Nellie Bowles

6 days ago | thefp.com | Nellie Bowles

Welcome to TGIF, a news summary from a very unreliable narrator. → Pope Bob: A billow of white smoke, and we have a new pope! And he is an American! His name is Robert Prevost—now Pope Leo XIV—and he was born in Chicago before serving as a bishop in Peru. The Vatican chose an American to avoid tariffs, I presume. Prevost was known to be close to Pope Francis and seems likely to carry forth many of his philosophies and efforts, though it’s too soon to tell.

1 week ago | thefp.com | Nellie Bowles

Hello, and welcome back to your week in review of strong opinions, loosely held. → The U.S. economy contracts: Our GDP has started contracting at an annualized rate of 0.3 percent, after three years of robust growth. Usually there’s a logical reason for something like that (a pandemic? A housing market collapse?

2 weeks ago | thefp.com | Nellie Bowles

Welcome back to the week’s news, dissected, digested, and then sent up. This is like if the Free Press Slack leaked but it’s only my messages, so all-caps announcements to the whole company asking where the bathroom key is, plus DMs of conspiracy theories that I send to interns. But first, a shameless sell: Bari and The Free Press are headed to San Francisco on May 15 for a debate on the future of AI. Tickets are almost sold out. Get yours today.

3 weeks ago | thefp.com | Sean Fischer |Nellie Bowles

Hello! It’s me, Sean, Bari’s assistant. If you’re wondering why Nellie is sharing this byline with me, don’t. I’m here. That’s all that matters. Nellie solemnly told me last week that I was “ready” to lead TGIF, and that “my time had come” to share the heavy mantle. But all I heard was: “I have a birthday dinner and want to leave early.” Which, fair enough. You only turn 37 26once, I guess. As for me? I’ve trained for this my entire life. Be kind in the comments.

1 month ago | thefp.com | Nellie Bowles

Hello and welcome. As a good American, my mood tracks the stock market, which is to say I feel muddled, stuck, kind of okay, but also ready to collapse. → Yippy: After tariffs officially set in, hitting a 100-year high this week, Trump finally blinked. He blamed Americans for getting “yippy” and “afraid.” And so the tariffs are paused, except a blanket 10 percent, and then of course a huge one just on China, which makes sense! In the end, did it all work out well?