MAGA's Soda Restrictions

While MAGA generally rejects government meddling in personal choices, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s health-focused movement is pushing for restrictions on junk food in food-aid programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. (WSJ)

The latest: Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is leading an effort to prevent SNAP recipients from using their benefits to buy soda, candy and desserts.

• The state is preparing a waiver request to the USDA, which, if approved, would allow Arkansas to restrict certain food items from SNAP purchases.

• Republican lawmakers in Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Texas and Wyoming have introduced similar bills.

• Brooke Rollins, recently appointed as Secretary of Agriculture in the Trump administration, has signaled that the USDA is open to approving state-led restrictions on SNAP purchases, specifically targeting soda, candy, and other sugary or highly processed foods.

• Historically, USDA has denied similar requests for over 20 years, arguing that such restrictions would be too difficult to enforce.

The visual: According to USDA data, soda ranks as the most frequently bought item with SNAP benefits.

The numbers: A USDA study analyzing 2011 data found that approximately 23% of SNAP households' food purchases were for sugary drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar, collectively categorized as "junk food."

• Within this category, sweetened beverages alone accounted for about 9.25% of total purchases by SNAP households.

• More than $23 billion of SNAP funds—nearly a quarter of its $100 billion budget—goes toward junk food like soda, candy, chips, and desserts each year.

• A 2018 study analyzing diet trends from 1999-2014 found that while overall diet quality improved among U.S. adults, SNAP participants consistently had worse diets and did not meet healthful diet recommendations.

The resistance: President Trump, a Diet Coke fan, is hesitant about soda bans, citing their unpopularity among his base.

• The American Beverage Association found that nearly 60% of Trump voters support allowing soda purchases with SNAP benefits.

• Walmart, where 94% of SNAP recipients shop and which accounts for over 25% of SNAP spending, is opposed to restrictions.

• Meanwhile, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are lobbying against restrictions, arguing they alienate Trump’s working-class voters.

Trump 1.0 Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue during a House Agriculture Committee hearing in 2017:

Bubba’s Two Cents

The MAGA coalition has become an uneasy fusion of ideological factions, and the soda debate exposes its internal cultural tensions. Trump’s ability to appeal to a wide spectrum of groups means MAGA is constantly negotiating its identity. For instance, the president embodies the blue-collar, Big Mac-loving, Diet Coke-drinking image of the movement, yet MAGA has also attracted health-conscious RFK Jr. supporters and Silicon Valley biohackers who take wellness very seriously. These competing visions of personal freedom and government responsibility are now colliding in ways that weren’t as visible in earlier iterations of MAGA.

At the core, this isn’t really about junk food—it’s about the evolving role of government in the conservative movement. Where the Tea Party once rejected government interference, today’s right is increasingly willing to use state power to enforce its priorities. Similarly, the GOP’s old guard would have balked at regulating food choices, but today, intervention is no longer seen as inherently bad—it just depends on who’s wielding the power and to what end. Another way to think about it—does the modern right lack principles or is it simply pragmatic?