Laurel Wamsley
Laurel Wamsley is a reporter for NPR's News Desk. She reports breaking news for NPR's digital coverage, newscasts, and news magazines, as well as occasional features. She was also the lead reporter for NPR's coverage of the 2019 Women's World Cup in France.
Wamsley got her start at NPR as an intern for Weekend Edition Saturday in January 2007 and stayed on as a production assistant for NPR's flagship news programs, before joining the Washington Desk for the 2008 election.
She then left NPR, doing freelance writing and editing in Austin, Texas, and then working in various marketing roles for technology companies in Austin and Chicago.
In November 2015, Wamsley returned to NPR as an associate producer for the National Desk, where she covered stories including Hurricane Matthew in coastal Georgia. She became a Newsdesk reporter in March 2017, and has since covered subjects including climate change, possibilities for social networks beyond Facebook, the sex lives of Neanderthals, and joke theft.
In 2010, Wamsley was a Journalism and Women Symposium Fellow and participated in the German-American Fulbright Commission's Berlin Capital Program, and was a 2016 Voqal Foundation Fellow. She will spend two months reporting from Germany as a 2019 Arthur F. Burns Fellow, a program of the International Center for Journalists.
Wamsley earned a B.A. with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar. Wamsley holds a master's degree from Ohio University, where she was a Public Media Fellow and worked at NPR Member station WOUB. A native of Athens, Ohio, she now lives and bikes in Washington, DC.
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House Democrats press the leaders of federal agencies for details on whether President Trump has stymied health experts from taking more effective action to stem the spread of the coronavirus. -
Officials attribute at least part of the rise to a decline in social distancing as people venture out into the world again. The majority of new cases are in Southern California and the Central Valley. -
Texas' education commissioner says the state's public schools will be open for students to return in the fall. But not everyone thinks that's a good idea, as cases of COVID-19 keep rising there. -
Gov. Greg Abbott said Texas hospitals have "abundant" capacity. Mayors from the state's largest cities asked Abbott for the authority to require face masks amid the spike in COVID-19 cases. -
"We will almost certainly see cases here again" Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern predicted last week. "That is not a sign we have failed." The two women in the new cases are in self-isolation. -
Rebekah Jones says she was fired after refusing to manipulate COVID-19 data. Her new portal is a reflection of how contentious coronavirus data has become amid battles over the states' reopening. -
Travelers must review the checklist when checking in online or at the airport and confirm — similar to how passengers must affirm they're not bringing explosives or banned materials on board. -
Access to tests has improved significantly, and in some places, people can now get tested without having to show any symptoms. We asked experts how much you can really learn from the result. -
They're not exactly easy questions to answer. In the first case, you must consider motel cleaning regimens and the hazards of driving vs. the risk of sitting next to a sneezy air traveler. -
"The speed with which this has happened is really devastating," says Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. He warns the outbreak will leave no part of the U.S. untouched.
