U.S. President Donald Trump attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 2, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Donald Trump has been credited with shaping the GOP in his own image and driving low-propensity voters to the polls in 2016 and 2024; however, he is now barred from seeking another term in the White House, and the MAGA movement must figure out a future without him in charge. Despite big talk at the start of the year, according to a new analysis from Axios, the MAGA realm has spent most of 2025 "locked in an existential war" over its future.
Axios's report argued that five key disagreements are driving the MAGA civil war: H1-B visas, Trump's bombing of Iran, the Epstein files, the killing of Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson's embrace of Nick Fuentes.
From the earliest days of his second term in office, Trump has attempted to curtail H1-B visas, which allow skilled foreigners to enter the US for specialty jobs and are heavily favored by the tech industry. Sen. Ted Cruz called these visas a "scam" that took jobs away from Americans, while MAGA acolyte and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy argued that the US needed top global talent to remain competitive.
In June, Trump aided Israel in bombing Iranian nuclear facilities, splintering the MAGA coalition on foreign policy terms. Some celebrated the president's actions as a show of strength, while others criticized the bombing as a betrayal of his campaign promise to keep the US out of more foreign conflicts.
Trump's handling of the Epstein files' release has been one of the more glaring and long-lasting issues for his presidency, turning many former allies against him. MAGA loyalists have long called for greater transparency into the DOJ investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, calling for a release of his "client list," which they believed would largely incriminate Democratic figures. Despite pledging to release the files while running for office in 2024, Trump later reversed course in office and fought against disclosure for months instead.
While the MAGA movement seemed generally united after the shooting of Charlie Kirk in September, that unity has gradually eroded as conspiracy theories surrounding his death have proliferated. This split has largely been driven by conservative commentator Candace Owens, who has spread conspiracies claiming that the Israeli government was behind Kirk's death in some way.
Finally, Axios highlighted the MAGA tumult over former Fox News host Tucker Carlson airing an interview with far-right activist Nick Fuentes, an avowed white supremacist and antisemite. This move drew swift condemnation from the likes of Cruz and Ben Shapiro, while Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts defended it. This split could be particularly damaging for the future of MAGA, as Fuentes has emerged as a loud critic of both Trump and Vice President JD Vance, the latter of whom is still viewed as the primary 2028 GOP presidential candidate.