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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President Trump minimized concerns about the economy during a Pennsylvania rally Tuesday. NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with political consultant Frank Luntz about Trump's latest take.
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Data obtained and published by the Deportation Data Project shows that in the first nine months of President Trump's second term, around 75,000 people arrested by ICE did not have a criminal record, which is over a third of all ICE arrests. Co-host Leila Fadel talks to Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, about what this data tells us about the Trump administration's immigration policy.
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NPR remembers supervising editor Kevin Drew, an award-winning journalist and esteemed colleague, who passed away last weekend.
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Trump downplays affordability at Pennsylvania rally, Fed expected to cut rates for a third straight time, Afghan CIA fighters, like National Guard attack suspect, face mental health struggles in U.S.
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María Corina Machado was slated to receive her Nobel Peace Prize Wednesday, but the Venezuelan opposition leader, who has been in hiding, will not attend the ceremony.
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Americans are concerned about high costs, but President Trump recently called affordability "a Democrat hoax." NPR unpacks the administration's messaging with GOP strategist Brendan Buck.
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President Trump expected to address affordability at Pennsylvania rally, SCOTUS seems poised to side with Trump in FTC firing, Indiana lawmakers expected to vote on controversial redistricting plan.
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Indiana Republicans are weighing a plan backed by President Trump to redraw its congressional map to add more GOP seats ahead of next year's midterm election.
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After hearing arguments Monday, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court seem poised to give the president the power to fire people at independent agencies like the FTC and Federal Reserve.
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Democrats have become the party of the status quo, says Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. He's urging members of his party to craft sharper election messages and back new voices in the party.
