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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Brass Solidarity was formed after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in 2020. Now, the band is playing at protests against federal immigration enforcement, in an effort to bring joy to residents and break potential tension. -
The move comes after President Trump again threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to control ongoing protests over the immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis. -
As President Trump began a pattern of deploying the National Guard to democratic-led cities, several Democratic attorneys general and their staffs worked to coordinate their fight against the deployments – and, ultimately, they won. -
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against President Trump on Tuesday, refusing to reinstate, for now, Trump's ability to send National Guard troops into the state of Illinois over the objections of the governor. -
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. has ruled that National Guard troops can remain in the city for now. That decision comes after a different federal appeals court ruled that troops must leave Los Angeles earlier this week. -
In the latest in a series of legal setbacks for Trump's deployments, a judge ruled the administration must end its deployment to Los Angeles and return control of National Guard troops to California. -
Beckstrom, 20, was an Army specialist from Summersville, W.Va. She entered the service in 2023. President Trump said the second Guard member who was shot, Andrew Wolfe, "is fighting for his life." -
As President Trump's call for National Guard deployments rings out across the U.S., a small contingent of Ohio guard members is quietly expressing concern in an encrypted group chat. -
President Trump and several others now high up in his second administration have been talking about using the National Guard to help with mass deportations — and possibly invoking the Insurrection Act — for years. Now, those plans might be playing out. -
Two significant legal actions — including a possible decision from the U.S. Supreme Court — are expected this week. While both would be preliminary, they could impact how courts weigh in on such cases going forward.
