It isn’t always easy to keep up with what’s happening in the US. “Shorter America” is a series where Dr Emma Shortis loops you in on what’s going on in America and shares news and analysis that you can trust.
Fri 28 Aug 2026 13.09 AEST
Photo: AAP Image/Joe Castro
The "Red Lines for 1.5°C" come from the Pacific Climate Justice Demands, built each year through a consultation across a network of more than 290 organisations. They were unveiled in a visual action led by communities already living the impacts these climate negotiation talks are meant to address.
Sometimes it really does feel like there’s no justice in the universe.
This week:
Collective grief is such a beautiful, precious thing. There’s so much to read and listen to in the aftermath of Dolly’s death. If you haven’t already, I can’t recommend Tressie MacMillan Cottom’s essay “The Dolly Moment” highly enough. It’s five years old now, and all the more extraordinary for it. It’s the reason I follow MacMillan Cottom’s work so closely. She has a follow up in the NYT this week: “Loving Dolly was easy. Understanding her was hard.”
My first podcast was called “Barely Gettin’ By”, in honour of Dolly. On the day she died, my co-host and brilliant friend, Chloe, put it best:
“hundreds of years from now, historians (if there are historians) will cite today as the day America died.”
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I hope Chloe is wrong, but she never is. I’ve been thinking a lot, of course, about the looming midterm elections and what they might tell us about the death, or not, of America. It’s very hard to be both pundit-brainy about this election cycle and to try to work through how the Trump administration’s attacks on democracy might play out.
I worry that in the last few weeks this column might have fallen a bit too heavily on the pundit-brain side, and so this week I’m offering a corrective: some pieces outlining the breadth and scope of Trump’s attacks on American democracy and the rule of law.
The Center for American Policy – which, incidentally, Trump is threatening to sue for $5 billion because they published a research report he didn’t like – has a detailed report on how the Trump administration is interfering in the midterms. The LA Times has a shorter summary, and an outline of how Democrats are preparing for all possible scenarios. And here’s another one, by George Chidi, in The Guardian.
None of what I wrote above is a prediction. There are so many constantly moving parts, and nobody knows how they will (or won’t) fit together. But the picture is grim.
So I’ll leave you with this: Dolly covering Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush” with Emmylou Harris and Linda Rondstat. I listened to it on a loop while I was pregnant with my youngest daughter, as a reminder of the beauty that persists in the world, despite everything.
Hold your girls tight x
