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.
-
The White House dismissed the release of new Jeffrey Epstein documents as a distraction by Democrats and maintained President Trump has done nothing wrong, but it's been a tough issue to shake.
-
Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen voted to end the shutdown without healthcare stipulations. Her daughter, congressional candidate Stefany Shaheen, shares why she disagrees with her mother's decision.
-
Morris Katz is a 26-year-old political strategist who wants to take the Democratic party in a new direction. Leila Fadel talks to him about the candidates he's backing and his vision for the future.
-
NPR's Leila Fadel asks Illinois Democrat Mike Quigley, who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, about his opposition to the Senate-brokered shutdown deal.
-
James Vanderbilt's Nuremberg focuses on the relationship between the Nazis' number two Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) and Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), the psychiatrist tasked with monitoring him. -
President Trump has issued pardons for 77 people, including his former attorney Rudy Giuliani and former chief of staff Mark Meadows, who backed his effort to subvert the 2020 election.
-
Senate lawmakers voted late Sunday on a measure that would reopen the government, with enough moderate Democrats joining Republicans to support the initial vote.
-
After 40 days and 40 nights, a bipartisan group of Senate Democrats and Republicans reached a deal to reopen the government. But some oppose the deal because it doesn't reduce health care costs.
-
Democrats won every election in the 2025 off-year contests, setting them up for high expectations going into the 2026 midterms. Democrats and Republicans talk about what it could mean going forward.
-
NPR's Leila Fadel asks Republican strategist Brendan Buck about the Democratic election sweep and what it reveals about voter attitudes on the economy under President Trump.
