POLITICS
Project 2025 has been getting all the headlines; its rival is who I want to hear from at the RNC
Speakers from America First Policy Institute get the stage on Tuesday
At this point, nearly everyone has watched John Oliver’s segment on Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan to overhaul the federal government, should Donald Trump win the election this November. It’s 900-page plan is a far-reaching and would radically change national policy on everything from abortion to immigration to education.
Following the news lately, you’d be led to believe Heritage is the only shop in town and every conservative group has fallen in line. While that’s true to a great extent, it’s not the whole story. Another group has the chance this week to share a somewhat different vision for the future and possibly reveal divisions in the Republican Party.
That group is the American First Policy Institute (AFPI).
It doesn’t have Heritage’s long history, but it’s been acting as a waystation of former Trump officials since he left office in 2021. That makes it integral to the plans for any future administration.
AFPI has a familiar set of initiatives on everything from Electoral Integrity to higher education to the “Biblical Foundations Project.” It is unambiguously conservative and has the policy agenda to prove it.
However, it’s the work on transition planning that I am most interested in right now. Last fall, AFPI announced the American First Transition Project initiative with a focus on conventional themes: process, policy implementation, and personnel planning.
Despite the similarities, AFPI didn’t follow one of the now 100+ groups signed up for Project 2025, and there’s speculation that animosity exists between the two operations. Everyone from the Alliance Defending Liberty to Young America’s Foundation is on board; AFIP isn’t.
In this conflict, AFPI has been positioned as the common-sense centrists in the conservative movement with Heritage as the far-right extremists. Sam Adler-Bell described this for the New York Times in January as simmering “ideological and personal rivalries.” After Trump claimed ignorance of Heritage’s work two weeks ago, have we reached a boil?
AFPI launched its initiative with an event called “Laying the Groundwork for the Next America First Administration.” Since then, its been pretty quiet — a YouTube recording of that event has subsequently been made private, but the promotional video remains.
Despite this, it claims “nearly 800 former senior federal government leaders” have signed up for the initiative so far. Former acting Secretary of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, former Secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt, and former acting Deputy Director at the OMB, Michael J. Rigas are some of those who have.
This is why I’m interested to hear from former Trump Small Business Association (SBA) administrator, Linda McMahon, who’s speaking on Tuesday. She is AFPI’s board chair.
McMahon has been to the RNC before. In 2004, she was on hand in New York City with WWE professional wrestler, Shawn Michaels. McMahon was CEO of WWE at the time and was encouraging 18–30 year olds to vote.
McMahon is not alone. Former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin is also scheduled to speak on Tuesday. Zeldin went on Fox & Friends last year to talk about his appointment as the chair of Pathway to 2025. He was the man in charge of this at the time and what he shares about that initiative will be telling.
In addition, Kellyanne Conway, another former Trump White House adviser, will speak on Tuesday. She is the chair of AFPI’s Center for the American Child.
To be sure, Project 2025 hasn’t been shut out. Also speaking this week are former secretary of HUD, Ben Carson, and former US trade director, Peter Navarro, who each wrote chapters for Project 2025’s policy report, Mandate for Leadership.
For a convention that has been lauded as having a different look and tone, an event to display a unified party, the Project 2025 vs. Pathway to 2025 rivalry provides another discourse. To be sure, on paper, much of what two groups have said about a future transition is the same. AFPI has been much more discrete, publicly sharing just the outline of its plans here.
And that may just be it: Pathway to 2025 may have gotten those spots at the RNC because it’s followed one of the solemn rules of pre-election transition planning. Keep it quiet and “don’t measure the drapes of the White House” until you win; at least not publicly.
