Leila Fadel
Leila Fadel is a national correspondent for NPR based in Los Angeles, covering issues of culture, diversity, and race.
Most recently, she was NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo and covered the wave of revolts in the Middle East and their aftermaths in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond. Her stories brought us to the heart of a state-ordered massacre of pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo in 2013 when police shot into crowds of people to clear them and killed between 1,000 and 2,000 people. She told us the tales of a coup in Egypt and what it is like for a country to go through a military overthrow of an elected government. She covered the fall of Mosul to ISIS in 2014 and documented the harrowing tales of the Yazidi women who were kidnapped and enslaved by the group. Her coverage also included stories of human smugglers in Egypt and the Syrian families desperate and willing to pay to risk their lives and cross a turbulent ocean for Europe.
She was awarded the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club for her coverage of the 2013 coup in Egypt and the toll it took on the country and Egyptian families. In 2017 she earned a Gracie award for the story of a single mother in Tunisia whose two eldest daughters were brainwashed and joined ISIS. The mother was fighting to make sure it didn't happen to her younger girls.
Before joining NPR, she covered the Middle East for The Washington Post as the Cairo Bureau Chief. Prior to her position as Cairo Bureau Chief for the Post, she covered the Iraq war for nearly five years with Knight Ridder, McClatchy Newspapers, and later the Washington Post. Her foreign coverage of the devastating human toll of the Iraq war earned her the George. R. Polk award in 2007. In 2016 she was the Council on Foreign Relations Edward R. Murrow fellow.
Leila Fadel is a Lebanese-American journalist who speaks conversational Arabic and was raised in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
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Storms kill dozens in southern U.S., Trump administration deports more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador with rarely used law, two legal migrants denied reentry in Boston after traveling abroad.
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President Trump justified his use of a wartime law to deport people. The CEO of Democracy Forward argues that the president is using it to claim powers not granted to him under the Constitution. -
More than 50 universities are being investigated for alleged racial discrimination as part of Trump's campaign to end DEI programs that his officials say exclude white and Asian students.
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On March 8, Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate student, was detained by federal agents. His wife, Noor Abdalla, witnessed the arrest. -
Voice of America is mostly silent after the Trump administration ordered hundreds of journalists locked out of their offices and put on indefinite leave.
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In her first broadcast interview, Noor Abdalla speaks about the arrest and attempted deportation of her husband, Columbia University protestor Mahmoud Khalil.
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Senate to vote on GOP spending bill as government shutdown deadline looms, Trump to give speech at DOJ about law and order, judges order federal agencies to reinstate thousands of fired workers.
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In a pair of rulings Thursday, judges ordered federal agencies to reinstate thousands of workers who were recently fired. In both cases, the judges said the mass firings appear illegal.
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During the COVID pandemic, NPR's Morning Edition commissioned pieces by musicians from various genres. Five years later, we listen back on the project.
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The Senate will vote Friday on a GOP spending bill. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., says he will vote to support the bill to avert a government shutdown. Hear the latest developments.
