Dr Emma Shortis explains what's going on with the United States this week.
Mon 27 Oct 2025 09.00
Official White House Photo/Molly Riley
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.
In Washington last week, the Australian Prime Minister said that Australia and the United States “have stood side by side for freedom and democracy”. At the same time as the President was having part of the White House demolished to make way for his new ballroom. Cool.
This week:
As I wrote last week, diplomatically, Anthony Albanese’s meeting with US President Donald Trump was a success. We know how badly meetings with President Trump can go! That it wasn’t a disaster is really something. But the substance of the meeting was also widely hailed by the Australian media as meaningful. The Prime Minister was hailed as a diplomatic hero. But the shine (or should I say, bronzer) is starting to wear off.
President Trump can’t “guarantee” or “confirm” AUKUS. And even if he does, all that’s committing the US to is taking free money from Australia with no obligation to provide anything in return! In the Guardian Australia, Ben Doherty has a great explanation of what I mean.
Despite our game of pretend, President Trump continues his assault on both. In the next episode of After America, I chat with Matt Duss of the Center for International Policy about Trump’s assault on the rule of law at home and abroad. We focused particularly on Latin America, and the Trump administration’s “extra judicial killings” (which is fancy foreign policy speak for “murder”) in the Caribbean and Pacific. Mr Duss has been doing some great explainers over at CIP’s instagram.
Trump’s actions in Latin America reveal how he is, in many ways, a prisoner of American history. Some of that history – and the complexities of democratic downfall – is outlined in this great piece on Peru in the New York Times.
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I’ve written in an earlier column about fascism and the cult of tradition. Trump and the MAGA-verse are actively trying to reshape history in their own image, which means erasing a whole bunch of stuff they don’t like. It also means constant appeals to “civilization” that include a certain kind of aesthetic – one that throws back to “classical architecture” and what they see as an ideal-type civilization (read: White). That all gets a bit lost in the coverage of Mr Trump’s outrageous demolition of the White House, but it gets to the core of the MAGA project. “Classical architecture” is, as this Layla A. Jones piece in Talking Points Memo outlines, “‘A Dog Whistle for White Nationalists”.
It’s grim, and there’s no sign of a let up in the grimness. Until next week.
This Week in America, link roundup:
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Australia’s allegiance to the US is being tested as the Trump administration faces accusations of illegal military action and escalating national security recklessness.
It does suggest that there’s something odd happening when the BBC’s fabled Goon Show provides the script for the AUSMIN talks just concluded in Washington.
It isn’t always easy to keep up with what’s happening in the US. 'Shorter America' is Dr Emma Shortis' weekly column looping you in on what’s going on in America with news and analysis that you can trust.
New research from the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work has revealed that Australia’s poaching of skilled health workers from Pacific Island nations is leaving their health systems on the brink of collapse.
