Kat Lonsdorf
Kat Lonsdorf is a Middle East reporter currently based in Tel Aviv.
Originally from a small town in Wisconsin, Kat attended Occidental College in Los Angeles where she majored in Diplomacy and World Affairs. She joined NPR in 2016 after earning her Masters in Journalism from Medill at Northwestern University.
Lonsdorf has produced and reported for NPR around the world, including in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Japan, Kenya, Ukraine, Georgia, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. In 2020, she was NPR's Above the Fray Fellow, reporting out a series of stories looking at clean up and recovery efforts in Fukushima, Japan after the nuclear disaster in 2011. That series made her a finalist for the Livingston Award for international reporting. She's also won both a Gracie and an Edward R Murrow award for her work.
Before she came to NPR, she was a full-time bartender in downtown Los Angeles, and also hosted and produced an education travel video series for kids called Project Explorer where she filmed in 14 countries across five continents. Lonsdorf has lived in both Japan and Jordan, and speaks Japanese and conversational Arabic. She's currently trying to learn Hebrew in the evenings. [Copyright 2025 NPR]
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The Trump administration filed an appeal to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking it to lift lower-court rulings blocking Trump from deploying National Guard troops in Illinois. -
As President Trump pushes to get National Guard troops patrolling American cities, his administration has, in effect, blurred the lines between the military, traditional law enforcement and immigration enforcement. -
Many in Memphis acknowledge that crime in the city is a real problem. And while President Trump's federal intervention might not be their ideal way to handle it, they're hoping it can provide some much-needed relief. -
Bondi added that she and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will be visiting Memphis this week. -
President Trump ordered the deployment of troops to Portland and said he's authorized them to use "full force" to curb protests outside ICE facilities. -
The president signed an order earlier this week to send Tennessee state National Guard troops, along with officials from various federal departments and agencies, into Memphis, in an effort to fight crime. It's one of several U.S. cities Trump has singled out for such a move, testing the limits of presidential power and military force. -
Trump posted online that Chicago was "about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR," but later said his administration wouldn't go to war with American cities but rather "clean them up." -
President Trump threatened the city with the deportation of undocumented immigrants, posting a reference to the film Apocalypse Now with the quote: "I love the smell of deportations in the morning." -
The iceberg, known as A23a, has been on a journey following the current into warmer waters for months. Now, it has begun the predicted and natural process of breaking apart, and eventually melting. -
As famine plagues Gaza, NPR exclusive reporting looks at the U.S. role in the humanitarian crisis. Many former officials NPR interviewed share a common refrain: Did we do enough to prevent this?
