Conventional wisdom suggests that the 2028 Republican primary is shaping up to be a chaotic affair. Supposedly, it’s anyone’s game, as Vice President JD Vance is weaker than he appears, while potential adversaries including Marco Rubio are gaining an advantage.

But this view is untethered from reality. The fact is that the 2028 Republican nomination is JD Vance’s to lose. The faulty prevailing opinion has calcified for two reasons: a poor reading of history and a deficient understanding of the political landscape.

The “Vice Presidents Don’t Win” Canard

“George H.W. Bush is the only sitting vice president in the last 190 years (since 1836) to be elected president,” an MS Now analyst recently confidently wrote. He is not alone: the “190 years” number has been trotted out by those who contend that Vance stands little chance of winning the presidency in 2028.

Martin Almuzara, Richard Audoly, and Davide Melcangi

On this episode of After America, Guardian Australia journalist Ben Doherty joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the likelihood of the Australia ever receiving a nuclear-powered submarine, the “dangerously undemocratic” secrecy around key elements of the AUKUS agreement, and Australia’s significantly changed strategic environment.

This episode was recorded on Friday 22 May.

You can sign our petition calling on the Australian Government to launch a parliamentary inquiry into AUKUS.

Guest: Ben Doherty, Senior Reporter, Guardian Australia

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis

Show notes:

Aukus nuclear submarine base would ‘place a massive target on our backs’, NSW labour union warns by Krishani Dhanji & Ben Doherty, Guardian Australia (May 2026)

Happy Africa Day!

Every Africa Day, we hear the same speeches about “Africa Rising.” And every year, millions more young Africans enter economies that still export raw materials, import food and fuel, service external debt in foreign currencies, and remain trapped at the bottom of global value chain. Africa is not poor. Africa is structurally disempowered, impoverished, and economically colonized. That distinction matters.

“The National Anti-Corruption Commission was founded three years ago with great hope that it would expose federal wrongdoing, but it has so far failed to live up to its promise,” said Bill Browne, Director of The Australia Institute’s Democracy & Accountability Program.

“The next Anti-Corruption Commissioner will have to rebuild public trust. This is best done in the open, so Australians can see the NACC at work – but the existing restrictions on public hearings make that difficult.

“The Albanese Government and the Parliament could set the next NACC Commissioner up for success by allowing public hearings whenever they are in the public interest, as supported by two in three Australians.

“The Australia Institute has identified five ways to restore trust and integrity in the NACC, including removing the government veto in the NACC’s oversight committee and establishing a whistleblower protection authority.”

The post NACC resignation an opportunity for much-needed fresh start appeared first on The Australia Institute.

This budget, and the debate around it, was not just about looming deficits, the need for belt-tightening and why now is the right time for company tax cuts.

For the first time I can remember, this budget was about what kind of Australia we want and how to pay for it.

The lead up to the budget was dominated by a huge public discussion around calls for a 25 per cent gas export tax. And while there was no gas tax in the budget, questions about why the government didn’t implement this no-brainer revenue-raising measure have dogged the Prime Minister and the Treasurer in post-budget interviews.

What was in the budget was a genuine attempt to address the housing crisis through reforms to expensive and unfair tax concessions for capital gains and negative gearing. Not only will this slow growth of house prices, but it will raise revenue for the government.

Quotes
Sullivan, Andrew. “Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic.” New York. May 1, 2016.
“As the authority of elites fades, as Establishment values cede to popular ones, views and identities can become so magnificently diverse as to be mutually uncomprehending. And when all the barriers to equality, formal and informal, have been removed; when everyone is equal; when elites are despised and full license is established to do “whatever one wants,” you arrive at what might be called late-stage democracy. There is no kowtowing to authority here, let alone to political experience or expertise.” (New York May 1, 2016)

Sulllivan: “For the white working class, having had their morals roundly mocked, their religion deemed primitive, and their economic prospects decimated, now find their very gender and race, indeed the very way they talk about reality, described as a kind of problem for the nation to overcome. [….] Much of the newly energized left has come to see the white working class not as allies but primarily as bigots, misogynists, racists, and homophobes, thereby condemning those often at the near-bottom rung of the economy to the bottom run of the culture as well. A struggling white man in the heartland is now told to ‘check his privilege’ by students at Ivy League colleges.”

Moe, Terry M., and William G. Howell. Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency. Princeton U P. 2025).

There’s a long tradition of explaining the transformation of democracy into authoritarianism as the story of “too much democracy” enabling the rise of a demagogue who makes himself a tyrant. It is “too much democracy” in that the rise of the demagogue is the consequence of a decline in authority and a flattening of hierarchy. In this talk I want to focus on two relatively recent examples of that narrative (more recent that Plato or Plutarch, anyway), one because it was influential (Samuel Huntington’s chapter in the 1975 Trilateral Commission report “Crisis of Democracy”), and the other because it’s typical (Andrew Sullivan’s May 2016 “Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic”).

ACOSS, Everybody’s Home, Better Renting and National Shelter are calling on the Federal Parliament to swiftly pass the vital housing tax reforms announced in the Budget. 

These long overdue changes to negative gearing and the capital gains discount will make a real difference to improve fairness and level the playing field in our housing and tax systems. 

Right now investors are buying twice as many properties as first-time buyers. These reforms will remove the unfair tax breaks that give investors a huge advantage over people who just want a home to live in. They will help reverse the stark decline in home ownership over the past 10 years. 

The changes will also improve housing stability for renters by encouraging long term investment over short term gains.

The current housing investor tax concessions mainly benefit the wealthiest 10 per cent who own two thirds of the value of investment property. At a time when the community is under increasing pressure, we need to make sure reforms raise revenue fairly to end the social housing shortfall and invest in the essential supports we all rely on. 

ACOSS Executive Director of Policy and Research Jacqueline Phillips said:

Update 5/24: Wow! Thank you, readers! I am overwhelmed by your kindness and support, both in the comments and in direct messages you sent. It means so much. I’m also overwhelmed with questions! In the interest of not over-promising, I’m going to close question submissions now and post responses later this week. Thank you again!

Update 5/27: The first round of answers are up! Click here. I’ll answer the rest in a follow-up article.

Update 6/1: The second round of answers are up! Click here. One more to go.

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Hello readers! Welcome to my regular Q & A, where subscribers send in questions and I answer as many as I can in a separate article.

I have not done a Q & A since my father died in late March. I’ll lay out the Q & A rules in a minute, but first, a few words for my subscribers:

Thank you for staying with me. It means the world during this dark time.