As global concern about an Ebola outbreak in central Africa grows, hundreds of Kenyans have taken to the streets to protest a plan by the Trump administration to send American citizens who have been exposed to the virus to Kenya, rather than bringing them back to the US. Two people have been shot and killed during the protests. 

The outbreak started in the Democratic Republic of Congo last month and has since spread to Uganda. There are currently no confirmed cases in Kenya, which shares a border with Uganda.

Kenyans are demanding to know why the US wants to send Ebola patients to their country, and why their government gave the US the initial approval to build a 50-bed quarantine facility at the Laikipia Air Base in central Kenya.

For now, the plan is on hold after a court ruling in Kenya; on Tuesday, the court extended the suspension to at least June 23 and also ordered the Kenyan government to provide details of its arrangement with the Trump administration, including financial agreements and measures put in place to protect Kenyans.

Between cuts to American foreign aid in the region, the sheer aggressiveness of this strain of the virus, and conspiracy theories that threaten public health workers, many public health workers fear that this Ebola outbreak has become a perfect storm.

To understand what’s going on — and why the US is trying to involve Kenya — Today, Explained co-host Noel King spoke to Sabrina Siddiqui, a national politics reporter for the Wall Street Journal who helped to break the story. They discussed the reactions from Kenyans and public health experts and what would happen if Kenya continues to rebuff the administration.

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

What is the plan?

The administration has been trying to set up a quarantine facility in Kenya at an air force base where they would essentially house Americans who have been exposed to Ebola and anyone who also tests positive.

They’re describing it as somewhat of a tent hospital. But there are various plans underway for also adding, if needed, isolation units and biocontainment units. That is, of course, if there are people who truly get sick or need further care. 

I think they see this as an opportunity to have a place for Americans to quarantine while they’re evaluated, and they have deployed public health officers from the United States to assist with these efforts. They have also said that if Americans test positive, they would only perhaps stay at this facility for a couple days before being sent to another country. And they’re looking at facilities in Europe that could potentially accommodate Americans if they were to truly get sick.

What the US is saying is: We don’t want you coming back into the US. You look at the reaction to this here at home, and there’s a lot of shock. Ebola outbreaks have happened before. This is a very dangerous, dangerous virus. How does the US usually handle this when our citizens are affected?

That’s actually been very striking about the administration’s response to this particular outbreak. In previous outbreaks, Americans who had been exposed to Ebola or who had tested positive were allowed to return home and they were monitored and cared for at quarantine facilities here in the United States. And we do have biocontainment units as well. During this recent hantavirus outbreak, American passengers who were aboard the cruise ship where that outbreak occurred have been quarantining at one of those biocontainment units in Nebraska. 

So it’s frankly been bizarre to a lot of public health officials and epidemiologists that Americans would not be allowed to come home. And it just appears to be the case that the Trump administration is taking a very hard line against letting anyone who is known to have Ebola to be allowed back here in the United States. What they’re saying is that they do not want any Ebola cases to exist in the United States during this outbreak.

So the plan is: send Americans to Kenya. And what is the status of that plan?

The Trump administration announced that the US and Kenya had reached an agreement to stand up this quarantine facility for Americans in Kenya. And then a Kenyan high court put a temporary hold on the Trump administration’s plan to set up that facility. So right now, the plan is very much in limbo. As of now, it’s not clear if the plan is even going to move forward.

How did people in Kenya respond when they were told the United States wants to send its citizens to you?

One of the lawyers who is part of the legal group that is arguing this case said, “Is Kenya being reduced to a dumping site?” I think that really captures the mood of many Kenyans who learned about this plan through news reports, and were critical of their government for agreeing to allow Americans who had been exposed to Ebola to be rerouted to Kenya when there are no known or suspected cases of Ebola in Kenya. 

There are obviously a lot of concerns, including from medical groups in Kenya that there could perhaps be an outbreak in Kenya that stems from bringing Americans to the country who’ve been exposed to the virus.

Does anyone know why [the administration chose] Kenya?

The administration said that they were looking for somewhere in the region that is unaffected by the outbreak, where they don’t believe there is as high a risk of spread and that is not too far so that people could get there quickly. Obviously there are also politics involved and it seems like they were able to come to some kind of agreement with the government, even if it’s been halted by the courts. 

Again, this is temporary for people who actually get sick. So it doesn’t even look like it was necessarily a long-term plan in terms of how they plan to actually use this facility, because at the same time that they’re saying Americans can quarantine in Kenya, they also said that anyone who truly gets sick would be evacuated to a tertiary care center and that they’re currently talking to partners in Europe to try and identify where sick patients can be taken. 

These are just some of the questions that a lot of people have around the administration’s plans, which they haven’t been terribly forthcoming about, and which have drawn criticism not just from people in Kenya, but also from public health experts here at home who simply do not understand why they would not allow Americans to return to their home country.

Let me ask you what you’ve been hearing from public health experts, because there is, from the non-expert’s point of view, a knee-jerk sense in this. It’s: Ebola is dangerous, keep people where they are, or keep people elsewhere, so that they don’t bring Ebola into the United States. 

You said public health experts say this does not make sense. Why doesn’t it make sense? What do they tell you?

I think there are a couple of things that are at play. One is that public health experts do say that it is the responsibility of the United States government to take care of its own people and to allow them to return home so that they could receive the highest quality of care and that they have these state-of-the-art facilities specifically designed for outbreaks and viruses like Ebola.

I also think that there is the component of mental health, and that, in addition to just needing to receive the appropriate care, that people should have access to their support system, that they should be allowed to be in closer proximity to their families if they were to get sick. And people see that as a moral responsibility that the United States has to afford Americans that opportunity. 

There’s also just the fact that in previous outbreaks, Americans were brought home, and the Trump administration has not provided a medical rationale for why they’re so opposed to Americans coming back home other than saying that time is of the essence when someone has Ebola. Well, time was also of the essence in prior outbreaks, and the US did not stop Americans from returning home.

You’ve been covering the hantavirus outbreak as well. And I wonder whether you’re seeing a pattern here in the way this administration is responding to these public health crises where the public is inclined to freak out a bit and public health experts might have a different idea of what needs to happen.

Well, here’s what’s really fascinating about covering the hantavirus outbreak as well as the Ebola outbreak. The Trump administration has been willing to embrace these very aggressive quarantine and isolation measures despite the fact that this administration is full of people at the highest levels of leadership who were so critical of what they saw as heavy-handed social distancing and isolation guidelines during the Covid-19 pandemic.

And they’re going even further. There were a couple of passengers who wanted to leave the Nebraska facility where those who’ve been exposed to hantavirus have been quarantining. And the acting director of the CDC, Jay Bhattacharya, signed an order forcing them to stay there. And now, as those passengers are reaching the end of their quarantine period — these are those who are exposed to hantavirus, who have been asymptomatic and do not have hantavirus — they’re now returning to their home states. The Trump administration is essentially insisting on 24/7 monitoring and not allowing them to leave their homes.

So, oddly enough, it’s a very heavy-handed way that the Trump administration has responded to these outbreaks, even though they were the ones who used criticisms of public health institutions and of the scientific community during Covid as a way to appeal to voters who are frustrated by these exact kinds of guidelines and rules during that pandemic.

What are the stakes here? What happens if Kenya says, no, President Donald Trump, we’re just not going to allow this?

Well, that’s actually going to be a really interesting moment if it comes to pass because it is not entirely clear if the Trump administration has a plan B.

It just seems like this entire plan came together very quickly. Even the public health officers who were deployed to Kenya when they were called upon for this assignment only received about three days of training. And that’s something that some public health officials said simply isn’t enough for people who are going to go and try to staff a facility where you have this rare strain of a deadly virus. 

When the Trump administration is talking about whether or not they would be able to send Americans to other facilities in Europe, they still haven’t identified where those care centers would be, which just signals that they haven’t really thought through what would happen if they are not allowed to stand up this facility in Kenya. And I suspect that while they’re still negotiating with the Europeans, it’s very likely that people in Europe would have the same reaction as those in Kenya: “Why are you sending potentially sick Americans here rather than allowing them to return home?”

Just a few years ago, Ben Shapiro was the defining voice of right-wing media. His podcast sat near the top of the charts. Posts from the Daily Wire, his media company, routinely dominated the competition on Facebook. His team was even coming for Hollywood, putting out “anti-woke” comedies and an epic fantasy series that cost millions per episode.

All that feels like a distant memory now. Shapiro’s social media traffic has collapsed, as the Washington Post’s Drew Harwell recently reported; the Daily Wire has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs since 2025. The epic fantasy series flopped. Shapiro’s struggle to stay relevant is clear on his YouTube page, where you can find painfully forced videos of the pundit reacting to trending culture.

So what happened? Ryan Broderick, a longtime internet culture reporter who publishes the Garbage Day newsletter, has a succinct explanation: “The age-old problem with working at the racism factory! They eventually make a new racism that includes you,” he wrote in May.

To learn more about the Daily Wire’s decline, Today, Explained co-host Noel King spoke with Broderick about how Charlie Kirk’s murder precipitated a MAGA vibe shift that has left Shapiro out in the cold, the new media figures rising to replace him, and whether we will miss Shapiro once he’s gone. (We very likely will.)

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

Explain your “racism factory” line, please. 

It was a pithy way to describe what I think is happening to Ben Shapiro right now, which is that he’s found himself on the wrong side of a far-right vibe shift that’s happening. 

The question of “Should American conservatives support Israel?” I think, has quickly become the deciding factor in canonizing the new wave of MAGA, or even post-MAGA conservatism in America. There’s a lot of creators on one side who say we should not be involved with Israel. They say that largely for antisemitic purposes, but also because they’re xenophobic and isolationists, but they know that this is a red line that they can go across. 

Ben Shapiro cannot follow them there because he is an Orthodox Jew who supports Israel and is a fairly standard conservative, all things considered. And so this is among the many other problems that Shapiro is having right now in trying to hold his digital media empire together.

Alright, so Ben Shapiro’s on one side. As you said, he is unlikely to ever turn his back on Israel. On the other side are people who are going hard at Israel and have been since approximately, I don’t know, October 8, 2023. Who are they? Who are the players here?

The biggest one is Nick Fuentes. He is the de facto leader of this far-right splinter cell movement, the “Groypers.” He’s got a live stream that he’s on every single day, and he’s just the most vile kind of far-right personality you could imagine. But you also have more and more creators, I think, sensing this vibe shift and moving towards him. 

Candace Owens was going so far as to even claim that Charlie Kirk was killed by Mossad. You also have Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly — a lot of these people I would sort of put in the camp of pretty run-of-the-mill conservative commentators who understand that Trump is not popular, and so they’re trying to feel out new territory there. And then you also have “manosphere” guys like Tim Dillon who have even started to kind of go against Israel. 

It is this thing that is happening, and social media, I think, always prioritizes the newest, most taboo idea. And so this would be a new taboo that has been discovered by far-right commentators.

So in that camp of people, you have critics of Israel that run the gamut from Candace Owens, who seems kind of nutty, to Megyn Kelly, who often seems pretty straight. What do they all have in common? Is it just their criticism of Israel?

No, my read on this is that it all stems from Charlie Kirk, actually.

The MAGA movement is not one movement. It is not one ideology. The 2024 winning coalition was this weird mismatch of far-right live streamers, manosphere podcasters, neoconservatives and the TPUSA/Charlie Kirk kind of middle-of-the-road MAGA people. I think Charlie Kirk was very instrumental in holding a lot of this together, if only because it seemed like — to them at least — he was possibly a replacement for Trump. 

I’ve read into it as the MAGA movement was trying to home-grow their own version of Trump. Charlie Kirk may have been that figure. He dies, and the whole thing starts to fall apart. And I have to give, unfortunately, some credit to Nick Fuentes here, who has always hated Charlie Kirk.

So Charlie Kirk is killed, and then these alliances form and they fracture and they reform and they refracture. What events of the last, say, eight months do we place in the post-Charlie Kirk’s assassination moment?

It’s a lot of reading the tea leaves of online discourse, I would say. But you know when the movement is working and when they’re all falling in lockstep with one another.

Sydney Sweeney’s jeans would be a good example of [that], or Cracker Barrel. They’ve been able to get this talking point to surface out of their DMs and into the general consciousness. And if you look back at the months immediately after Charlie Kirk’s murder, that hasn’t really been happening the same way. They’re not really working together. They’re fighting with each other a lot, and they’re also telling on each other. 

These people are very messy. Even as we speak, Ashley St. Clair is on TikTok sharing secrets from inside the MAGA movement and going on Hasan Piker’s stream. All these guys are unfollowing each other and fighting with each other. And it’s a lot of right wingers who are super dependent on internet attention and monetizing internet attention, and they’re really, really nervous about the internet landscape the same way all digital media publishers are. I think that’s having a negative impact on the stuffiest of the digital media-era people. And Ben Shapiro is the stuffiest.

There is something else that I’ve been thinking about a lot, which is: Ben Shapiro, when he started out, he was so young, and it was like this young man that appealed to people who were much older because he was super well-spoken and he was pugnacious. 

Now he just sort of seems old. He seems like he doesn’t really know what he should be doing on TikTok. He seems like he doesn’t really know who in the culture is relevant anymore. You could make the same argument about Tucker Carlson, even though he’s surviving, but he openly seems scared of Nick Fuentes. 

Do you think that the guys that we were used to are now the old guys and they know it, and the young guys that are coming after them are worse?

I would say that Ben Shapiro from the very beginning was much better at talking to old people than talking to young people. And it seems like what he was doing was creating a digital media company that looked hip and cool to old people, who would then give him money and he would spend that money on advertising and sort of dominate Facebook and create this flywheel that allowed him to grow pretty quickly. 

A lot of the weird preoccupations the Daily Wire has had with dominating Hollywood, for instance, feel very old to me. It feels like an 80-year-old conservative’s fever dream of what the internet could be. Just very strange stuff. 

I think it’s only gotten stranger in the last year or two, because it also feels like the Trump movement has kind of moved beyond the need for someone like Ben Shapiro. In the era of DOGE and Project 2025 and ICE occupations [and] JD Vance/AI stuff, none of it feels like Ben Shapiro is really in the mix anymore.

Do you think we’re going to look back in a few years and miss Ben Shapiro for his sort of sobriety?

Yes. I think that when digital publishers on the right, in the early 2010s, began to really lean into the internet, they inadvertently connected American conservatism and by extension global conservatism with the sea changes and tides of internet discourse. And that’s always going to go towards the thing that feels the most dangerous and the most taboo, because that’s what’s most exciting on social media. 

If you have every major conservative figure in America making money directly from the internet, there’s no real incentive for them to become more moderate. They’re going to be hitting themselves in the face with hammers and smoking meth and attacking people on the street and going full white nationalist, race-science Substack nonsense. We’re already seeing this. The days of Prager University or the Daily Wire trying to do a sensible conservative’s reaction to Cardi B’s “WAP” or whatever are just not going to come back.

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.

Last fall, Graham Platner — an oysterman running for the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Maine — landed in hot water, when some of his old Reddit posts, showing him blaming victims of sexual assault and calling himself a communist, surfaced. Then, there was a story about the Nazi imagery tattooed on his chest. He had the tattoo covered up. Platner emerged from those scandals relatively unscathed by admitting to his checkered past and saying that he had changed. 

In late May, however, the Wall Street Journal reported that Platner’s wife informed his campaign that he had sexted women outside of their marriage on an app called Kik. And last week, the New York Times published reports of “unsettling” behavior by Platner from former girlfriends.

Nonetheless, on Tuesday, Platner won the Democratic Senate primary to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the November general election. (By Tuesday, Platner was running largely unopposed; his only serious opponent, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign in late April.) 

As deputy editor of the Midcoast Villager, a local newspaper based in Camden, Maine, Alex Seitz-Wald has been tracking Platner’s rapid political ascent — and how Mainers of all stripes, the people Platner will have to win over to defeat Collins, feel about him. Seitz-Wald told Today, Explained co-host Noel King that many people are torn over the scandal, but not so torn that they’re not still voting for Platner. He breaks down the results of the primary, Platner’s chances this fall, and more. 

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

What do Maine voters think about Graham Platner? You live there; you talk to people. What’s the read? 

I’ve been talking to Platner voters since he jumped in as this totally unknown oyster farmer in August, who no one had heard of, running against a two-term sitting governor. And he instantly connected with people and developed this strong bond; people really related to him.

I think that helped him survive that first round of scandals in the fall with his tattoo and the Reddit controversies. Then, with this latest round, these later ones definitely hit differently. They didn’t roll off his back the way the earlier ones did. There was a lot of concern; there was a lot of disappointment. But ultimately, Maine Democrats have been trying to get rid of Susan Collins and failing for so long, and they have tried running more traditional candidates and lost. And so, I think they are willing to take a chance on him. 

It seems like a very pragmatic calculation that a lot of Maine Democrats are making right now, which is, “We need to beat Susan Collins. The stakes are too high. Supreme Court, control of the Senate, everything else, and we’ll put aside any concerns we have with his personal life if he’s our only chance to beat Collins.”

You will know that outside of Maine, there is so much speculation about who Graham Platner really is. Are people in Maine speculating about who Graham Platner really is?

Yes, and no. I think there’s been a major disconnect between what I’ve seen and heard on the ground — when I drive my daughter to school every day, I pass dozens of Platner yard signs that have been out every day for months — and between what the national narrative is, which is typically much more negative. 

I think there are very legitimate questions about his past that a lot of Maine Democrats have been asking. But he is also just a type of guy that is very familiar in Maine, and I think a lot of people felt like they could connect with him, could relate with him, even if they didn’t know exactly who he is. I think he also did a really effective job of weaponizing this chip on its shoulder that Maine has about how it’s viewed by the rest of the world. 

There’s this concept of: You’re either a Mainer, or you’re from away, and he is coded as extremely Maine. He was able to use that to say all these attacks from the New York Times or whatever, outside world, don’t listen to them. That’s people from away trying to tell us in Maine what to do. And that’s hitting deep in the core of the Maine psyche.

It is notable that Platner’s scandals have unfolded over a long period of time. The allegations in late May — again, I’m in DC, not in Maine, and that felt huge to me. Are you seeing any shakiness after the most recent round?

There’s definitely a lot of shakiness and a lot of concern, a lot of disappointment. 

One voter told me they were heartbroken about it, because they really thought that he was different, that he was not a typical politician and especially the way he responded to that first round of scandals with the Reddit post and the tattoo. He really took ownership. And it was part of this whole redemption arc that he had built about how he was a combat veteran with PTSD and in a really dark place. And then, he came home to Maine, got involved with his community and his business, met his now-wife, and was a different man. But the latest round of scandals kind of punctured that narrative, because he only got married in 2023, and those [sexts] were from just a couple of years ago. He wasn’t a young man in his early 20s. And so, I did hear a lot of disappointment about that and also a lot of cynicism from people who thought he was different relegating him back to, “Oh, he’s just a politician like the rest of them.”

But ultimately, partisanship is a very powerful force, and the stakes being what they are in a race that could tip control of the Senate, most Democrats are going to put aside their concerns. But — and this is a big “but” — the thing to watch, I think, heading into November, Susan Collins has a proven, almost unique ability in this day and age, to win split-ticket voters, to get people to vote for Joe Biden at the top of the ticket and, then, vote for her. So it would only take a relatively small number of defections to potentially tip things back into Collins’ column, especially if there are more revelations yet to come.

Do you think he can win against Collins?

I do think he can win against Susan Collins.

Just to level set for a second, I think any Democrat would have a tough time beating Susan Collins. A lot of people look at Maine — it’s New England, it’s a blue state. We haven’t voted for a Republican president since 1988, so they assume this is low-hanging fruit. It’s really not. Susan Collins is a very effective politician. So I think this race, no matter who the Democrat was, was always going to be a tight, within the margin of error race. 

That said, Platner has been able to raise the money. He’s been able to hold the coalition together. So far, despite all these scandals, he hasn’t really had any defections from elected officials. He’s done this enormous number of town halls. This is a small state where retail politics goes a long way and connecting with voters face-to-face can really make a difference. And that’s not something that Susan Collins does. 

In 2020, Democrats ran a squeaky-clean, well-qualified candidate who raised twice as much money as Susan Collins and still lost by nine percentage points. So I think there’s a willingness — almost a sense of necessity — among some Maine Democrats that we have to try something different, and there’s a good chance we’re going to lose anyway, so let’s take a flyer on this guy and maybe he can do it.

President Donald Trump has spent years testing the boundaries of what politicians can say publicly.

During his first presidential campaign, he famously said that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing supporters. It was an exaggeration. But captured something real about Trump’s political appeal — his willingness to say things publicly that most politicians wouldn’t dare.

Now, in his second term, Trump is once again testing the boundaries of what a president can say — by dismissing Americans’ concerns about rising prices of food, energy, travel, and other goods. He has repeatedly indicated that worries about inflation and household finances are secondary to broader goals, such as ending conflicts abroad.

Last month, it was “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.” Then, last week, he told reporters that “I love the inflation” after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released figures that showed prices had risen at the fastest rate in three years.

The comments have drawn criticism from supporters and opponents alike, baffled some Republicans, and delighted many Democrats looking toward the quickly approaching 2026 midterm elections. They’ve also raised a broader question about Trump’s second term: Free from the constraints of another campaign, is the president governing with voters and his party in mind, or with his historical legacy at the forefront? And what happens politically when a president appears willing to openly deprioritize concerns about inflation and affordability?

Shelby Talcott, who covers the White House for Semafor, has spent months talking with administration officials and Trump allies about the president’s economic messaging and his priorities in a second term. She recently joined Today, Explained co-host Noel King to discuss what Trump’s comments reveal about his governing style, his political calculations, and how those around him are responding.

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

President Trump has been talking about the economy a lot lately. Some of what he said has gotten a lot of attention. What are the most attention-grabbing things?

He has repeatedly, pretty bluntly said that he effectively doesn’t care about it. He has made comments indicating that this is all short-term, that he doesn’t care about inflation. And so those comments — he, again, has said more than once, “I’m not focused on Americans’ economic situation when I’m negotiating with Iran. I don’t care about this inflation number” — have really stood out to people over the past few months.

My favorite was “love the inflation.” He had an opportunity to walk it back. He did not. He doubled down. What do we make of that — that he’s telling us, it is not a mistake? 

I think it indicates a few things. First of all, when I’m talking to administration officials and people who’ve known the president for years, one of the things that continuously comes back around is this is all really said in the broader context of the Iran War.

That is something that the president cares deeply about, and he genuinely believes that he needs to continue moving forward with this, right? He has talked a lot over the past few years about Iran not being able to obtain a nuclear weapon. And so he’s coming at this economic argument from the perspective of, I have to defend the decisions I’ve made globally. 

But a big part of it is also about the legacy of Donald Trump. That’s something that he has been acutely focused on. He is far less worried about the midterms. About the price of groceries — actually, I asked somebody who’s close to the White House several months ago, “Why isn’t he more focused on this stuff?”

And the answer I got was, when the president goes down in the history books, it’s not going to be for eggs being a dollar a carton. It’s going to be for reinvigorating Venezuela, for going into Iran and getting their nuclear [material]. And so when he talks about “I don’t think about voters’ economic situations when I’m negotiating with this Iran war,” it’s because he is always thinking about what he’s doing legacy-wise. He has to defend the Iran war. That’s part of his legacy. He has to defend the Venezuela situation. That’s part of his legacy. And so all of these answers are tied back into how he’s thinking about his history and how he’s going to be remembered.

It’s just the timing of when he’s saying this is really notable because, obviously, there are a lot of Americans who are really struggling right now.

I get what you’re saying about why he’s articulating them. But there’s part of you that thinks the president must know that now is not the time. However, let’s give him a little bit of grace. Is there something about the time that maybe we’re missing?

I don’t know that it messes with him because he’s not running again, right? This is his last term in office. And I think that is also an overarching theme of what we’re seeing, why he’s making certain decisions, is because he’s unleashed this time around. It is certainly going to impact the party. And you’re hearing from lawmakers who are concerned. 

You’re even hearing from White House officials who are trying to sort of walk back what he said or say, well, he didn’t really mean it in this context. He meant it in the x, y, z context. And so there are administration officials who, when they hear the president say things like that, they just sit back and sigh heavily because it does not make their jobs any easier.

Who are these people? Who’s driving the economic messaging at the White House?

If we are being honest, the answer is the president. 

There are advisers around him who are telling him what to do. You know, James Blair is one of the president’s closest confidantes. He has recently shifted over into a midterms role, but he is still very involved in the White House and is there often. [Chief of Staff] Susie Wiles has really urged the president over the past several months to focus more on the midterms. You’re hearing from the people around Trump who recognized that the midterms, even though it doesn’t directly impact Trump — he’s not on the ballot — it’s going to impact him. 

If Republicans lose, it’s going to be a lot harder for the president to get anything passed. It’s already hard, and Republicans have the majority. It’s also going to impact him because they believe that Democrats, if they take back the majority, are going to try to push things forward against Trump, right? There are impeachment concerns, etc. And so you do hear from the people around Trump who care a lot about this topic and want him to be more focused in his messaging. 

But ultimately, as with everything else, this is Trump’s show.

What are the Democrats thinking? Every time President Trump says something like, “I love the inflation,” what do we see on the other side of the aisle?

I mean, they’re giddy. They’re kicking their feet, right? This is something that even Republican operatives that I’ve talked to, when the president made the comment about loving inflation, they said, even if that’s not what he meant, that’s going to be clipped. You’re gonna see that in ads across America. 

Democrats love this rhetoric because it is a way for them — just like Trump was able to do during the 2024 election, which was focused on the economy — to say, this person who is in office right now doesn’t care. He’s there. He’s not helping you. 

That’s what Trump did in order to beat Biden and Kamala Harris. They’re doing that same thing now with the midterms based on the president’s comments. Now the question is, are they going to be able to be organized enough to make that an effective message?

Ten, 15 years ago, if you had an American president saying, “I love the inflation,” or I don’t care about Americans’ economic circumstances, you do feel like that would’ve been the end of that president’s term in office. There would’ve been people in the streets. The world has changed, the US has changed. But I wonder what you think the broader lesson might be here. 

Do you think President Trump is changing the way that presidents talk about the economy, or voters are changing the way they respond to messaging about the economy and saying, “It doesn’t really matter what the president says, we feel what we feel”?

I think it’s a little bit of both. I definitely think, not just with the Trump administration, quite frankly, but over the past several years, there has been a shift with voters sort of dismissing the presidential argument for the state of the economy. We saw it during the Biden administration. We’re seeing it now during the Trump administration. 

But I think part of that is because of how these presidents, like Trump, like Biden, are messaging. Their message is effectively, “Things are good. We know that you’re saying things are not good, but it’s short-term. Don’t worry about it. And actually, look at all of this other data over here that shows that you’re not doing as badly as you feel like you’re doing.”

Voters are looking at that and saying, “I’m going to the grocery store. I’m struggling to pay for my groceries. That’s not a real message.” They’re dismissing the presidential argument of it all. But I do think with Trump in particular, he has changed politics in the way that he is able to say things and get away with them, in a way that other presidents in the past have not. And I really think presidents in the future won’t be able to either. I think it is unique to him.

Death doulas, also called end-of-life doulas, wear many hats. In helping patients and their families prepare for a peaceful end of life, they can offer solace and companionship, handle logistics, mediate with medical staff, and more.

As my colleague Anna North reported recently, public interest in the job is growing. Celebrities like actor Nicole Kidman and director Chloé Zhao have spoken about training to become death doulas, and the hospital drama The Pitt recently featured a death doula character.

“The interest from celebrities mirrors interest that we’re seeing from the population as a whole,” North told Today, Explained co-host Noel King. “There’s been a rising interest in death doulas in recent years, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic began, when so many people were forced to encounter death at the same time.”

Noel spoke with North and a death doula, Jane K. Callahan, for a recent episode of Today, Explained.

Callahan, who works in Durham, North Carolina, and wrote A Death Doula’s Guide to a Meaningful End, shared the experiences that made her want to be a death doula, what the job entails, and how the “death-positive” movement encourages us to acknowledge our inevitable demise and prepare for the best death we can imagine for ourselves.

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

Why do you do this work?

In 2009, I got a call that my mother was in the hospital. She would end up dying two weeks later. I was 27 years old. And that was my first exposure to anything involving death and dying. And during those two weeks, I realized how broken this healthcare system is when it comes to helping people die versus fixing them. 

I didn’t understand what was happening to my mother’s body, because I had no knowledge of how the body dies. It was hard to get a direct answer from a doctor. In fact, no one told me until toward the end that she was dying. I was waiting for her to be discharged. 

I sat with that for a couple of years, and, eventually, I got pregnant, and I had my son. And when I gave birth to my son, I did not have a birth doula. I didn’t really understand what that was. A lot of things went wrong. So, I started researching birth doulas and realized that would’ve really helped. That’s how I found out that there are death doulas, which are based on the birth doula model. I realized those were all the things that were missing in the last two weeks of my mother’s life. So, I attended a training, and I started volunteering with hospice, and I’ve been doing that for eight years.

Do you think that you are more comfortable with death than most people?

I think I’ve gotten comfortable with being uncomfortable, which is really the main skill of being a doula. We’re not untouched by the work we do. I have moments where losing someone I’ve worked with is very hard, and watching them suffer and die is very hard. But you start to accept the reality of it through learning how to sit with discomfort.

Do you think that being in close proximity to death changes the way you think about being alive?

Absolutely. In Bhutanese culture, they’re encouraged to think about death five times a day. Do I think it’s mentally healthy to just spend your entire day every day thinking about death? No, that’s not healthy. It’s also not really possible. But, I think being consistently aware of the fact that we’re not here for very long, and that it can end at any time — today, even — makes you appreciate what you have. 

Since I’ve started doing this work, I have found myself being a lot more present in my everyday life and appreciating small things. Definitely more gratitude and more awareness.

I think that one of the many things that freaks us out about death is the finality of it. The sense of, “Oh, I will never see this person again.” 

I wonder whether you have ideas about where we go after we die and if there’s something in there that you find comforting.

Yes, but I will say, as a disclaimer, doulas are trained not to answer that question. When a client asks you, “Do you believe in an afterlife?” you should really reflect it back on them and say, “Why is that important to you?” 

When someone is scared and unsure, maybe even desperate, they see doulas as a guide, and your answer has an influence. And doulas are not meant to influence people. Doulas are meant to facilitate what someone wants. By sharing my opinion directly with a client about what I believe, there’s potential there to influence them and their journey towards the end of life. And so, I try to steer the conversation away from my beliefs, because, really, what I’m there for is them, and their beliefs, and their values, and goals. 

But, I will say, before I started this work, I was a hardcore atheist. I am not anymore. I am not going to pretend I have any idea what happens, but I’ve seen enough in the dying process and in death itself that there’s something I just can’t put my finger on. But I just cannot say that there’s nothing.

What is it that’s making you think that?

You know, when someone is in what we call active dying — which, by the way, can last up to two weeks, dying can be a long process — the person looks different. It’s the same person. Their body’s still working to a different degree obviously, but something looks different. Something feels different. 

And there’s a point where someone loses consciousness, and you can just feel, and I know this is not very scientific, but you can just feel like they’re halfway somewhere else. And right before the moment of death, there’s almost like a brightening of the person, kind of like this clarity in appearance is the best way I could explain it. 

I don’t want to say glowing, but when you see someone who’s in love, and they just look different — it’s kind of like that. And after they die, in those minutes, their face has not changed at all. They’ve just died, but something looks and feels different. 

And do you find that comforting to a degree?

I think there’s always going to be a fear if the light switch turns off and there’s nothing. But I see that as kind of a win-win situation, because if there’s nothing, then I’m not going to know what I’m missing. And if there’s something, then, great.

What’s the best part of this work, and what’s the worst part?

The best part of this work is the huge difference that doulas can make for patients and families at the end of life. Losing someone you love and losing your own life is sad. Sometimes, it’s even tragic, but when a doula is involved early enough in the process, it does not become a trauma. And that is absolutely what is happening to families without death doula care.

“It’s really about giving what control is left in these situations to the dying person. And it’s also about avoiding panic and chaos by thinking ahead and talking these things through.”

The thing that I don’t like about this work is, because there’s not enough awareness of us, because people are referred to hospice way too late, I’m often called at the 11th hour when a family is in crisis, and there’s only so much I can do to help. 

That’s hard, because I’m very aware of how differently that could have gone if there had been a more timely referral to hospice, if there had not been high levels of denial.

What would it look like for this, in your view, to be better?

I think that our healthcare system is focused on curing and fixing, and doctors will internalize death as a medical failure. We have to shift how we care for someone when they’ve reached the end of the road. We’re already seeing that shift in the growing presence of palliative care, which is a great field.

As far as working with a doula, doulas are not covered by insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid. And so, that means doulas either work pro bono or offer a sliding scale, or they only serve the people who can afford a doula. And that can exacerbate the division we’re seeing with the haves and the have-nots in having a good death.

Are you able to make a living doing this? Are you pro bono? How does your life work?

I do charge sometimes, if the family has sufficient funds. I don’t charge a lot of the time. And that is a personal choice, and I’m acknowledging I have the ability to do that. 

There are people who can make a living off this. I would say that’s mostly possible in large metropolitan areas where there’s a huge number of people. I think that’s far less possible in smaller towns. Only so many people are dying. Only so many dying people know about a doula or want a doula. And only so many of those people can afford one.

What’s it like to get trained as a death doula? Do you end up with a certificate or a degree?

There’s pros and cons to that. Right now, there is no national standard. There are not even state standards for death doula work, and there is no formal or formally recognized licensure. That’s part of why we’re not reimbursed right now.

What you’re seeing is you have a couple of major organizations who offer trainings across the country, and then, increasingly, you’re seeing a lot of death doula schools pop up online. 

These courses vary in their content, and their quality, and in how much they cost. Every curriculum has its own content. There are things some curriculums touch on that others may not. Some people will take the training and immediately market themselves as doulas to their community. But there’s no clear pathway to hands-on mentorship, or apprenticeship, or anything like that.

Can you tell me about someone that you’ve worked with, someone who stands out in your mind?

I’ve been doing this for eight years, so, a lot of people. I think there was one family that I learned a lot from, and that’s primarily because they engaged me early enough, which is not as common. 

It was two adult children, and they reached out to me. Their mother had terminal cancer. She was still being treated with chemo. She had some other health issues, and her teams were not speaking to each other. She was low income, and there were issues with her housing. There were issues with her being able to get transportation to her chemo appointments. Both of her adult children were working full time. One was dipping into the 401k to pay for mom’s care. Another one took a second job driving Uber at night to pay for mom’s care. And there was tension within the family. 

And so, we come in and, as doulas, we can do some of the logistical stuff: Do you have your advanced directives? And then we worked on logistical issues, like “let’s find ways for you to get transportation to your appointments.”

Once she enrolled in hospice — and this is a very common misunderstanding with families — most people get home hospice, which means they die in their own homes, and the hospice team comes to them. Many people think that that means 24/7 care. It does not. A nurse will come to your house, toward the end, one hour a day. The other 23 hours are on the family, who have no caregiver training. And if they don’t have money for that, then there’s a problem. 

And then also creating what we call a vigil plan or a death plan. I talked to the dying woman about what kind of environment she would want: “Well, I love country music.” So we made sure we had her favorite country musicians playing. Any kind of scents? She loved roses, so we had a rose candle. She wanted fuzzy socks and a fuzzy blanket. She really liked that feeling for her comfort. We talked about, “do you want to be touched?” “Yes, hold my hand, but don’t touch my feet.” 

Some people want all their friends and family coming and going, and laughing, and telling stories, and looking at photos, whereas other people, like this woman, said, “I want my dignity, and when I start going into active dying, I really just want these couple of people around me. I don’t want anyone else coming in and out.” 

It’s really about giving what control is left in these situations to the dying person. And it’s also about avoiding panic and chaos by thinking ahead and talking these things through. If I’m having a conversation with you, then you’ve never died before, so you may not know what to think about and what to ask. You don’t know what you don’t know. And doulas who have that experience know how to help you think about planning for the most peaceful death possible. 

It’s so cool how much you learn about people. Some people want everybody coming in and out, and talking, and laughing. And other people, I imagine, find that exhausting. People are very different in life. And it is just so cool to hear you talk about how different people are in death, as well.

Yeah, I have my whole death plan. I want lots of plants around me, because I like plants. And then, have you ever been really sick with the flu or cold, and you wake up in the middle of the night ,and there’s no sense of time and it’s just horrible? Well, I want to have Christmas lights, because I associate those with comfort and coziness.

The thing is, it asks us to have an imagination about our own death. And that’s really challenging for some people. And doulas, a skilled doula will be able to help someone open that door at a pace that works for them.

One of the values of doulas outside of patient work is this public education about, “Hey, we do have to think about these things if we want the best for ourselves.” This is the death-positive movement. That’s what it’s referred to. Educate yourself, have these conversations, normalize talking with your parents about what they want at the end of life instead of guessing. 

The death-positive movement isn’t asking people to be excited and happy about dying. All it is asking people to do is understand that this is an inevitability. It is part of being a human being. And you can also still be scared, and you can also still grieve the fact that this ends one day. You can have both. And I think I exist in both.

“Longevity” — a buzzy catchall for the quest for a longer life — is having a moment. Tech titans like Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos are spending billions to fund research into how to slow aging. Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Hailey Bieber are touting peptide use. And the world’s most powerful authoritarian leaders are jumping on the bandwagon too.

Last fall, a hot mic caught Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping gabbing — through a translator — about how organ replacement may soon allow people to live to 150 or older. The conversation caught the attention of Bojan Pancevski, the Wall Street Journal’s chief European political correspondent. He had been curious about Putin’s obsession with health for a long time.

According to Pancevski, Putin is “quite serious about his issues. So I decided to look up and see what he was talking about. It turned out he was actually referencing a state program.”

Pancesvki’s reporting journey led to a viral article on Putin’s $26 billion longevity program. Pancesvki talked to Today, Explained co-host Noel King about how Putin’s scientists plan to replace organs (pity the pigs), the role Putin’s daughter plays, and the long history of Russian leaders pursuing immortality.

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

The $26 billion is money being spent on this longevity project. And one of the things it’s being spent on, as you said, is organ replacement. Where do the poor pigs fit in here? Tell me what happened.

The mini pigs. Yeah, that’s a bit creepy. Poor little mini pigs. 

Essentially, there are two ways they’re looking to achieve organ replacement for humans. One of them is 3D printing. I think everyone by now has heard of 3D printing — they can print a glass, a glove, even a whole house. But there are also 3D printers that print biological tissue, and the Russians are hoping to print organs quite soon. The idea is you print an organ in the lab and implant it into a human being — say, lungs, a liver, or even a heart. That’s the aspiration.

The second thing is the mini pigs. They are genetically close to humans in some ways, and they are genetically modified as well. They’re growing organs in these mini pigs and then implanting them into human beings. I don’t think people who get organs like that live very long — for various reasons, the body rejects the organs. But it is a technique that is actually quite promising. It’s not a fantasy. Other countries, notably China, are doing this as well.

You also wrote that Vladimir Putin loves a “reverse sauna.” What is this?

He loves a cryo chamber. A cryo chamber is basically a room like a sauna, but the exact opposite, because it’s extremely cold. I think it’s minus 170 [degrees] Fahrenheit, if I’m not mistaken.

What he does is, he strips naked, walks in, and stands there for a few minutes in that horrible cold. I discussed this with the former chancellor of Austria, Sebastian Kurz, who visited Putin in the Kremlin. During the conversation, Putin just brought this up and talked about it for quite a while.

Kurz, who at the time was just over 30 years old — I think he was the world’s youngest leader — was listening to this, and he told me later, “That was weird.” Kurz said, “We were here to talk politics, and then suddenly he started talking about health and longevity and how you should use this reverse sauna.” 

They’re looking into how to slow down or even stop the actual aging process within human cells. They’re looking into peptides. Again, something very familiar — I think RFK Jr. is very big on peptides.

Putin had one longevity guru who was a geriatric doctor. He was a very esteemed professor of medicine, and he had been looking into peptides for many decades, even back in the Soviet days. He was a peptide pioneer. When asked in an interview, “What is your research? How does it relate to Putin?”, he said the idea is to prolong the life of a leader who is so important that if he were to die, the country would be thrown into a crisis. That’s how he saw his mission. He also said that people are programmed to live to 120 years old, and he quoted the Old Testament of the Bible as his source for that.

It was interesting for a well-credentialed scientist and professor to quote the Bible as a source of medical knowledge. But the thing is…he then died when he turned 77. He didn’t quite reach the age he prescribed for himself — the age I guess he was hoping Putin might reach.

After the early demise of that guy, Putin had to find another longevity guru. Now he’s got a guy who’s much more focused on the mini pigs and the 3D printing.

I was genuinely impressed to learn that Vladimir Putin’s daughter is involved in this. She is a legit scientist, yeah?

She’s a doctor. Her name is Maria Vorontsova. She is an endocrinologist; she looks into glands and the endocrine system. And she has received quite a substantial grant from one of these state programs to work on longevity research.

Putin has recruited his own family members and scientists he really trusts to work on this issue. It is very close to home for him, which shows it’s something deeply important to him as a leader. 

Russia is pretty much a military dictatorship nowadays. He can commandeer the resources of the state the way he likes. Obviously, he’s decided this is a subject that merits a lot of research, a lot of funding, and input from people he truly trusts, including his own daughter.

And to your point, Vladimir Putin is not the first Russian autocrat to try to live forever, is he?

Not at all. I was surprised to learn while researching my article that Russia is kind of the cradle of modern longevity science. Going back to Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union — he had a longevity guru himself. That guru organized what seems to be the world’s first longevity conference back in the late ’20s or early ’30s. It happened in Kyiv, in today’s Ukraine. That guy also claimed in his medical work that people will be living up to 140 years of age. And that guy, too, unfortunately, died at age 65.

It seems to be a trend among these longevity gurus that they don’t really reach the biblical age. I didn’t include this in my article because I couldn’t find hard evidence for it, but there are anecdotal stories about Stalin being very angry about his longevity guru dying young. He didn’t like the sound of that.

Bad look. Alright, so Vladimir Putin is spending a lot of Russian money on this project. It may work, it likely will not work, but let’s say it does work. Let’s say there are some real scientific advances that come out of this project. Is Putin going to share?

If Vladimir Putin were to find the source of eternal youth, obviously he’d be hogging it for himself first, and for his family or the elite. But eventually, these things trickle down. It’s worth remembering that Putin is extremely concerned about the demographics of his country, and the demographics were awful to begin with. Life expectancy for a Russian male is 68 years. That’s very, very low for an industrial nation. It’s terrible.

On top of that, there is this extremely lethal war he started and is waging against Ukraine, and it’s not going well for him or for anyone. There’s a bit of a macabre irony here: He’s trying to prolong the lifespan of a nation that he has dragged into this incredibly damaging and deadly war. He’s trying to somehow undo something that he’s done himself.

It was the sale heard around the millennial world: Eco-conscious Everlane was being acquired by fast-fashion kingpin Shein. 

After a few tumultuous years, Everlane, an apparel brand loved largely by millennials looking for sustainable basics, reportedly went for the price of $100 million. When news broke last month, segments of the internet were up in arms. How could a brand built on radical transparency and ethical manufacturing fall so hard? And was this the beginning of the end for other millennial-coded brands, too? 

Lauren Sherman is a fashion editor at Puck and broke the Everlane news. She tells Today, Explained co-host Noel King about how “millennial” brands — think: Allbirds, Glossier, and Sweetgreen, as well as Everlane — have been struggling under the radar for years, what the Everlane deal means, and if these brands can ever stage a comeback. 

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

You’ve been writing about this whole genre of brands that has unfortunately been tanking. And those are millennial brands. What makes something a millennial brand?

Millennials are specific because they’re very hard workers and they’re okay with selling out and they’re okay with commercialism. I think what a lot of big millennial brands represent is aspiration. 

A lot of the brands that came up in the 2010s that were direct-to-consumer and digital-first were like, “We’re going to make it better. We’re going to make it more efficiently, we’re going to make it look cooler. We’re going to do all these things. And because we know better than our elders about how to run a business and how to make something really work.” And very few lived up to that promise.

You’ve been writing about a millennial brand that recently went through an incredible shift, and that is Everlane. Tell me about Everlane. What were its beginnings like and what was its pitch to consumers?

When Everlane launched, it was all about transparency — the idea that we are online all the time, we have access to a ton of information. Brands can’t lie to you anymore, so they’re going to give you all the information upfront. Everlane was like, “We’re going to tell you how much it costs to make our product. We’re going to tell you how much we’re profiting off of that. We’re going to tell you where the factories are. We’re going to tell you what fabric we use.”

“A lot of consumers kind of pushed back on anyone who was touting being socially conscious in the market.”

But the other thing that they did from the beginning was they tried to make cool clothes. This was an era — 2010, 2011, 2012 — where the Gap was sort of waning. Amazon wasn’t as at the front of our lives when it came to apparel in particular. And so there wasn’t a place that everybody was going to for their basics. 

Everlane’s promise was, “We’re going to give you the coolest basics on the planet — these great box-cut tees and cool high-rise jeans — but we’re going to do it in a way that makes you feel better about purchasing it.”

And it worked for a time, because I remember people being very loyal to Everlane. But then what happened? 

It worked for about 10 years, I’d say. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term normcore, but they were at the center of the normcore trend. And then I’d say around 2018, 2019, they were doing really well. They were growing pretty fast, but they wanted to grow faster. 

They started raising more money, and they just made some strategic changes to products that didn’t really jive with how the consumer was transforming as well. And so they sold a majority stake to a private equity firm. It just kept diminishing from there, and they really lost their place in the culture, whereas Uniqlo and all these other [brands] were rising up. 

And then also, obviously, the anti-woke thing. They were associated with sustainability. And there’s this whole culture of, “Actually, we don’t care about that.” A lot of consumers kind of pushed back on anyone who was touting being socially conscious in the market. 

Recently, the private equity firm that owned Everlane decided to sell the business to Shein, the Chinese fast-fashion conglomerate. When the deal was approved by the board, hours after I broke this news, the outrage was insane.

From who? From people who love the company?

People online who felt like it was an injustice. They were upset because [Everlane] was supposed to uphold all these values. And you’re selling to what in their minds is the antithesis of what Everlane supposed to stand for. Shein has an incredibly opaque supply chain and doesn’t share a lot of information. They’re not transparent. And also they sell stuff for really, really cheap, so you just assume that the way that they’re creating it is probably not the best possible way. 

It sort of represented the death of those millennial brands, and also this place we are in the culture where nothing matters anymore. All these things that people stood for don’t matter. And I think it just really upset people.

A lot of these brands were started back when everything was a startup. There was a lot of venture capital money flowing in, and you didn’t really have to turn a profit, you just had to be doing something cool. Do you think that Everlane and some of these others are the equivalent of what happened with DoorDash and Uber, [where] you have to start making money now?

Yes and no. I think the difference is that Uber, a service business, eventually will be able to be profitable. Apparel businesses, it takes a lot and it takes a lot longer. There’s not really a demand for more apparel. If you can’t make it work, you just close. 

In the end, the investors in Everlane didn’t really have a choice. And the thing for Shein is, they don’t need Everlane to be profitable. They can use it as an experimental little side piece.

What other brands are struggling?

[The makeup and skincare brand] Glossier is a great example of a brand that was really important to the consumer that has lost its footing. They have a new CEO and they’re trying to get back on track. But again, it was a matter of suddenly the message and the product were not as on-point as they had been, and they invested too much in the wrong things and didn’t focus on profitability. Beauty can scale faster than fashion, but it’s a similar thing. 

[The sustainable shoe company] Allbirds — they really were focused on this one style shoe made with this environmentally friendly wool, and it was sort of a novelty. Now they’re in AI or something. They totally pivoted out of the shoe business. It’s very weird. 

The one that has done really well is Warby Parker, and that’s because there is a monopoly in the eyewear business. They really did find a white space and were able to make a product that people really needed and they did it responsibly.

Can you imagine any of these brands — the Allbirds, the Everlanes, the ones that are really struggling — making a comeback?

Allbirds, no. Everlane, probably not. I’d say 2 percent chance Everlane. Allbirds, 0 percent. Glossier — there’s still a need for what they do and how they originally presented it. I think they could potentially get that one back on track. 

But the reality is, in this market, we’re just going to see brands turn over more quickly. There are a lot of legacy brands that are still around, so it’s not like none of these things became the Levi’s of their category. And that’s what you kind of have to do to have longevity. If you want to be around for a hundred years, you have to be Louis Vuitton or Levi’s or Nike or what have you, to be able to really stick it out.