For more than two decades, I’ve covered national security, tracing policies from their origins in Washington to their effects on the ground in the United States and across the globe. As a bureau chief in Baghdad and Cairo, my reporting focused on authoritarian regimes, human rights, diplomacy and the threat of transnational militant groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida. More recently, as a D.C.-based national reporter, I launched extremism-focused beats at NPR and The Washington Post to cover violent homegrown movements and the mainstreaming of far-right ideologies.