By The New York Times (U.S.) | Created at 2024-10-24 17:27:14 | Updated at 2024-10-24 19:27:16
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America First Policy Institute didn’t even exist four years ago. But it is poised to be more influential than Project 2025.
Oct. 24, 2024, 1:12 p.m. ET
Late this summer, a prominent right-wing think tank invited conservatives from around the country to learn how to work in a second Donald J. Trump administration.
In a series of training sessions in Washington, former Trump officials shared strategies with attendees for combating leftist civil servants in the federal government and dealing with the mainstream media. Participants were sent home with a thick binder of materials for further study. One section’s title: “Tales From the Swamp: How Federal Bureaucrats Resisted President Trump.”
The classes could easily have been the work of Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint and personnel project that was created by loyalists to Mr. Trump and that has been turned into a political cudgel by Democrats seeking to link its most radical prescriptions to the former president.
But the meetings had nothing to do with that enterprise or its principal backer, the Heritage Foundation. Instead, they were the work of the America First Policy Institute, a right-wing think tank that has, with little fanfare or scrutiny, installed itself as the Trump campaign’s primary partner in making concrete plans to wield power again.
Founded by three wealthy Texans in late 2020, the group, known as A.F.P.I., has quickly inserted itself into nearly every corner of Mr. Trump’s political machine, and is closer than any other outside player in his planning for a second term.
Mr. Trump chose one of its leaders, Linda McMahon, a former member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet and a longtime friend, as co-chair of his official transition team. Brooke Rollins, who also worked in the Trump administration and is currently the nonprofit’s chief executive, has been discussed as a candidate to be Mr. Trump’s chief of staff. The institute’s ranks are stocked with other former Trump administration officials who have spent the past several years planning for a return, and in recent weeks several have quietly moved over to work full time for the campaign’s transition team.
