How MAGA learned to love psychedelics

OG Article  By SOPHIE GARDNER and KELLY HOOPER Watch Today's LIVE Episode on YouTube, X, and Rumble

June 30, 2025

THE PSYCHEDELICS FLIP-FLOP

Historically, the Republican Party hasn’t readily embraced cutting-edge medical interventions that involve substances commonly used recreationally (consider: "Cannabis"). Yet, the tide is turning when it comes to psychedelics for PTSD — and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could be precisely the figure this movement has been seeking, as reported by POLITICO’s Erin Schumaker.

Driven by a desire to assist former service members grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health conditions, GOP legislators spearheaded a failed initiative last year to persuade the Biden administration to authorize psychedelic compounds.

The endeavor concluded in August when the FDA denied drugmaker Lykos Therapeutics’ request to offer MDMA, alongside therapy, as a PTSD remedy. FDA consultants voiced apprehension that the company’s researchers were more zealous advocates than dispassionate scientists, concluding they had failed to demonstrate the regimen's safety or efficacy. The consultants also raised alarms that MDMA had the potential to harm the heart and liver.

However, Kennedy has a history of endorsing medical approaches that deviate significantly from conventional practice.

A Friend in MAHA: A long-standing proponent of psychedelics’ capacity to aid individuals with conditions such as PTSD and depression, Kennedy is escalating government-sponsored clinical investigations and assuring the disappointed lawmakers that medical professionals would soon be prescribing these substances, despite Biden officials finding no evidence of their effectiveness.

“These are individuals who desperately require some form of therapy; nothing else is proving effective for them,” Kennedy stated at a House hearing Tuesday. “This category of therapeutics offers immense advantages if administered in a clinical environment. And we are diligently striving to ensure that this materializes within 12 months.”

The Shifting Political Terrain: The GOP’s adoption of psychedelics represents another — and perhaps one of the more striking — illustrations of the cultural transformation brought about by President Donald Trump’s populist political stance.

Veterans seeking relief for mental health issues linked to combat, coupled with the Kennedy-supported Make America Healthy Again movement’s enthusiasm for natural remedies, have reinforced a libertarian current on the right favoring drug exploration. Concurrently, the left, where counter-culture figures are yielding to technocrats, has become more skeptical.

Key Context: Earlier this month, Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, signed legislation allocating $50 million to clinical trials of the psychedelic ibogaine as a mental health treatment.

Like MDMA, ibogaine also carries cardiac risks. The Drug Enforcement Administration classifies both substances on its schedule of drugs with no currently accepted medical application and a high potential for misuse.

That would have once been sufficient to deter law-and-order Republicans. But top Kennedy advisor Calley Means asserts that this is no longer the case.

“Ten years ago, no one anticipated the Republican Party being the party of wholesome food, the party of physical activity, the party of scrutinizing pharmaceutical corporations, the party of psychedelic research — but that is our current reality,”