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Opinion In monster snowstorms or blistering heat, workers need protection Opinions - Energy and Environment | 1 minute ago

The Movement: How anti-MAGA Republicans are plotting to take back the party The Movement | 1 minute ago

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The Movement: How anti-MAGA Republicans are plotting to take back the party

For the Republican officials and operatives who have been turned into outcasts as they balk at President Trump and his MAGA takeover of the party, there’s a question about what to do next: Join the Democrats? Try to influence specific issues? Or try to retake control of the Republican Party?

Those in Our Republican Legacy (ORL) are attempting the latter path, forming a “shadow RNC” with the goal of working to regain control of the state GOP structures one by one — with the ultimate goal of making a non-MAGA candidate the Republican presidential nominee in 2028.

I attended the group’s conference on Friday, in a Residence Inn conference room in National Harbor, Md., which came just before the kickoff to the Principles First summit that featured a range of anti-Trump voices, including now-Democrats.

This gathering, though, was about the steep task of trying to work within the GOP. About two dozen attendees in the room and more online listened to addresses from the likes of commentator Charlie Sykes and former Republican National Committee Chair and MS NOW co-host Michael Steele.  Pollster Whit Ayres of North Star Opinion Research gave a rundown of public perception of Trump’s policies.

Steele, who said this is his 50th year as a Republican, told me of those who left the GOP and joined the Democrats: “My bet is if they’re still living and the ship rights itself, and there’s established a better footing, they’ll come back, because principally those values still remain important to them. It’s just politically, they’re operating and operationalizing in a different space.”

I talked to a few ORL advisers about what, exactly, their strategy is to penetrate a party in an environment where polls show the vast majority of Republicans approve of Trump; what principles are driving the organization; and how they can appeal to conservatives and Republican voters when so many of those in the group had backed former President Biden or former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Chris Vance, former chair of the Washington state Republican Party, said ORL now has 25 state chairs in its organization. It’s working to get its members and supporters elected to local-level offices, like precinct delegates, that can influence the electoral process — employing the same strategy that led to the Ron Paul libertarian wing upending state parties in the early 2010s.

And what kind of candidate would ORL be happy with in 2026? Vance rattled off many of those who unsuccessfully ran against Trump in the 2024 primary: former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas). Other names floated in the conference were Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.

“We’re trying to build up an infrastructure and momentum to make sure somebody like that wins the nomination,” Vance said.

Definitely not on ORL’s list is Vice President Vance — or working to sway him. “JD Vance, I think, is irredeemable,” Chris Vance said. ORL won’t be able to support anyone that is “hardcore MAGA” — supportive of tariffs, “outright hostility towards Ukraine and NATO,” and continuing current immigration policies.

Inside the conference, there was discussion about Secretary of State Marco Rubio — and whether his ties to Trump now would disqualify him from being a candidate they could support in 2028. Many of them supported Rubio in 2016, and the tone of his recent speech at the Munich Security Conference that sought to “revitalize” alliances in the West encouraged some.

And there was also nervousness about Turning Point USA, which has done much to institutionalize the MAGA activist base. Would the organization become less powerful without Charlie Kirk? “How do you become a counterpoint to Turning Point?” one attendee asked.

Chris Vance answered frankly.

“We’re not nearly that big,” he said. “We represent this much smaller sliver of the party that lost in 2016 and has been in the wilderness ever since. It is going to take time to rebuild this thing. … But everybody has to start somewhere.”

I repeatedly brought up that it seems like it is pretty hard to rebuild the party on a few core principles — “Unity, The Constitution, Fiscal Responsibility, Free Enterprise, and Peace through Strength.” There is much ideological debate on the right about some of those principles.

And so much enthusiasm and energy driving the right-wing base is in support of ideas like immigration restrictionism, a strong and shared national identity, or socially conservative policies.

In an interview, I asked Steele about Republicans who, even if they don’t love Trump, wonder why they should listen to those who spend most of their time talking about what Republicans are doing wrong — and not much, if any, time talking about what Democrats are doing.

“What is it the Democrats are doing?” Steele shot back, and I gave examples of Republicans talking about the border, or COVID policies and the large amounts of spending during COVID.

Steele brushed off the COVID complaints: “OK, so your dumb a– didn’t want to wear a mask,” he said. “We hit 9 percent inflation under Joe Biden. But when Joe Biden left, inflation was down to 3 and a half percent. So what?”

“I compare that to putting kids in cages, to referring to my lineage as a ‘s—hole country,’ to now indiscriminately killing Americans on streets. … What do you think I’m going to complain about — this s—, or the stuff that Democrats did that actually created jobs?” Steele said. 

“I mean, yeah, I can have all kinds of policy arguments with the Democrats and how they spend money. … We’re concerned about the authoritarian takeover of our country by a madman who sees himself as a king. We’re not in a position to argue about the degree to which Democrats or have not imposed a certain type of economic or educational policy.”

Merrill Matthews, a policy analyst and Texas state chair for ORL, said that the case could be made that the cultural issues that drove the “hardcore MAGA people” have been addressed: “Overturning Roe v. Wade; push back on transgender surgeries and so forth.

“If that’s the case,” Matthews said, then “economic issues and other things come to the forefront again.”

A closed border, he argued, gives Republicans the opportunity to pursue immigration reform under a GOP president that could allow more migrants to work in the U.S. legally.

And Vance said that they “absolutely reject” the kind of arguments coming from the hard right “that only white Christian Americans are real Americans.”

“Our party was the party of unity, of pulling a fractured nation together,”  Vance said. “So, yes, it’s unpopular with the hardcore base. We don’t care. They’re wrong.”

Further reading: A Fractured ‘Never Trump’ Movement Eyes an Uncertain Future, by Tim Balk in the New York Times 

Welcome to The Movement, a weekly newsletter looking at the influences and debates on the right in Washington. I’m Emily Brooks, House leadership reporter at The Hill. 

Send me tips, comments, and suggestions: ebrooks@thehill.com.

Follow me on X: @emilybrooksnews

Not already on the list? Subscribe here

EXECUTIVE ORDER SPARKS MAD MAHA 

The “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) crowd is up in arms after President Trump signed an executive order in support of glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup weed killer, last week.

“Ensuring an adequate supply of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides is thus crucial to the national security and defense, including food-supply security, which is essential to protecting the health and safety of Americans,” Trump wrote in the order — saying that producers of the chemicals should have “immunity” under the Defense Production Act. More from my colleague Rachel Frazin here … and here.

Alex Clark, host of the Turning Point USA-produced podcast “Culture Apothecary,“ was one of many MAHA voices pushing back — posting Sunday on the social platform X: “We can ABSOLUTELY secure our agricultural supply chains without handing blanket immunity to the very corporations that helped create this mess in the first place.”

“True reform means breaking the cycle of chemical dependence and corporate capture, not deepening it,” Clark said. “If we’re serious about MAHA that includes making sure powerful corporations answer to the same legal standards as everyone else.”

That is all putting Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a tough spot. In a lengthy post on X on Sunday night, Kennedy said that while “pesticides and herbicides are toxic by design,” he supports the executive order because the U.S. agricultural system “unfortunately” depends heavily on the chemicals. He added that U.S. agencies are working to accelerate the transition to regenerative agriculture.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) is planning a bill to undo that executive order.

Further reading: MAHA activists warn Trump could lose their support over glyphosate order, by Reuters’s Leah Douglas … MAHA unleashes on White House after Trump backs pesticide, by Marcia Brown and Cheyenne Haslett in Politico … MAHA unleashes on White MAHA Moms Turn Against Trump: ‘Women Feel Like They Were Lied To,’ by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Hiroko Tabuchi in the New York Times.

Tonight: President Trump delivers a State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.

Thursday, March 5: Conservative organizer Scott Presler will join the Conservative Partnership Institute for its “Off the Record” speaker series, moderated by Brendon Leslie, founder and CEO of Florida’s Voice. Doors at 5:00 p.m.

1. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America last week revealed polling of GOP primary voters by Cygnal that it said shows the anti-abortion position is strong, but that GOP primary voters are at odds with Kennedy on abortion policy: 71 percent of GOP primary voters oppose the decision to allow the abortion drug mifepristone by mail without an in-person consultation. And it warned that 32 percent of GOP primary voters would be less enthusiastic about voting in November “if GOP leaders abandon pro-life policies.”

2. American Moment, which has been integral in funneling MAGA staff to the second Trump administration, is celebrating its five-year anniversary today. CEO Nick Solheim said in a video that will be released on X later today that one of their flagship programs started after GOP chiefs of staff said that their interns “had no framework for thinking about policy from an America First perspective.” More than 100 of its graduates walked into the administration on day one of the second Trump administration, he said.

3. The Heritage Foundation announced it hired Daniel McCarthy as a distinguished fellow in conservative thought within its B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies, where he will focus on conservative thought, America’s founding, and republican order.

City Journal’s Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo: The Freak World of Nicholas J. Fuentes

Wall Street Journal’s Olivia Empson: Evie Magazine, a ‘Conservative Cosmo,’ Takes On the Cultural Moment

CNN’s Steve Contorno, Kristen Holmes, and Austin Culpepper: Steve Bannon pushed hard for the release of the Epstein files. Then he was in them

New York Times’s Nathan Taylor Pemberton: Is ‘Slopulism’ Shaping Our Politics?

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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