The Trump administration has a surprising new agenda item: It’s all-in on legalizing a psychedelic drug called ibogaine. 

Ibogaine is classified as a Schedule I drug, which means it’s illegal on the federal level. But some studies show it may be able to treat opioid addiction, and researchers are also hopeful that it can help with PTSD. 

It’s that second use that has caught the White House’s ear. Veterans and veterans’ groups have been lobbying hard for ibogaine as a way to treat PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. Last month, they made some headway on that project when President Donald Trump signed an executive order to fast-track the Food and Drug Administration review process.

Mattha Busby, a freelance journalist writing about drug policy and other topics, told Today, Explained guest host Jonquilyn Hill that, naturally, podcaster Joe Rogan was also involved. Busby spoke with Hill about what ibogaine does, how the right got into psychedelics, and whether the FDA could soon approve some of them for use.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

When did Trump become interested in psychedelics?

Well, he’s famously never smoked a cigarette, had a drink, certainly not had a trip. So in the Oval Office the other week, he’s kind of joking about taking ibogaine. There’s a lot of bravado there, but ibogaine is an incredibly potent psychedelic. It famously gives people sort of recalls of every traumatic moment in their life. 

It’s an extracted molecule from a West African — Gabonese, specifically — root bark from a shrub, and basically became known as being able to rid opioid addicts, heroin addicts, of withdrawal symptoms in one trip. 

Ibogaine and psychedelics have now entered the mainstream conversation with the Trump administration talking about legalizing certain psychedelics. How did we get here?

Psychedelics have obviously long belonged to the cultural left, the counterculture, but it seems now there’s almost like a counter-counterculture with these right-wing, mostly Christian former special forces fighters, soldiers in the US Army, that are suffering from really debilitating conditions — from PTSD and [traumatic brain injuries] — and they’ve basically figured out that ibogaine and other psychedelics provide them the relief that conventional medicines don’t.

How is Joe Rogan involved in the policymaking here?

He’s had figures talking about psychedelics on his podcast since it began. The original sort of bro-cast dude, Aubrey Marcus, he’s had the former Texas governor and Trump’s first energy secretary, Rick Perry, on his podcast twice, along with a Kentucky lawyer and ibogaine advocate named Bryan Hubbard, who sounds like a Christian Southern revivalist and always quotes his favorite passage out of Isaiah.

Joe Rogan had this unlikely duo — who have both done ibogaine and are waxing lyrical about the benefits — on his podcast like three weeks before the executive order and they basically said, “Look, Joe, we need to make this happen.” So Joe texts Donald Trump, and apparently Donald Trump responds almost instantaneously saying, “Sounds good. Do you want FDA approval?”

This culminates with Joe Rogan actually going to the White House to attend the signing of an executive order about psychedelics. What’s in that executive order?

The thing about the executive order is it is sort of shouting into the wind a bit, but there is this money to go into the research side. 

It has five or six prongs. One of the main ones is that now under [the Right to Try Act] that Trump [signed] in his first term to allow end-of-life patients to try experimental drugs. That will be extended to psychedelics, so long as the DEA doesn’t try and obstruct that process. 

There’s $50 million for psychedelic research, most of which it seems is going to support state-led initiatives to investigate ibogaine and allow a US-first human trial. It’s also accelerating the path to a potential approval for psychedelic drugs. Three candidates that just submitted their data got fast-tracked for potential approval, so their applications will be considered more quickly. This would open the floodgates more widely to research.

Do you expect the FDA to say, “This is great, go ahead, use psychedelic drugs, they will help you.”

It’s quite likely really, within this presidency, to see several psychedelic drugs approved now. There was talk about [Joe Biden] setting up a federal task force and helping stuff along, and he didn’t seem to put any political will behind it. Trump has really seized the mantle here and he’s surfing the zeitgeist, as he weirdly seems to be able to on certain topics, all the while outraging and provoking us along the way.

There does seem to be some dissonance here, though. The GOP traditionally was all about the war on drugs.

There’s a lot of dissonance. I think that broadly, we’re seeing the war on drugs coming to an end little by little, despite the rhetoric, and I think this is a significant threshold moment. 

Trump’s always been kind of outside the Republican Party establishment compared to some previous presidents. It is not like it’s been some sort of topsy-turvy issue. The Democrats, when they’ve come in, there have been piecemeal changes. Joe Biden himself introduced the law when he was a senator to make the punishments for crack cocaine, which is more likely used by people of color, is like 30 times more stringent than for powder cocaine, which is used more often by white people. I think that there’s been a bipartisan war on drugs.

Do we know who’s using psychedelics? 

I think the interesting thing with psychedelics now, as opposed to maybe 10 or 15 years ago, is that they’ve crossed the political divide. A lot of people from unexpected segments of society are getting turned on because they are seeing, broadly, the benefits, even while there are serious risks, especially with ibogaine.

There was only one drug named in that executive order: ibogaine. Why? 

The veterans. These stories from veterans about the transformative effects of ibogaine have been really difficult to refute politically. Twenty-two veterans, on average, are committing suicide in the US every day. And Trump in the Oval Office, when he signed the order, said that “Since 9/11, we’ve we’ve lost over 21 times more veteran lives to suicide than on the battlefield.”

There are so many [representatives] and senators who are veterans themselves. There was a study from Stanford a couple of years ago that looked at 30 ex-special forces [soldiers] and found that a dose of ibogaine reduced all of their traumatic brain injury significantly. 

But we shouldn’t be under any illusions. This is a seriously potent and dangerous psychedelic when used improperly, and there’s been a whole spate of deaths. Indeed, the deaths are probably underreported because the drug disrupts the QT interval in the heart and can lead in some cases to fatal cardiac arrest.

President Donald Trump has big plans for America’s 250th birthday celebration, which gets underway this month. Some are anodyne: a state fair on the National Mall, for example, and what will reportedly be a record-breaking fireworks display. 

Others, though, are focused a little bit more on Trump than America: There will also be a UFC cage match on the South Lawn of the White House (on the president’s birthday), and a planned “Freedom 250” concert has already morphed into a full-blown Trump rally. And the whole thing is being presided over by not one but two groups: America250, Congress’s decade-old initiative to celebrate the country, and Freedom 250, which is the Trump administration’s very own. 

So, should Americans still be excited about the big party? Today, Explained asked Semafor editor-in-chief Ben Smith, who explains how America’s bisesquicentennial party got so political. He also talks with Today, Explained co-host Noel King about the dueling groups behind the celebrations, how the Freedom 250 concert fell apart, and what else is planned for the anniversary.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

What do you think President Trump is trying to say with this celebration?

I think President Trump is trying to celebrate America as he sees it, which is not totally separate from celebrating himself.

Do you believe that what President Trump is up to is justified?

Most Americans think it’s a good idea to celebrate big national anniversaries.

There’s a congressional body called the Semi-Sesquicentennial Commission. It’s been around for years, preparing to put up flags at football games, and have a ball drop in Times Square, and do cheerfully generic celebrations of America’s 250th anniversary. The Trump administration thought that was kind of sleepy and didn’t have the kind of flair for spectacle that Donald Trump likes. They wanted more glam, and more fireworks, and more cage matches on the White House lawn.

When I was talking to people at these two rival semi-sesquicentennial committees, they are mostly staffed by people who were trying hard, at least for a while, to get along and not have the 250th birthday of America descend into the partisan mayhem that every other thing in America descends into.

Are they competitive now? Are they still working together?

They’ve always been competitive and eyeing each other with a bit of mutual disdain. Because the Republicans control Congress, and because Trump basically controls the Republican Party, two-thirds of the money Congress allocated went to the White House branch, not to the congressional branch. 

The congressional bipartisan [committee] got $50 million to play with and raised a bunch of outside money, and so they were kind of grudgingly satisfied. In fact, there had been a plan to explore darker elements of America’s past, which, when Trump won, they dropped, because the White House doesn’t like doing that.

Much has been made of the concert series. Can you talk us through where that all began and where we are right now?

There was an idea that came out of the White House-led arm that I think is kind of a fun idea: a Great American State Fair, to have the spirit of state fairs — which are, in fact, genuinely delightful American institutions — on the Mall in Washington. And as part of that, there would be big concerts with beloved artists. 

Artists in general, most of them have learned lessons about staying away from politics. [And] Donald Trump is very unpopular right now, which I think has made it particularly hard for him to get any mainstream, popular artists to appear. So what they wound up with was a lineup of lesser artists of the ’90s and the early 2000s: C+C Music Factory: Young MC of the great hit “Bust A Move;” and Vanilla Ice. 

I’m a child of the ’80s. I would’ve enjoyed this, but it was kind of an embarrassing lineup to begin with. And then when Young MC realized that he had been, in his view, snookered into doing the pro-Trump version rather than the bipartisan version, he dropped out. 

Usually, when you book an artist for something like this, you don’t see this happen, because everybody signs the contract — they realize what they’re signing onto. But these guys are also sensitive to social media and, apparently, did not want any kind of association with the White House or Donald Trump. 

And so, only Vanilla Ice is left. 

What else is planned? There’s the UFC fight drawing a lot of attention. Any of the initial state fair elements preserved? Do we get a big Ferris wheel?

There will be carnival elements. I’m not sure if there’re going to be giant pigs and cows, but that’s always a fun state fair feature. But mostly, there’s just going to be Donald Trump. 

I mean, it’s the most classic cycle of American politics: Trump says, “I want to put on a big bipartisan spectacle,” and it leans a little more partisan than Democrats and these artists are comfortable with, and they drop out, and Trump says, “Well, fine. I’m just going to turn this into a hyper-partisan rally for myself.” Democrats say, “Well, you were always going to do that anyway.” And he says, “No, you forced me into it.” And it’s kind of worse than doing nothing in the end, if the goals were bringing Americans together to celebrate the birthday. 

I do think the White House detects an opportunity to accuse Democrats of not being patriotic enough and of selling out America’s birthday celebration. And I think some Democrats are mildly worried that the party will be somehow cast as unpatriotic. But as this thing continues to spiral, I think most Americans likely will just see it as the latest Washington hyper-partisan antics.

This could have been fun, let’s be honest.

I mean, it could still be fun. You don’t know until you go.

It could still be fun. Are you going to go?

If I can, yeah. I live up in New York, so I’ll have to make the trip down.

I’m already predicting — and I could be wrong — that the partisan nature of it will make it less fun than it could have been if we had all agreed to get along.

Maybe less fun for you, more fun for others. It’s actually one of the features of Trump rallies that I think his opponents miss is that they’re very fun for the people who go.

That’s a very good point. So I was going to ask whether Donald Trump actually cares about the people attending, and I think what I’m hearing you say is if they’re his supporters, yeah, he does care that they have a good time.

Yeah, I think he wants to throw a big party for his supporters and not for the “haters and losers.”

What do we know about the fireworks?

Trump loves spectacle. He’s talking about building a massive triumphal arch, although honestly, I’m not sure which triumph it intends to commemorate. If he’s going to have a firework show, it’ll be the biggest firework show in history. Hide your dogs.