The Make America Healthy Again momentum that has shaped President Donald Trump’s health policy in his second term seems to be losing steam following a series of blows to the movement’s key public health objectives.
Trump promised now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the 2024 campaign trail that he could “go wild” on health. Slightly more than a year in, however, fault lines are showing between MAHA activists and the broader Make America Great Again coalition within the GOP.
On a host of key MAHA issues, ranging from vaccines and autism to weedkillers, the Trump administration has failed to deliver, according to several activists within the movement.
MAHA acolytes are also increasingly struggling to get their supporters into positions of power within HHS, including finding a permanent director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and getting Trump’s surgeon general nominee, Casey Means, through the Senate confirmation process.
Public opinion polling is also starting to show the split between MAHA and MAGA.
A majority of Americans, 52%, now believe that the Trump administration has not done enough to actualize its MAHA promises, including a 41% plurality of Trump 2024 voters, according to a new poll from Politico published Friday.
Of those who identify as MAHA supporters, about 47% say they do not believe the Trump administration has done enough to improve Americans’ health, compared to 60% of non-MAHA supporters.
In other words, there are warning signs of a more permanent fracture. Here are the three key areas of strain for the MAHA-MAGA coalition.
Vaccine and autism policy thwarted
The White House is largely pulling back from Kennedy’s goal of reforming vaccine policy, with multiple GOP strategists reportedly advising Trump officials that it is not a winning issue ahead of the 2026 elections.
Dr. Robert Malone, Kennedy’s close ally and former vice chairman of the CDC panel that sets vaccine policy, criticized both the White House and the HHS secretary for stepping back from scrutinizing vaccines after multiple opinion polls showed that their approach is unpopular with voters.
Last summer, Kennedy reconstituted the CDC’s critical Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices and replaced its members with people more aligned with his view that children in the U.S. receive too many vaccines compared to children in other countries.
Malone quit his volunteer post on ACIP earlier this week following a federal court’s decision to overturn its decisions on procedural grounds, saying the way Kennedy unilaterally reappointed the committee violated federal rules.
Malone said Friday on a podcast hosted by fellow MAHA activist Del Bigtree that the White House has shut down all discussion on vaccines ahead of the midterm elections.
“There’s been a strategic political decision that the MAHA coalition and the people you represent are an inconsequential minority and they will not impact the midterms,” Malone said.
Running parallel to the challenges with ACIP, Kennedy’s revitalization of HHS’s autism advisory panel has also been slowed.
In January, Kennedy overhauled the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, a lesser-known panel that guides federally funded autism research, and replaced the board with 21 new members. The new membership includes several parents of autistic children who connect their children’s diagnoses to vaccination.
But the committee’s first meeting, scheduled for March 19, was abruptly canceled at the beginning of the month and has not been rescheduled.
This slowed-down autism agenda is a stark contrast to the White House’s enthusiasm last year for Kennedy’s mission of finding the cause of autism, culminating in Trump’s condemnation of Tylenol during pregnancy in September.
Trump’s embrace of glyphosate
The broader Trump administration’s embrace of the chemical herbicide glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, marked the final straw in the MAHA-MAGA relationship for many of the movement’s most ardent supporters.
Glyphosate has been at the center of hundreds of thousands of lawsuits over the claim that the household weedkiller and agricultural tool causes cancer, but many wellness gurus also blame the chemical for the rise in gluten intolerance and other autoimmune conditions.
The Justice Department is slated to support the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer, the maker of glyphosate, in an impending Supreme Court case this term in which the company argues it should not be held liable for failing to warn consumers about cancer risks for the product.
On top of this, in February, Trump issued an executive order invoking national security protections to shield Bayer from liability and boost domestic production of the chemical.
Kennedy defended the executive order’s national security implications, saying in an X post that herbicides and pesticides are “toxic by design” and “put Americans at risk,” but eliminating them overnight “would be disastrous.”
MAHA activists, such as the self-described “food babe” Vani Hari and MAHA-aligned journalist Anna Matson, decried Kennedy’s statement as a violation of trust.
The Politico poll found that roughly 3 in 10 voters believed the GOP was more susceptible to pressure from the pesticide industry despite its stated goal of making Americans healthier. That’s compared to 2 in 10 who say the same about Democrats.
Supporters in the MAGA and MAHA camps also both said the GOP is more likely than Democrats to succumb to pesticide and pharmaceutical industry pressure.
CDC director turmoil and stalled surgeon general
MAHA is also apparently losing its grip on getting its supporters into key positions of power within HHS.
Trump’s first Senate-confirmed CDC Director, Susan Monarez, was fired by Kennedy in late August 2025 following a conflict over the secretary’s desire to curtail the number of vaccines recommended to children.
After Monarez’s ousting, then-Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O’Neill was given the job of acting CDC director until a replacement could be nominated. But O’Neill was abruptly replaced last month by the current National Institutes of Health Director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who is overseeing both agencies.
Kennedy and HHS adviser Chris Klomp, who also oversees the Medicare program, are in the process of selecting a permanent CDC nominee but are reportedly having difficulty finding the right candidate.
The short list of candidates reported by Bloomberg Government includes more traditional public health figures, contrary to MAHA’s stance on vaccines, including childhood vaccine supporter and Mississippi health secretary Dr. Daniel Edney.
On top of this, Republicans on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee appear to be slow-walking the confirmation process for Means, whose MAHA influencer career served as the basis for her nomination as surgeon general.
During her confirmation hearing last month, Means dodged key questions on childhood vaccines, including universal vaccination against Hepatitis B in newborns.
MAHA MOVEMENT GROWS LOUDER AS REPUBLICANS DEBATE ITS POWER AHEAD OF MIDTERM ELECTIONS
The Hepatitis B vaccine, which prevents liver disease and liver cancer later in life, is an important consideration for Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a physician and liver specialist, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who credits universal vaccination with reducing the disease in her rural state.
Means also did not provide satisfactory answers for Republicans on the abortion pill mifepristone, a sticking point for anti-abortion conservatives within the party, but not a core MAHA principle.
