Breaking the News

Breaking the News will serve as a platform for frequent updates, including articles, podcasts, images, reader correspondence, guest contributions, and various messages from me, James Fallows.

National

English

Newsletter (Digital)

Outlet metrics

Domain Authority

Ranking

Global

N/A

Country

N/A

Articles

Breaking the News

3 weeks ago | fallows.substack.com | James Fallows

This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts
Standing Up: It Looks Like This.

3 weeks ago | fallows.substack.com | James Fallows

Throngs in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, as part of nationwide protests against Trump/ Musk policies. In more than 1,000 communities through all 50 states plus DC, several million people showed up. The world looks different from just one week ago. (Photo by Etienne Laurent/AFP via Getty Images)This post has two purposes. -One is to note this moment in history: What we know, what we can guess, what we can’t even imagine. And how rapidly everything is changing.
Breaking the News

3 weeks ago | fallows.substack.com | James Fallows

This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts
Launching the Economic Version of the Iraq War.

3 weeks ago | fallows.substack.com | James Fallows

During George Washington’s first term, US tariffs were just a gleam in Alexander Hamilton’s eye. This illustration recreates Hamilton, as Treasury Secretary, presenting Washington with the ‘Report on Manufactures,’ which recommended tariffs as part of a strategy for economic development in the nascent republic. (Ed Vebell/Getty Images.)This post is about tariffs, the latest bit of chaos through which Donald Trump is satisfying his major need, which is to dominate minute-by-minute news coverage.
Simple Q-and-A About the Signal Leak.

1 month ago | fallows.substack.com | James Fallows

An engraving from the Battle of Antietam, in September, 1862. Just before this bloodiest battle of the Civil War, Union infantrymen found a copy of Robert E. Lee’s secret orders on where to station Confederate troops. Someone had left them at a campsite wrapped around a pack of cigars. That copy of Lee’s “Special Orders 191” quickly made its way to the Union commander, George B. McClellan.
Breaking the News

1 month ago | fallows.substack.com | James Fallows

This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts
Where Do We Stand: A ‘Correlation of Forces’ Assessment.

1 month ago | fallows.substack.com | James Fallows

Newly commissioned pilots from the Tuskegee Airmen, studying maps before a mission in 1942. The military heritage of the Tuskegee Airmen was downplayed during the initial “anti-DEI” effort of the Trump/Hegseth Pentagon—as was the bravery of the Navajo Code Talkers, the Japanese-American infantrymen of the Army’s 442nd combat regiment, and the countless other women and non-white men who served and sacrificed in the name of American values.
Breaking the News

1 month ago | fallows.substack.com | James Fallows

This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts
‘The Only Practical Check That’s Left Is the Power of the Purse.’

1 month ago | fallows.substack.com | James Fallows

A famous Thomas Nast cartoon from the 1870s. He put ‘Brains’ in quotes, but left the money bags without annotation. Ie, then and now. money makes people think they are smart. (Smithsonian Institution.)So much, so destructive, so fast. Back in the fall of 1973, in Richard Nixon’s era, a total of two major resignations from the Justice Department, and one firing of a federal Special Prosecutor, were enough to dominate news coverage for the rest of that year.
Three Alarming ‘Tells’ from Trump's Latest Speech.

1 month ago | fallows.substack.com | James Fallows

Supportive crowd reaction during Donald Trump’s Congressional address on Tuesday night. (Photo Tom Brenner / Washington Post via Getty Images)This post is about three things I noticed in Donald Trump’s delivery of his State of the Union-like speech to Congress this week.1 They are clues, and negative ones, about how he views his job, and of how far his party will go in subservience to him. About the speech itself: It was extremely long.