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 12 Jun 2026 13.15 AEST
Photo: The White House/Flickr
How is it that we are still here? Over 100 days into Trump’s illegal war on Iran, the headlines keep cycling through: Trump issues threat, Trump drops more bombs, Trump says ceasefire still in place, Trump says we have a deal, Trump says the Strait will open, oh wait, Iran says there is no deal. Rinse and repeat.
This week:
The structures of the old world continue to crumble. While I’m not quite sure about the Kevin McAllister references, the European Council on Foreign Relations has a pretty striking new polling report out. Only 11 (eleven!) per cent of Europeans now consider the United States as an ally of Europe.
Visiting Europe to commemorate D Day, the United States Secretary of Defense once again revealed why that is. Hegseth used that solemn occasion to repeat white supremacist tropes about a new “invasion” of Europe. As this characteristically good take from Jamelle Bouie points out, Hegseth seemed to get confused about some pretty important details. Like, who the bad guys were in WWII.
In that take, Bouie also talks about the different versions of America, of what it wants to be. While I wouldn’t usually recommend Ezra Klein’s podcast, I’m making an exception this week because our great colleague Matt Duss was on the show, talking about America’s role in the world and the foreign policy of the Democratic Party. Matt will also be on After America this week.
Trump and his MAGA allies, meanwhile, are busy projecting their white supremacy abroad, pulling on established networks with home grown movements, particularly in the UK. I haven’t seen that much great analysis of what’s happening in Northern Ireland and the role of one Elon Musk (if you find some, send it to me?). While we wait for that, this post from a Belfast local on the London Review of Books blog gave me pause.
Predictably, that white supremacy is also marring the FIFA World Cup, which kicks off in the US over the weekend. It’s funny (not funny-ha-ha) how much of that coverage doesn’t quite seem to connect the dots between what Trump is doing at home and what he’s doing abroad. The appalling case of the Somali referee denied entry, covered well by this NPR piece, doesn’t note the revolting, conspiracy-laden attacks on the Somali-American community Trump is engaged in at home. The President of the United States called that entire community “garbage”. The lack of real pushback on this from the United States’ allies, particularly those participating in the World Cup, is appalling.
I’ve written before about the Trump movement’s weird thing about “classical architecture” – you can see it in Trump’s stupid “Arc de Trump” (everything is so embarrassing). That extends to an obsession with Ancient Greece and Rome, currently playing out in a quite hilarious meltdown over the casting of a luminously beautiful Black woman, Lupita Nyong’o, as Helen in Christopher Nolan’s Odysseus. I loved this piece by historian Bret Devereaux about “the campaign mounted by bigoted very-online right-wing self-described “chuds” to claim Greek and Roman culture for their own fascist, or at least fascist-adjacent, ideology”.
And finally, because I am very petty and I enjoy the petty grievances of Ivy League academics far too much, here’s a great review of Samuel Moyn’s (of Yale Law School) new book Gerontocracy, by one of his former students.
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Former environment minister Peter Garrett will lead a public inquiry into the Australian Government’s $368 billion AUKUS defence pact, amid growing concerns over the lack of scrutiny surrounding the nation’s most expensive defence project. The independent inquiry will run for five months, with the Midnight Oil frontman and environmental campaigner saying there has never been a more critical time to uncover the facts.
Australia will now receive three second-hand Virginia-class, nuclear-powered submarines in the coming years, instead of the original deal of two used vessels and one brand new sub. Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles spun this as a welcome streamlining of the fleet that would simplify its supply chain, as well as the management and sustainment of these complex warships.
