Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and the American gerontocracy

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Hello, friends, and good afternoon – I am delighted to come to you, for the first time ever, at this most civilized and well-caffeinated hour.

As I saw here on Friday, Today, It’s Explained slightly revised: We now deliver this newsletter on weekday afternoons. And we’ve changed the format to make it more useful, entertaining and informative, with a renewed focus on exploring the fascinating, big ideas and hidden forces that drive the news cycle.

Every afternoon, my friend Cameron or I will catch you up on two to three top stories you need to know so you can feel grounded and informed about the day. Then we’ll delve deeper into one thread from one story: an interesting related science, an economic concept that can change the way you think, or a little-known context behind a pop culture trend that suddenly and surprisingly explains everything.

My goal here is not to help you “keep up” with information – as if information is a scary, never-ending treadmill that you can jump off of – but to find better, smarter, and more sustainable ways to think about the fast-moving infopocalypse that is our now inescapable reality.

Speaking of inevitable reality: What better place to start, really, than with…unexpected death? South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham he died on saturday of possible complications of heart disease, shortly after traveling from Ukraine back to the United States.

Graham was 71, and — at the risk of sounding a little macabre — no one had the late senator on their Congressional death-hour bingo card. A number of other prominent national politicians it is in apparent ill health: Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, for example, who on Sunday he finally explained that his miraculous hospitalization for several weeks followed a slight fall. Or President Donald Trump himself, who often appears in public with visible bruises in his hands, and who maybe/probably receive a highly potent, experimental obesity drug to treat pulmonary hypertension.

The White House vehemently denied All rumors about Trump’s health, of course. But in what is known as the American gerontocracy, health problems are a risk at work.

You can’t imagine: Congress has never this old man. In January 2025, the average age of a sitting U.S. senator was 64.7 — up more than a decade from 40 years ago.

The simplest explanation is basic demographics: America is aging overall.

But there is also another, more troubling reason to the changing demographics of Congress. Over the past century, increasing political polarization and partisanship have made parliamentary elections far less competitive.

As a result, many races are essentially decided by primaries, where big, incumbent candidates have a big advantage: More voters recognize their names and more donors contribute to their re-election funds, for example. Despite high-profile setbacks – like the recent victory of political guest Melat Kiros in Colorado – only a handful of incumbents lose their primaries every cycle.

Critics have pointed to several interesting solutions, including term and age limits for federal lawmakers. Most Americans say they would support those kinds of reforms. But the problem with democracy is not the age of the legislators – after all, the elderly benefit from increased life experience! – but the feeling that voters do not have the opportunity to choose young candidates, even if that is their preference.

To change that it would require major structural reforms that will help new challengers to politicians in power and that make it more possible for any party to win a certain district. Unfortunately, it is it’s not a trend at all The United States enters.

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