Ali Breland

1 week ago | theatlantic.com | Ali Breland

The president was quick to condemn political violence. It’s hard to take him at his word. Josh Shapiro is very lucky to be alive. The Pennsylvania governor and his family escaped an arson attack in the early hours of this morning. Parts of the governor’s mansion were badly charred, including an opulent room with a piano and a chandelier where Shapiro had hosted a Passover Seder just hours earlier. Things could have been much worse.

2 weeks ago | theatlantic.com | Ali Breland

White House staffers, it seems, had better hope that they stay in Laura Loomer’s good graces. This week, Loomer—a far-right provocateur who has described herself as “pro–white nationalism” and Islam as a “cancer on humanity”—met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. After she reportedly railed against National Security Council officials she believed were disloyal to the president, the White House fired six NSC staff members the next day.

3 weeks ago | theatlantic.com | Ali Breland

Steve Bannon seems resigned to sharing power with the “tech bros,” as he calls them. Last week, when I spoke with President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and continued ally, he was clear about his disagreements with Elon Musk and other Silicon Valley elites on the so-called tech right. “Nationalist populists,” Bannon’s self-identified political clan, “don’t trust these oligarchs,” he told me.

3 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Ali Breland

8 hours agoWhen Madonna Cristobal landed at the airport near Seattle in February, she and her aunt waited in the same line for customs. Cristobal, a U.S. citizen, sailed through. Then she waited for her aunt. And waited. "One hour, two, three hours," Cristobal said. "I started to worry, and then I'm like, 'Oh, …

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Ali Breland

J. D. Vance doesn’t look like himself. In recent days, memes have spread across social media in which the vice president’s face has been Photoshopped to give him cartoonishly chubby cheeks. He looks like a bearded baby or Humpty Dumpty. Sometimes, he is holding a lollipop and wearing a child’s baseball cap with a propeller affixed to the top.