President Donald Trump’s second term began at a breakneck pace, with a wave of executive orders and other actions imposing tariffs; targeting law firms, universities, and individuals he believed had wronged him while he was out of office; and reshaping the US immigration system.

Nearly a year and a half into his second term, the White House appears to be losing momentum. Much of Trump’s legislative agenda has stalled in Congress, the war with Iran has dragged on longer than the administration seems to have expected, and Trump’s proposed “anti-weaponization” fund” went down in flames after some unusual pushback from Republican lawmakers.

To understand the current state of the Trump White House, Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Megan Messerly, a White House reporter at Politico, who recently wrote about the “funk” Trump and his staff are in.

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. 

You recently wrote for Politico about how the president and his administration are kind of in a funk — and not just over the slush fund fiasco. Remind us how else we’re seeing this funk, for those who have disassociated.

We are now more than three months into the Iran war, and this is just not going anywhere anytime soon. We have seen the president over the last week and a half now say that he’s close on a deal to extend this ceasefire with Iran that still has not come through. There was this two-hour Situation Room meeting on Friday. Nothing came out of that after two hours. 

Talking to folks in and around the White House, they just want to find a face-saving way out of this war, but they have been unable to do that. They’ve been unable to get Iran to agree to something that would open the Strait of Hormuz. And in the meantime, everyone’s just very over it. 

According to my reporting, that’s including staff inside the White House; one of my sources said that pretty much everyone is in a funk and described it as being stuck in this quicksand of Iran.

Is there a legislative funk too with this administration? Because it doesn’t feel like the Trump administration is getting anything done.

That was one of the big things that I was talking to folks about for this story — this idea that Iran has really taken up so much of the president’s time that it is in some ways distracting from some of these other priorities. And that includes the president’s legislative agenda. 

Some allies I spoke with also blamed that squarely on Senate Majority Leader John Thune and said, Thune is being too much of an institutionalist, protecting the filibuster. The president has called for firing the Senate parliamentarian. And so you have a very frustrated Trump, but a frustrated Trump who has rhetorically turned the screws a bit on Thune, but really hasn’t put the full force of pressure on Thune to get his legislative agenda through. 

That includes things like the president has talked a lot about this Save America Act, an elections-focus piece of legislation. That’s one of his top legislative priorities. There’s this housing bill that includes this institutional investor ban that he wants to see across the finish line. And then of course he wants to see security funding for his ballroom/bunker.

It feels like [Trump] doesn’t care about the midterms. But then there’s all the gerrymandering that he’s pushing, which implies that he very much cares about the midterms and his endorsement of candidates. What’s your read on what’s going on with the president when it comes to the midterms?

Yes, it definitely feels like those two things are at odds with one another. 

I think the way that White House allies view it is the president needs to be able to say, I don’t care about the midterms. I don’t care about high gas prices because that language is for Iran. 

He’s saying, I’m willing to take this gamble because he needs Iran to believe that he will take the maximalist position, that he will let gas prices rise however high they need to rise in order to notch a deal. White House allies would say that that’s a negotiating tactic. So what might be helpful rhetorically with Iran is not helpful rhetorically with Republicans as they’re fighting it out in these really key midterm races. 

It feels like it’s such a tough spot that even the things that should be easy wins — like a sesquicentennial concert on the National Mall. What is going on with this concert?

What we’re seeing is even some of those folks now pulling out and saying, “Hey, we were interested in sort of celebrating America’s 250th anniversary, but this is far too political for us. This is not what we wanted. This is not what we signed up for.”

And to me, and many of the folks that I spoke with, this is just such a deviation from where we were at the beginning of the president’s term last year when he was just really taking the culture by storm. He was just steamrolling these law firms and Ivy League institutions, and you’ve seen other pop culture figures come on board to the president’s agenda like Nick Minaj.

This is a moment where the president wants to be taking a victory lap and yet he’s stuck in this quagmire that is Iran, one that he desperately wants to get out of.

And Trump even lost his name on the Kennedy Center? 

This has been one that has been near and dear to the president for months now — his fight to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center and this planned massive renovation of the center, all put on hold by a federal court last week. We saw the president take to Truth Social to express his sincere displeasure at that decision.

Do they have any wins that they should be celebrating right now that they could be parading in front of the American people?

The White House pushed back on my story and said we do have things that we are doing. 

For instance, their efforts to reduce the cost of prescription drugs through TrumpRx and the coming launch of “Trump accounts” for millions of children. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was on the road last week in California and elsewhere touting these investment accounts that are supposed to sort of build generational wealth for the next generation. But that is all getting overshadowed right now by Iran.

But ultimately, I think the challenge, and this is what I hear when I’m talking to regular voters, is, “Okay, these Trump accounts are great, but I’m being crunched right now by the cost of gas, by the cost of my groceries when I’m buying ground beef and it’s $9, $10 a pound.” 

So these wins are great, but when the pressing concern is putting food on the table and making ends meet and paying the bills, that has been cold comfort and that sort of exposes some of the challenge of the White House’s efforts to message here.

Do you think watching some half-naked men brutally beat the living daylights out of each other on the South Lawn will make the president feel better — and on his birthday, no less?

The president is a longtime fan of the [Ultimate Fighting Championship] and we are certainly seeing him celebrate his 80th birthday, which is the day of the UFC fight. In accordance with that, the president is sort of this mercurial figure and something like that really could raise his mood and honestly produce a policy breakthrough, because he has been stuck for so long. 

Talking to allies, I think they think that if the president gets a win, that could sort of put them back on track to passing the president’s agenda. And that could be a policy win or it could just be a triumphant UFC fight on the White House lawn.

Before Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy took his great big American road trip, Mikah Meyer did it first. 

Meyer is a travel writer and blogger. In 2019, he became the first person to visit all of the National Park Service sites in a single journey — over 400 in total. The full list includes national monuments, battlefields, and rivers — and the 63 national parks that most of us think of when we plan our summer trips. 

Now, with ultra-high gas prices, park staffing shortages, and funding cuts to the NPS, Meyer has some guidance for how to enjoy the outdoors responsibly this summer. He told Today, Explained that Americans should start with exploring their own backyard this summer — and think outside the box. 

Meyer talked with Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram about the hidden outdoor gems in each region of the US and what his number one spot in the country is. Hint: It’s not one of the heavy hitters. 

Below are some of Meyer’s favorites, divided by region and 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 Northwest

One of my favorites in the northwest is the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument [in Oregon]. There’s a unit called the Painted Hills Unit, which has these incredible red stripes that cut through the earth. And whether you live in Seattle or Portland, you can access it within a day’s drive and you’re not going to have any of the crowds that you’ll experience at Mount Rainier or at Olympic [National Park]. It’s just one of the most otherworldly places I’ve seen up there.

The Southwest

For the Southwest, I would not go to Saguaro National Park. If you go a few more hours away to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the cactuses are way cooler looking.

There are way more epic hikes. There are way more epic vistas and views. It’s on the border with Mexico. If it’s between just Saguaro or Organ Pipe, I would go to Organ Pipe.

The Southeast

If you are in the Southeast, I would skip the crowds of the Everglades and hop a short flight over to the Virgin Islands, where there is an island off the island of St. Croix, which is called Buck Island Reef National Monument. 

It’s a natural turtle nesting ground that you can actually snorkel underwater down a trail that the Park Service has made. It’s incredible. It’s not going to be crowded because most people, when they go to the Virgin Islands, go to Virgin Islands National Park, which is the majority of the island of St. John. And so St. Croix is like the forgotten kid, [which] is amazing. You just have to take a little boat over there.

The Midwest

Through the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, there is a 72-mile river corridor called the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, and it is a federally protected riverfront that is full of places to fish and hike and run and see amazing wildlife. And it’s one that I actually go to on a daily run every day. 

The Northeast

Acadia is a really popular one, but really close to there and far from the crowds is the end of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, which starts in Georgia and runs all the way up to the center of Maine. You don’t have to do the whole thing, but in just one day you could go hike the final few miles to the center of Maine and you can actually see people finishing their months-long trek. 

It’s this super cool experience just as a day tripper to get to meet these folks, to talk to them. You get to the top of this mountain, and you get to witness people complete a historic National Park Service trail and feel just a little bit of that for yourself. 

His all-time favorite

My favorite National Park Service site in the whole system is in Utah. And when I wrote a blog ranking all of Utah’s Park Service sites, I got a lot of flack because my number one was not Zion, it was not Bryce, it was not Arches. It was Dinosaur National Monument. 

Because it’s a national monument and not a national park, most people haven’t heard of this site. If tomorrow Congress upgraded it to Dinosaur National Park, it would get millions of visitors. But that’s just because most people think America’s park system is only the 63 parks. They don’t realize that it’s over 400 sites. 

Dinosaur National Monument only gets 7 percent as many visitors as nearby Rocky Mountain National Park or Zion National Park, but I think it’s the best that the entire National Park Service system has to offer, all in one less-visited site where you, for example, can touch a dinosaur bone if you would like.

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.

With a little over five months until the midterm elections, Democrats in Washington and on the campaign trail are trying to show voters they care about cost-of-living issues. 

To make that pitch, some parts of the party’s usual message may be going by the wayside. That includes the conversation about combating climate change. Once a pillar of the Democratic agenda, it may now be fading into the background. According to Matt Huber, a professor of geography and the environment at Syracuse University and the author of Climate Change as Class War, Democrats, and the climate, might be better off for it. 

Huber, who recently wrote an essay for the New York Times titled “Democrats Don’t Have to Campaign on Climate Change Anymore,” spoke with Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram about why Democratic candidates can and should de-center climate change from their platforms and streamline their campaigns on affordability issues. 

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 made you want to write this appeal to Democrats to essentially shut up about climate change right now?

I try to argue that it’s the end of a 20-year period in Democratic Party politics where a lot of Democrats were thinking that climate would be this urgent issue that could galvanize this mass majoritarian coalition around green jobs. 

What I’ve come to in the last few years is that I’m just not sure that rhetorically centering the climate crisis as the impetus of this kind of politics is actually going to be effective in building that power, building that majority. Most Americans don’t really prioritize this as an urgent issue, and they prioritize other cost-of-living issues much more.

When did fighting climate change become such a core issue for the Democratic Party? 

2006, which was 20 years ago, was a big flashpoint where Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth was released. And that did coalesce in the zeitgeist with a massive financial crisis a couple of years later. 

There was a lot of feeling, just like in the Great Depression, that there had to be this mass jobs program, public investment program, and that climate change actually provided the urgency and impetus to center around that kind of large scale investment program and it could create jobs and appeal to these more economic concerns.

When the Green New Deal became a big deal, spread by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others, I think they too were thinking it would actually be a more effective politics in the context of a large-scale economic crisis like the original New Deal was. 

Unfortunately for them, I think we never really entered that kind of crisis since the Green New Deal politics took off. We did have a recession, but it was this Covid recession that was a strange kind of economic shutdown and not the kind of crisis that called for this big jobs program.

That label,“Green New Deal,” became so polarizing. And it was a strategy to make it so, obviously. Do you think anything like that kind of messaging is just bunk now?

I’m really sad [about it]. I was a big Green New Deal stan, if I can use that word. I really loved this broad vision and a positive vision. I think a lot of climate politics can be pretty doomer-ist. 

It did go wrong, though. I think when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced the House resolution on a Green New Deal in 2019, she did this media blitz around it and she released this FAQ document — or her office released this very bizarre FAQ document — with the sort of media blitz about the Green New Deal. And in the document it had some very stream of consciousness language about how we’re not quite ready to ban farting cows and airplanes.  

Of course, as you would expect, that language got taken up by the Fox News culture war machine and almost immediately the Green New Deal became “We’re going to ban hamburgers. We’re going to ban air travel.”

What was supposed to be this broad-based majoritarian politics that could appeal to working-class people became yet another kind of polarized culture war issue, unfortunately.

Biden clearly realizes he can’t use this Green New Deal marketing to get this kind of legislation through Congress. But he does get this kind of legislation through Congress, weirdly called the Inflation Reduction Act.

Here we are in 2026 and no one ever talks about [the IRA], even though when they were doing it, they said it was the most consequential environmental legislation in American history. How did that happen?

In many ways the Inflation Reduction Act was based on this Green New Deal idea that jobs and investments in the green economy will lead to material benefits and help win back some of these working-class voters who had been shifting to Trumpism. 

Of course, a lot of these investments were very long term. The style of policymaking that has been in vogue for a while in the Democratic Party is to incentivize these investments through tax credits, which means you’re incentivizing the private sector to do a lot of the building of these projects. I cite a study in the piece that found, basically, when you survey communities where these investments are going, they actually didn’t identify it with a political project coming from Biden. They just associated it with the private firm that is investing. 

Meanwhile, inflation is really hammering the working class and the cost of living is skyrocketing as the number one issue voters care about. The Biden administration was saying that the economy was actually really good. If you look at unemployment, if you look at GDP numbers, everything’s going great. And so you really had no answer for the core material cost-of-living concerns that really shaped the 2024 election. 

Of course, with Trump in office, they’ve repealed a good portion of that legislation. Emissions in 2025 in the United States went up, which is very depressing. It was a real disaster on a number of fronts.

You write in your opinion piece in the Times about how we’re already seeing Democrats shift away from climate change. Where do you see it specifically?

You can see a lot of working-class candidates that are union members that are fighting for this progressive agenda of taxing the rich, public investments, Medicare-for-All. But they are steering clear from the climate issue. And if they are talking about climate change, they’re linking it directly to cost-of-living issues like energy affordability. To win and to campaign, they’re realizing that talking about the apocalyptic existential nature of the climate crisis is not going to really inspire and motivate people to support them. 

I profiled someone named Sam Forstag in Montana. And he is a smoke jumper — someone that literally parachutes out of planes to fight forest fires in the west. Because he’s a government employee, he is a union member too, and he is fighting on this kind of working-class agenda. Bernie Sanders and AOC have endorsed him. I profile an iron worker in Oklahoma. A flight attendant in Minnesota. Some of their websites literally don’t mention climate change at all, and if they do, it’s just very brief and links it to energy affordability jobs, things like this. 

That’s a real shift. These are exactly the types of candidates that I would say five or six years ago would’ve been the central messengers of this kind of Green New Deal message of unions, jobs, blue-collar workers that are going to kind of build the energy transition. These would be the kind of workers that’d be front and center, but they’re not, and I think that’s telling. 

One thing I mention in the piece is Zohran Mamdani, who ran a very successful campaign. But there’s been reporting showing that he barely talked about climate change in his campaign. And that’s after he had really been a climate activist in the Democratic Socialists of America and ran on climate change and public power in his assembly campaign in 2020. The whole affordability message, I think, came out of his campaign and people realizing that’s a way to build a mass coalition. And that’s a way to win. 

As someone who’s written the books, who’s done the research, who’s a college professor talking about these issues, how much does it break your heart that this is where we’re at, that you have to write an opinion piece in the New York Times that tells politicians that they need to Trojan horse climate issues into their platforms?

It doesn’t really break my heart. It actually reinforces what the Climate Change as Class War book was arguing, which is that the climate challenge is really a question of power.

I mentioned in the book four years ago that it’s convenient that the sectors we need to decarbonize are energy, transport, things like housing. These are end-of-month concerns for working-class people. So if we can kind of build a decarbonization agenda around those sectors, we can link climate to those working-class needs. 

Since the book, I’ve become less convinced that shouting about the climate crisis as this existential threat is going to be the central motivating impetus of that kind of politics. Why not just focus directly on those material needs? Once you build the power, you figure out how to really make those investments and build towards decarbonization.

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?”

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.

Our social media feeds are being inundated by clips. Big names like Justin Bieber, reality shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race, and even AI companies like Perplexity — they’re all using bite-sized video segments to advertise themselves on social media. And they’re not just posting from their own accounts; they’re paying thousands of anonymous people to do it for them. 

This practice, a marketing tactic known as clipping, is everywhere — and still spreading. The Verge’s Mia Sato recently wrote a piece breaking down how the practice works and how it might be an existential threat to more nuanced, full-length content. 

Sato spoke with Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram about why everything is a clip now, the companies behind it, and what comes next.

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.

How would you describe what’s happening on our Instagram feeds? 

It’s basically the TL;DR-ification of the entire internet. It truncates everything we make and it all goes down to “We need a way for people to discover our content.” And right now, the way to get people to discover the content is to make clips of it, no matter what it is. 

Think about the politics videos. You see Trump giving a speech that Aaron Rupar is posting. Or sports highlights from the game the night before. You see this with sort of every podcast becoming a video. A major reason that happened was because they needed something to put on TikTok, to put on Reels, to put on YouTube Shorts.

What made you want to write about this now? 

The reason I felt like we needed to have a conversation about it is because of Clavicular. 

Clavicular is really a great example where the point of his online existence is clips rather than the full live streams. They know him through these disembodied short videos of this other thing that exists, but nobody is seeing. And you have this person who comes from obscurity into getting a 60 Minutes interview. 

I wanted to take this one example to illustrate a larger point about the nature of content on the internet and how people are working to go viral.

Is there a difference between the podcast clips that we talked about at the top of the show and what Clavicular is doing?

Clavicular is basically the industrialized version of a podcast that is just posting its own clips organically. The difference is that there’s an ecosystem under it that is paid. 

For the month between March and April, I believe there were something like 1,600 clippers working on his behalf, generating tens of thousands of videos, billions of views, and all of that is paid. People are paid to post this content and paid based on how many views the clips get. And so it is completely a scale game. It’s a hundred percent trying to take advantage of the algorithms of social platforms. These pseudo-anonymous accounts are profiting based on how much these clips are showing up on all of our feeds.

How much money is there to be made here?

[Clavicular] oversees 62,000 clippers on his platform. Some people are making tens of thousands of dollars a month. He claims the average is around $3,000 a month. It’s not nothing. Is it enough to support a family? Can you support a family on clips? Maybe not. But brands are paying companies like this clipping platform; [they] basically say, here’s $10,000, make us go viral.

What kinds of companies are paying for this service?

I was kind of surprised by how many household names were using this type of service. RuPaul’s Drag Race. There were clip campaigns for AI companies like Perplexity. Dan Bongino, former second in command at the FBI, who has now gone back to being a full-time podcaster. I found clipping campaigns that appeared to be for Call of Duty, the video game. Political candidates, which really gets weird. So it really spans different industries. There’s definitely a variety.

When I’m scrolling through, say, Twitter, I know when something being put in front of me is an ad because it’ll say ad, but I don’t know when I’m seeing something organically or when I’m seeing something that’s been paid to be elevated into my feed. And I imagine it’s the same on Instagram or TikTok? That you’re seeing things that have been sort of pushed upon you alongside things that maybe have organically entered into your feed? 

Yeah, and I think one of the things that clippers do is they make content that looks like it could blend in with organic content.

One rule of thumb that I like to share is, you can probably picture it now, you’re scrolling and you see a clip of the Joe Rogan podcast. The background is black, and on the black background there will be a caption that’s like, “I can’t believe bro said that. Shocked emoji.” You know what I mean?

I’ve seen that before. And then watch the video. And then nothing shocking is said, and I’m just like, “I hate the internet.”

There’s a really good chance that you were seeing paid clips. One of the campaigns that I found was promoting Perplexity via Joe Rogan’s podcast because Perplexity is a sponsor of the podcast. And so these clippers were hired to pump out a bunch of clips of Joe Rogan talking about Perplexity, and it would be hard, unless you checked the hashtags, to see that it was a paid piece of content. Buried in the hashtags, it says ‘Powered by Perplexity’, ‘hashtag sponsored’. 

Even that is a better example of a disclosure. A lot of this content has zero disclosure whatsoever. You would have no way of knowing if the account was paid to post it or not, including, like I mentioned, I had found some political candidates hiring clippers. There was a candidate in Florida, a GOP congressional candidate who was running a clipping campaign with zero disclosure, which is, from my understanding, against the law. 

It is really the Wild West because a lot of these companies are not disclosing that they’re paying these accounts.

Can I read you the most depressing pair of sentences in your piece that you wrote? That I sent to many people to be like, how depressing is this?

Yes, please.

“But overindexing on the clipped version means eventually, the full-length content is a means to an end. If clips really are the present and future of media and reach online, one begins to wonder what justifies making the unclipped, complete content in the first place.”

That is really sad. 

Whoever wrote that.

That’s crazy.

It is so brutal because some of these things that are being clipped are, like, artful. 

Yeah. I will say, I wrote those really depressing sentences because I feel this. 

I’m a features writer. I write long things that are thousands of words long and are often behind a paywall. I make clips of my stories. I do the short-form video thing. I talk in front of my phone and explain my stories to audiences, and I know that very, very few people who watch that video will actually go and seek out my story and read it.

I wonder if you think — from having written this piece on “The Clippening,” as you call it — if this is just our moment or if this is our forever,

For me, it’s really hard to see an exit from vertical video because it is so dominant right now. At the same time, I don’t think anyone should completely put their trust into the TikTok algorithm or the Instagram Reels algorithm because you don’t want to put your trust into a tech platform that can change things on a dime and you will have no control over it. 

I think the balance is, if you’re someone who wants new people to find out about your show or your story or whatever, you maybe need to be on short-form video. But how do you make it so the sad sentences that I wrote in my story do not become the reality, where the clips are the justification rather than creating the longer version, the real art or the real journalism or whatever? How do you avoid that as much as possible?

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.

The United States indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro in federal court last week, one of its most aggressive actions against the island since the end of the Cold War.

The unsealed indictment charges Castro, the 94-year-old brother of deceased Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and five others for alleged involvement in the shooting down of two small planes over Cuba in 1996. Four people, three of them US citizens, were killed.

The indictment is the most recent in a string of US moves that have left the island in a tough spot. The US embargo on Venezuelan oil to the country has plunged Cuba into a massive energy crisis, with blackouts affecting everything from homes to hospitals. The crisis is so acute that Cuba has cut the work-week to four days for state-owned companies; school days have also been shortened, and universities have waived in-person attendance requirements.

“For the last 50 years or so, the US has ensured that no country — other than a couple that the US didn’t hold sway with, such as Venezuela — [would] export oil to Cuba,” Cécile Shea, a Cuba expert and nonresident senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram. “Now that Venezuela is also not exporting oil to Cuba, it means that they’re out of oil, and that’s completely on us.”

With Cuba already in a vulnerable spot, the Castro indictment has resulted in a fresh round of speculation: Is the US about to invade Cuba? Is this the same playbook the Trump administration used to oust former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and usher in new leadership in Venezuela?

Sean spoke with Shea to get a better sense of how the Cuban government and everyday Cubans are thinking about the US, as well as what could come next.

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.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a video last week about Cuba. What did he say?

He spoke Spanish; of course, he’s a Cuban American. And he said, Listen, Cuban people, it’s not the United States’ fault that you don’t have any energy, that your electricity grid is down. It’s the fault of mismanagement by your government. Don’t blame us. It’s not because of our embargo. It’s because you are badly led, and it’s time for you to pressure your government to step down.

That’s a paraphrase, but that’s generally what he said.

Is that generally true?

No. It is not generally true. 

There is truth to it in that the government has not always been a great government. But the reason that Cuba is in the current crisis — which is that there is no oil at all for consumers or businesses; they’ve reserved some for hospitals and the like — is the US is forcing Venezuela not to ship oil to Cuba.

For the last 50 years or so, the US has ensured that no country — other than a couple that the US didn’t hold sway with, such as Venezuela — [would] export oil to Cuba. Now that Venezuela is also not exporting oil to Cuba, it means that they’re out of oil, and that’s completely on us, and anyone in Cuba listening to Marco Rubio’s speech would have known that.

What makes this moment different? Is it that this administration is willing to go further than previous ones?

What could be interesting about this moment is that Cuba seems ready to deal.

If we believe the press reports, Cuba has offered to release political prisoners, which would be huge because it would create a political opposition in the country. Cuba has agreed to open its economy. Cuba has agreed to allow Cuban exiles back into Cuba. Things that we have been asking for for decades, it now appears that Cuba is willing to do. And I wish we would take the win. I wish we would accept these things and then add something to it: Promise to have a free and fair election two years from now.

That would just make so much sense, and we wouldn’t be talking about the military, and we wouldn’t be talking about going in and kidnapping 94-year-old men. And President Trump could finally be what he wants to be. He wants to do what every president since Eisenhower has wanted to do, which is to end the communist-oriented regime that we have in Cuba. 

Eisenhower tried; JFK tried. Trump was alive during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was an adult. So was Biden. This is all very real personal history to them.

And I do think that part of what is going on is Trump wants to be the president who can accomplish what no other president has done. And I happen to think he could be, but I don’t think it’s going to be through a military method. 

He has the attention of the people in charge of Cuba. We have a lot of leverage there. The government of Cuba these days seems willing to listen to us and to do some of the things that would keep us happy. And that’s particularly true of the younger generation in Cuba: I think they would like to see the government open up relations with the US and move beyond revolutionary Cuba.

So the Cuban government is willing to concede in a way we haven’t seen in decades. Young Cubans want there to be an opening-up of Cuban society. They want the government to play ball. And yet it sounds like you’re saying it’s more than likely the Trump administration will not go for it?

Unless there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that nobody sees, it seems like there would be a lot more talking and taking the win right now, especially if the Cubans actually did offer the things that the press has been reporting. 

I don’t understand, for instance, the indictment against Raúl Castro. He wouldn’t still be alive by the time that the trial would start. He and his family are still heroes in Cuba, particularly with the older generation. So why mess with the Castros?

Can I offer a theory? 

Yeah, please do.

Is it what the diaspora wants?

That’s a good question, and is it in particular what the older diaspora wants? 

In part because of pressure from us, Cuba began allowing more people to emigrate from Cuba over the last 20 years, and a lot of them came to the US. There’s some evidence that among that million and half or so émigrés, they really want to move forward. They’re really not interested in fighting the wars of the 1960s anymore.

I think we’ve heard your best-case scenario, Cécile — that the United States takes concessions from Cuba and allows the country, on its own terms, to transition to free elections that organically replaces the Castro regime. What’s the worst-case scenario here?

The short-term worst-case scenario is that we end up with something worse than we have now. 

The long-term worst-case scenario is that we further alienate the Cuban people who have already suffered from our sanctions and our embargoes for the last 60-some years, and it harms our ability to create a close relationship with a country 90 miles away over the next 20, 30, 40 years. 

It’s hard for politicians to look past the next election. It’s one of the weaknesses in our government. But we should also be thinking about what kind of relationship we want with Cuba 15 years from now. Invading the country is not a way to make the odds of having a good relationship in the future strong.

You keep talking about this tension between the United States and Cuba as something from another generation — a holdover from, from the ’60s and ’70s, the Cold War. I feel like most Americans right now are not thinking about Venezuela nor Iran nor Cuba. They’re thinking about their gas prices and interest rates. How should Americans be feeling about this intervention that we may soon be executing on this island?

Here’s what I would say to some of those Americans: Imagine we could go two routes right now. Imagine we could start selling spare parts that Cuba desperately needs to keep their machines running. Imagine we could make an agreement with them that would allow them to begin importing American vehicles again, tariff-free. Imagine that you could take vacations to Cuba again, which are fairly inexpensive. 

Would you choose all of those things, or would you choose sending more young people into harm’s way 90 miles away from Florida? Being even more of a pariah in the world than we already are? Because if you’ve been to Europe lately or Canada lately, you know that Americans are very unpopular right now. And just imagine what will happen if we take military action in Cuba.

I think we should also talk about the morality of the situation. There are people who can’t get kidney dialysis right now because the hospitals are running out of oil. There are people who can’t get to work and therefore can’t get paid because they can’t put gas in their vehicles.

These people are just 90 miles away from us. Are we really going to let this kind of pain and suffering continue through the hottest part of the year? What will be the long-term harm not just to them and their health but to their view of the United States? We should not just be sitting by and watching this happen.

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.

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.

Welcome to the era of the big three.

We’re not talking rappers here — although according to Kendrick Lamar, it’s “just big me” — we’re talking AI companies: Anthropic, SpaceX, and OpenAI. 

These three leading artificial intelligence companies are all expected to go public this year. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which recently acquired another Musk company, xAi, is on track to open up to investors later this month. Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, just filed confidentially with the States Securities and Exchange Commission for its own initial public offering. Reports say OpenAI could also go public as soon as September. (Disclosure: Vox Media is one of several publishers that have signed partnership agreements with OpenAI. Our reporting remains editorially independent.)

SpaceX’s IPO, when it happens, could be the largest in history and mint Musk as the world’s first trillionaire. With Anthropic and OpenAI, the combined value of AI IPOs could total over $3 trillion.

But it’s not as simple as going public and raking in cash. “There’s this race that’s been going on between SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic,” Liz Lopatto, a senior writer at The Verge said. “There’s this fear that if you don’t go public at the right time or you don’t go public first, investors aren’t going to wait for you.”

To understand why some of the world’s richest men, at the helm of some of the world’s richest companies, are now courting the public’s money, Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Lopatto. 

She’s been deep in SpaceX’s public filings and has been covering the court drama between Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Her latest piece for the Verge is titled “The SpaceX IPO is great for Elon Musk and terrible for you.” 

Sean and Lopatto chat about what each of the companies hope to gain from the public, why this moment could be like internet 1.0’s dot-com bubble, and whether these companies chasing shareholder profits will be good for us.

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.

Why do [these companies] need to go public right now?

Whoever goes public first is going to scoop up better investors or have an easier time convincing investors. That is fueling this rush toward the market. So that’s thing one. 

But thing two is that AI is extremely expensive. And I think that’s something that people often forget about because right now we’re sort of in, like, the early days of Uber, where you’re using this very expensive tool for free and then they’re going to try to get you hooked on it so that you’ll pay real prices later on. 

In order to get the money that you need for compute, to build all of these data centers, to do all of the things that you need to do in order to have these frontier models, that’s just an incredibly capital-intensive business. One way to get capital is to go public.

Anthropic has had some better discipline than the other companies in terms of behaving like actual adults. They might actually tell us a little bit less before it happens than we’ve heard from, for instance, SpaceX.

Tell me more about behaving like adults when it comes to IPOs, which feels like a very adult thing to do.

There are sort of a lot of things that come into play with an IPO. And basically what you’re doing is you are setting out what your company is, what the company’s vision is, how you plan to make money, and what you’re going to do with all the money that you’re raising in the IPO. And for SpaceX, there’s a bunch of nonsense about Mars in there that doesn’t really feel real to me. There’s nothing about the biological risks of going to Mars, for instance, and the risk factors, which, if that were a real thing, you’d see it. 

One of the things that’s been notable is that both Anthropic and OpenAI seem to have better businesses, based on what we know. Anthropic is actually about to make a profit. Anthropic in particular didn’t make any images with its AI. It stuck to text and it focused specifically on programming. It’s not a sexy business, it’s enterprise software. But you don’t have to be sexy to make money.

Just looking at the difference between like the flash we’re seeing about, like, spreading the light of human consciousness among the stars and actually making money, which is the point of a company. I would say that Anthropic seems like it’s run by adults by comparison. And then I would put OpenAI somewhere in the middle.

Why? What is Open AI doing that isn’t very adult-like behavior?

OpenAI as a business is really scattered. They created and shut down Sora, which was AI-generated videos. They have these AI image generators that have created a whole new level of headaches for them. They’re embroiled in a number of lawsuits.

Sam Altman, the CEO, was running it effectively as a startup composed of little startups within it and was like, “Well, we’ll just see which one of them wins.” And that’s maybe not the best way to run a company. It’s a fine way to run a portfolio, but a company is not a portfolio.

Liz, you’re very tapped into this world out there in Silicon Valley and you were at the trial between Altman and Musk. It sounds like these companies are all being talked about in the same breath even though two of them are very specifically AI companies and one of them wants to colonize Mars. Why is that? Is it just because they all may IPO soon?

I think that’s part of it. I also think there’s been this investment thesis that frontier AI models are effectively going to be a boom on the scale of internet 1.0, if you remember 1999.

This is sort of the moment where we’re going to find out who’s Google and who’s Amazon and who’s Pets.com, right? And so I think that’s why people are talking about them in this way, because it’s not just these three companies that are AI companies. Obviously Google has an AI arm that is very good. But then you have companies like Databricks, which you maybe haven’t heard of. 

Can’t say I know her.

Yeah. This is a perfectly fine company. It’s got a business. But it’s not in that conversation because I don’t think people expect it to be one of the behemoths in the way that they’re looking at these three as the potential behemoths of this generation of technology.

This reminds me that when social media companies went public, they started prioritizing things like shareholder profit rather than safety. I think Facebook — Meta — is probably the most prominent example of this. 

Do we want the still mostly dudes holding our future in their hands to be beholden to market forces and profits above all else?

Arguably they already are. 

This is one of the arguments that has been made about OpenAI: that the reason they’ve had some of these issues around safety has been because they are motivated by chasing the market and trying to raise money. Because unlike social media, this is a very capital-intensive business.

You need to be showing investors something. You need to be proving yourself out in a way that you didn’t necessarily have to with social media right off the bat. So I think that’s part of it. But I think that going public potentially makes that worse. The chatbot will try to keep you engaged. It will give you an answer and then it will ask a tag question. And that’s an engagement tool that keeps you engaged with the AI. 

You see that also with some of the sycophantic behavior you see with these AI where they’re like, “Wow, that’s such a smart question. Gee, you’re so bright.”

And is that really good for us? I don’t think it is. But it does keep people involved, and it does keep people engaged with the AI, and if you need to be showing user numbers or otherwise showing metrics to investors, those are the ones you show.

It seems almost silly to ask if being a publicly traded company could make these companies more accountable or even safer. But then again, if you think about Anthropic and their whole dustup with the Pentagon, without being publicly traded, they said, you know, you guys are crossing the red line and we have to reassess our relationship.

Do you think something about being publicly traded post-IPO could make a company like Anthropic or OpenAI a little bit more conservative in their developments and their technology?

To the degree that you can say, “Hey, like I was misled by this company as a shareholder because they told me there were these safety practices that actually were not in play and then take them to court” — that is something that can be done, sure. Unless you’re talking about SpaceX, which has a governance structure that effectively bars shareholder suits, unless you have a specific percentage of holding.

So not SpaceX, but maybe Anthropic, maybe OpenAI have this additional measure of accountability where shareholder lawsuits can potentially move the needle.

But most likely of all we just start to see a lot more ads.

I think that’s right. I think you also see prices go up for the enterprise products — and maybe for all of the other products as well.

Summer travel is just ramping up, but our country’s pride and joy is being put through the wringer. 

Since President Donald Trump took office in 2025, the National Park Service has been gutted. Staff have left or been laid off, historical signage has been removed, and funding to maintain and operate the parks has been slashed.

Still, Trump doesn’t seem to be slowing down. The administration’s proposed 2027 budget would cut more than a fourth of the remaining annual budget for national parks.

Despite this, Trump still wants Americans to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday by visiting the underfunded parks system (and he’s stamped his face on the annual national parks pass). 

He’s hoping Americans follow the example of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the former reality TV star whose new YouTube show, The Great American Road Trip, captures Duffy’s travels around the US.  

But the parks aren’t ready for it, experts warn. A funding shortfall could further damage the experience and preservation of America’s most visited parks, but journalist Stephanie Pearson tells Today, Explained that she’s most worried about the damage visitors can’t see. 

Pearson has written for Outside Magazine for decades and authored two books on our national parks. Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram asked her how the parks are doing in light of big cuts from the Trump 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.

How are our parks doing? Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy is encouraging Americans to hit the road. I think a place Americans tend to go when they hit the road is to the national parks, especially in the summertime. What will they find when they go?

It’s a moving target. There’s a lot happening in parks right now. There is almost a quarter of full-time National Park staff have lost their jobs. That’s more than 4,000 positions. 

When you lose a quarter of your park staff, what do you end up losing?

A lot of the public-facing people will still be there. People may not necessarily notice that. They’re still going to be greeted at visitor kiosks. They’re still going to have information people. 

Where they’re really diminishing is in scientists, biologists who are studying the flora and the fauna or the wildlife, people who are critical pieces of these parks who are trying to balance visitation with wildlife, for example. Infrastructure people who are taking care of the parks and maintaining them. The way that’s translating is that people who are left have a lot of hats, and they have to do a lot of different things.

And can they? Do they?

It’s amazing what the National Park Service staff is continuing to do. Anyone who sees someone in a National Park Service uniform should probably go up and give them a hug or, you know, a high five or something.

You have to ask before you give them a hug, though. You don’t wanna make their lives even worse.

Yes, very true. But I would say that I think their jobs are really hard right now. And so just to keep that in mind. However you want to do that, send them good vibes.

I don’t know if you watched the trailer for Sean Duffy’s Great American Road Trip, but he really seems to be emphasizing that this country has so much to offer, and especially its natural beauty, its parks. 

I imagine the maintenance and the infrastructure of our national park system is included in that marketing campaign that they’re on right now. And you’re telling me that the parks are struggling in that regard.

Yes, they are struggling in that regard, and it’s all documented. You can do your own research and see where these cuts are being made. And I do agree with Duffy. I think it’s an amazing, amazing park system, but it is being drastically reduced in terms of the budget that is going toward it and the workforce that they have. 

They are hiring seasonal employees, but what they’re doing is they’re increasing “seasonal employee” to mean a nine-month position. So they’ll get maybe health insurance, but they won’t get other benefits. But what that means is they’re just not a full-time workforce and so a lot of them are also being shifted to different positions.

Can you give us some specifics on what conditions might be like at some of these parks that are really struggling and understaffed? I mean, are you not able to use a porta-potty in a park? Are there no facilities to speak of at this point?

There are facilities, and these parks are not closing down. But, for example, at Yosemite National Park, the first weekend of May, it took an hour and a half to get to the entrance for people. When they got in the park, what is also happening is they’ve lifted all the reservation systems.

[At] some of these iconic parks — Yosemite, Glacier National Park, Acadia National Park — you used to have to make a reservation to drive your car, for example, on Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park. They have lifted those, and so it’s sort of a free-for-all. 

It all depends on which park you’re going to. There are parks that are in the system that are a lot less visited; for these iconic parks where everyone seems to want to go all the time, there’s going to be a lot of people who want to see the same things that you do.

Beyond budgetary cuts to these parks, there’s also a bit of an agenda here to sort of reshape the culture and historical educational programming at our national parks. How’s that going?

It’s being implemented as we speak. In March 2025, President Trump issued an executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. And what that does is, as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum put it, is to eliminate depictions at the Park Service that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living, including in colonial times.

What that means is Acadia National Park climate change signs have been taken down. The [Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail] had to do a big review, and the Park Service staff identified, which was the mandate, I think something like 80 things that they needed to take out of that park.

It’s happening in places, in parks all across the country. For example, Stonewall in New York City — they pulled down the [pride] flag, but it went back up because New York City officials wanted it to go back up.

Do you think this could be an added incentive to get out there this summer and see these parks despite the gas prices, because it’s America 250 and the parks are being ruined, so you may as well see ’em before they’re trashed? 

It almost breaks my heart to even think that. I still have some hope. I have hope that they will not be trashed. I have hope that people on both sides of the aisle understand the value of these parks. I am a proponent of understanding our American history because there’s so much to offer through these parks. You’re going to gain some understanding when you visit Ancestral Puebloan land in New Mexico or you see the geology of Big Bend National Park. 

I am really hopeful that people understand the value of these places. In Big Bend National Park, people are rallying around the fact that they’re trying to build a border wall through it. People have rallied, on both sides of the aisle, to say, We do not want a border wall in Big Bend National Park.“ And so I think that there is hope that people will rise to this occasion.

What you’re saying in Big Bend is that you can only push people so far, and they will eventually stand up if you go too far.

Absolutely. I think Teddy Roosevelt is a perfect example of this. Teddy Roosevelt is the conservation president. Teddy Roosevelt was changed, fundamentally changed, by the Badlands landscape. And that’s my hope that people go to these landscapes and are fundamentally changed and understand what we have to lose here.