Christopher Loffredo Hayes (/heɪz/; born February 28, 1979)[1][2][3] is an American political commentator, television news anchor, and author.

[11] Hayes attended Hunter College High School in New York City;[12] his classmates included Immortal Technique[13] and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Speaking of "intellectual formation" at Brown with Ezra Klein, Hayes stated, "I was a philosophy major, but I was very much in this sort of analytic school.

[16] Beginning in August 2001,[17] for four years Hayes was a contributor to the independent weekly newspaper Chicago Reader, where he covered local and national politics.

In late 2003,[18] he began a four-year stint at In These Times, a labor-focused monthly magazine based in Chicago where he was a senior editor.

Hayes wrote extensively on issues central to the liberal community, including what ails the Democratic Party in the post-9/11 era[21] and how the labor movement is changing.

[22] He also reported on progressive activists' work to resuscitate the "public option" during the 2009–2010 health care fight when many political insiders wrote it off as dead.

[26] On August 1, 2011, MSNBC announced that Hayes would host a two-hour morning show on Saturdays and Sundays, each going into depth on current issues.

And I don't want to obviously desecrate or disrespect the memory of anyone that's fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers, and things like that.

[38][39] In May 2018, Hayes launched a weekly podcast called Why Is This Happening?, featuring interviews with political figures, activists, journalists, writers, and academics.

[40][41] The podcast's first live episode was recorded in November 2018, at Congregation Beth Elohim, in Brooklyn, New York, with author Ta-Nehisi Coates.

[44][45] Hayes criticized the United States government's decision to charge WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917 for his role in the 2010 publication of a trove of Iraq War documents and diplomatic cables leaked by Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

Hayes tweeted: "The Espionage indictment of Assange for publishing is an extremely dangerous, frontal attack on the free press.

[51] Hayes' third book, The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource was published (in hardcover) on January 28, 2025 by Penguin Random House.