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.
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 during the Covid era, when skepticism of vaccine and mask mandates activated a new population, frustrated by what many saw as excessive government control, that found resonance in RFK Jr.’s message. When he ran for president in 2024, he was able to unite a loose group of influencers and activists, many of them moms, under the MAHA banner.
Their ideas were wide-ranging. Many early MAHA supporters shared his vaccine skepticism, with some saying that vaccines had harmed their children. (While severe side effects from vaccines can happen, research shows that they are rare.)
Over time, however, more Americans joined the MAHA fold over concerns about additives and pesticides in food and water. Democratic pollster Celinda Lake calls this second group “organic moms.”
When Kennedy endorsed Donald Trump in August 2024, some of his supporters went all-in on MAGA. Trump got access to a new constituency of engaged, organized, and extremely online female voters. Their support was a boon to a candidate accused of sexual assault who was responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade, and who was, once again, running against a woman. When Trump won, MAHA influencers and their ideas were, at least initially, welcomed to the White House.
Today, MAHA is a heterogenous group united by a belief that Americans are getting sicker, and that the federal government is overlooking — or even actively abetting — the crisis.
“For me, MAHA is giving a voice to all the issues of environmental exposures and the chronic disease epidemic that previously has been ignored or overlooked by both parties,” Ryerson said.
Kennedy has notched some wins for MAHA supporters like Ryerson as secretary of Health and Human Services. He recommended that states ban water fluoridation, a practice he has blamed for numerous diseases despite little evidence. He fired all 17 members of the CDC’s advisory committee on vaccines, replaced them with vaccine skeptics, and attempted to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule. He unveiled a new, MAHA-inflected food pyramid, with meat conspicuously placed at the top.
But soon the cracks in the MAHA-MAGA alliance were starting to show. In the past year, the Trump administration has taken steps to rein in the influence of vaccine skeptics at HHS, replacing many of Kennedy’s picks with officials from more conventional backgrounds. Earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the United States might restart funding for Gavi, a global vaccine alliance, after Kennedy withdrew the US last year.
These moves are likely part of a broader push by the administration to deemphasize the issue of vaccines ahead of the midterm elections. Despite the skepticism of some MAHA voters, vaccines remain broadly popular, and the White House clearly sees anti-vaccine policy as a liability going into November.
Immunization policy hasn’t been the only source of tension between MAHA and MAGA. The Trump administration, with its business-friendly, deregulatory bent, was never a natural home for activists who wanted to remove pesticides and other contaminants from America’s food, water, and soil.
The Environmental Protection Agency under administrator Lee Zeldin has rolled back regulations aimed at protecting Americans from harmful chemicals. Especially enraging to many in the movement was Trump’s February executive order expanding domestic production of glyphosate, a pesticide that has been linked to cancer in some research.
Some MAHA supporters are inclined to forgive Kennedy for his inability to push his policies through an indifferent administration. “He’s part of a system that doesn’t allow him to do what he wants to do,” Hannah Dunning, a consultant and influencer who works on clothing safety, told me.
Many are less forgiving of the president, who they see as standing in Kennedy’s way. If she could give Trump a grade for his performance, “he’d definitely be in the principal’s office,” Dunning said. “We are not happy.”
Meanwhile, MAHA has already begun to emerge as a force in its own right, with candidates Trump and MAGA don’t necessarily control. Lahn won in Iowa by squaring a difficult circle, Ryerson said, appealing both to family farmers concerned about their livelihoods and residents worried about the health impacts of living in an agricultural state where pesticide use has been linked with rising cancer rates.
“He talks about agriculture in such a relatable and realistic way that speaks for the same farmers that I am in touch with and work with,” Ryerson said.
While Iowa is the clearest example of a MAHA insurgency, the movement’s power is showing up in other state contests as well. MAHA influencers campaigned against Rep. Dusty Johnson, a South Dakota Republican, in his primary run for governor; he ended up finishing third, despite an early lead.
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who ran a successful primary campaign against Republican Sen. John Cornyn, also drew support from the MAHA faithful, launching investigations into food additives and chemicals in clothing. Earlier this month, he announced an investigation into glyphosate use.
“He’s a great example of somebody who’s really utilizing MAHA’s influence in the right way,” Dunning said.
Both Paxton and Lahn will face competitive races in November. And while MAHA hasn’t gotten highly involved in other races, the movement’s supporters represent a big chunk of the electorate — a third of Americans, according to a recent Politico poll. That’s enough to make a big impact if they stay home — or even vote for Democrats.
“I have Republicans telling me they’re voting a Republican out of office,” Dunning said.
Where does MAHA go in 2028?
Despite its Trumpy name, MAHA has a lot of potential common ground with Democrats. Regulation of processed foods, access to fruits and vegetables, and restrictions on pesticide use are all issues Democratic voters can get behind, said Peter Lurie, president and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a group that has pushed for restrictions on food dyes.
There’s also an opportunity to work with MAHA on environmental issues, where Kennedy got his start. Rather than focusing on climate change, Democrats should tap into voter concerns around the human impact of industrial farming and other practices, Ryerson said. “What impacts the planet is exactly what impacts human health.”
Indeed, some Democrats are starting to partner with MAHA activists on these issues. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Maine Democrat and organic farmer, worked with MAHA advocates last year to strip language from a spending bill that would have shielded pesticide companies from lawsuits. In April, she and Ryerson co-wrote an op-ed in The Hill urging tougher regulation of pesticides.
Meanwhile, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) recently filed a brief in a Supreme Court case involving glyphosate manufacturer Bayer.
The big wedge between Democrats and MAHA, however, is vaccine skepticism. The anti-vaccine attitudes Kennedy helped stoke both before and during his time at HHS have led to a decrease in vaccination rates across the country. That decline has paved the way for the resurgence of infectious diseases like measles, resulting in preventable hospitalizations and deaths.
Democratic lawmakers have generally rejected Kennedy’s efforts to weaken vaccination requirements and to cast doubt on vaccines; many Democratic-controlled states (along with a few Republican-controlled ones) announced they would not abide by his scaled-back vaccine schedule.
Some in the MAHA movement say there’s no room for compromise on immunization policy. “MAHA will absolutely not budge on vaccines,” Dunning told me.
For others, however, it’s less of a priority. In a recent Politico poll, more self-identified MAHA supporters cared about reducing ultraprocessed foods and limiting pesticides than about reducing the number of vaccines Americans get.
Covid was a unifying force for the movement to focus around, and skepticism of the Covid vaccine specifically aligned with the GOP’s allegations of overreach by Democrats in the early years of the pandemic. As Covid policy fades from the forefront of politics, the synergy between MAHA and Republican messaging has weakened, and the MAHA movement finds itself faced with a wider array of disparate priorities.
Rather than a unified group with one set of policy goals, it makes sense to think of MAHA as a set of concentric circles, Lake, the pollster, told me. “The inner circles are hardcore anti-vax, but the next concentric circles are not.” Those in the outer circles may be willing to vote for candidates who support vaccination.
What does unite a lot of MAHA voters, Lake said, is what she calls a “conspiracy-oriented” mindset — the idea that “the economy and the government is rigged.”
You’ll hear that message a lot from MAHA activists. “Chemical companies and large corporations run our country,” Dunning said. “It’s no longer a democratic republic when you have corporations running everything.”
But you’ll also hear a version of that message from populist lawmakers and candidates, from Sen. Bernie Sanders to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, Lake said. Candidates who lean into that message have a “natural opportunity” to win MAHA votes.
With the end of the Trump era in sight, the United States is approaching a major political realignment. One of many open questions hanging over the 2028 election is where MAHA voters will find their home, and how their priorities will shape the post-Trump future.
Some of the answers depend on Kennedy himself — though his power in the Trump administration appears to be on the wane, he remains a political force, one who may be considering another presidential run. And he retains a popularity with the MAHA base that Trump has lost, and that potential successors like Vice President JD Vance never had.
“Regardless of if you agree with RFK Jr. or not, you cannot deny that he has some clear passion for making our country a great nation,” Dunning said. “I would be very shocked if he didn’t do anything in 2028.”
Whether Kennedy chooses to run, or throw his weight behind another candidate, will play a role in how and whether MAHA shows up in 2028. So, too, will the way that candidates of both parties approach a disaffected electorate.
Geriatrician and MAHA-watcher Rachael Bedard asked in a recent New York Times op-ed whether MAHA represents a real voting bloc or simply another special interest group. But there’s also a third option: that MAHA is one expression of a larger trend among American voters.
Like it or not, we live in a low-trust era of American politics, with young voters especially disillusioned with both parties. MAHA is, in some ways, all about distrust — of mainstream medicine, corporate agriculture, and the government bodies created to regulate them. Democratic candidates may not share that distrust — in some cases, they may find it dangerous. But if they can learn to reach out to voters who believe everything is rigged against them, they may unlock a crucial key to success with an increasingly pessimistic and disenchanted public.
“I’m not sure what MAHA looks like in the future,” Dunning said, “but I am sure that every single politician interested in running and keeping their job should care.”