The Washington Post: Meryl Kornfield joins National politics team as campaign trail reporter

Meryl first joined The Post as an intern in the summer of 2019, when she was tasked with helping the investigative team with the Opioid Files series. Her byline appeared on four stories in the series, including a piece on how the nation’s largest drug companies devised tactics to weaken the Drug Enforcement Administration’s enforcement at the height of the pain pill crisis.

After moving onto the GA team in 2020, she continued to play a key role on the opioids story, scooping details about the largest legal settlement and detailing a horrifying mass fentanyl poisoning as part of The Post’s CartelRx series. Meryl has contributed to other major Post investigations, including the Afghanistan Papers and a project about student health centers. She also wrote about a dispute between neighbors over marijuana smoke, which probed how far the law goes to give us control over the spaces we inhabit.

Meryl graduated from the University of Florida, where she majored in journalism and minored in Latin American studies. She also edited the student newspaper and participated in the TrailGators hiking club. When she is not researching her next story, Meryl is digging into restaurant reviews for her comprehensive Yelp lists and bingeing old episodes of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

Meryl is filling in on the White House team before heading onto the campaign trail this fall. Please join us in congratulating her.