Dr Emma Shortis explains what's going on with the United States this week.
Mon 6 Oct 2025 10.00
Photo: White House Flickr
It isn’t always easy to keep up with what’s happening in the US. ‘This Week in 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.
It just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it? Just how quickly Trump and his cronies have been able to implement their agenda has taken so many of us by surprise – even those of us who knew that the worst-case scenarios were entirely within the realms of possibility.
This week:
Early last week, the President and Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth lectured the top brass of the US military in a spectacle that I think will be a watershed moment for American democracy. They effectively told members of the defence forces that they could act with impunity – that they could “retaliate” and there would be no consequences, that they could use cities like Chicago as “training grounds”. And while the speech was directed at the military, you can bet ICE agents were listening. The same agents who are currently in Chicago, according to reports, pulling people – including children – naked from their beds, zip tying them, and detaining them for hours.
The On the Media podcast did a great long-form interview with Jamelle Bouie on Trump and Hegseth and the military that’s really worth a listen.
This breakdown in the rule of law is all being projected outwards, too. I find The Conversation’s coverage of questions of international law really clear and helpful. This week, Australian academic Donald Rothwell wrote about Israel’s interception of the Gaza flotilla and how it is a clear violation of international law. The breakdown in that system of law is being actively enabled and encouraged by the Trump administration and men like Hegseth.
The US government is now, as predicted, in total shutdown. This is the first one in six years (since Trump’s last stint in office). We don’t know how long it will last. We do know that the Trump administration will weaponise it, led by Russell Vought, a key Project 2025 contributor. The New Yorker’s Political Scene podcast – always very good – did a great episode on Vought and the shutdown.
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I will never not include anything written or said by Doctor Tressie McMillan Cottom. A sociologist based in North Carolina and a regular NYT columnist, Dr McMillan Cottom’s analysis is always incisive, accessible without dumbing down, and often really funny. Her longform essay on Dolly Parton, now four years old, remains one of the most outstanding pieces of writing on American political and pop culture I’ve ever read. Her stuff on country music is also brilliant, if that’s your thing (it’s mine). Here she is with a typically great column on Charlie Kirk and power.
Just because sometimes we need to be reminded that Jane Fonda is the best – this week she re-launched a committee to defend free speech founded by her dad, Henry Fonda, during the Cold War. The Committee for the First Amendment is back, baby.
This Week in America, link roundup:
Experts say the insertion of US special forces into Caracas and the abduction of President Maduro was a precision tactical operation.
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A new Australia Institute podcast shows why an amnesty is needed to address the estimated 7000 cases of people who have “disengaged” from the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme.
The abduction and subsequent arrest of the President of Venezuela is a dramatic re-statement of America’s dominance of the western hemisphere and its willingness to do whatever it takes – including defiance of international legal norms – to protect and promote its interests.