MAHA is breaking up with Trump. Now what? |
MAHA is breaking up with Trump. Now what?
A coalition of wellness-conscious activists is changing course, with big implications for 2028.
Donald Trump is not exactly a health influencer: The 47th president famously loves fast food and Diet Coke, and reportedly eschews both sleep and exercise.
But Trump’s political power comes in part from a group of exceedingly health-conscious Americans. Supporters of the Make America Healthy Again movement, led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., helped propel Trump to a second term in the White House.
Trump’s relationship with MAHA was one of the many unusual alliances that have helped his version of the Republican Party consolidate power over the past 11 years. Well-known for his anti-vaccine activism, Kennedy had amassed a following among voters who were suspicious of mainstream medicine and concerned about their children’s health, and who came to see Trump as a weapon against the institutions they’d lost trust in. Trump did not seem to care much about any of this, but he wanted MAHA votes and promised to let Kennedy “go wild on health” as part of his administration.
Activists with the Make America Healthy Again movement are disappointed in the Trump administration.
They’re starting to throw their weight behind their own candidates, like Zach Lahn in Iowa.
If MAHA voters are really up for grabs, they could be a major political force in 2028.
But now, the MAGA-MAHA alliance is fraying. In recent months, multiple high-profile MAHA influencers have publicly vented their frustration with the Trump administration, which they feel has repeatedly let them down. A March Politico poll showed that a plurality of MAHA supporters — and of Trump’s own 2024 voters — believe the president has not done enough to “make America healthy again.” And in at least one case, the schism showed up in election results: Trump’s pick for governor of Iowa, Rep. Randy Feenstra, lost his primary earlier this month to Zach Lahn, a businessman and farmer endorsed by key MAHA figures.
“It was our votes from MAHA and Kennedy that brought Trump into power, and so we definitely feel that they owe us what they promised,” MAHA influencer Kelly Ryerson told me. “We expect more than what’s happened.”
Many MAHA voters were former Democrats, and Trump’s ability to bring them into the MAGA fold has been hugely important to the GOP. If those voters are now up for grabs, their defection could have big implications in 2028.
But whether the Democratic Party can capitalize on this and reclaim the MAHA voter base is a much harder question. Any candidate who wants to appeal to MAHA will have to reckon with the fact that its supporters are in some way defined by their mistrust of institutions. While Republicans have scored points with their base by questioning medical authorities in the wake of Covid lockdowns, Democrats typically hew close to mainstream scientific expertise — and many of their voters like it that way.
The slippery appeal of RFK Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement
Meanwhile, MAHA supporters’ history of vaccine skepticism is likely to make compromise with Democrats, and even some Republicans, extraordinarily difficult. And if a disruptor like Trump was unwilling to make the wholesale changes to American food, medicine, and agriculture that MAHA activists wanted, it’s even less clear that Democrats can do it.
But if MAHA reunites behind another candidate, Republican or Democrat, the consequences for American politics and health policy could be sweeping. Observers both inside and outside the MAHA coalition say a seismic change is coming as a new group of swing voters begins to reevaluate its loyalties. MAHA today is more than just an arm of MAGA, its supporters say. It’s a political force in its own right, one that both parties have opportunities to attract — if candidates know how to harness them.
The uneasy alliance between MAHA and MAGA
To predict where MAHA is going – and why it has struggled to find a real home in either party – it helps to understand where it began. Starting in the early 2000s, Kennedy became a major celebrity face of the anti-vaccination movement, advancing the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. His influence exploded........