Didn't I just read that all the galaxies are moving away from each other? Now they aren't ?
No, you didn't just read that all galaxies are moving away from each other - unless you were perusing a "dumbed-down" article about it in "Ladies Home Journal" (or even "Tech Times").
[...] hundreds of galaxies caught in each other's gravitational pulls.
That statement is itself an overgeneralized, popularized, dumbed-down version of the actual astronomical truth.
Regards,
While space itself is indeed expanding, galaxies in clusters are close enough to each other for their gravity to keep them together. But 99.9999% (give or take) of the rest of the galaxies continue to get further apart.
That came from the 'expanding universe' theory, which has a giant flaw.
In order for the 'universe' to expand and yet keep the same 'density', it must somehow acquire MORE MASS.
Based on estimates of the size of the universe (which really only reflects our limited ability to perceive), if it were expanding, it would require more mass than we estimate is IN the ENTIRE KNOWN universe.