Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and the American gerontocracy

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Hi, friends, and good afternoon — I’m delighted to be coming to you, for the very first time, at this far more civilized and adequately caffeinated hour.

As I previewed here on Friday, Today, Explained has undergone a little makeover: We’re now shipping this newsletter on weekday afternoons. And we’ve tweaked the format to make it more useful, entertaining and elucidating, with a renewed focus on exploring the fascinating, big ideas and hidden forces that drive the news cycle.

Every afternoon, my pal Cameron or I will catch you up on the two to three big stories you need to know to feel grounded and informed about the day. Then we’ll go deeper on one thread from one story: a fascinating bit of related science, an economic concept that might change the way you think, or the little-known context behind a pop culture fad that suddenly and surprisingly explains everything.

My goal here isn’t to help you “keep up” with the news — as if the news were some terrible, never-ending treadmill you could fly off the back of — but to find better, smarter, more durable ways to think about the fast-moving infopocalypse that is our inescapable reality now.

Speaking of inescapable realities: What better place to start, really, than with an…unexpected death? South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham died on Saturday of likely complications from heart disease, shortly after traveling from Ukraine back to the US.

Graham was 71 years old, and — at the risk of sounding ever-so-slightly macabre — no one had the late senator on their Congressional death watch bingo card. A number of other high-profile national politicians are in visibly poor health: Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, for instance, who on Sunday finally explained that his mysterious, weeks-long hospitalization followed a minor fall. Or President Donald Trump himself, who often appears in public with visible bruising on his hands, and who is maybe/probably receiving a high-powered, experimental obesity drug to treat pulmonary hypertension.

The White House strenuously disclaims all speculation about Trump’s health, of course. But in America’s so-called gerontocracy, health problems are something of an occupational hazard.

You’re not imagining it: Congress has never been this old. In January 2025, the median age for a sitting US senator was 64.7 — up more than a decade from 40 years ago.

The simplest explanation is basic demographics: America is getting older as a whole.

But there’s also another, more troubling reason for Congress’s demographic shift. Over the past century, growing political polarization and partisan gerrymandering have made congressional elections far less competitive.

As a result, many races are essentially decided by the primaries, where older, incumbent candidates have huge advantages: More voters recognize their names and more donors contribute to their reelection funds, for instance. Despite some high-profile upsets — like the recent triumph of political newcomer Melat Kiros in Colorado — only a handful of incumbents lose their primaries each cycle.

Critics have floated a number of interesting remedies, including term and age limits for federal lawmakers. Lots of Americans say they’d support those types of reforms. But the problem with the gerontocracy isn’t actually lawmakers’ ages — after all, older people benefit from a lifetime of accrued experience! — but the sense that voters don’t really have the opportunity to elect younger candidates, even if that’s their preference.

Changing that would require sweeping structural reforms that help newcomers challenge incumbent politicians and that make it more possible for either party to win a given district. Unfortunately, that’s not at all the direction the US is moving in.

➨ Keeping up with friends is hard. A weekly photo dump can help. Vox’s Allie Volpe observes this little digital ritual in her own group chat. Every Friday, her friends share a handful of casual, lo-fi photos from the preceding week to keep up with the small stuff in each other’s lives. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s actually in keeping with recent research about the most effective ways to nurture friendships online.