Today, Explained - The Great American Road Trip?

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

The Secretary of Transportation took a sponsored road trip across the US with his wife and nine kids. Now if only Boeing could pay for YOUR family's summer vacation. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru and Peter Balonon-Rosen, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Bridger Dunnagan, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy speaking during a Great American Road Trip Expo hosted by the Department of Transportation. Photo by Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, and his wife, Rachel, are going on a road trip with all nine of their kids. Avita, Xavier, Jack, Lucia Belen, John Paul, Paloma, Maria Victoria, Margarita, Patrick Miguel, and Valentina. And they would like to bring you along with them. What a beautiful family. Duffy hails from reality TV, so of course, they're making a YouTube series out of it. You can watch the trailer now. Parts of it look like AI, but it's mostly real. We're encouraging everyone to go take a road trip to celebrate America's 250th birthday.

They meet American icons. Oh, my young friend. What an absolute pleasure. They meet Kid Rock. I haven't seen everything there is to see. There's drama. What's going on here? He's in the hospital.

They put an IV in her. Enough of the sad stuff, though. It's going to be fun. But if you're asking, wait, did I, the American taxpayer, pay for our secretary of transportation to go on a road trip with his family? You didn't.

But on today, explained from Box, you might not like who did. We did it. Support for this show, comes from deal. Let's be honest, most HR platforms are stitched together. That's why AI barely helps. Deals different. It's a single AI native system for HR, IT, and payroll built from the ground up. That's why AI inside deal can actually run real work, onboarding, compliance, payroll, approvals, all under your rules, whether you're five people or 50,000. Deal scales with you. See it in action at deal.

slash audio. That's d-e-e-e-el.com slash audio. Support for the show comes from Hostinger. Ever had an idea for a business or side hustle, but never actually launched it? With Hostinger, you can turn that idea into something real in minutes instead of weeks. Hostinger is an all-in-one platform that brings everything into one place, your domain, website, email marketing, AI tools, and AI agents. You can create websites, online stores, and custom apps with simple prompts.

Then, use AI agents to automate tedious tasks and grow your business. Go to Hostinger.com slash Vox to bring your idea online for under $3 a month. Plus, get an extra 20% off with promo code Vox. I wore my boots that John Rich gave me. They're very sexy. Today explained, Sean Ramos for I'm here to tell you about Sean Duffy, or as we call him in my house, other Sean, Will Gottzaken, wrote about him for the Atlantic. we started with the most important question.

Can you name all of his children? I can't. He's got nine of them. Why is Sean Duffy taking his nine children and his wife on a road trip across the country for YouTube? Ostensibly, it's to celebrate America's 250th birthday. When I reached out to the Department of Transportation about this, they were adamant that it was part of Duffy's official responsibilities here.

It makes a kind of sense for him to promote the birthday in this way, since he has this background in reality TV. That's how he met his wife. Sean blurts with me all the time. Part of me thinks she likes me. I still have this physical attraction, and I want to have this relationship with it. They were on the real world,

the quintessential 90s reality show. This is the true story. Whatever. A seven strangers. And this thing is pitched as a kind of reality show, too. Welcome to Montana. The Duffies, they've got tons of kids. I think they have like 11 kids.

Nine. Nine or 11 something. Is there a difference? The Duffy family and their nine kids, they go across the country. You're excited about going at the Rocky Steps? Oh, I am. I am. They filmed over seven months, and they're there to see the sites and appreciate American landmarks.

How did you live in Boston? You don't know any, like, fun things to do in Boston. I believe in your piece, you link to an attempt over at Rolling Stone to tally the cost of Sean Duffy's road trip that he didn't pay for. Do you recall how much this would cost an average American? Just in terms of gas alone. Right. In gas alone, Rolling Stone is saying that his particular route that he took with his family would cost $1,300 in gas money. And if you have like nine kids as he does and you have to get what, like three hotel rooms every time you stop, we're talking about several grand to take this trip that he took and didn't pay for that. Yeah, that's a lot of like, I don't know, string cheese to whatever people eat in the backseat of their cars these days.

So I think this reality show has chafed for a couple reasons. The first is the price of gas. Prices are rising as the Iran war creates oil supply shocks. The average price for a gallon of regular topping $4.50. That's about $1.30 higher than last Memorial Day. You have to plan your excursions now in advance. Americans might see this and say, I want to take a road trip, but it's too expensive.

They can't, which is largely to do with the Iran War. And the energy crisis that has kind of resulted from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. That is, for many Americans, directly attributable to a decision made by this administration. One of the things that I think Duffy had said when he was promoting this on Fox and Friends is that road trips can fit into any kind of budget. You could go for two hours. You could drive for two days. You could do a day trip. It fits any budget.

But also, he's advertising this, like, grand experience. And so I think the timing issue kind of chafes for a lot of people. The second issue is the funding aspect of this. It was funded by a nonprofit called The Great American Road Trip. This organization was funded by a group of transportation industry companies that Duffy oversees, which included Boeing, which included Toyota, United Airlines, Royal Caribbean, among others. And in the four-minute trailer for this thing, you can see a giant Toyota logo. You can see a cruise ship. Politico got a hold of the pitch deck for the nonprofit, which explicitly pincolnship.

pitched potential donors on the perks that they might receive if they gave a certain amount of money. So, like, for example, if you give a million dollars, you're a platinum partner. If you give $500,000, you're a gold partner. Let me actually read it out direct. Let me find the quote because it's quite explicit. Platinum partners get logo placement in up to 10 produced video features, opportunity for strategically placed speaking roles within program segments aligned with the narrative and production plan, branding across media placements. Stuff like that, right? There's, um, A kind of explicit, like, this will be given to you if you give us X amount of money.

And so part of the controversy around this show is that it's being indirectly funded by companies that Duffy oversees. And when companies do things that directly or indirectly benefit their regulator, there are questions as to why they're doing them. But I guess there's two ways of looking at this, right? It's like, one is this is wildly inappropriate and unnecessary. And the other is like, well, if they were going to do this anyway, better Toyota foot the bill than like me? Where did people land when this trailer dropped and so clearly was brought to you by Toyota? On the one hand, if it's work, which the Department of Transportation is saying that it was, then the American taxpayer should fund it. But right, as you're saying Duffy and the department are saying, don't worry, guys, this wasn't funded by the American.

American taxpayer. But in fact, that's why they should worry. You know, like, RFK has a podcast, which is presumably funded by the American taxpayer. We're paying for an RFK podcast. Oh, you didn't know about this? Hey, everybody. I'm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. You're HHS secretary. Welcome to the Secretary Kennedy podcast. What are the interesting ways that this administration tends to pitch itself is like through the lens of the showman, right? Like, there's a kind of media element to any presidential administration, but of course to an administration with a showman. and really in the top job. And Duffy, you know, in some ways, a reality show

around a Great American road trip makes a lot of sense, right? Like Duffy and his wife have this background in TV. Duffy's a charismatic guy. His kids seem great. You know, road trips are great. It should work. But right, the questions around the funding and around the timing are just making it a little bit hard

to swallow for a lot of people. It is an embarrassment. A seven-month road trip for the Secretary of Transportation where we're paying his salary? He's going to do some work. He's on a vacation that's filmed and funded by Boeing and Toyota, which allegedly gave a million dollars a piece for them to drive around. Is it legal for Sean Duffy to pay for his family to go on a road trip in a Toyota,

on a cruise ship that's presumably sponsoring said road trip from a vehicle manufacturer that sponsoring said road trip? Is this all above board in terms of, I don't know, government ethics, government rules, regulations? Let me put it this way. The question of whether it's legal is, I think, less relevant than this sort of like perennial blurring of the line that happens in this administration

between kind of public and private funding. This is like the road trip version of the ballroom. Exactly, right. Trump kind of set the tone for this. Executive branch employees are not supposed to accept gifts from companies they oversee. Duffy is not directly accepting a gift, from companies he oversees.

But he's accepting a gift through a pass-through nonprofit. So there's a question as to whether it violates those rules. I genuinely don't know whether it does, but certainly people are raising the alarm about that. Is part of the controversy also that he was doing this

instead of like, I don't know, his job? Well, that's the other aspect of this, right? Is that, like, over the past year, Duffy has been the face of several huge PR fiascos in the American transportation industry. Two government shutdowns. As you all know, we're going through a shutdown right now, and in that shutdown, government employees don't get paid.

Both of which led to widespread chaos at American airports. Facilities are low staff, which means we have significant delays. Huge cutbacks on TSA. They're doing their job, right? They're screening all the necessary people, but it's just taking a longer period of time. You had huge lines. The reasons why we have such long lines is when we have, you know, more TSA agents that call out than previous, you know,

issues with flight controllers. The school that trains are air traffic controllers in Oklahoma City shut down and didn't ramp up fast enough. You had a fatal crash. When Americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at their destination. And Duffy was the face of all this.

He was the one taking the fall for it as the top guy. He could sort of use the good press, as I guess what I'm trying to say. And yet, he's not attracting the kind of good press with this that I think maybe he thought he might. Like he was also filming this promo video at the same time as these shutdowns were going on, at the same time that airports were in crisis.

Let's just, I don't know, give everyone here the benefit of the doubt for a second. And I don't know, assume that this was well-intentioned and above board. What are we supposed to take away from this? He pitched it as like a civic experience. And he's right to say that road trips are or can be a civic experience. You see parts of the country that you wouldn't otherwise see. You get to experience this country's great diversity. You know, even like eating at a diner with your kids.

Like, I don't know. Like it can be a family experience, which I know is part of how he's pitched it to. What we're supposed to be getting is I think both sort of like an ad for what makes this country great. The places that make it great, the people that make it great. Duffy, I think also on Twitter has said, The radical miserable left has noticed our awesome great American road trip trailer, dot, dot, dot. And they hate it. It's too wholesome. It's too patriotic. It's too joyful. And then, in a different tweet, he said,

Taking a road trip in America is a civic experience. For decades, our kids have been told they should be ashamed of our country and its founders. It's time to push back on those Marxist narratives. What? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sean, fellow Sean here. everyone knows that having a family and taking a road trip is a part of the American experience. Mark's sister not.

Who needed a reminder that you can get in your car and take a road trip? If anything, people can't do it because we're at war with Iran. Right. It's like road trips are great, as you're saying. Like, no one is anti-roadtrip. Where is the anti-roadtrip coalition? I want to see the anti-road trip coalition. It's just that, like, people aren't necessarily as able to take a road trip as they might

ordinarily be. How is it? Tell me about your, I want to hear about your road trip experience. I don't have a car because I'm a Marxist. Right, you're definitionally a Marxist if you don't have a car. I mean, listen, cars are expensive. That's unreal. The trailer for Sean's Great American Road Trip suggests that we Americans should be hitting

our world-class national parks this summer. But Sean's Great American plane boss has been slashing the budgets at said parks. We're going to ask how they're doing in light of the cuts when today explained is back. Support for the show comes from Upwork. Forget about downwork because there are lots of clever ways businesses speed up their growth. Sometimes Upwork says that just means they delegate smarter. Upwork can help you delegate smarter by bringing in expert freelance help fast. You can delegate and keep it moving.

Upwork is a one-stop platform to find hire and pay expert freelancers. You can find specialized talent across web and software development, data, analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. You can browse profiles, review past work, and get help scoping the role. That way, you can hire with confidence. Upwork says they also have Business Plus, which gives you access to the top 1% of talent on their platform. With AI-powered shortlisting, they say you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. Impressive. You can go to upwork.com right now and post your job for free.

That's upwork.com to connect with top talent, ready to help your business grow. That's upw-o-rk.com. Support for the show comes from Shopify. Starting something new, like a brand new business isn't just difficult. It can be really intimidating. You're pouring time and energy and is something that might not work. But on the other hand, what if it does work out? Ain't that what it's all about?

What if you find your instincts were right all along? Shopify says they want to help you get there. They say that the comments platform powering millions of business. businesses worldwide and nearly 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. from established brands like Mattel and Heinz to companies just getting started. They say their design tools make it easy to build the exact online presence you're imagining with hundreds of ready-to-use templates to choose from. And with built-in marketing tools, they say you can create full email and social campaigns

in just a few clicks so you can reach your customers wherever they are. You can turn those what-ifs into FABAMB! With Shopify today, you can sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com. slash explained. You can go to shopvite.com slash explained. That's shopify.com.com. slash explained. Support for today, explain comes from Delete me. Delete me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Perhaps you're a public figure. Perhaps you're a private citizen. The reality is that these days we're all susceptible. But delete me can help protect your

personal privacy and the privacy of your business from doxing attacks before sensitive information can be exploited. Colleague Claire White deleted herself. I joined Delete Me a little over a year ago, and I haven't had to lift a finger since. They've continued to scrub the internet for unsafe places where my information is, remove it for me, and make calls where they might deem something unsafe or even just a little bit fishy. Last year, the New York Times wire cutter named Delete Me their top pick for data removal services.

Now might be the time for you. You can take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. out a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to jointhleetme.com slash today. Use the promo code today at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to join's deleteme.com slash today and enter the code today at checkout. That's joined delete me.com slash today code today. You're listening to Today explained. Well, I remember I wasn't a kid who took a lot of road trips to parks with my family in a wagon and a station wagon, but I remember distinctly the first time I went to a national park. I did a road trip

from northern Minnesota to Big Bend National Park when I was a geology major in college. It was the first time I had seen that part of the country, and I was astounded by the beauty of Big Bend and the ability to see into Mexico, which I thought was amazing, having grown up very far from Mexico. So it was a game changer, and we had little havelinas running through our campsite. And just I learned a lot about the geology of the park, and that park is famous for its geology, so it was a real eye-opener. Stephanie Pearson's trip to Big Bend inspired her to become a journalist. She's been writing for Outside Magazine for decades and has authored two books on our national parks.

We asked her how the parks are doing in light of big cuts from the Trump administration. Well, 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 job. have lost their jobs. That's more than 4,000 positions. You're proposing a 38% cut to parks facilities, operation and maintenance. These are the road crews, things like that, a 35% cut for support staff and over 50% of funding for resource stewardship. To me, that is just a recipe for disaster.

When you lose a quarter of your park staff, what do you end up losing? Well, I think a lot of the public-facing people will still be there. So people may not necessarily notice it. They're still going to be greeted at visitor kiosks. They're still going to have information people. But where they're really diminishing is in, say, scientists who are biologists who are studying the flora and the fauna or the wildlife. I mean, people who are critical pieces of these parks who are. trying to, you know, balance visitation with wildlife, for example.

The visitor experience is what most people are focusing on, but frankly, I'm much more worried about the condition of the resources, both natural and cultural, and the condition of the infrastructure, and it's not sustainable. If you're cutting a third of the budget, you're effectively dismantling the protections of this place. You're dismantling a lot of the National Park Service. Also, infrastructure people, people who are taking care of the parks and maintaining them. The workforces stretched so thin this season that nearly all staffers, including scientists, are required to take turns checking people in and cleaning campground toilets.

Trails are going to have more litter. The trash cans will be emptied less frequently. You know, these things feel like small things if you talk about them individually. In aggregate is the fracturing of the foundation of the National Park System that is entrusted with the democratic ideals of our country. It's amazing what the National Park Service staff is continuing to do. And 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 got to ask before you give them a hug.

Yeah, exactly. You don't want to make their lives even worse. Yeah, I'm from the Midwest. I know that's, yeah, that's probably bad advice. But I think their jobs are really hard right now. But for example, Yosemite National Park, I think the first weekend of May, it took an hour and a half to get. get to the entrance to the park for people. And so then when they got in the park, what is also happening is they've lifted all the reservation systems in some of these iconic parks, Yosemite being one of them, Glacier National Park being another one.

Some parks will rely on real-time traffic controls, parking limits, and shuttle systems instead of reservations. Advocacy groups warn that the change could strain staff and damage park resources. And critics worry this summer could become pretty chaotic. Park officials say they're trying their best to manage the crowd with more traffic control and shuttles. There are parks that are in the system that are a lot less visited. But for these iconic parks where everyone seems to want to go all the time, there's going to be a lot of people and a lot of people who want to see the same things that you do. So just come prepared or maybe go in the fall.

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 them before they're trashed. Well, 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. It almost makes me tearful. It does make me tearful. I am a proponent of understanding our American history because there's so much to offer through these parks and you're going to gain some understanding when you visit ancestral Pueblo and land in New Mexico,

or you see the geology of Big Bend National Park. So I just, yeah, I am really hopeful that people understand the value of these places and really use their voices to, you know, like in Big Big National Park right now, I mean, that's a perfect example. People are rallying around the fact that they're writing a, 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. Oh my gosh. Is this place real? I feel like I keep asking myself that question. Micah Meyer has been to every single National Park in America. The guys are loading up the boat so we can head about 12 to 15 miles. to the border of Yukon-Charlie River's National Preserve. We asked him on to tell you about some of the most underrated destinations our country has to offer. Here we go. Around the Big Bend. The Northwest. One of my favorites in the Northwest is the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

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, and it's just one of the most otherworldly places I've seen up there. The Southwest. For the Southwest, I would not go to Sawaro National Park, but if you go a few more hours away to Oregon Pipe Cactus National Monument, the cactuses are way cooler looking. There's way more epic hikes. There's way more epic vistas and views.

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's an island off the island of St. Croix, which is called Buck Island Reef National Monument. And 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. And 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. The Midwest. Through the Twin Cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul, there is a 72-mile river corridor called the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, and it is 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 on a daily run every day. And I often listen to your podcast, Sean. Get out of town! Oh, my gosh. The North. East. So Acadia is a really popular one, but really close to there, 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. And 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. And it's this super cool experience just as a day-tripper to get to meet the center of Maine. And you can actually see people finishing their months-long trek. And it's this super cool experience just as a day tripper to get to meet these folks, to talk to them.

You usually smell them before you see them because they haven't showered in so long. But 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. And his 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. Behind me in Dinosaur National Monument, you see some of the most diverse and expansive views of my entire journey so far. But because it's a national monument and not a capital N, capital P, national park, most people haven't heard of this site.

Like 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 capital and capital Pete parks. They don't realize that it's over 400 sites. And so Dinosaur National Monument only gets 7% 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 system has to offer all in one less visited sites where you, for example, can touch a dinosaur bone if you would like, Sean. I would like, Micah. I would like. I think too often we feel like we have to take a flight out west or go somewhere far-flung to experience an amazing piece of nature.

But every single state and territory in America has at least one national park service site. So before you do anything else this summer, go visit your local in-state or in-terrary parks, and then think about the far places that you have to pay a bunch of gas to get to. Mike Amier, today explained listener, Patriot. Stephanie Pearson, who you heard from earlier, is the author of 100 Great American Parks and 100 Hikes of a Lifetime USA. Find them wherever you find your books. And even earlier in the show, you heard from Will Gatsaken.

He's a staff writer at The Atlantic. He also writes their daily newsletter, The Atlantic Daily, check it out. Ariana Spurro and Peter Ballin-on-Rosen made the show today with help from Al-Assadi, David Tatteshore, Bridger Dunnigan, and Gabriel Dunnettov. Park Life. Support for the program today comes from Vanguard to all the financial advisors listening. Vanguard wants you to listen up. Finding real value and fixed income isn't easy.

The bond market is enormous, as you know, complicated, as you suspect, and in a lot of cases, not especially transparent. Hmm. Plenty of firms will hand you a few headline grabbing funds and leave it at that, but Vanguard says they take a different approach. Vanguard says their bond offerings are built with institutional quality standards in mind, and for them that's more than just marketing language. It means giving advisors access to a deep lineup of high-quality products, including more than 80 bond funds managed by a global team of over 200 sector specialists,

analysts, and traders. So, if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and also year out, Vanguard says you can go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com slash audio. That's vanguard.com slash audio. All investing is subject to risk people, Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor.