, on her radio program, Ingraham began campaigning for another cable television show. In 2008, Fox News Channel gave her a three-week trial run for a new show entitled Just In. In October 2017, she became the host of a new Fox News Channel program, The Ingraham Angle.
Ingraham launched The Laura Ingraham Show in April 2001. The show was heard on 306 stations and on XM Satellite Radio. It was originally syndicated by Westwood One, but moved to Talk Radio Network in 2004. In 2012, Ingraham was rated as the No. 5 radio show in America by Talkers Magazine. In November 2012, she announced her departure from Talk Radio Network, declining to renew her contract with TRN after nearly a decade of being associated with the network. She was the second major host from TRN's lineup to leave the network that year: TRN's other major program, The Savage Nation, left TRN two months earlier. Her new program, syndicated by Courtside Entertainment Group, began airing on January 2, 2013, and went off the air in December 2018. Ingraham continues to produce podcast material for Courtside's PodcastOne division.
LifeZette is a conservative American website founded in 2015 by Ingraham and businessman Peter Anthony. In January 2018, Ingraham confirmed that she had sold the majority stake in LifeZette to The Katz Group, owned by Canadian billionaire Daryl Katz.
