Pam Fessler
Pam Fessler is a correspondent on NPR's National Desk, where she covers poverty, philanthropy, and voting issues.
In her reporting at NPR, Fessler does stories on homelessness, hunger, affordable housing, and income inequality. She reports on what non-profit groups, the government, and others are doing to reduce poverty and how those efforts are working. Her poverty reporting was recognized with a 2011 First Place National Headliner Award.
Fessler also covers elections and voting, including efforts to make voting more accessible, accurate, and secure. She has done countless stories on everything from the debate over state voter identification laws to Russian hacking attempts and long lines at the polls.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Fessler became NPR's first Homeland Security correspondent. For seven years, she reported on efforts to tighten security at ports, airports, and borders, and the debate over the impact on privacy and civil rights. She also reported on the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, The 9/11 Commission Report, Social Security, and the Census. Fessler was one of NPR's White House reporters during the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Before becoming a correspondent, Fessler was the acting senior editor on the Washington Desk and NPR's chief election editor. She coordinated all network coverage of the presidential, congressional, and state elections in 1996 and 1998. In her more than 25 years at NPR, Fessler has also been deputy Washington Desk editor and Midwest National Desk editor.
Earlier in her career, she was a senior writer at Congressional Quarterly magazine. Fessler worked there for 13 years as both a reporter and editor, covering tax, budget, and other news. She also worked as a budget specialist at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and was a reporter at The Record newspaper in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Fessler has a master's of public administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and a bachelor's degree from Douglass College in New Jersey.
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California leaders called these claims "political retribution" and denied that the homeless crisis is affecting environmental issues.
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While the poverty rate finally fell to prerecession levels in 2018, the number of people without health insurance increased, and about one in eight Americans still lived below the poverty line.
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Low-income Americans who use government safety net programs could be affected by a number of proposed rules and actions in areas such as housing, food aid, overtime and immigration.
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The administration wants to close what it calls a "loophole" that allows states to give benefits to those who would not otherwise be eligible by raising or eliminating income and asset limits.
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Under the Housing and Urban Development change, immigrants in the country illegally would be prevented from receiving federal housing aid. The result could be thousands of families evicted.
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A new report by the Brennan Center found that automatic voter registration in states has given a big boost to voter rolls in states where it's been adopted.
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The Trump administration has proposed changing food stamp rules to require able-bodied adults without children to work 20 hours or more a week or lose benefits.
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Misleading claims, particularly about voter fraud, have intensified ongoing debates about voting rights and election security. Some election experts say the rhetoric erodes voter confidence.
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Claims of massive illegal voting by noncitizens have routinely been disproved, but some noncitizens end up on the voter rolls, often by accident. Now, states are trying to fix that.
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The Department of Homeland Security said earlier this year that it had evidence of Russian activity in 21 states. But they didn't inform individual states whether they were among those targeted.