Franco Ordoñez
Franco Ordoñez is a White House Correspondent for NPR's Washington Desk. Before he came to NPR in 2019, Ordoñez covered the White House for McClatchy. He has also written about diplomatic affairs, foreign policy and immigration, and has been a correspondent in Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and Haiti.
Ordoñez has received several state and national awards for his work, including the Casey Medal, the Gerald Loeb Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism. He is a two-time reporting fellow with the International Center for Journalists, and is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and the University of Georgia.
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Griner was traded for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. The swap did not include retired Marine Paul Whelan who remains imprisoned in Russia, on espionage charges the U.S. says are false. -
Biden says a faction of the Republican party tied to former President Donald Trump is "determined to take this country backwards." Republicans say he's being divisive.
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Western allies would respond if Russia uses chemical weapons against Ukraine, President Biden said after an emergency meeting with NATO allies. "It would trigger a response in-kind," he said.
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The next round of sanctions from the White House targets banks and export controls, which would cut Russia off from critical technology such as semiconductors.
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Speaking about the Taliban's ousting of the U.S.-backed Afghan government, Biden acknowledged, "The truth is this did unfold more quickly than we anticipated."
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The order follows a ransomware attack on a company that operates a pipeline that provides nearly half of the gasoline and jet fuel for the East Coast.
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The president rolled out a plan to overhaul the immigration system on his first day in office. Last week he shifted to talk about a narrower approach. Some advocates feel abandoned.
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents encountered nearly 172,000 migrants at the border in March, up 71% from February. The increase included a record number of unaccompanied minors.
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Officials are trying to shrink the timetable for many asylum cases from "years to months." That could benefit people with legitimate asylum claims and discourage some unauthorized migration.
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As Biden stated, crossings often rise during the early months of the year as the weather improves. But the number of unaccompanied children arriving is considerably higher than in the recent years.
