The Great American State Fair’s ‘MAHA Monday’ Is Lacking in MAHA

It’s “MAHA Monday” at the Great American State Fair, but it’s proving hard to find anything Make America Healthy Again-branded.

The Kansas tent had a few “MAHA Summer”-branded brochures, which highlighted Republican Sen. Roger Marshall’s record on MAHA-approved legislation and Kansas state parks, but Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s more recognizable slogan is otherwise elusive.

The merchandise tents, of which there are many, offer a wide variety of Freedom 250-branded items, but nothing MAHA.

The list of scheduled speakers for what has been billed as “Everyday Health and Well Being | MAHA Monday” includes a few affiliates of the alternative health movement: vaccine-fighting lawyer Aaron Siri, a MAHA-sympathetic Food and Drug Administration official and a chiropractor-slash-alternative health practitioner.

Hilda Labrada Gore, known online as Holistic Hilda, is another one of them. She spoke about natural therapies on the fair’s main stage to an audience of around 50 people.

“I think it’s great that there are initiatives right now to lower health care costs and make prescription drugs more affordable, but wouldn’t it be better if we had more sunshine to nourish us? And more butter?” said Gore, who has also extolled the benefits of raw milk on social media and on her podcast.

She didn’t discuss MAHA in her talk.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz spoke at the fair on Monday, but Kennedy is not scheduled to appear. The Freedom 250 organization, the private-public partnership President Donald Trump created to help run birthday celebrations, posted about Monday at the fair, but didn’t mention it being MAHA-themed.

And perhaps most conspicuously for those in search of “MAHA Monday” programming, the Department of Health and Human Services does not have a booth among the many other federal agencies and departments. The Small Business Administration has a booth. The Department of Agriculture has a booth. The Defense Department — which the Trump administration has dubbed the Department of War — has a double booth.

A staffer at the USDA booth said they thought HHS had a booth somewhere in the row of agencies. A staffer giving out fair passports — attendees can receive stamps from each featured state and territory — said the same. Searches for MAHA or Health Department booths on the electronic map came up with zero results.

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its lack of representation at the fair.

The 16-day Great American State Fair has completely taken over the national mall and includes exhibits from every state and U.S. territory, as well as companies like SpaceX and TikTok. It’s been sparsely attended and marked by controversies — including the temporary display of a Confederate flag in the North Carolina booth and a mobile museum that was put together by Hillsdale College and conservative platform PragerU.

Asked about the dearth of MAHA content at the fair, Gore said it is “unfortunate if we’re not being more visible.”

Unprompted, she said the movement transcends its Trump-Kennedy connections.

“I think the MAHA movement is unstoppable, even if we lose that moniker, that name, Make America Healthy Again, because it started before Trump and Kennedy came into their positions,” Gore said. “It will continue on, even when things shift, or if they shift, I guess. They have to shift eventually.”

She noted that she, as a member of the MAHA movement, had been given stage time to talk.

But she added that she still wanted more from the administration when it came to issues like pesticides – and said that “if the Republicans were smart, they would realize that health is not a partisan issue.”

“I know that in Trump’s State of the Union, he didn’t mention MAHA. And so there’s a sense in which, are we being sidelined? I hope not,” Gore said.

As to why her talk didn’t include any mention of MAHA, Gore said it was an accident.

“It was probably my mistake,” she said. “I get excited about sunshine and butter.”