James' World 2

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On a sweltering night in August 2024, moments before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed then-candidate Donald J. Trump at a packed rally in Arizona, a conservative young wellness podcaster named Alex Clark had a fleeting backstage conversation with the once-and-future president.

“I said, ‘Mr. President, please keep talking about food and pharma; this has a massive impact with undecided female voters,’ ” recalled Ms. Clark, now a leading conservative voice in Mr. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement. Witnessing the two men join forces, she said, “was the greatest political moment of my life.”

Not quite two years later, the MAHA movement is still a political force. But MAHA leaders warn that many of those who embrace the cause are dispirited and disillusioned — and that when the November elections come around, some may just stay home.

Six of the movement’s most prominent leaders, who together have millions of social media followers, said in separate interviews that the mostly white, mostly female voters who followed Mr. Kennedy into Mr. Trump’s camp are so disappointed with the president that Republicans risk losing them. But they said Democrats would need to work hard to win their votes.

“Republicans would be stupid, moronic,” Ms. Clark said, “to let these voters just slip through our fingers.”

The MAHA PAC, run by Tony Lyons, a conservative-leaning publisher and close Kennedy ally, launched an ambitious initiative in March to raise $100 million to elect “MAHA-aligned, Trump-endorsed” Republicans — a goal that would far exceed the $1.2 million the group raised through the end of February, according to recent campaign finance filings.

But the MAHA leaders who spoke to The New York Times said their voters belong to no individual party. They will vote the person, not party.

“The only thing that matters is action,” said Zen Honeycutt, who founded Moms Across America, an advocacy group that threw its weight behind Mr. Kennedy. “Not a political party.”

Leslie Manookian, a former Wall Street executive who became a homeopath and founded the Health Freedom Defense Fund, which fights vaccine and other medical mandates, said this about MAHA: “I don’t think it’s led by anybody. It’s a populist, grass roots movement.”

A Loose Coalition

Long before Mr. Kennedy gave it a Trump-inspired nickname, the MAHA movement was a loose-knit collection of groups.

Vaccine skeptics fought mandates under the “health freedom” banner. Environmental activists fought chemical exposures, allying themselves with fans of organic food and alternative medicine. They are now held together by Mr. Kennedy, and a shared suspicion of government and industry.

Vaccine skeptics complain that the White House seems to be muzzling Mr. Kennedy on what had been his signature issue. Health and wellness activists are thrilled with Mr. Kennedy’s Eat Real Food agenda promoting red meat and rejecting processed foods, but are upset that Dr. Casey Means, a wellness influencer whose emphasis on diet as a way to combat chronic disease make her a MAHA heroine, is struggling to win Senate confirmation as surgeon general.

And both food and environmental activists feel deeply betrayed by Mr. Trump’s recent executive order aimed at ramping up production of glyphosate, the weedkiller marketed as Roundup, which some scientists suspect causes cancer. The president said he issued it on national security grounds to protect the food supply and because its core ingredient is used to make munitions.

“It’s very hard to support a movement that is labeled MAHA when two opposing things are happening at the same time,” said Vani Hari, a wellness personality who markets herself as “The Food Babe.” “It’s like, ‘Yes, we can eat all the real food we want, but it’s covered in Roundup.’ ”

Whether the MAHA moniker — a riff on MAGA, Mr. Trump’s acronym for Make America Great Again — survives is an open question. MAHA leaders say the components of their movement will thrive and grow no matter what it is called. Both Ms. Hari and Ms. Clark worry about getting MAHA voters to the polls.

“They have nowhere to go,” said Ms. Clark, who works for Turning Point U.S.A., the right-wing organization founded by Charlie Kirk. “They feel like their vote is useless. They have lost the energy. They have lost the enthusiasm. They feel like the Democrats don’t care about them. They feel like the Republicans lied to them, and they’re not planning on voting.”

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Tricia Busch, a former elementary school teacher and a MAHA voter, felt betrayed by President Trump’s recent executive order promoting glyphosate, the weedkiller marketed as Roundup. Credit…Rachel Mummey for The New York Times

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