President Donald Trump’s MAGA coalition has been dealt a huge blow ahead of the midterm elections, with members of the MAHA movement unhappy that the Trump administration is not doing enough to advance its bonkers agenda.
Vaccine critics, who are some of the most ardent members of the “Make America Healthy Again” coalition, are angry that the administration has not done more to take the issue front and center.
Trump failed to mention either vaccines or any other MAHA priorities during his marathon-long State of the Union address this week.
On Wednesday, Toby Rogers, a fellow at the Brownstone Institute, a Texas-based think tank that promotes discredited vaccine conspiracy theories, raged on X, saying the majority of Americans support Kennedy’s policies.
“A majority of Americans support @SecKennedy and the goals of the Make America Healthy Again movement. (Someone should tell the America First Policy Institute knuckleheads in the White House so that they stop purging the MAHA reformers from the public health agencies.),” Toby Rogers posted.
He did not cite his poll, but a multitude of surveys—even a December poll from Trump’s own pollster Tony Fabrizio—have shown that the majority of Americans are pro-vaccine and do not subscribe to vaccine conspiracies.
“Eight-in-ten MAHA voters and 86% of voters overall agree that vaccines save lives,” Fabrizio wrote in the December memo. “More than three-in-four MAHA voters, and 83% of all voters say vaccines are the best defense against many infectious diseases.”
Trump administration officials do see the MAHA coalition as essential to securing a strong showing at the 2026 midterm elections, but they believe some of their vaccine messaging is too polarizing.
“Vaccines are not popular issues to talk about,” one administration official told the Washington Post. “It goes back to polling.”
MAHA has also been fuming over Trump’s new executive order to boost the domestic production of herbicide glyphosate, a widely used weedkiller known more commonly by one of its brand names, Roundup.
Moms Across America, a nonprofit in support of the MAHA agenda, called the president’s executive order “outrageous.”
Kennedy has long opposed glyphosate-based pesticides. He successfully sued one manufacturer over allegations that the pesticide causes cancer, and said on The Katie Miller Podcast earlier this year that he believes “glyphosate causes cancer.”
But he changed his tune once Trump signed the executive order.
“We must safeguard America’s national security first, because all of our priorities depend on it. When hostile actors control critical inputs, they weaken our security. By expanding domestic production, we close that gap and protect American families,” he said after the order was signed.
Lauren Lee, a popular MAHA influencer, called Kennedy’s sudden switch a “humiliation ritual.”
The MAHA coalition’s discontent hasn’t been helped by the fact that neither the vaccines nor other MAHA’s priorities, like eliminating pesticides and food dyes, were discussed in Trump’s State of the Union address earlier this week.
The president briefly discussed his efforts to lower prescription drug prices, but did not address other items on the MAHA agenda.
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House for comment.
