Lifestyle
She’s Young, Trump-Friendly, and Has a White House Press Pass
The waitress was pouring tap water. But Natalie Winters was quick to ask for bottled.
“No fluoride for our dear dinner guest!” she said, gesturing to me. “Only filtered water and pesticide-free limes.”
We were sitting in the back corner of Butterworth’s, a Capitol Hill bistro that has become a destination for friends and supporters of President Trump. Stephen K. Bannon, Ms. Winters’s current boss, has hosted private events there. Her former boss, Raheem Kassam, the editor in chief of The National Pulse, is an investor. The menu that night featured lamb tartare, oysters brûlée and pork cheeks.
Ms. Winters and I had met for dinner, or so I had thought. “Honestly,” she said, “I’m probably not going to eat because that’s my brand. I don’t eat at restaurants because I don’t like the seed oils that they use.”
At 24, Ms. Winters has been a White House correspondent since Jan. 28. She reports for Mr. Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, whose audience includes large swaths of the Republican base, high-level officials and the president himself.
She belongs to a group of journalists from conservative outlets who have taken on a new national prominence in recent months as they jostle for positions in the cramped James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has described long-established news media organizations as increasingly irrelevant while accusing them of spreading “lies.”
The White House Correspondents’ Association, which includes journalists from dozens of outlets, has criticized the new administration’s handling of the press, saying it discourages independent reporting and gives priority to those who favor President Trump’s agenda. But the elevation of nontraditional outlets has been a good thing for Ms. Winters and some other journalists in the West Wing, including those representing Breitbart News and Lindell TV, the platform founded by the conspiratorial MyPillow salesman Mike Lindell.
When Ms. Winters is not seated beside Mr. Bannon in the basement studio of his townhouse near the Capitol, she is often reporting to the loyal “War Room” audience from outside the White House, delivering off-the-cuff monologues that pillory Democrats and, sometimes, her fellow reporters.
“It’s very gonzo, which I like,” she said. “I think of it as an I.Q. test every day.”
Ms. Winters describes herself as a “populist nationalist,” like Mr. Bannon. She says she “detests” more Republicans than she admires. She frequently attacks party leaders like Speaker Mike Johnson and usually supports Mr. Trump.
“Even though I agree with most of what Trump does,” Ms. Winters said, “it’s because I ideologically agree with him. Not because I am a cultist.”
She counts Mr. Bannon not only as her co-host and boss, but also as her mentor. When he went to federal prison last year for defying a subpoena from a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, he entrusted her to host “War Room” in his absence.
Since Mr. Trump’s reascension, her profile has skyrocketed to the point where she says she is recognized in restaurants and airports. She says her parents have been surprised by her often combative onscreen persona.
“It’s such a different version of myself than I am in my day-to-day life,” she said, adding, “I don’t even recognize myself.”
Ms. Winters grew up in Santa Monica, Calif., the daughter of a physician father and a stay-at-home mother. She attended Harvard-Westlake, an elite prep school in Los Angeles, and was relatively apolitical until the 2016 campaign was underway.
Various school activities struck her as liberal-coded and performative. First it was a bake sale intended to raise awareness of the gender pay gap. “Just straight-up bogus,” Ms. Winters said. Then came the student walkout in protest of gun violence after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. “A school-sanctioned walkout,” she said. “What are you doing?”
Her only published piece in the high school paper was a letter to the editor in which she made the case for the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. It was not well received on the mostly liberal campus. Because of her conservative views in general and her support of Mr. Trump in particular, she was ostracized by her peers, she said.
“Maybe the trope that everything goes back to high school trauma is true,” she added.
During her senior year, after she learned she had gotten into the University of Chicago, she more or less stopped going to class. She skipped her high school graduation day because she was flying to Washington to start working as an intern for Mr. Kassam, who was then a “War Room” co-host. She also missed out on prom. “It was the best thing I ever did,” she said.
During her first year of college, Ms. Winters became a “War Room” staff writer. She frequently commuted to Washington instead of attending class. “My best friend from college is, like, Steve,” she said, referring to Mr. Bannon. As Covid spread across the globe, she made her first on-camera appearance.
“The pandemic’s really where she got her sea legs,” Mr. Bannon said in a phone interview. He used some baseball-scout lingo to describe Ms. Winters, calling her “a five-tool player.”
She has raised her visibility with her appearances on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” a YouTube talk show hosted by the former CNN personality. “She is always a lively and provocative contributor, even if I don’t agree with many of her views,” Mr. Morgan said by text. But Ms. Winters insists she’d be happy spending her days sifting through federal databases.
“She’s essentially a nerd at heart,” Mr. Bannon said.
One of the biggest feuds on the right has been between Ms. Winters’s boss and Elon Musk, who, with the president’s blessing, has embedded himself within the federal government. At the height of the rift, Mr. Bannon called Mr. Musk a “truly evil person.” In response, Mr. Musk wrote on X: “Bannon is a great talker but not a great doer.”
The spat has put Ms. Winters in a unique position. Mr. Musk is one of her 630,000 followers on X, and he frequently reposts her. She has lauded him and his leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency.
“I think I’m the only person who could bring them together and get peace,” she said, laughing.
Ms. Winters may be a White House correspondent, but her job is not so much to cover Mr. Trump’s avalanche of executive actions as it is to report and comment on what she labels “opposition forces,” whether they be Democratic politicians, liberal organizations or major news outlets.
Hugo Lowell, a White House correspondent for The Guardian, said that Ms. Winters differs from other reporters on the beat because she is “vocal about her own political views and clearly infuses them into her coverage.”
“But she’s good on TV,” Mr. Lowell added, “and she has built up an audience with Trump’s base that translates to a degree of influence in a fragmented media ecosystem.”
Ms. Winters compared the White House briefing room to high school. “This is my first time in a professional setting where my MAGA royalty clout means nothing,” she said.
Her outsider status was confirmed when the National Press Club rejected her bid to become a member. Asked about the denial of Ms. Winters’s application, a spokesperson for the organization, which was founded in 1908 and has roughly 2,500 members, said: “Decisions are made in alignment with the standards of journalism we uphold. We do not publicly comment on individual applications out of respect for all involved.”
Many White House reporters affiliated with large news organizations do not talk to her, Ms. Winters said, and several of them contacted for this article declined to comment. But, ultimately, someone who has blasted much of the news media as “ground zero of left-wing opposition to Trump” was always going to be in for a chilly reception.
At Butterworth’s, true to her word, Ms. Winters had only bottled water during our three-hour talk.
She said she has had two drinks in her life and has never done drugs. She also has a budding lifestyle brand. Items for sale include a tank top with “More insecure than the border” plastered across the front and a tote that reads “A little conspiratorial.”
Her cable news network of choice is MSNBC, which she watches partly to generate material. She said that in another world she might have been a poetry professor. “I always joke — in my day-to-day life, I really am a lib at heart,” she said.
She also loved “Barbie” and agreed with the monologue delivered by America Ferrera, in which her character says, “It is literally impossible to be a woman.” But, Ms. Winters caveats, “It’s also really hard to be a man.” She added that scores of women younger than she had asked her not only for career advice but also for tips on how to be like her.
Like a growing Gen-Z contingent, she is “anti-app,” meaning dating apps. One day, she would like to settle down with a man she can be “submissive” to, she said. She added that she had been wronged in past relationships, which only stoked her ambitions.
“I was like, ‘I’m going to get revenge,” she said. “You can watch me on TV being the next big deal.’”
Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace, a former science teacher-turned-humanity’s last hope.
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Perhaps the reason Project Hail Mary hits the spot in the spring of 2026 is that novelist Andy Weir, who wrote the 2021 novel and also the book The Martian, is fundamentally an optimist. Both stories concern men who are alone, facing impossible odds, far from Earth. And both stories posit that for anyone stranded under these conditions, the most important assets are accumulated knowledge, patience, curiosity, and the understanding that you need collaborators. Not magic, not muscle, not weapons, not even bravery, really. Just this: Know your stuff. Stay calm. Solve one problem at a time. Get help.
Problems of the natural world can be addressed through, and only through, mastery and cooperation might seem like a truism, but in Weir’s stories, it emerges as an expansively hopeful thesis.
In the new film Project Hail Mary, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Ryan Gosling plays Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher whose background is in molecular biology. He wakes up in a berth, bedraggled and weak, unable to remember why he is floating through space on a ship in which he is the only living crew member. With time, he’s able to put together that a woman named Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) recruited him to a team she was assembling to solve the gravest of problems: The sun is dying. The rest of the mission details are filled in through flashbacks, but the short version is that Grace was sent into space to figure out how to stop a sort of celestial infection that’s wiping out star after star — not just our sun.
Because there are other suns involved, it’s not surprising that there turns out to be other life involved, too. Other beings are trying to save themselves from the same menace that’s threatening Earth, and eventually, Grace makes contact with one: another scientist in another ship, whom he decides to call “Rocky,” because the guy looks a little rock-like. Also a little dog-like.
It is one of the greatest threats to making a good film out of Project Hail Mary that Rocky is very cute. In fact, he is adorable. He is also a skilled engineer dealing with his own isolation and his own losses. But Grace finds a way to communicate with him and eventually to outfit him with a human voice (provided by James Ortiz, who’s also Rocky’s puppeteer), and at that point, there is a lot of buddy comedy in the mix. It would have been easy to turn this into a nonstop series of gags where Ryan Gosling — who, after all, is also often adorable — cracks jokes with his alien pal. There are parts of the film that are that, and they are terrific.
But Weir is a really thoughtful writer (as is screenplay writer Drew Goddard), and Gosling can be an exceptionally quiet and sympathetic actor (as he was when he played Neil Armstrong in the underappreciated First Man). And in this story, they also find a lot of opportunities to explore questions about how to carry on in almost impossible circumstances.
Grace’s story is a lot of fun, but, like The Martian, which became a movie in 2015, it’s also an examination of how to get by and avoid despair. It’s about what Grace needs in order to persevere: a plan, a sense of purpose, and some company. It posits that people (and maybe beings other than people) need friends. They need allies. Grace needs Rocky, for help with the science but also because for him, alone is bad, and not-alone is better.
This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.
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Animated Australian sensation “Bluey” has arrived in Disneyland, and the titular anthropomorphic pastel-coated canine has come ready to play. And dance. And to race some “barky boats.”
The Walt Disney Co. first teased that the Blue Heeler puppy and her younger sister Bingo would be coming to the Anaheim theme park in 2024. Bluey is now the star of a performance-focused takeover of the park’s Fantasyland Theatre, which officially opened Sunday.
Two shows, games and spontaneous dance parties are hallmarks of the experience, as Disneyland’s live entertainment team sought to translate the show’s particular broadcast-based appeal to the real world.
“Bluey” works because it’s charmed children and grown-ups alike, emphasizing imaginative parenting skills as much as it does Bluey’s playful spirit. Though only about seven minutes, each core “Bluey” episode unfolds patiently, often centered on make-believe, wonder and childlike ingenuity. Subtle life lessons, such as cooperation, understanding one’s self-worth, overcoming a fear of the unknown and much more, dot seemingly simple scenarios.
In many episodes, Bluey’s mom (Chilli) and dad (Bandit) indulge in their daughters’ penchant to play pretend, so much so that a friend of mine with a young girl joked that she needed to watch the show to learn how to be a better mom.
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I arrived at “Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” as a childless columnist, and yet I came away enchanted by what Disneyland’s live entertainment team, led by Susana Tubert, had concocted. It’s a little silly and corny, yes, but manages to vary the tempo and can even tug at one’s heartstrings by showing the bond between siblings.
Theme park fare, especially when aimed at a preschool set, tends to fall back on high-energy, photo-op-based treatments, and while there’s plenty of amped-up goofiness here, “Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” understands that’s not why the series was the most-streamed program in 2025, according to data from research firm Nielsen.
Two core shows are featured in the experience, and some “Bluey” regulars make an appearance. The overbearing, bratty hand-puppet Unicorse, for instance, plays key roles in launching each performance. Set to play continuously throughout the day, with breaks for Bluey and Bingo to appear on stage and dance or play with youngsters, each has a slightly different tone and feel.
One emphasizes an adventure story, its themes encouraging Bluey to flash some bravery and dispel stereotypes. The other takes a lighter touch, with some of the softer, almost ballad-like songs from the show, such as “Rain (Boldly in the Pretend),” highlighted, seeking to emphasize the bond between Bluey and Bingo. Here, I thought of Bluey’s more tender moments — those, for instance, that emphasize becoming comfortable with growing older and letting go.
“Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” features live music, puppets and dance breakouts.
(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)
“We try to hit the humor, the play — shared play — and some of the more profound experiences that these characters go through,” Tubert says. “At the end of the second show, you’ll see a moment that is really quite beautiful. It’s a tribute to sisterhood, and how these two characters of Bluey and Bingo connect with one another.”
While one can certainly sit in the Fantasyland Theatre’s stands and simply take in the two shows, there are plenty of moments geared at getting audiences moving. Dances, for instance, may mimic animal behaviors, or reference popular moments from the series, such as getting grannies to floss.
A nod to the attention-seeking fairies — here, less Tinker Bell and more a metaphor for being noticed — inspires a “Riverdance”-like breakout. The five-piece, brass-heavy band gets a workout when Bluey’s impossible-to-control toy Chattermax has a cameo. The squawking plaything can test even Bluey’s patience.
Throughout, performers walk a line between teaching the maneuvers to the crowd and getting lost in the moment themselves. The challenge for Disney choreographer Taylor Worden was to create dance moves that also doubled as audience encouragement.
Spin, for instance, like a flower in the wind, or lightly snap your fingers to recall the sound of rain. Bounce with your hands in front of you as if you’re driving a car down a rocky street, or put your hand above your head and try for an elegant, ballerina-inspired twirl.
“It actually was letting go of all of those technical things that I’ve learned and letting that inner child come out,” Worden says. “As imaginative as Bluey and Bingo are, I wanted to hone in on that. I want everybody to enjoy, have fun and play. Play is at the forefront of everything. It’s so easy to get set in our ways, and even as an adult, it’s so hard to actually play nowadays. This has been such an experience to get to a childlike state.”
“Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” references many show moments from the series, including one with nods to the fairies.
(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)
There’s more, however, to “Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” than the two performances. The Fantasyland Theatre has been outfitted with pop-up installations. Some are purely photo ops, such as an opportunity for little ones to take a class photo with Bluey and her pals, while others aim to inspire exploration, such as a mini gnome village or fairy garden.
Taken as a whole, the feel is something of a fair, like hanging out with Bluey and Bingo at a backyard barbecue. The theater’s walk-up food window is serving pizza-inspired baked potatoes, a colored chocolate pretzel meant to mimic an asparagus pretzel wand, and more.
There’s also a place to race some “barky boats.” In the show, barky boats is a game that takes place on a tiny stream with tree bark, but there’s no water here. Instead, look for a track in a nook above the seating area, where one can race wooden blocks affixed with wheels — think Pinewood Derby — down a track painted to mimic a waterway. Throughout the theater, the colors are springlike and muted, pastels that are lightly bright and storybook-inspired. Even the dance costumes adopt this soft, crayon-like color palette.
“Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” at the Disneyland Resort invites audience participation.
(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)
“The color palette works perfectly with the set,” says Trevor Rush, a manager with costume design and development. “Lots of pastel colors. ‘Bluey,’ that world, focuses very much in that primary world. You won’t see a lot of black represented.”
“Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” does not currently have an end date, but is expected to be a Disneyland staple throughout the spring and summer seasons, with showtimes currently set for the late morning and early afternoons. For Tubert, who has an extensive background in theater, “Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” is meant to highlight the theme park as a place of play, where one can be a bit silly, and maybe even a little vulnerable.
“There’s a nonjudgmental safe space that we’ve created in ‘Bluey’s Best Day Ever!’ that invites everyone to feel uninhibited and the joy of playfulness,” Tubert says.
The illuminated bell tower of the Basilica Minore dei Santi Filippo e Giacomo stands at the heart of Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, as evening settles over the valley. Once a small village of farmers and shepherds, this storied town has evolved into the “Pearl of the Dolomites,” a renowned luxury destination. Surrounded by the limestone peaks of the UNESCO World Heritage Dolomites, the town’s historic center remains a “living room” for celebrities and high society.
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CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Walking the main thoroughfare of Cortina D’Ampezzo is a glamorous experience. It is as if every designer brand has decided it needs to be represented in this small town more than 4,000 feet up in the Italian Alps. In a few short steps, you pass shops for Dior, Fendi, Gucci, Prada and more. Among passers-by, fur coats are in fashion.
Cortina has been in the international spotlight in recent weeks as a host to many of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. But this storied town has a much longer history of fame and fortune that has led to various nicknames like Pearl or Queen of the Dolomites.
A window display for the luxury fashion brand Fendi illuminates a central street in Cortina d’Ampezzo, adjacent to a large outdoor sculpture of a skier. The town’s main thoroughfare is a glamorous hub where premier designer brands like Dior, Gucci and Prada are represented.
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On the mountain slopes nearby, skiers stop for hot chocolate or an alcoholic spritz at an Alpine lodge where they are served by Riccardo Fiore, the grandson of the region’s winter sport champions. His grandmother, Yvonne Rüegg, is an Olympic gold medalist in giant slalom. His grandfather was the trainer of Alberto Tomba — one of history’s greatest Alpine skiers, who learned on these very slopes. “Tomba still stops by here all the time,” he says.
Riccardo Fiore, grandson of Olympic gold medalist Yvonne Rüegg, poses inside his family’s Alpine lodge in the Dolomites.
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American actor Sylvester Stallone (right) and director Renny Harlin on the set of Harlin’s film Cliffhanger.
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A large-scale photograph of Italian skiing legend Alberto Tomba, wearing a traditional fur hat and reading a sports newspaper with the headline “Immenso Alberto,” is displayed in a wood-paneled interior in Cortina d’Ampezzo. Tomba, one of history’s greatest Alpine skiers, learned to race on these slopes under the guidance of local trainers, further cementing the town’s status as a historical cradle of international winter sports.
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For Fiore, there’s nothing unusual about serving drinks to famous individuals. He names well-known Italian politicians, actors and singers he has spotted in the lodge. And there are international names who visit Cortina, too — Sylvester Stallone, who filmed scenes from the 1993 action movie Cliffhanger here, Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake and Ridley Scott, to name a few.
“Many celebrities you barely recognize,” he says. “They try to disguise themselves, as they don’t want to attract too much attention.”
Nonetheless, Cortina has earned another nickname — the “celebrities’ living room.” The Hotel de la Poste bar, with its wood-paneled ceiling and walls, was a favorite haunt of American writer Ernest Hemingway. A small plaque honors him on a wall by the corner table he occupied for countless hours in the 1940s. And the hotel has preserved the room he stayed in — visitors can look in to see his typewriter.
“His room is a time capsule,” says Servane Giol, author of The Queen of the Dolomites, a book about the history of Cortina.
“I found some amazing letters from Hemingway explaining how he was a bit against ski lifts, because he believed it was better for the legs to be warmed up by climbing the mountains and skiing down,” Giol says. “This really made me laugh; to think that somebody could be against ski lifts.”
Servane Giol, renowned expert in Venetian art and lifestyle, poses in the historic wood-paneled Stube of the Hotel de la Poste. Giol, who has dedicated her work to preserving the cultural and aesthetic heritage of the region, sits beside an old painted pendulum clock, a symbol of the hospitality and Ampezzo tradition that the hotel has represented since 1804.
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American writer Ernest Hemingway, wearing a hunter waistcoat, stands behind a bar counter and pours gin in Cortina d’Ampezzo in 1948.
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Members of the U.S. Olympic teams walk during the procession into Cortina’s huge ice stadium for opening ceremonies launching 11 days of competition in the 1956 Winter Olympics.
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Giol says Cortina, once a small village of farmers and shepherds, became famous in the 1920s, when it was visited by the then king of Belgium, who loved to climb the jagged limestone Dolomite peaks that surround it. His daughter then married an Italian crown prince. “Between the 1920s and the 1940s, Cortina was actually the chicest place to be. You’ve got very glamorous royal families,” she says.
It became a destination for Italy’s wealthy. And then in 1956, Cortina hosted the first-ever Winter Olympics to be televised. Archive footage shows grainy black-and-white images of the opening ceremony, described by the news anchor as the “spectacle of peace.” Olympic participants from 32 countries took part in the Games that saw athletes speeding down the mountain slopes or shooting down the bobsled track built at the edge of the town.
The television broadcasts internationalized Cortina’s fame. Hollywood films were shot here — including the first Pink Panther movie, as well as the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only, with actor Roger Moore as James Bond. It includes a high-octane chase, as Bond skis down the mountainside pursued by assassins on motorbikes who shoot at him, the bullets zinging past as he slaloms and performs a somersault on skis.
English actor Roger Moore poses as 007, with a Lotus Esprit Turbo, on the set of the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, in March 1981.
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Today, the Dolomites are a UNESCO heritage site and their beauty attracts celebrities and huge numbers of other tourists — many lured by images shared on social media of the turquoise Alpine lakes and stunning peaks.
And more crowds came in February and March to watch the Olympics and Paralympics. This time, the Games relied almost entirely on artificial snow. As winters become shorter and warmer because of climate change, there are also questions about the future of this ski resort town.
Ludovica Rubbini, co-founder of the Michelin-starred restaurant SanBrite, inspects a wheel of artisanal cheese inside the establishment’s aging cellar. The “agricucina” project emphasizes the traditional preservation and maturation of local dairy products, showcasing the deep connection between the restaurant’s kitchen and its own farm production in the Dolomites.
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A table setting awaits customers at SanBrite restaurant.
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A waiter provides tableside service for guests in the dining room of the Michelin-starred restaurant SanBrite. The establishment, known for its “agricucina” philosophy, combines a refined mountain atmosphere with traditional Cortinese architectural elements, emphasizing a direct connection between local ingredients and high-end hospitality in the heart of the Dolomites.
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But Cortina is changing, too. More people come for summer hiking and for unique fine dining, like that offered by Ludovica Rubbini and her husband, Riccardo Gaspari, whose restaurant SanBrite has earned a Michelin star, as well as the guide’s “green star” for the sustainable agricultural and locally grown ingredients the couple uses on its farm.
In the cozy restaurant, where dried flowers hang from the walls and lights include lamps used during the 1956 Olympics, waiters tell guests at this fine-dining restaurant about the cows that provided the home-churned butter that is served in large pots for sourdough bread.
The dishes are inspired by the mountains and woodland of the area. They include a Jerusalem artichoke cigar served on a bed of moss and filled with the cream of the artichoke, mushrooms and marinated shallots. And a dessert made to look like a frozen lake, with a panna cotta base and layer of frozen water and elderflower, and yogurt powder as a dusting of snow.
“We were out for a walk, and Riccardo crouched by the frozen lake tapping it and examining it,” Rubbini says, remembering the day her husband was inspired to develop this perfect winter dessert.
The snow-capped peaks of the Tofane massif are framed through a window of a rifugio, a kind of traditional mountain hut, decorated with typical heart-patterned Ampezzo textiles. These high-altitude lodgings serve as essential rest areas for skiers and hikers, offering a blend of rustic hospitality and panoramic views that define the winter experience in the Dolomites.
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