Last week, Australia’s Labor prime minister Anthony Albanese called a federal election for Saturday 3 May. It’s a tight contest, with a jarring disconnect between the relatively modest policies on offer and the huge upheavals caused by decisions being made 10,000 miles away in Washington.

On Wednesday Donald Trump imposed 10% tariffs on allies like Australia (and bizarrely even higher tariffs on uninhabited Australian offshore territories, that were due, as our reporters exclusively discovered, to erroneous trade data). It prompted the strongest rebuke of Trump by Albanese yet: “This is not the act of a friend,” he said, presenting an opportunity for Albanese to show strength when the opposition’s strongest line of attack during his leadership to date has been his “weakness”.

It left the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, with little to say, other than vague promises that he would somehow be able to negotiate a better deal, with scant detail on how he would achieve that (a common theme for the policies on offer from the Coalition this election).

What all this means for the future of the $368bn Aukus nuclear submarine deal, which was meant to secure Australia’s future, is the topic no candidate wants to talk about, as a consensus builds that the US can no longer be relied upon.

As we witness the impact of billionaires with extraordinary access shaping American politics, this week we launched our new narrative podcast, Gina, in which senior correspondent Sarah Martin examines the influence of Australia’s richest person – mining tycoon Gina Rinehart – with her own mission to, as some see it, “make Australia great again”.

Gina is part of the distinctive approach our team here in Australia is taking to covering an election where the stakes are high, as Labor tries to defy the cost of living backlash experienced by many incumbent governments around the world. To understand these pressures, we’re looking beyond the campaign trail at ordinary people’s lives in the popular Anywhere but Canberra Q&A series. I’ve also been intrigued by the shadow campaign, a series by political reporters Josh Butler and Dan Jervis-Bardy, which delves into the dial-shifting conversations taking place away from mainstream media on podcasts and social media.

We are also working hard to engage younger voters. In Tell Me More, a livestreamed series on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Matilda Boseley interviews a reporter about the big news of the day while taking questions from viewers. Matilda is also presenting Voting 101 videos that take people through the mechanics of how the system works and other common questions about the election. Meanwhile, our new politics podcast, Back to Back Barries (with veteran political journalist Barrie Cassidy and former Liberal strategist Tony Barry) is taking an in-depth and expert look at the strategies behind the campaigns as the weeks go on. There is lighter relief too in comedian James Colley’s Surviving the election videos and the always caustic (and funny) First Dog on the Moon cartoon strip.

It’s looking as though the likely result on 3 May will be a minority government (with many independents expecting to perform well) as polls tighten in the run-up to election day. It’s a fascinating, and consequential moment for the country. Over the next month, the Guardian team here in Australia will chronicle how it plays out.

Our reporters around the world have been working to make sense of the vast impact and scale of Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff frenzy which sent stock markets and the dollar tumbling, wiping trillions from the value of some of America’s biggest companies and stoking fears that Trump has ushered in a global recession. We looked at the chaos in a series of charts, as senior economics correspondent, Richard Partington, analysed the many flaws in Trump’s methodology. Richard also appeared on a special edition of Today in Focus to discuss the prospect of a global trade war. Callum Jones’s analysis explored why the move is likely to raise prices for Americans; Lisa O’Carroll considered if the tariffs might reopen old Brexit wounds in Northern Ireland, while Kate Lamb and Rebecca Ratcliffe reported on how disaster-hit and struggling countries already affected by the USAID cuts attracted some of the steepest tariffs.

Lorenzo Tondo, Malak A Tantesh and Julian Borger worked together to produce a shocking story: that 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, including at least one UN employee, were killed by Israeli forces “one by one” and buried in a mass grave in southern Gaza, according to the UN. The further details our team revealed painted a chilling picture of what may have happened, with witnesses saying that some of the bodies were found with their hands or legs tied and had gunshot wounds to the head and chest. We also ran a visual timeline chronicling the horrific episode.

Rebecca Ratcliffe and Kate Lamb reported powerfully on the scale of the Myanmar earthquake, covering the scenes as bodies started to pile up at the epicentre and the ruling junta blocked aid, while continuing airstrikes in already devastated zones. In the midst of the tragedy, China, Russia and India stepped in with aid, while the US was conspicuous for its absence, as a result of the USAID cuts.

After JD Vance flew to Greenland, to further Donald Trump’s annexation ambitions, historian Timothy Snyder wrote an excoriating piece on the trip and the thinking behind it, calling it not just morally wrong, but a “strategic disaster”. Columnist Nathalie Tocci viewed the trip through the frame of the administration’s visceral disdain of Europe. Elsewhere, Charlotte Higgins addressed yet another shocking move by Trump: his demands that “improper ideology” be removed from the Smithsonian museums. And, as the Trump administration ramps up its vast and indiscriminate crackdown on immigration, Latin America correspondent Tom Phillips, and Clavel Rangel reported on one case that has triggered horror and dismay, even among sympathisers of the president such as Joe Rogan, that of a young gay Venezuelan makeup artist deported to a notorious security prison in El Salvador.

There was shock in France as the National Rally leader, Marine Le Pen, was banned from public office for five years after a conviction for embezzling European parliament funds. The ruling provoked anger among her far-right allies both at home and abroad, and sent operatives in her party scrambling for a plan B in the form of Le Pen’s 29-year-old protege, Jordan Bardella. Angelique Chrisafis looked at the shock decision and how it will probably play out for the far-right former presidential candidate in this Today in Focus episode with Helen Pidd.

A frail Polish woman in her 80s has been threatened with deportation from the UK after she mistakenly filled in a Home Office application form online, rather than on a paper form, as required. Diane Taylor told Elzbieta Olszewska’s kafkaesque story.

Education reporter Caitlin Cassidy wrote about how alarming behaviour from parents and students is threatening to deter an entire generation of Australian school principals from the profession.

Two years ago, the Guardian revealed research showing its founders’ connections to transatlantic enslavement. In response, we launched the Cotton Capital series and a 10-year programme of restorative justice. This week, alongside several other pieces from our powerful series, Caribbean correspondent, Natricia Duncan, spoke to people at Gurney’s Mount Baptist church in Hanover, Jamaica, a church that served the sugar plantation co-owned by Guardian funder, George Philips. Many of the congregation said they felt empowered learning about their community’s past to help them figure out what reparations should look like and what they want for their futures.

Jeremy Deller’s huge, meticulously orchestrated artworks – which have included an inflatable Stonehenge – have made him one of Britain’s favourite artists. Charlotte Higgins has been working on a profile of him since 2016 and, ahead of his biggest extravaganza yet, he gave a rare insight into his creative process. Elsewhere, documentary maker Alex Gibney introduced a list of 25 films you need to watch to understand the US now in the Observer, including American Factory, The Florida Project and, of course, Ali Abbasi’s recent Trump/Roy Cohn biopic, The Apprentice.

A woman who had been happily with her partner for 25 years had a torrid affair that tore her life apart. Psychotherapist Juliet Rosenfeld told her patient’s story and looked at the complex and deep-seated reasons why people cheat.

Did you like this email? Don’t forget to leave a review … in this feature Chloë Hamilton pondered the unstoppable spread of review culture in every aspect of our lives.

Cook this | Alice Zaslavsky’s fennel stew with polenta dumplings

Chicken cacciatore is classically a “hunter’s stew”, but Alice has borrowed the general idea and stalked the produce aisle for fennel instead of fowl. She’s also turned polenta into free-form dumplings that add body and texture to the stew from above.

Listen to this | The Tesla backlash – Today in Focus

The Guardian’s global technology editor, Dan Milmo, talks to Michael Safi about the recent protests against Tesla, and we hear from current and former Tesla enthusiasts, Jim, Mika and Kam, about what they think of Elon Musk’s rise in US politics.

Watch this | The invertebrate of the year competition is here. Who will you vote for?

Invertebrates may be the unsung heroes of the planet but they have received a lot of love and recognition from Guardian readers. A dazzling array of nominations have flown in for insects, arachnids, snails, crustaceans, corals and many more obscure creatures for our invertebrate of the year competition. Natural history reporter Patrick Barkham reviews this year’s shortlist of 10.

The Guardian’s crosswords and Wordiply are here to keep you entertained throughout the weekend.