On this episode of After America, Emma Shortis and Angus Blackman discuss the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, the credibility of the Trump administration’s threats against Greenland and elsewhere, and the fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer.

This discussion was recorded on Friday 9 January 2026.

A time for Bravery: what happens when Australia chooses courage is available now via Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘POD5’ to get $5 off.

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

Host: Angus Blackman, Executive Producer, the Australia Institute // @AngusRB

Show notes:

‘What you need to know about Trump administration’s abduction of Nicolás Maduro’ by Emma Shortis, The Point (January 2026)

The American Founders freely acknowledged that natural rights were granted by God—“endowed by their Creator,” to use their language. They and their early republic successors saw the United States as an example to the rest of the world in practicing the art of self-government. But what bears remembering in our own day is that they did not believe the United States was a home for all the world’s freedom-loving people. Instead, constitutional nationalists like Daniel Webster understood the U.S. as a teacher of mankind, a republican people seeking to pass along the blessings of liberty they cultivated to their posterity.

Due to an explosion in unrestrained Enlightenment universalism, Democrats of Webster’s day wanted to obliterate national borders and all non-democratic governments. Webster affirmed those same universal natural rights, but believed they could only be truly expressed through the particular history of the people of the American republic. It was not America’s job to tear down borders or obliterate national distinctions. It was America’s duty to teach all nations the value of natural rights by their example so that every nation might embrace natural rights in its own particular way, through its own institutions.

America was a nation founded upon universal principles, but those principles could only be truly expressed through the historical development and experience of the particular people who called themselves Americans.

Ronald J. Pestritto has done a splendid job in supplying us with a succinct account of the ideological origins of the administrative state, its evolution, and the attempts by Donald Trump and some of his predecessors to rein it in. Essentially a fourth branch of government, the administrative state has taken over most of the functions of government, yet is not directly responsible to any elected official.

Its establishment and expansion presuppose the existence of what Hegel called “the universal class”—an impartial, benevolent, all-wise cohort of Platonic Guardians apt to take better care of us than we would be capable of doing ourselves, even if we were blessed with ample resources. Such an arrangement makes a mockery of our pretension that, as human beings, we have the capacity to govern ourselves, and that it is incumbent on us to do so. How can there be liberty and personal responsibility when our conduct is governed in nearly every particular by individuals over whom we exercise no leverage? And how can there be a redress of grievances when our true rulers are largely beyond our reach?

Sebastian Heise, Jeremy Pearce, and Jacob P. Weber

Ronald Pestritto’s article on the Trump Administration’s efforts to tame the administrative state helpfully offers what he calls a “brief snapshot,” focusing primarily on the administration’s project to reshape administrative law to buttress presidential control over the bureaucracy through regulatory review and firing authority. His longer Provocation offers an exceptional and more thorough introduction to these and other issues, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand why the administrative state presents such a fundamental challenge to American constitutionalism.

The core principle that animates Pestritto’s article and Provocation is the consent of the governed—a principle enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as a prerequisite of any just government. According to the Founders, our natural equality means that we cannot be governed by another without our consent. To accept government without consent would be tantamount to admitting that there are rulers who are so naturally superior that they may rule us against our will. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote just before the celebration of the Declaration’s 50th anniversary that “the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

History, as it’s understood in most Western countries, often misses important chapters that leave critical gaps in the story of how modern countries came to be. In Latin America in the 20th century, episodes of guerilla warfare and juntas are acknowledged, along with portrayals of a drug war, usually depicted through popular culture.

What is left out, however, is the clandestine involvement of American intelligence agencies, including the CIA and DEA, and how their drug operations were intimately tied to the Latin American anticommunist brigades funded by Western capital throughout the Cold War, and the brutal liquidation of the Left these narco-terrorists often carried out.

The social media hashtag #NeverTrump first appeared in June 2015, days after Donald Trump announced his presidential candidacy. For the balance of that year, social media derision attracted less attention than Trump himself, mostly due to the widespread belief that Trump’s campaign was self-extinguishing, which argued against pointless efforts to bring about an already inevitable defeat. In election cycles since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide victory, unlikely protest candidates for the GOP presidential nomination—Pat Robertson, Ron Paul, Herman Cain—had briefly surged in the polls, only to give way to a conventional politician who ended up as the party’s nominee. Bill Clinton observed that, when selecting a presidential nominee, there is an almost anthropological difference between Democrats, who fall in love with a previously obscure politician (George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama), and Republicans, who fall in line behind an established one (Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney).

“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” — Stephen Miller to Jake Tapper on CNN, Jan. 5, 2026.

“He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist. Such a saying may sound hard; but, after all, that’s how it is.” — Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf

“The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical... Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit — i.e., in the tendency of nations to expand — a manifestation of their vitality.” — Benito Mussolini in The Doctrine of Fascism

Following a statement from the board responsible for the Adelaide Festival organisation and all Adelaide Writers’ Week events, The Australia Institute is withdrawing its support and sponsored events from this year’s literary festival.

The Australia Institute has valued being part of discussions at the event, which in the past have promoted bravery, freedom of expression and the exchange of ideas.

Censoring or cancelling authors is not in the spirit of an open and free exchange of ideas.

The post Statement from The Australia Institute appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

Maduro No Más: Venezuela’s Future After His Capture ft. Josh Treviño & R.J. Pestritto | The Roundtable Ep. 299

Nicolás Maduro is in U.S. custody, pleading not guilty to federal drug and weapons charges. What does his capture mean for Venezuela, American foreign policy, and the global order? And how does this moment connect to the domestic fight over America’s administrative state? Josh Treviño of AFPI unpacks the geopolitical aftermath of Maduro’s arrest, and R.J. Pestritto of Hillsdale College discusses his latest publication about the rise of America’s unelected bureaucracy: Government by the Unelected: How It Happened, and How It Might Be Tamed.

Pierre Coster, Julian di Giovanni, and Isabelle Mejean

In episode two of PALMed Off, host Morgan Harrington travels to Leeton, New South Wales, a town that’s become a safe haven for some of the estimated 7,000 people who have ‘disengaged’ from the PALM scheme. We find out what leads people to make the difficult decision to walk away from their employer and speak to some of the community members trying to help them.

PALMed Off is a special four-part series of Follow the Money exploring the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme, an Australian Government guestworker program that could be putting people from nine Pacific Island nations and Timor-Leste at risk of modern slavery.

The interviews for this podcast were recorded between June and August 2025.

Host: Morgan Harrington, Research Manager, The Australia Institute // @mhharrington

Interviewees: Ken Dachi (Welcoming Australia), Paul Maytom (Leeton Multicultural Support Group), Ian Bull (member of St. Peter’s Anglican congregation, Leeton), (Waskam) Emelda Davis (ASSI-Port Jackson Chair), anonymous former PALM workers

Scripting and production support: Stephen Long, Senior Fellow & Contributing Editor, the Australia Institute

Sound design and mixing: Simon Branthwaite

Show notes:

In the fourth and final episode of PALMed Off, host Morgan Harrington canvases some of the proposed solutions to the problems facing the PALM scheme, including an amnesty for disengaged workers and ensuring that everyone working in Australia has the right to leave their employer.

PALMed Off is a special four-part series of Follow the Money exploring the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme, an Australian Government guestworker program that could be putting people from nine Pacific Island nations and Timor-Leste at risk of modern slavery.

The interviews for this podcast were recorded between June and August 2025.

Host: Morgan Harrington, Research Manager, The Australia Institute // @mhharrington

Interviewees: Ken Dachi (Welcoming Australia), Dr Lindy Kanan (researcher), Dr Matt Withers (ANU), (Waskam) Emelda Davis (ASSI-Port Jackson Chair), Thomas Costa (Unions NSW), anonymous former PALM workers

Scripting and production support: Stephen Long, Senior Fellow & Contributing Editor, the Australia Institute

Sound design and mixing: Simon Branthwaite

Show notes:

‘The PALM Scheme: Labour rights for our Pacific partners’, The Australia Institute (December 2023)

Pierre Coster, Julian di Giovanni, and Isabelle Mejean

The theater where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested is playing Eyes Wide Shut. The movie is a revival. Everything is a revival when nothing gets resolved.

I am driving around Dallas the day after Christmas. The Texas Theatre is near Oswald’s residence, an unassuming home with a sign offering tours. I decline: I came to see the graves of Bonnie and Clyde and the Ewing Building where they shot JR. I can only handle so much crime at once. But Dallas never cared about that.

Writing is hard: this week’s work

 — Author: Patricia Roberts-Miller — Wednesday 7th January 2026

When I started trying to write scholarly articles/books, it was SO hard. Writing doesn’t come easily to me—it never has—but this was unusually hard. I always assumed that some day scholarly writing would come easily to me. It hasn’t.

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