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.
Mon 17 Nov 2025 12.00
Photo: AAP Image/Darren England
In the lead up to thanksgiving weekend, the longest Federal Government shutdown in American history is now over. After 43 days, a few key Democrats caved to Republican pressure.
I promised I’d bring you the best election analysis as it came in, and here it is. My longtime friend and collaborator Dr Liam Byrne has a piece in The Conversation on the major questions that remain for the Democrats after their big wins. Viewed in the aftermath of their acquiescence to Trump over the shutdown, it’s all the more pressing.
But – hear me out here – what if a Kennedy could set everything right again? (He can’t, but it would make us all feel a bit better about the world if the Kennedy redemption arc finally arrived, wouldn’t it?)
There’s always a bit of infighting in the MAGA-verse, as ambitious cronies fight each other for positions of power. Trump assembled a lose ideological coalition, uniting apparently unlikely allies like the evangelical Christian movement and libertarians, and they don’t always get along (see: Marjorie Taylor Greene).
Epstein (which we’ll get to, yikes) is causing internal rifts, particularly as the libertarian wing demands the release of all documents. Trump has let the libertarians down time and time again – promising to end wars and then not doing that, promising to release classified information and then not doing that.
He did promise them a libertarian would be in his Cabinet, and he sort of delivered. But that’s not going super well either. Kash Patel, head of the FBI, is having a bit of a time. This piece in Mother Jones has all the details.
What a weekend to be online. Yikes.
Over at The Nation, Jeet Heer has a brilliant piece on Epstein and his deep links to militarism. It’s grim reading, but it explains so much about power in America. As Heer writes,
“Trump richly deserves whatever reputational harm and possible legal retribution may come to him as a result of his ties to Epstein. But, at its heart, this has always been a scandal about the ruling class as a whole, not one individual or political party.”
More yikes to come, no doubt.
Soaring costs of living and the nation’s longest government shutdown have fueled fierce voter backlash against US President Donald Trump with the Democrats being handed sweeping victories in multiple state elections.
