A man holds a MAGAhat during CPAC USA 2026 at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center, in Grapevine, Texas, March 28, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Cole
Younger members of the conservative political movement think that "MAGA is dying," according to a new report from the New York Times, and many of them are ready for the GOP to get past President Donald Trump, arguing that the biggest divide in the party right now is generational.
In a report published Monday, the Times detailed the goings-on at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference in Grapevine, Texas. According to the outlet, this latest iteration of the long-running event was "sparsely attended," the result of the conference "gradually waning in energy for years."
Despite efforts to bring in guest speakers that might bring a jolt of youth to the proceedings, like Minnesota fraud conspiracy theorist Nick Shirley, CPAC's younger attendees seemed to mostly ignore the speeches, instead opting to "briefly escape the politics of their social media feeds and interact directly with the conservative apparatus at this year’s conference." They also "found themselves marooned in a listless and... older gathering of Trump loyalists" at the conference, stuck in a sea of attendees unwilling to have tough conversations about the future of the Republican Party.
“There is a divide between the young and old in the party,” Aiden Hoffses, 19-year-old from Maine attending his first CPAC, told the Times. “We keep hearing these talking points that we’re all united and in the same movement. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I feel like I have closer views with liberals than more conservatives at this point.”
Hoffses added further: “It’s not fair for someone to graduate college and have $100,000 of debt. We’re sending billions of dollars to other countries. Why can’t we help our own people?”
“It’s very cultish here,” Joseph Bolick, a 30-year-old Army veteran, told the Times. “It seems like boomers are just on this Trump train."
Samantha Cassell, a 27-year-old Republican strategist, lamented that "There’s no serious discussion going on" at CPAC this year, calling it "probably the worst one I’ve ever been to."
“I think that MAGA is dying,” Cassell said. “I do.”
Some moderates in attendance expressed similar exhaustion with the ongoing MAGA movement and its "culture-war provocations," decrying guests like Shirley as "a shallower mode of conservatism."
“They need to go touch some grass,” Jack Greenberg, 23, told the Times.
Greenberg, who had previously supported Trump, "expressed dismay that policy had largely been abandoned in favor of rage bait," and longed for a return to simpler politics of the past.
“I just want politics to be boring again,” he added.
