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jfallows.bsky.social
Reporter and writer: https://fallows.substack.com/ and https://www.ourtownsfoundation.org/ One-time speechwriter, long-time pilot, longer-time husband of linguist/writer Deborah Fallows. Note same wristwatch in the two photos, more than 50 years apart.
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I went to graduate school in economics. I never call myself "an economist." Oren Cass, who went to law school, does.

submitted 2 hours ago • 7 comments

The current prez of Harvard issued a letter taking at face value Trump's claim to be fighting antisemitism. Fortunately last week a *former* prez of Harvard joined the chorus calling total BS. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/o... No one should give this claim any credence.

submitted 2 hours ago • 2 comments

submitted 4 hours ago • 1241 comments

On today's FareedZ show, Larry Summers does good job of arguing the pro-reality case, and Oren Cass does poor job of arguing the converse. Good to have CNN id Cass as "MAGA intellectual." Full transcript here braddelong.substack.com/p/oren-cass-... , via Brad DeLong. www.cnn.com/2025/04/13/p...

submitted 7 hours ago • 8 comments

Which would you rather do? 1) Be on stage at a *tech* conference, in your role as Sec of *Education,* and reveal you don't know the diff between A1 sauce and AI. ( www.fastcompany.com/91315754/lin...) 2) Be seen in one of these vehicles. It's the kind of difficult decision A1 can help us make.

submitted 1 day ago • 25 comments

They never don't look painfully stupid

submitted 1 day ago • 2756 comments

"Look like" ????

submitted 2 days ago • 10 comments

So Much Winning™ dept, below. Quiz for Trump: When was peak employment year for coal miners in US? Hint: 'Great Gatsby' was published 100 years ago today. And number of miners was *already* going down by then. (WWI brought the peak.) Good luck with the revival.

submitted 3 days ago • 42 comments

This is one of many things that makes our moment unlike any others I have read about.

submitted 3 days ago • 9 comments

Am I just missing the reports? Or has Musk recently vanished from official White House /Trump statements and press appearances? After running Cabinet meetings himself? (Like Homer Simpson into the bushes? But having done a zillion times more damage than Homer, even at the Springfield nuclear plant)

submitted 3 days ago • 26 comments

I'm as big a USA booster as you'll find. But why would people from anyplace else *risk* coming to the US right now? What if Customs/Border people at the airport find something about you they don't like? Good luck to US travel/tourism industry h/t @beijingpalmer.bsky.social @swiftonsecurity.com

submitted 3 days ago • 58 comments

Off topic: Revisiting home-territory for the past two days. (Inland Empire Calif: underrated.) Now back in the fray.

submitted 3 days ago • 12 comments

What's that term for an arsonist who keeps setting fires, and revels in attention for putting some of them out? (Rhetorical question.)

submitted 4 days ago • 29 comments

Chinese-sponsored media has long had tin ear for global audience. Unsubtle, hortatory, obviously aimed at *internal* audience (leaders in Zhongnanhai) rather than outside. Now: Chinese memes on US post-tariff strategy. Don't know how "official" this is, but still. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn5R...

submitted 4 days ago • 9 comments

I have lived in US under leadership so 'realpolitik'-minded that it became amoral. (From LBJ-Nixon on Vietnam, to Mitch McConnell.) Under leaders who made disastrous misjudgments. (Crowned by Bush-Cheney Iraq War.) Under leaders whose values I thought wrong. But never before by nuts and clowns.

submitted 4 days ago • 39 comments

okay now that you all have gotten a taste of America's rational and predictable new trade policy, everyone who wants to build your new factories here just form an orderly line

submitted 4 days ago • 439 comments

I agee w Patrick. (We lived in China at same time, diff on many things, agree here.) Chinese leaders always reckoned with the vast *depth* of US strength. Institutions, networks, expertise. Now, in cold-blooded rather than triumphalist mode, they recognize they're dealing with nuts and clowns.

submitted 4 days ago • 30 comments

'Quietly wondering' is a large-scale system problem of our times. I wrote last month ago that we were seemed to be seeing a person in full cognitive decline. And somehow it gets 1% the attention of Joe Biden's less consequential gaffes. fallows.substack.com/p/three-alar...

submitted 4 days ago • 15 comments

Much more significant than the stock-value collapse.

submitted 4 days ago • 12 comments

Agree w this framing by Sen Schiff. My parallel argument yesterday fallows.substack.com/p/standing-u...

submitted 6 days ago • 10 comments

As context: -Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett were all on 2000 Florida Recount team for GWBush -Kav, Gorsuch, Barrett all appointed by Trump -Last Dem prez to appoint a chief justice was Harry Truman 1946 -Most of today's Americans have never lived w/ Dem-appointed Scotus majority. (Changed 1969)

submitted 6 days ago • 25 comments

US Senators from every one of these states—AR, TX, KY, MO, OK, MS, TN—(1) approved Trump/Musk/Doge cuts to NOAA and FEMA, and (2) said Calif would need to change its internal policies before getting federal help for LA fire disaster. Every one of these US Senators happens to be MAGA/GOP.

submitted 7 days ago • 116 comments

THIS IS WHAT A TRADE WAR LOOKS LIKE -

submitted 7 days ago • 474 comments

Q for Lutnick: Find a single iPhone factory where "millions of human beings are screwing in little screws" I've been inside a lot of these places. He is now proving that he never has. Even 5 years ago you'd see people monitoring robots, and doing quality-check. not the little screws

submitted 7 days ago • 90 comments