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-elect Donald Trump bills himself as a strongman. NPR's Leila Fadel asks philosopher, professor and author Jason Stanley why that appeals to American voters.
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Despite outspending Republicans, Democrats didn’t achieve some ambitious goals in state legislative races. They lost power in Michigan and Minnesota, making some gains in Wisconsin and North Carolina.
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A Guantanamo Bay detention camp judge has reinstated plea deals with three Sept. 11 defendants, ruling that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was wrong to rescind them.
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NPR's Leila Fadel talks to Andy Levin, a former Democratic congressman from Michigan and senior fellow with the Center for American Progress, about what Democrats could have done differently.
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Donald Trump's presidential transition plans are lagging. What to expect from Trump's first 100 days in office. January 6 rioters are already angling for presidential pardons under Trump.
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Barton Gellman of the Brennan Center for Justice speaks with NPR’s Leila Fadel about the potential for a losing candidate to reject the results of the 2024 election.
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NPR's Leila Fadel asks Mosab Abu Toha, a poet from Gaza, about his family’s experience in northern Gaza, where the Israeli military is intensifying its ground operation.
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U.S. employers created only 12,000 jobs in October, well below expectations for about 100,000 jobs to be created. However, the data was heavily skewed by the impacts of Hurricanes Helene and Milton and likely by the ongoing Boeing strike.
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Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump visit Arizona and Nevada. Reports offer a picture of the economy ahead of Election Day. Labor unions deploy thousands of canvassers.
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We catch up on the last-minute Arizona and Nevada stops by Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump.