I was born on the north side of Chicago the day after Christmas, 2003. I grew up in the Bowmanville and Ravenswood neighborhoods until 2011, when we moved to the suburb of Berwyn. 

My mom worked on the assembly line for a manufacturing company; my dad was a manager for a company that made products for the construction industry.

My parents — both Mexican immigrants — weren’t very political at all. They never talked politics at home, unless I asked them something. They would watch the local Spanish TV news channel, which was more interested in local crime stories than serious political coverage.

My mom is a Democrat, but she’s also avidly anti-abortion. Being an immigrant herself, she is very pro-immigrant. Obama was her favorite president; she was impressed with his efforts to fix the economy and the creation of Obamacare.

My interest in politics really began to kick up around the 2016 election. I was still in middle school at the time. We held a mock election a few weeks before election day during lunch hour. Clinton won 94% and Trump won 3%. That got me thinking about how the electoral system works. 

Watching the 2016 election returns fascinated me; I had 50 tabs open on my iPad, tracking every state’s results. I went to sleep thinking Clinton was going to win. When it turned out Trump won, I was very surprised and nervous, because there had been a lot of fearmongering about what he would do.

I told myself to be open minded, let’s see what he has to say and watch what he does. Up until that point I got my information from CNN, MSNBC, Vice, Vox, and left-leaning figures like Clinton. I stopped following all of them. My teenage brain told me that to be open minded didn’t mean listening to both sides; it meant I should reject what I used to listen to, and start listening to Trump and his supporters.

So my sources of information became Fox (I particularly liked Tucker Carlson), Newsmax, OAN,  the Daily Wire, Breitbart, Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA — anything or anyone who claimed to be pro-Trump and America first. I started listening to Alex Jones’ InfoWars. I completely trusted what he said.

I became a full-throated MAGA American, very pro-Trump. I embraced anything Trump said. I became pro-border wall, I thought Mexico should pay for it, and that we should even send troops and shoot people trying to cross into the US.

I agreed with Trump’s proposed cuts to health care; I thought we should only provide it to pure American citizens.

I supported MAGA policies even if I thought they were morally wrong. I knew I believed in contradictory things, especially on immigration. I never had an explanation for it. I told myself it made sense to do what Trump wanted while finding a way to protect my mom from his policies.

Another example of how being in MAGA led me to shift my moral compass: Before the 2016 election I was very upset about Trump’s comment about grabbing women by the pussy. But once I joined MAGA, I defended him. I parroted what he said: it was just boy’s talk, locker room talk.

I didn’t want to talk politics with my mom. I would tell her Obama is the one who made us so polarized. She would look at me like I was crazy.

I became more outspoken in high school about being a proud MAGA member. Friends I’d known for a long time stopped talking to me.

I bought into Trump’s COVID agenda. I became very anti-COVID vax (while still supporting all other vaccines). Even though I didn’t entirely believe them, I gave credence to the conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and microchips being placed in the COVID vaccine so we could be tracked. 

Trump did say and do things that gave me pause. His “shithole countries” comment made me raise an eyebrow for the first time. I also didn’t like when Trump started talking about injecting bleach and shining a light through the body as ways to fight COVID. I’m a big believer in science, so I knew those things weren’t true. 

I was also disturbed by Trump’s claim that climate change is a hoax. I knew there are thousands of years of data that prove it’s real. But I was so deep into MAGA that I went along with what he said.

I was pretty certain Trump was going to be reelected in 2020, so I wasn’t prepared for what happened. When Fox News called Arizona for Biden, I was stunned. Then I saw Rudy Giuliani claiming there was fraud. I thought, no way Biden won Arizona, there must have been some fraud. I had the same reaction with regard to North Carolina and Georgia, since the early returns had Trump ahead. 

I went into full election denialism; I was convinced the presidency had been stolen from Donald Trump.

Even though every recount and audit, along with virtually every court case, confirmed that Biden had won, I refused to believe it. I thought it was a bunch of BS, just lies. I wondered if all the Republican state and local election officials and the Trump-appointed judges had faked their loyalty to Trump to get their jobs, and now that they had their jobs they were showing their true colors.

I had been wondering in the few weeks before Jan. 6 about why Trump was saying there was fraud over and over like a broken record. He was rambling about it every time he had a microphone near him. While I still believed him, the thought did enter my mind: “What if it wasn’t stolen and he’s just saying it was stolen?” But I suppressed the thought.

Everything changed after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. I was in my 11th grade English class when Trump supporters breached the police lines and entered the building. My teacher canceled class and we all watched the livestream from Washington.

I was speechless. I couldn’t think of anything to defend Trump on this. It made me question whether he was a great man, because for the most part he let it happen. By the end of that day, I felt Republicans should be ashamed of themselves. We’re a democracy and we should fight to continue being a democracy. That was one of the first moments when I began to question my allegiance to MAGA.

I was still a Trump supporter, but a few months later I decided I needed to become truly open-minded. I was now 17, and I understood by then that to be open-minded means getting my information from a variety of sources. 

I continued listening to my right-wing information sources, although not as much. I stopped listening to InfoWars because it was too far right for me. I went back to CNN and NBC, and found a lot of insightful coverage and op-eds. 

While I continued to stick with Trump, I found myself shifting to the left, particularly on immigration and health care. I tried to look at things from the standpoint of morality. I mean, these are human beings we’re talking about. For example, my parents are very low-income, but they should have the same access to health care as anyone else. So I embraced Obamacare.

Then I shifted on gun control, LGBTQ rights, and taxes (I was a big proponent of tax cuts but now I’m more a backer of a progressive tax, because if the rich paid more taxes we could use it for public services).

And yet I still backed MAGA and Trump! The last straw for me was the 2022 midterm elections. Trump endorsed so many election deniers across the country, and when they lost, they again claimed fraud. After what happened on Jan. 6, I knew we couldn’t have that happen again. That was it — I was done.

I still include a few moderate and center-right outlets among my sources of information, but after the midterms I cut off Fox, Newsmax, OAN, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Steve Bannon, and anyone else whose motto is, “Trump good.”

I don’t want to call MAGA a cult but it almost seems that way. I’m mystified at how evangelicals support Trump. I don’t understand what they actually believe in. And things have gone too far with Christian nationalism. When Trump started selling Trump-endorsed Bibles, I thought, “Jesus would not like that at all.”

I now call myself an independent; I’m not associated with either party. 

Sadly, most of my friends who had stopped talking to me did not resume our relationships after I left MAGA. It doesn’t bother me that much; if they were really my friends they would have stayed with me regardless of my beliefs.

Things are better with my mom. We had stayed close outside of our political beliefs, but now that I’ve left MAGA I’m seeing why she believes what she does. Again, it’s about morality. We’re all human beings; we all deserve health care and not to be treated as criminals just because we’re seeking a better life in the US.

I’m finishing my second year at Illinois State University, majoring in Biology Teacher Education. And I’m looking forward to my new life beyond MAGA. I feel I’ve learned how to truly think for myself — it’s liberating!