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 12.51 AEST
Photo: AAP Image/Joe Castro
Australian defence policy is entirely based on the idea that these guys – Trump, Hegseth and co – will keep us safe. It’s an act of faith, and like all acts of faith, it is blind to argument and evidence.
It’s been pretty clear for nearly a year now that Australians have taken a look at what Trump and his ICE goons are doing and have decided that the USA isn't the place for them.
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, Dr Chloe Ward, put it best:
“hundreds of years from now, historians (if there are historians) will cite today as the day America died.”
Quality research, analysis, explainers and factchecks from experts you can trust.
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
