Astead Herndon | Vox

What does American politics look like beyond Trump?

2026-04-13T13:43:45-04:00

The only people with worse poll numbers than President Donald Trump are the political media that cover him. We, the journalists, are in a crisis: of trust, relevance, and being swamped by an attention economy that will either replace us with Claude or an influencer. The skills of traditional reporting: storytelling, man-on-the-street interviews, even the language of “investigations,” are the template for the modern TikToker. But it’s the process of journalism — fact-checking, waiting for comment, leaning into nuance over sensationalism, or even leading with curiosity generally — that is growing to be a lonelier pursuit, competing for attention from an audience increasingly inundated by hot takes.

I”m hoping my new show, America, Actually, will be different. As the country marches toward the 2026 midterms and the first open presidential primary in a decade, it feels like the first steps of a new story for a changing nation. Emerging communities, artificial intelligence, a rapidly shifting work economy, and growing risk of global conflict — all things that should have been front and center in the last presidential election — can now no longer be ignored. The question of “who do we want to be?” is open, and answering it will require the type of journalism that prioritizes the messy over the clean.

In a decade in political journalism, I’ve gone to 30-plus states and followed elections big and small, in hopes of doing just that. As a political reporter and host of The Run-Up podcast at the New York Times, I sought to expand the Times’ coverage of Black voters, Midwesterners, and evangelicals — communities I felt confident were underrepresented. I was the lead reporter for the presidential campaigns of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and then-Vice President Kamala Harris, exploring the values and limits of representation. I found a niche doing trend stories about Trump voters, either by attending rallies or going to community events (like Trumpstock; “Woodstock for Trump fans,” or Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point events) to hear from his voters directly.

And what I found most was a country that was more politically attuned than it’s often given credit for. Working-class people who did not need the latest revised figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to know that the economy was slowing. Voters who could not name gerrymandering — but intuitively understood that Congress had grown more extreme than ever. An electorate that more or less agreed that the mere prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024 was a reflection of a political system that had become completely untethered from the desires of its citizenry. The whole narrative of “polarization” came from the process of sorting those views into Team Red and Team Blue. It was not inherent.

By removing Donald Trump from the center of the political discussion, I think it gives space to see that new story more clearly. I have always believed this president, while a uniquely authoritarian actor with unique electoral traits, has exploited a political system whose distance from the concerns of most Americans made it even more vulnerable for exploitation. And it’s only in flipping our focus, from the concerns of elected officials and the elite bubble of industry and media that follows them to the voters at large, that we political journalists see that distance most clearly.

America, Actually will seek to see the country for that diversity of opinion. I joined Vox last year because I want to cut through the noise, amplify voices that political journalism typically hasn’t amplified, and help audiences understand the issues that really matter in American politics today. With this new show, we want to create a weekly space to think about the people and ideas who are driving the country’s post-Trump future — and prepare us for the 2028 election along the way.

Some of the questions I want to explore include: How large is the wing of Republicans against the Iran war? What’s the impact of growing social isolation on politics, which has long been a community activity? Is this the first Democratic primary where the Black vote won’t be determinative? How will Americans’ souring mood on Israel manifest itself in votes? Will it?

In our first episode, out now on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts, pollster Nate Silver and culture podcaster Hunter Harris discuss the show’s premise — Is a politics show without Trump even possible? — and the political and cultural factors that will shape our post-Trump future. Later, the show will feature interviews with experts, elected officials, and local journalists, who will regularly appear on the podcast through a partnership with Report for America, the national service program that places emerging journalists into local newsrooms across the country to report on under-covered issues.

View Link

The goal is to model something different: a new way to understand a country that the Trump era has distorted. Not because this president doesn’t reflect who we are, but because the political system inherently flattens it. And while the White House may govern without public opinion in mind, candidates don’t have that luxury. The American public is back in the center of the conversation. The 2026 midterm elections, and the 2028 presidential election, will force a reset that’s been avoided since Trump came down that golden escalator more than a decade ago.

There will, eventually, be a post-Trump future. Let’s write it together.

How one Democratic senator is tackling Trump’s corruption

2026-04-03T14:48:54-04:00

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) speaks during a protest at the US Customs and Border Protection Office on January 13, 2026, in Washington, D.C. | Jemal Countess/Getty Images for MoveOn Civic Action

President Donald Trump’s blatant, sometimes open corruption can feel disorienting. While other White Houses have made a point to show their administration is not for sale, this one has seemingly done the opposite — making a big show of their transactional relationship with corporations, Silicon Valley, and other governments, given the right price.

This kind of pay-to-play politics was the focus of a recent forum in Washington, DC, hosted by the American Economic Liberties Project, a think tank focused on corporate consolidation, breaking up monopolies, and accountability for rogue businesses. It’s also the focus of Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who has made this anti-corruption a focus of his message and policy proposals since the 2024 election.

I spoke with Murphy last week as part of the forum; in an extended conversation, I asked about the effectiveness of this message, what role the Democratic Party also plays in Washington’s current culture of open corruption, and if there’s anything the public can do to push back.

Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can hear the full interview on Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, and you can also watch this episode on video at YouTube.com/vox.

If you enjoy our reporting and want to hear more from Vox journalists, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/vox. Each month, our members get access to exclusive videos, livestreams, and chats with our newsroom.

When I think about corruption, one thing that immediately jumps to mind for me is that when we think about the Trump administration, this isn’t happening in backroom deals. A lot of these things are happening right in front of us. Is corruption the right word to even use when it’s been broadly sanctioned by legal and governmental entities?

I think corruption is still a word that resonates. I think people understand that corruption is a bad thing, that it is something that we have broadly tried to expunge from our politics. And I do think that people generally understand corruption to be something that happens quietly behind closed doors.

Corruption is something you try to hide, and so I do think the most important piece of this moment is trying to understand what to do with the brazen public way that Trump is engaging in corruption, because simply by the very fact that he does it every day, that he does it openly, publicly and proudly, it is causing some people to question, Wait, wait, is this corruption? Because this isn’t what I learned corruption is. There’s no shame in this.

I don’t necessarily know if it means you change the word. He’s trying to change the very notion of corruption by doing it publicly. And so if you call it something different, then I think you’re playing his game.

You know, your Corporate Pardons Report documents over 160 companies that have had federal enforcement actions dropped.

As we know, corporate influence has been in Washington for a long time. How do you think this is a qualitatively different moment than the usual lobbying influence that we’ve seen?

It’s just so nakedly transactional right now. It’s an easy story to explain, whether it’s the donations that Boeing made that got them out of their trouble, whether it’s the Toyota donations, whether it’s the money that Zelle pumped into the administration,

It now doesn’t happen through slowly putting money into the political system, slowly building up connections. It’s literally just a million dollars for a corporate pardon. And that now happens within weeks or months. It’s put Eric Trump on your board, the lawsuit or the enforcement action is dropped, right? It’s so nakedly quick and transactional that it’s hard to hide.

What do you think is the impact of that kind of flagrant degradation of the process? What do you think is the consequence of its being in our face in this way?

Trump takes over at a moment when a lot of Americans were seriously contemplating giving up on democracy, right? And while that conversation may not be on the surface of kitchen table talks in our country, it’s right below the surface. People just don’t think that their voice matters any longer.

They, for a long time, have believed that the elites get whatever they want out of the system and the way in which Trump has chosen to do this so transparently, I think, is an effort to permanently shatter people’s faith in the entire enterprise and to transition the country to a kleptocratic oligarchy.

And so, yes, I think this is a particularly vulnerable moment for the country in which a lot of Americans are unfortunately ready to just say, Fuck it. This thing doesn’t work any longer. It now clearly doesn’t work, because we have an elected president who is just stealing from us. I’m just going to walk away from the whole enterprise.

And when people give up and retreat from public action, that’s the moment that the oligarchs seize power and never give it up. The reason that I have been raising the unacceptability of the corruption — that it is abnormal, that we should not normalize it — is because I think Trump’s core case here is, if he’s successful in normalizing it, it may be the death blow to people’s faith in the entire democratic enterprise.

Is there some form of a conflation between overt corruption and something like corporate consolidation? Or do you see those as one and the same when we’re talking about these monopolistic media companies [like Paramount]?

It’s all part of the same story. The only way that Paramount Skydance gets to be as big and as corrupt and as manipulative as it is is because of corruption, is because of an underlying deal that is done between the Ellison family and the Trump family.

I mean, [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth literally says it on stage: I can’t wait until my friends, the Ellisons, get control of CNN because then you’ll stop telling the truth about the war.

And again, back to how you message this: Yes, I understand that it’s a hard thing to break up that corrupt consolidation. Yes, I understand that by the time we get control of things here, the prediction markets will be even more mature, but by stating what you are going to do, you can actually bend reality by being bold in your claims about what you will do with power. People — and not just people out in the public, but members of Congress, right? — start signing up for the project the bolder it is.

The scope of Trump’s corruption can feel disempowering. The administration seems immune to public opinion at many times, undeterred by legal and institutional restraints.

It feels like we’re strapped in at the beginning of a roller coaster and you don’t know where it ends. Is that true? Are constraints coming?

It’s only coming if the Democratic Party, as we head into the 2028 election, makes the un-rigging of our democracy a tent pole for our party’s messaging.

If it’s up to me, our party’s message is unrigging democracy, unrigging the economy.

I’ll end here because you are right that people are feeling super discouraged and super powerless right now. We as a party have to start our analysis of what this moment needs through a diagnosis of the way that people are feeling like they have no agency. Both our economic and political messaging has to be about returning control to human beings and explaining to them, as we’ve talked about a few times, that it goes both ways: The corruption of our economy is downstream of the corruption of our democracy.

But also, the right way to end the corruption of our democracy is also downstream of the corruption of our economy. When our economy is an economy that only cares about profit and efficiency, it becomes this winner-take-all economy in which the folks who do well just grab it all. And we’ve normalized that because we’ve normalized the idea that that shared prosperity is not a value any longer in our economy.

When we normalize zero virtue in our economy, it’s really easy to say, well, maybe virtue shouldn’t matter in our politics either. And so that’s why the project is so big, right? There are cross currents between what has happened in our economy affecting our politics, what’s happened in our politics affecting our economy, which is why your willingness to confront this question of corruption in government and in our economy and recognizing how they flow back and forth is so critical.

Even John Bolton is against this Iran war

2026-03-28T08:26:19-04:00

How did President Donald Trump lose the Republican Party’s biggest Iran war hawk, John Bolton? And why? | Brandon Bell/Getty Images

For the past 20 years, there’s basically been one guy in Republican politics who was known as the Iran war guy.

For years, even decades, John Bolton has argued for regime change in Iran, and for America to take a proactive military role to make that happen. Bolton served as the US ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush and, later, as national security adviser to Donald Trump during his first term.

The partnership with Trump was fleeting, however. He did not leave the administration on good terms and has been a critic of Trump since. He’s even been indicted by Trump’s Department of Justice for the mishandling of classified documents. Despite that backstory, it is still a bit confusing to hear one of America’s foremost Iran critics break with the Trump administration on this war. How did Trump lose the Republican Party’s biggest Iran war hawk? And why?

Below is an excerpt of my conversation with Bolton, 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.

You’ve become known as one of the most prominent American advocates for military action in Iran over a set of decades. But in recent weeks, you’ve emerged as one of the sharpest critics of the Trump administration’s actions and how it’s conducting this war. I wanted you to walk me through your critiques.

What I support is a policy of regime change in Iran. And I’ve held that view for many years because I don’t think there’s any chance the current regime will change its behavior on two critical fronts.

It’s not going to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons, which threaten Israel, the United States, really the whole world. And it’s not going to give up on its pursuit of terrorism, its support of terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Shia militia in Iraq and conducting terrorist operations around the world.

We’ve got decades of evidence that their behavior is not going to change. So when you’re confronted with that kind of threat, danger, and behavior isn’t going to change, the alternative is change the regime. I think the regime is in its weakest position since any time after it took power in 1979. The economy is a mess. The young people are, they can see they can have a different kind of life. Two thirds of the population is under 30. The women are enormously dissatisfied since the death of Mahsa Amini. Ethnic groups are dissatisfied.

Conditions are ripe for regime change as a policy to succeed. And the question is, what role can the United States play? And here, I think Trump has badly misplayed his hand from the beginning, unfortunately.

Tell me how.

Well, Trump initially did nothing to prepare the American public for the steps necessary to affect regime change. Normally, when a president is going to take a dramatic action like Trump has, you explain that to the American people.

You make the case why it’s in our national interest to seek regime change, to avoid the threat of nuclear weapons, to avoid the continuing threat of terrorism. You don’t have to say anything about what your specific plan is. You don’t have to talk about timing, but you have to be respectful of our citizens and make the case to them that this is in their interest. I think he could have done it. I think there’s a very compelling case he didn’t do it.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

A corollary to that is you need to prepare Congress, certainly on the Republican side, to get their support, but on the Democratic side too. I think there are a number of important steps that Congress is going to have to take, instead of leaving them in the dark. It doesn’t mean they would agree with you necessarily, but at least you’ve stated your case to them and it’s part of making it to the American people.

The other aspect that Trump failed on was consulting with allies. Normally, you try and build an international coalition before the war starts, not after. And he obviously didn’t do that. I mean, we’ve got very close ties with Israel. I think our military planning and preparation has been seamless as far as I can tell.

But there are plenty of others, not just the NATO allies, but the Gulf states in the region who are obviously affected by this, our allies in the Pacific, Japan, South Korea, and others who get most of their oil from the Gulf.

As far as we can tell, he did no preparation of the opposition actually inside Iran. No coordination, no effort to see what they would do, no effort to support them, to provide resources, money, arms if that’s what they wanted, telecommunications, just no coordination at all.

There’s a sense that they want to make this around four to six weeks, not necessarily the timeline that a full regime change could take. Is it your position that if they aren’t willing to kind of see that all the way through, they shouldn’t have started this in the first place?

Right. Four to six weeks might have been a good estimate of the Pentagon’s initial campaign. But the military action alone was never going to cause regime change, or at least it would have been a lucky event had it done so. This has to come from inside Iran. It’s the people, the opposition, the ethnic groups, the young people, the women that have to have to figure out how to actually accomplish it.

“I think if you are going to go after the goal of regime change, you have to know what you’re getting into and be resolved to work your way through it in order to achieve it.”

And it’s clear they were badly intimidated in January when the regime killed 30 or 40,000 protesters, literally machine gunned them in the streets of Iran simply for protesting against the regime. That needed to be taken into account.

I’ve heard you say in other places that Trump is not a strategic thinker. From your perspective of someone who was in the White House, who was trying to strategize with the president, what was the impact of that lack of strategic thinking?

Well, it makes it very hard to carry through to achieve a given objective. One thing that Trump has done in the second term is all but eliminate the National Security Council decision-making process, which I’ll be the first to say is not perfect. But it’s a way of getting all the different agency and department views together to try and get the facts assembled that would permit a president to make a responsible, well-informed decision.

I’m hearing from you that we should see the lack of planning that has manifested in this war as a result of the change or the collapse in process from the first Trump administration to the second.

Yeah, I mean, making Marco Rubio both secretary of state and national security adviser is another piece of evidence there — with all due respect to Marco, these are two completely separate jobs.

I don’t blame that on anybody in the government other than Trump. He thought he was being constrained by the NSC, that somehow we were trying to — I speak for all these other Cabinet members — that we were trying to force him in one direction or another.

Obviously, each member of the the NSC has his or her own views, but it’s the clash of views that can benefit a president so he can see what the stronger case is, what aligns more with his preferences, what the better plan is, all of these sorts of things I think are generally enhanced by discussion. If you don’t have much discussion or it’s not well-informed discussion, you’re not getting the benefits.

The administration would say that Iran is weakened militarily fundamentally, that their leadership has been eliminated in a unique way, that they have sped up a succession crisis. Is that achieving the objective of regime change?

No, not at all. There’s a report that the regime has selected a new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council held by Ali Larijani, who was killed a few days ago. And this guy is reported to be an old-time Revolutionary Guard hardliner.

So if he’s the new National Security Council secretary, that’s an indication that he’s probably even more hardline than Larijani. To the extent the regime can rebuild, and that’s simply a matter of getting oil flows out through the Strait of Hormuz. I have no doubt they’ll be back to an assertive nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program, and lining up their terrorist surrogates again.

I think if you are going to go after the goal of regime change, you have to know what you’re getting into and be resolved to work your way through it in order to achieve it. And if you don’t think you can achieve it, then don’t start it. Try something else. And it’s clear Trump hasn’t done many of those things. And that’s why he’s in the conundrum that he is in now.

Today, Explained publishes video episodes every Saturday tackling key issues in politics and culture. Subscribe to Vox’s YouTube channel to get them. New episodes of Today, Explained drop every day of the week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite listening app.

Nancy Pelosi tells us how she really feels

2026-03-19T18:15:14-04:00

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on March 3, 2026. | Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

Nancy Pelosi’s record of impact is undeniable. Over more than three decades in Congress, the San Francisco juggernaut is frequently cited among the effective legislative operators of her generation — the person who held together the votes for the Affordable Care Act, who twice ascended to the House speaker’s chair, and who built a fundraising machine that reshaped how her party competes.

Last week, at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, I spoke with Pelosi about that record. In front of a packed crowd of innovators at the Vox Media Podcast Stage, I asked Pelosi about key moments in her career, her unshakable faith in the American electorate, and the outlook for November’s midterm elections.

Pelosi is preparing to leave Congress at the end of this term, and it comes at a time of profound uncertainty for the Democratic Party. Republicans control the White House. Her party’s polling favorability has reached historic lows, and a once solid liberal majority seems to be fraying on lines of age, race, and class. There’s no consensus about what went wrong or who should lead next.

Regardless, Pelosi told me she has absolute confidence that Democrats will take back the House this year. And it’s hard to argue with such a legendary vote counter. Below is an excerpt of our 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.

You’ve been called the most effective speaker in history. I wanted to know, what is the skill or trait that you think made you so effective?

The thing about it is that when you’re a legislator, you have one, shall we say, dynamic at work. You have hearings, you have public comment, you do all those things, and so you have time to make a decision. When you become the speaker or the governor or the mayor or whatever — the executive position — you then have to act.

The reason you have to act is because if you don’t act immediately, people think, “Oh, she’s gonna think about it. And while she does, we’ll take this option away or that option away.” You just have to act. Then you get the reputation that it will work, and that’s that.

It is [also] really important when you go out to do these things to just make sure people trust your judgment — that you know what you’re talking about, you know how to get something done. And I have to give credit to the members who are so courageous to take strong votes, which will be mischaracterized by the other side no matter what you do.

The other thing is nothing really good happens unless you have outside mobilization. Inside maneuver, outside mobilization. And that is like President Lincoln said, “Public sentiment is everything. With it you can accomplish almost anything, without it practically nothing.” But for public sentiment to prevail, people have to know, you have to get out there and engage public sentiment.

Your story is built on faith in the American people and it seems as if that is kind of core. I wanted to kind of gut-check that. You’ve been set to retire in 2016 and 2024, and Americans elected a president that surprised you and many others and kind of forced you back into office.

There’s been some tough moments. I’m thinking about the horrible attack on your husband in 2022 or things like the January 6 riots where you were in the building. How are you retaining this kind of optimism in the American electorate when it doesn’t always seem as if that has been returned to you? I wanna ask about your trust in Americans.

Our founders were such geniuses. They were so remarkable in what they put together, a country that was more remarkable than anything that anybody had ever seen. They believed in the goodness of the American people. And that’s what gives me optimism. I do believe in the inherent goodness of the American people. If they know, in a public sense, if they know what all this means to them, they will make the right judgments.

There’s a lot of evidence of a backlash to Donald Trump as we speak, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that people would prefer Democrats as the other option. How are you so sure that Democrats take back the House and possibly win the Senate in November?

Not only are we gonna win, we’re gonna win substantially.

To win an election, you have to mobilize. You have to own the ground because we know: American people are good. We know that what we want to do is in their interest. They know what their interests are. We respect that.

And by the way, our whole democracy is at stake. Free and fair elections, independent judiciary, due process, rule of law, separation of power. We’re not a monarchy, we’re a democracy. But we save the democracy at the kitchen table. So what we’re talking about in terms of lowering costs, affordability of course, but in people’s terms, lowering cost of health care and groceries and education and whatever it is, it’s what they are telling us they are most voting on. [We need] message, mobilization, and money to get it done.

I think right now there’s a big question about trust in institutions, trust in elected officials. Considering just how much Congress has seemed to step back from its own authority, what do you think is the importance of these midterms? If you’re someone who’s kind of skeptical and says, “Okay, Democrats win the House, but Donald Trump’s gonna do whatever he wants to do.” What is Speaker Pelosi’s response to that?

Well, let me just say, first of all, that Congress hasn’t stepped back. The Republicans in Congress have abdicated — they have abolished the House of Representatives. They have just given the president free rein.

The Senate somewhat too, but they have a little different rules. In the Constitution, the House of Representatives is given very big power. Congress is Article One of the Constitution, but even within that, the House has the power of the purse, to declare war, issues like that that are fundamental to the Constitution. They’ve abdicated.

If Democrats take back the House, last time that you all had the House under a Donald Trump presidency, there were those two impeachments. Is that something you think, if Democrats take back the house this November, we should expect?

The only person responsible for the impeachment of Donald Trump — not once but twice — is Donald Trump. He gave us no choice. So I don’t think you go out and start with saying, “We’re gonna impeach.” Winning is about the people. It’s not about him. It’s about the people, meeting their kitchen-table needs so that they have confidence. And we have to restore that. And the best way to do that is to listen to the people.

You’ve said that Donald Trump is a “vile creature,” but you said that was a euphemism for what you really wanted to say. This is South by Southwest, I was gonna let you end on this note. Do you wanna tell us how you really feel?

If you’re president of the United States, you have a certain responsibility to live up to honoring the vision of our founders. The beauty of the Constitution, the exquisite beauty of the Constitution, is the separation of power. They didn’t want a monarch; they did everything in the Constitution to make sure we didn’t have one. So he’s smashed all of that.

In terms of one of my big issues coming to Congress — saving the planet — forget about that. [He has] his hand in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry. And so we’re taking so many steps away from clean air, clean water.

Be grateful for the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform who have fought for our freedom and other freedom in the world and not call them losers. When you’re at a cemetery for a deceased soldier, honor that.

And then, of course, the aspirations of our children. Forget about that, as far as he’s concerned.

But I didn’t come here to talk about him. He is what he is. We’re gonna win in November. You’re going to see a big change in how the separation of powers works. It’s about honoring the vision of our founders. It’s about ending corruption in this government, and that’s what I think of him.

Bernie Sanders explains his proposed billionaire tax

2026-03-14T08:02:02-04:00

Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont and ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, speaks during a hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. | Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is no stranger to singling out the richest of the rich. Along with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Sanders recently introduced the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act, a 5 percent annual wealth tax on anyone in the US worth over a billion dollars.

The act would affect 930 people — the very tippy-top of the 0.01 percent. Elon Musk would owe roughly $42 billion per year. Mark Zuckerberg would owe $11 billion.

And what would this new wealth tax fund?

In its first year, according to the Sanders proposal, it would provide $3,000 direct payments to every American in a household earning $150,000 or less, with subsequent revenue used to address “the most pressing crises facing working families.”

While the bill has essentially no chance of passing Congress in the near future, it could become a litmus test for Democratic presidential candidates in 2028. Vox’s Astead Herndon sat down with Sanders for Today, Explained to ask him about how the tax would actually work, as well as about some of the other most pressing issues of the moment: how Democrats should navigate the AI landscape, Sanders’s call for a moratorium on building new AI data centers, and President Donald Trump’s recent strikes in Iran.

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

You can also watch the Saturday interviews this week and every week on the Vox YouTube channel. Subscribe at youtube.com/vox.

Most Democrats have condemned the US-Israel strikes in Iran, but Donald Trump is blowing ahead. Is there any recourse coming from Congress?

What we have got to do is pull the financial plug here. I think what we have got to do our best in saying is that not only is this war unconstitutional, not only is it illegal, [but] when we have so many strong domestic needs in terms of housing and health care and education, we’re going to be just throwing tens of billions of dollars into another endless war.

I think taking a look at how we finance wars is one of the areas that we have to move to. But the bottom line is we’ve gotta do everything that we can to stop Trump’s reckless foreign policy, which is not only unconstitutional, not having gone to Congress, [but] it is in violation of international law and will lead, in my view, to international anarchy.

You and Congressman Khanna introduced this bill that would add a 5 percent annual tax on wealth for anyone making over a billion dollars. And importantly, this is a wealth tax, not an income tax. Things like assets and stock accumulation are also in play. Why $1 billion?

We wanted to make very clear that today we have more income and wealth inequality than we’ve ever had in the history of the United States of America. We all read about the Gilded Age, right? Nickels and dimes compared to where we are right now.

We’re living in a moment where the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 93 percent, where one man, Elon Musk, owns more wealth than the bottom 53 percent of American households, where, while 60 percent of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, the billionaire class has seen its wealth increase by a trillion and a half dollars since Trump was elected.

The point is that at a time of so much inequality, we have to ask the wealthiest people to start paying their fair share of taxes. One way to do it is a wealth tax. I personally think starting off at a billion dollars is the appropriate way to go.

The goal of the revenue is to send $3,000 checks to every American in a household making $150,000 or less. Should I see this as a means of funding a kind of universal basic income?

No. It does two things: It says that at a time when the very richest people are becoming much, much richer, while ordinary Americans today are struggling to put food on the table or pay for childcare or pay for health care, the working class of this country needs immediate help.

On top of that, we make massive investments every year in child care, in housing, in education, in health care, in addressing the basic needs of working class Americans. And yet everything being equal, our kids will have a lowest standard of living than we will, and millions of families are struggling.

All of our people should have a decent standard of living, and we have to address the massive level of income and wealth inequality to do that.

France tried a wealth tax and repealed it. Sweden tried one, repealed it, and the European countries that have gone back have almost universally said that it was because capital left, or evasion meant that they did not see the necessary revenue returns. Why would that not be true in the United States?

I think we need to enact that legislation, and then we need a political movement to make sure that it is implemented.

That’s a pretty high standard.

One of the things that is really troubling to me is what you are saying is, Look, even if the American people want it, these guys will evade it one way or another. Is that what you’re saying?

Other countries have repealed the wealth tax because of that exact problem.

We have to deal with it.

I was out in California a few weeks ago where they’re dealing with a state wealth tax. The issue there is that 15 million people, including many in California and Vermont, have been thrown off the health care they have in order to give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the 1 percent.

What the 1 percent are saying is, You want us to pay more in taxes so that working class people and children will have health care? If you pass that, you know what we’re going to do. We’re going to move to Texas, we’re going to move to Florida.

The time is long overdue that we stand up to that greed and say, no, that’s not the choice. You are in America, you benefited from America, you’re part of America. You don’t have the divine right to rule and you play by the rules, and if we pass this tax, you’re going to pay it.

You called for a moratorium on AI data center construction. I spoke with your ally Ro Khanna about this, and he disagreed about that point. Why do you think the time is now to put a moratorium on data centers?

I don’t think a moratorium is the solution to all the problems. I think it’s the right thing to do now, and here’s why. What I have been really stunned by is that I go out around the country and I talk to people and I say, well, what do you think about AI and robotics? Are you concerned about it?

I talk to mostly working-class audiences and they say, Bernie, we are really, really concerned. I come back to the United States Senate, and you know what? Hardly anything is being done about it. No legislation has yet been passed, so the disconnect is five miles wide.

Who’s pushing AI and robotics? The richest people in the world. Elon Musk. Zuckerberg, Bezos, Ellison, Altman, Bill Gates.

The very first question that we have to ask ourselves is, do you think these guys who are investing huge amounts of money in AI and robotics, transforming our economy? Are they staying up nights worrying about you and your family?

They want even more wealth and they want even more power. And at a time when these guys already have so much wealth and power, when they’re buying elections, I worry about that and what it means for our democracy.

Issue number two, people disagree because nobody really knows what the impact of AI and robotics will mean to our economy.

Some people say, look, you had the Industrial Revolution. People were farmers, they work in factories. No big deal.

I don’t agree with that. I think what you’re looking at now is going to move a lot more pervasively and a lot faster than other economic transformations.

Looking ahead to the next Democratic presidential nominee, I imagine your top priority may be Medicare for All, but are there two other policies that you want that next nominee to support?

First of all, we have to figure out how we remain a democracy. And it’s not just Donald Trump, who is an authoritarian and is undermining democracy. It is money in politics.

You talked about AI, right? You know why there’s no regulation of AI right now? It is because the AI industry is prepared and is spending hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. If you want to run for Congress, and you want to stand up and say, I have real concerns about AI, they will pour millions of dollars against you.

You have to deal with Citizens United in creating a democratic society. You need, in my view, public funding of elections. So maintenance of democracy is important, dealing with Trump’s authoritarianism is enormously important, and you have to deal with this issue of oligarchy.

In terms of the needs of the American people, why are we the only major country not to guarantee health care to all people as a human right? That takes you to Medicare for All. You have to deal with AI and its impact.

This is a very difficult and unprecedented moment in American history, and I think elected officials in many ways are far behind where the American people are in terms of their wanting action to protect them, and not just the 1 percent.

The “Epstein class,” explained

2026-02-28T11:23:54-05:00

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) speaks at a press conference outside the US Capitol on November 18, 2025. | Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The Trump administration says it’s done with its release of the Epstein files. But that doesn’t mean the issue is going away: Just last week, NPR and other outlets reported that the Justice Department may have withheld interview materials potentially touching on an allegation of sexual abuse by Donald Trump.

Congress is also continuing to hear testimony on Epstein’s crimes, including from former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. And Democrats like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) are still calling for accountability.

Recently, Vox’s Astead Herndon sat down with Khanna for the Today, Explained podcast; an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.

There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Can you give us a status update [on the Epstein files]? How much is still out there?

At least 50 percent still has been hidden, covered up. But what has been released is shocking. [Rep. Thomas] Massie and I didn’t think we’d get this far.

They’ve released a fair amount. They’re keeping the worst stuff, but what they’ve released is not a good look at our elite class. It’s not a good look at the Epstein class.

These are powerful people in business and Silicon Valley and Hollywood who were visiting Epstein’s island, knowing young girls are being abused, knowing young girls are being raped. And every day a shoe drops.

Now other countries are prosecuting. They are prosecuting Lord Mandelson. They’re prosecuting former Prince Andrew and the former prime minister of Norway. We are seeing resignations of powerful people at law firms and banks, but we have not yet seen investigations and prosecutions.

I’ve also heard over the last couple of weeks increasing concerns about whether this has amounted to something of a witch hunt.

Do you have any concern that the kind of internet sleuthing of it all is painting a group of people that you call the “Epstein class” with too broad of a brush?

I’m more concerned about the predators who aren’t being prosecuted. If there was a balance, there are more people who have gotten away with things that were part of this Epstein class of men who are being branded in a witch hunt.

I don’t subscribe or want a witch hunt in any way, but the real issue here is the people who are being protected. The real issue is two tiers of justice in America. The real issue is people with power and wealth using it to be above the law and to escape even investigation or prosecution.

Now, do I think that if someone sent an email to Epstein before Epstein was convicted, or if someone showed up to an event before Epstein was convicted, that they should be ashamed? No, there always has to be context. But right now, what I’ve seen is far more on the end of no accountability than on the side of some kind of witch hunt.

How would you define the Epstein class?

Rich and powerful people, who feel entitled that they can use that wealth to be above the law.

That certainly rings true to the behavior we have seen from these files and what we know to be the facts of Epstein, Maxwell, and the people they surrounded themselves with. The question is: How is that different from billionaires or elites or whatever?

There are billionaires who do extraordinary things for the world. Warren Buffett has, by and large, done incredible things. I don’t believe that just because someone is a millionaire or just because they’re a billionaire, that that makes them suspect.

It is the use of your money and privilege to defy the law, to abuse the law, to think you’re above the law. That is what enrages Americans. Most Americans like people to build wealth and admire economic success. It’s the corrupting influence that is where we draw the line.

I was talking to a journalist last week about the Epstein files. I asked about why Democrats didn’t do this years earlier, and the quote was, it wasn’t politically beneficial for them.

I wanted to know how true is it that the reason why we didn’t get that push earlier is because the party itself was also wrapped up in it?

I believe the fact that there’s so many rich and powerful people coming out, and some of them were Democratic donors, certainly disincentivizes the political class from speaking up.

It’s one of the reasons [Donald] Trump and [JD] Vance ran on this, saying [Democrats are] protecting rich and powerful friends. Trump says this to this day. And there are a lot of Democrats in the files, let’s be honest. There are a lot of those friends that were Democratic donors.

I don’t think that there was some kind of conspiracy, but the political class wasn’t — let’s just say they weren’t rushing to come to the aid of these survivors. They weren’t rushing to expose all of this.

How exorbitant concert ticket prices became so normal

2026-02-23T18:59:53-05:00

Harry Styles performs on stage during The BRIT Awards 2023 in London, England. Styles’ concert tickets have been going for over $1,000. | Dave J. Hogan/Getty Images

The fans are fighting again. Followers of artists like Harry Styles and BTS reported seeing ticket prices well over $1,000 for seats — and that’s when buying tickets directly, not only resale sites.

The cost of attending a concert has skyrocketed in recent years, making it closer to a luxury purchase than a hobby. We can partially blame the pandemic for jacking up the cost of running a big production. And, as always, we can blame resellers for buying up cheap tickets and selling them back to us for exponentially more.

But the base price of a ticket now looks oddly similar to that inflated resale price. Why? And is there any amount we won’t pay to see our favorite artist perform live?

On Today, Explained, co-host and avid concertgoer Astead Herndon dug into these questions with Taylor Mims, a Billboard editor who covers the live entertainment industry. They discuss the behind-the-scenes costs of touring, why prices won’t come down, and whether a breaking point is on the horizon.

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.

I recently read that Harry Styles was charging $1,000 for a concert ticket. No beef with Harry Styles, but that seems like a shocking price. Can you tell me what’s going on here?

$1,000 is a lot of money for a ticket. But if we’re being completely honest, it’s fairly typical for these big tours at this point to find tickets in the $1,000s, $2,000, etc., especially for those really valuable seats. It’s been slowly going up over the years, but it really became normal following the Covid-19 pandemic. Concerts were so in demand, still are in demand, and people really want to be there. They will pay good money to have a good seat at a good concert.

I hear what you’re saying, but supply and demand was true before the pandemic too. What exactly has changed to make this process so much more sticky?

People have figured out that there’s a way to get in that queue and make a bunch of money off of these tickets. It’s become its own marketplace. Ticket resellers get in there, buy those tickets at a low price, and then mark it up as much as they possibly can for the secondary market. Resell that ticket, and that’s their whole profit right there. It’s not that difficult to make a bunch of money off of these concerts.

But now we’re seeing huge ticket prices from the original sellers like Ticketmaster. Who sets that initial price for a ticket, and who should I be blaming here?

That’s going to be between the artist and the agent or the promoter. One of the big things that happened over the course of the pandemic is that we lost a lot of good staff, a lot of good crew, because they couldn’t make money when concerts were shut down and the price of everything has gone up. So the price of touring — that could be a crew, supplies, travel — has gone up, and so that makes the price of the ticket go up as well. These artists have to recoup costs at some point.

“It’s not slowing down — it’s only getting worse.”

And when you’re telling a fan it’s going to cost you this much to get into the door, they expect a show. So on top of that, that means more rehearsal time. It costs a lot of money for these giant productions. Loading in and out of a stadium show is incredibly expensive, and so is hauling all that stuff across the country, across oceans. So there’s a lot of costs that have made it more expensive just to be a touring artist.

Is it also that artists are seeing these high resale prices and think, Hey, if people are going to pay it, might as well. I mean, could this just be a case of artists prioritizing bottom line over fan accessibility?

Yes, but also it’s not necessarily that they’re prioritizing the bottom line over the fan. It’s that they know the fan’s going to pay that price either way, so that money might as well go to them. If you’re selling a ticket for $200, but it’s going to go for $1,000 on a secondary market, if you raise that ticket price to $500, it’s a lot less profitable for the ticket reseller, and that fan was going to pay that price anyway, if not more.

What is the recourse for fans who feel like $1,000 for a live concert might be too much?

One of the things that’s happening across the country right now is that a bunch of different states are trying to implement regulations on this because it has gotten really out of hand. And so you’ll see recently in California, in New York, what they’ve introduced are resale caps. When somebody buys a face-value ticket, if, for whatever reason, they can’t go, they can resell that ticket for no more than 10 percent above face value.

And what that does is take the wind completely out of the resale market, because that makes it so much less lucrative to be in this job, to be doing this for a career. It’s very possible. But only one state so far has passed the ticket resale cap, which is Maine.

Do you think there will be a tipping point where fans may say, “Hey, we’ve had enough,” and this road we’re on reverses course or at least slows down?

I definitely think if we’re not there yet, we’re getting very close. It’s not slowing down — it’s only getting worse. And I do think that this legislation is really going to tell us where we’re at because we’ve had almost 10 states introduce these resale caps. Even just a couple of years ago, you couldn’t even get those bills discussed because there’s so much lobbying money against it. So if we see more states able to pass this, that should tell you right there that the tide is turning.

The Democratic governor building a playbook to resist ICE

2026-02-14T08:11:52-05:00

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker attends a Veterans Day ceremony in the Little Village neighborhood in Chicago, on November 11, 2025. | Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images

Few Democratic politicians have leaned into the fight against the Trump administration as aggressively as Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. While some blue-state leaders have tried to find a lane of compromise or quiet resistance, Pritzker has gone the other direction — signing laws to limit ICE operations in the state, creating the Illinois Accountability Commission staffed by retired federal judges, suing the federal government, and successfully blocking the deployment of federalized National Guard troops on Chicago’s streets.

Pritzker has turned Illinois into a test case for what organized state-level opposition to President Donald Trump’s administration looks like — and has modeled a playbook he hopes other blue-state governors can follow.

Pritzker is a unique figure in Democratic politics. A billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, he has spent tens of millions of his own dollars pushing for a more progressive income tax in Illinois and advocates for a national wealth tax — policies that would directly cost him money. He’s also a Jewish Democrat who has navigated his party’s shifting positions on Israel and Gaza, and a two-term governor who has drawn some public support as a potential 2028 presidential candidate.

In our conversation, we talked about all of it: the Illinois playbook against ICE, what Democrats are getting wrong on messaging, the wealth tax, health care, antisemitism, AIPAC, and what Pritzker thinks the party needs to do to start winning again. Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

We want to talk about how you’ve positioned Illinois as a ground zero for pushing back against Trump’s immigration enforcement. You signed a law limiting ICE in Illinois. You created the accountability commission. You all sued the federal government. I wanted to know if you could describe the playbook that Illinois has laid out for what to do if Trump comes to town.

It starts with making sure people know what their rights are when ICE agents are banging on your door. Do you have to open the door? What is it that they’re allowed to do and not allowed to do — and then the second thing, and this is what I told everybody very early on: pull out your iPhone, pull out your Android phone, video everything. And I’m talking about not just the people who are being pursued, but you people in the neighborhoods who want to protect their neighbors. And they did that… That evidence came in handy when the ICE and CBP agents were taken to court here. And we won.

I wanted to dig into this because Trump gave you an ultimatum saying to activate the National Guard or they federalize your troops. You called that an authoritarian march. But at the end of the day, 300 Guardsmen still came to Chicago. There were hundreds of arrests there. Trump got the show he wanted, too. What do you think was the tangible impact of that playbook you’re laying out? What do think you all succeeded in resisting?

Well, he federalized our National Guard, but was not allowed to deploy them in our streets. They were never deployed in the city of Chicago. They had to stay on a federal base until it was determined by the court — including the Supreme Court — that indeed he doesn’t have the ability to send his, you know, federalized National Guard or my National Guard into our streets.

I wonder if the implication here is somewhat that blue states have been too timid in pushing back against Trump. It seems like implied in what you’re laying out is a kind of call to action for other Democratic states.

Well, it’s certainly true that we’ve got to stand up and push back. And I’m talking about peaceful protests and encouraging people to do as I’ve described, to video everything, to stand up. And by the way, I know that protesters hold up signs and they say — maybe the law enforcement agents feel like it’s terrible things they’re saying. But that is what protest is about, right? People showing up and making their voices heard. And it’s very important for us to protect that right.

Democrats have also been a part of funding and expanding ICE over the years. As recently as 2024, I remember Democrats on the presidential campaign trail agreeing that illegal immigration was a problem. Cities like Chicago have struggled with the increase of undocumented migrants in recent years — I remember my family who lives in the suburbs here talking about how they see more people on the street over the last four or five years.

Sometimes it feels as if Democrats want deportations to happen. They just want them to happen quietly and not necessarily like we’re seeing from the Trump administration. Is it just a matter of tone here, or what is the tangible difference between what Democrats want to happen versus what Donald Trump is doing?

The tangible difference is ICE and CBP today under Donald Trump are stopping US citizens who are Black and brown and demanding to see citizenship papers. Now, I don’t know about you, I don’t get asked for citizenship papers. I don’t have any on me. But they’re doing it, and they’re doing it to people who are not undocumented, they’re doing [it] to people who are here legally, people who have lived here maybe generations, US citizens… The difference is that they’re racially profiling.

So should ICE be abolished?

It is fundamentally different, what Donald Trump is doing with it. What he’s doing with it should absolutely be abolished. And it’s got to be replaced. It’s just got to be wiped away and replaced. Donald Trump has turned them into a secret police. And I do not believe that we want secret police on the streets of our cities and of our country.

So when you say stop the funding, stop your occupations, stop the killing, that is meant to be —what you’re saying is that that amounts to a call to defund and replace ICE.

That’s what I’m saying. I think what they’re doing in the Senate right now, holding up DHS funding, precisely to get a lot of rules and regulations around what’s happening, because people are getting shot in the streets by ICE and CBP, is the right thing to do.

I want to also talk about taxes. You’ve spent $58 million of your own money trying to pass a graduated income tax in 2020 that voters rejected 55 to 45. I know you’re in favor of a wealth tax nationally. You yourself are someone who would fall under said wealth tax. Tell me how you came to supporting an idea of something that would cost you money.

I’m a Democrat. I believe that it is our obligation to have a government that stands up for the middle class, the working class, the most vulnerable. You’ve got to pay for that somehow. And it shouldn’t fall on the backs of the middle class and the working class mostly. It should fall on the backs of the people who can afford it. And so I really believe in a graduated income tax. We have constitutionally in the state of Illinois, a flat tax. I know there are lots of people who like that fact, but mostly they’re the wealthiest people who like that fact because they don’t like the graduated income tax that exists at the federal level either.

So is it about raising revenue or is it more ideological? Were you always someone who was supportive of a wealth tax? Tell me about your kind of journey on that question.

You call it a journey. Listen, I’ve been a Democrat my whole life. I grew up in a household where we were…

There’s a lot of Democrats, particularly wealthy ones, who don’t believe in something like a wealth tax.

I don’t know what to say about that. I can tell you this — that we need…you got to pay for roads. You got to pay for, you know, government. You got to pay for the supports that the most vulnerable need, somehow. And so the question is, who should that burden fall on? People who can’t afford it or people who can?

Fair. You’ve been traveling to New Hampshire. The state has pushed to move Illinois up in the Democratic primary. I recently read James Carville publicly backed you for president in 2028. I know you’re immediately running for a third term for Illinois governor, but I would not be a journalist if I didn’t just directly ask you — are you someone who we should be thinking about as a 2028 presidential candidate?

I’m running for reelection like you just said. Now that is what I’m focused on. I’m obviously flattered that people have talked about me for national office. I, you know, look, I’m the governor of the fifth-largest state in the country. And I’m very proud of that fact. But I’m focused on the accomplishments that we need to make and that we’ve made, in the state of Illinois and for the people of Illinois.

Today, Explained publishes compelling interviews with key figures in politics and culture every Saturday. Subscribe to Vox’s YouTube channel to get them or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Art of the Steal

2026-04-14T17:30:16-04:00

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing from the White House in Washington, DC, on February 6, 2026. | Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

President Donald Trump seemingly cannot let the 2020 election go. Despite winning convincingly in 2024, including, for the first time in his political career, the popular vote, he remains fixated on the idea that he also won four years prior, against former President Joe Biden.

Now, a year into his second term, Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has reportedly dedicated months to finding new “evidence” that 2020 was stolen from him (it was not).

Trump’s continued preoccupation, along with a raid on an Atlanta-area elections office last month, has raised concerns about what Trump could have planned for the 2026 midterms this November. As CNN’s Marshall Cohen told Today, Explained co-host Astead Herndon in a recent episode, Trump’s desire to avoid another defeat could result in a “worst-case scenario”: “He might try to put his thumb on the scales, use government powers, use federal authorities to try to influence the process,” Cohen said.

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

What has Trump been saying about the midterms?

He made a lot of news just a few days ago when he went farther than he’s ever gone before. Trump told a radio host that:

The Republicans should say, “We want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places.” The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.

He said 15 states. He didn’t say which ones, but we can guess. He said that he was talking about the states that have the big “fraud problem,” which presumably is a lot of the states that he lost in 2020, many of them run by Democratic governors. He’s [also] been saying that [elections] should be nationalized. That’s really not constitutional or even practically viable, but it shows you where his mind’s at.

How did Democrats respond to Trump’s claims?

Democrats pretty swiftly, by and large, came out and said that this is crazy and unconstitutional. I was at a conference, the National Association of Secretaries of State, in [Washington,] DC. They do it every year, but the vibes were completely different this year because all of the Democratic secretaries are terrified and strategizing for this potential assault by Trump on the integrity of the midterms.

We spoke to a lot of officials. Some of them didn’t want to tell us what possibilities they were planning on preparing for; they said, I don’t want to give [Trump] any ideas. But they’re very afraid about possible troop deployments, which we’ve seen in California and Chicago. They’re also scared about ICE and [other] immigration enforcement agencies possibly being sent at the last minute when it might be too late to stop, but early enough to cause chaos and possibly intimidate or disenfranchise [voters].

The Republicans we talked to by and large are not afraid. They don’t think Trump’s going to do anything terrible. They applaud his efforts to clean up the voter rolls. They are supporting his efforts to require voter ID. They’re supporting his legislative priorities in terms of requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration.

There might be an air of intimidation that could play into 2026. Is there concern about that and do we know if that’s an explicit strategy from the White House?

When you talk to nonpartisan election experts, folks that are former election administrators, that is what they bring up. [Trump] doesn’t actually have to do all this stuff to make an impact. He can just threaten it because it is scary. People might ask themselves, Is it really worth it to go vote for some senator that I think is a bum or some member of Congress that I might not even remember? Like, What have they done for me lately? Am I going to risk getting detained for them, to vote for them? I could imagine that is going through people’s minds.

Are there other ways that you think Trump could influence or interfere with the midterms?

The Justice Department has sued more than a dozen states for access to their voter rolls — private data belonging to American citizens that the states are in charge of. The feds think that they have the power to access it, but so far they’ve been losing. There have been at least two cases — one in California, one in Oregon — where federal judges have rejected those attempts by the DOJ to get that data and the Democratic officials in those states say, we are not giving you this data.

The Republican officials that we’ve talked to in the states have said, We’re doing a very good job already keeping a very clean voter roll. We’ve purged a lot of people. They’re trying to make the case politely to the administration that we love the idea of what you’re doing, but please let us do it.

DOJ is not just in court. They have really ratcheted things up. A few weeks ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi made waves when she sent a letter to officials in Minnesota, basically offering a quid pro quo that the administration would pull back ICE from Minnesota in exchange for the voter rolls from Minnesota, which most election officials that we spoke to and nonpartisan experts say is bananas, like a hostage [threat]. The Minnesota secretary of state called it a “ransom note.”

How legitimate do you think the concern that Donald Trump will steal the midterms is?

Everyone should take this seriously, not because people should be conspiracy theorists, but because we’ve lived through this before.

I wouldn’t have necessarily said this in 2017, in the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, but we have the benefit of 10 years’ [experience]. Donald Trump claimed the Iowa caucuses were rigged when he lost to Ted Cruz in 2016. He claimed that the popular vote was rigged against him when he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, also in 2016. He tried to overturn the 2020 election, which led to a violent insurrection.

That being said, the nonpartisan experts in election administration say that despite all this noise, despite all the fears, despite what you’ve been told that our system is garbage, it’s actually quite resilient. There are many safeguards. There are hardworking, Democratic and Republican officials and nonpartisan staff that run these elections. There are judges and courts that take this seriously as a firewall when people do try to get involved with some funny business, and that you should rest assured that your vote will be counted and will be counted fairly, despite all the drama.

Just how healthy is Donald Trump, really?

2026-02-06T15:53:57-05:00

A bruise can be seen on the back of President Donald Trump's left hand at the World Economic Forum on January 22, 2026 in Davos, Switzerland. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Donald Trump has been on the world stage for more than a decade now, during which he has given his fair share of rambling speeches — although he claims it’s a “brilliant” way of speaking. But is the rambling getting worse?

Since Trump returned to office a year ago, the internet has gone back and forth on whether the 45th and 47th president is healthy. The rambling paired with a mysterious bruise on his hand and swollen ankles has people wondering: Is Trump okay?

New York magazine’s Ben Terris, who recently wrote about Trump’s health, told Today, Explained co-host Astead Herndon that the answer was quite complicated.

What was the catalyst for this piece?

We’ve all been watching him for years now, but especially in the last year, there’s been more questions about him: his health, the bruising on his hands, the swollen cankles, the falling asleep in meetings.

Before sitting down with him, I’d been reading some books by members of his family. I talked to his niece, Mary Trump. Mary Trump says sometimes when she looks at Donald Trump speaking in the public square, she sees flashes of her grandfather when he had Alzheimer’s. I don’t know if he has it or not, but I wanted to ask him about it.

He started saying, “My father was so healthy; he had no problems. His heart couldn’t be stopped.” “He did have one problem though,” Trump told me. And he said, “Late in life, he had, what’s the word for it?” And he pointed to his head. And Caroline Levitt, the press secretary sitting next to me, she kind of rescued him in that moment and said, “Alzheimer’s.” And he said, “Yeah, yeah, he had an Alzheimer’s thing. Well, well, I don’t have it.”

What are the concerns with Trump’s health that you uncovered?

The story I set out to write about was to figure out whether he is healthy or not, and it kind of ended up being a story about whether the government is healthy or not. There’s kind of an infection that has spread throughout Trump’s inner circle where everybody who talks about him talks about him in the craziest, most North Korean-type, dear-leader way.

Instead of just saying he’s healthy for an almost 80-year-old, that he’s slowing down a little bit, but he’s certainly healthy enough to be president, people talk about him in these terms that are just completely outrageous: superhuman, the healthiest man alive. He told me he was healthier than he was 40 years ago.

The guy doesn’t exercise; he doesn’t eat well. He drinks enough Diet Coke to fill a football stadium. And you just can’t quite trust the people around him. And I felt like the story I published said a lot about Trump’s America, not just Trump’s health.

I want to ask about the bruised hand. Did you get any answers on what that is coming from or the level of severity?

When I got to the Oval Office for my interview, we shook hands. He had a really soft, warm hand, which was surprising, but on the back it was very dry. [He had] a big kind of rhino hide — like bruise on the back. I asked him about it, and what he claims is that he’s on an aspirin regimen, on a much higher dose than even his doctors want him to be on. He says he’s on aspirin because he wants thin blood. And because he takes so much aspirin, he bruises very easily.

The doctors confirmed this is what’s going on. He says, because he bruises easily and because he shakes just a ton of hands, he’s always bruising.

I’m curious about some of the logistics and how open they were to this discussion of his health.

I went into the White House early in my process and I was transparent about what I wanted to write about. I said, look, there’s a big question about the president’s health. Lots of people think they have the answer. I want to clarify the picture, and there’s not a lot of people who really know the answer. There’s Donald Trump; there’s his inner circle; there’s his doctors — and they made a lot of people available.

It was not clear I was going to get to talk to Donald Trump, but before I talked to him, they made time for me to go to the White House and sit down with Marco Rubio. He’s got 40 jobs, and he took time out of his busy day to sit with me in Caroline Levitt’s office and talk to me about how the president was, quote, “too healthy.”

He was telling these stories [that were so embarrassing] that he was debasing himself in a way. “When I ride on Air Force One, I need to take a nap, and so I hide in a blanket. I wrap myself like a mummy covering my head and I do that because I know that at some point on the flight, [Trump’s] going to emerge from the cabin and start prowling the hallways to see who is awake. I want him to think it’s a staffer who fell asleep. I don’t want him to see his secretary of state sleeping on a couch and think, Oh, this guy is weak.”

What did his doctors tell you about his health?

When I showed up to the Oval Office, they were holding pieces of paper that said “Talking Points” on the top of it. So they had things they wanted to get through. They told me that he was as healthy as he says he is. One of them said that they did an EKG of his heart, and he appears to be a 64-year-old or a 65-year-old, according to the AI data that they found. At the end of my interview, Caroline Levitt turns to one of the doctors and says, “oh, you worked for the Obamas, didn’t you?” So I asked the doctor, well, who’s healthier? President Obama? Or President Trump? And Trump is sitting right there staring across the desk at the doctors making direct eye contact. And without any hesitation, the doctor says, “Oh, President Trump.”

Did you experience any skittishness when it came to reporting on Trump?

I think the fact that we went through the Biden era has made reporting on this topic easier in a way. It’s still difficult because you can’t get to the bottom of it, but it made people more willing to talk, maybe?

[The Biden era] made journalists more willing to go for these stories [and] for editors to assign them, because we went through this period of time with Biden where he aged in front of all of our eyes and people were too skittish in some ways to write about it.

Does that comparison feel fair?

I think it’s definitely fair to draw some comparisons if for no other reason than they’re both old. Donald Trump is about to be 80 years old. Just by dint of that fact, it’s a worthwhile story to cover.

One reason I think that Trump is able to “get away” with some things that could be signs of aging is that they could also just be signs of Donald Trump being Donald Trump. He has been a chaotic figure for a long time. He’s got this rambling way of talking. He says unhinged, outrageous stuff. He did that 15 years ago. He does that now. Are there differences in the way that he communicates between now and then? Sure, of course. But it’s not as stark as if and when Biden starts to show signs of deteriorating. Because Biden was such a serious guy who kind of spoke in your traditional politician way, as soon as there was slippage, you could notice it a lot easier.

I want to ask about something that does seem similar: The president and their aides basically kept telling you not to believe your own eyes. In this instance, you have Trump dozing off in meetings and aides saying, oh, that was just his thinking pose.

One thing that did not make it into the story — I’ll talk about it with you for the first time. This is a little exclusive.

I did talk to some people from Biden’s White House for this story. They didn’t want to put their name out there, obviously, but one person was telling me that watching this happen did kind of feel similar to them. I have a quote [about Biden’s health issues] in front of me here I can read, which is: “I think there’s a world where we denied it so much that there was a delta between what people were seeing and hearing, and that led to distrust. I think that denial of the thing people are seeing — you just can’t get away with that anymore. I think they’re making the same kind of mistake in backing themselves into the same kind of corner that we were in.”

Part of Trump’s broader success and appeal is that he can get his followers to believe his own version of reality. Do you think this strategy on this issue of his health is actually working for him?

I think it’s like a lot of issues for Trump these days: He’s got a base of support that’s going to believe everything, and then there’s this group between his supporters and his detractors who are going to be less convinced by this.

Donald Trump does seem to be losing his ability to control his story. His poll numbers are not what he wants them to be. The midterms are trending in the wrong direction. The immigration story is not even going the way he wants to go, and that was kind of a top issue for him.

The way that he tries to control the narrative, so to speak, of his health is sort of akin to how he’s trying to control everything, and I just feel like he’s sort of losing some of that control. This happens to presidents; this is why they become lame ducks. It’s just happening a little earlier for Trump than is traditional for a president. He’s been referred to as a lame duck by pundits already, and that doesn’t normally happen until the third year of a presidency.