The Center for Renewing America is a right-wing think tank founded as a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute.
The Center for Renewing America is a right-wing think tank founded by Russell Vought, a Republican operative who served as vice president of Heritage Action for America and — most recently — director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump administration. Numerous other CRA staffers are former Trump administration, OMB, or Heritage Foundation staffers. Several high-profile staffers of the CRA, including Vought and Senior Fellow Kash Patel, were involved in the Ukrainian military aid scandal that prompted Trump’s first impeachment, and CRA Senior Fellow Jeffrey Clark was later subpoenaed for his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
Vought launched the Center for Renewing America shortly after Trump left office, bringing several former Trump administration officials with him. Vought remained close to Trump and his MAGA ideology after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and worked to position CRA as a key player in far-right culture wars. The organization has engaged in fights against so-called “critical race theory,” LGBTQ rights, immigration, and voting rights. In turn, Trump expressed his approval of the CRA.
The CRA was founded as a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute “to renew a consensus of America as a nation under God,” an extension of Vought’s own far-right religious approach to politics. The CRA shares an address with CPI, and CPI provided over half of the CRA’s 2021 revenue, according to an analysis of both groups’ tax forms. The CRA also established an affiliate 501(c)4 advocacy group called Citizens for Renewing America.
The CRA’s 2023 budget proposal, “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government,” calls for defunding government programs to fight the ‘deep state’ and ‘woke’ culture — and has proven influential with House Republicans. The budget proposal, backed by Vought himself, provided a blueprint for the newly formed House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which purportedly seeks to fight “woke” culture and supposed bias against conservatives in law enforcement agencies. The proposal also outlines spending cuts that CRA and Vought have pushed in the 2023 debate over the debt ceiling in Congress.
Russ Vought is perhaps best known for serving as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in the Trump administration, previously serving as OMB’s deputy director and acting director. Prior to his tenure in the White House, Vought was vice president of Heritage Action, the 501(c)(4) arm of the right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, and headed up the Republican Study Committee, where he argued the group should aim to “push [Republican] leadership as far to the right as possible.” He also worked for former Senators Dan Coats (R-IN) and Phil Gramm (R-TX), and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX).
Vought’s time at OMB was marred by controversy. His confirmation process for deputy director of OMB was severely “complicated” by his 2016 blog posts, including a post that claimed Islam was “a deficient theology,” and one that praised his alma mater for firing a professor who was “seeking solidarity with Muslims.” Vought was one of nine administration officials who defied subpoenas during Trump’s first impeachment after the Government Accountability Office found that OMB violated federal law by freezing security aid to Ukraine. This decision raised concerns as to whether Trump was attempting to extract political favors from the Ukrainian government in exchange for aid. After the 2020 election, Vought was accused of hampering the incoming administration by preventing Biden officials from meeting with OMB staff. Vought is also known for his aggressive advocacy for unpopular spending cuts at OMB, including massive cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
Vought founded the CRA “to renew a consensus of America as a nation under God,” and claimed that a “biblical” worldview sits at the core of the organization’s policy platform. He once signed a statement claiming that “the Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities.” He also authored a Newsweek op-ed titled: “Is There Anything Actually Wrong With ‘Christian Nationalism?’”
Vought positioned the CRA to engage in right-wing culture wars, leading attacks on anti-racism and diversity initiatives under the guise of “combating critical race theory.” He claimed that fighting the “transgender contagion” should be a high priority to save “our civilization” and claimed that “the LGBT movement […] demands not only to be left alone but also a license to indoctrinate children in the public schools.” Vought also praised a controversial bill passed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis banning public schools from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms from kindergarten to third grade.
Vought is closely connected to former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, who also previously served as president of The Heritage Foundation. DeMint founded the Conservative Partnership Institute, the CRA’s parent organization, and currently serves as CPI’s chairman. Vought has appeared in Conservative Partnership Institute’s promotional materials and has produced podcasts at CPI’s studios.
Vought is a key member of Project 2025, a project to prepare for a potential 2025 Republican presidential transition. The coalition calls for an executive order that could result in the firing of tens of thousands of federal workers, which would be an “unprecedented scale” of federal staff changes. The organization is also building a “conservative LinkedIn” of ideologically-trained future presidential appointees to fill the absences left by such a mass firing. Vought separately revealed CRA’s plan for a future Republican presidential administration, which includes “deconstruct[ng] the state” and generally gutting the federal government to make it easier for political appointees and other federal workers to obtain security clearances to “crush the deep state.”
Vought drew public attention after House Republicans signaled they would stage a fight over the debt ceiling. In 2023, Vought privately met with Republican lawmakers privately to pitch $150 billion in spending cuts as part of negotiations to raise the debt ceiling. The CRA’s budget proposal has become a blueprint for House Republicans’ own budget proposal they intend to use in the debt ceiling fight.
Ken Cuccinelli, former Virginia Attorney General, served in the Trump administration as the senior official performing the duties of the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security and the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Cuccinelli is known for his hard-line anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, and anti-environment views.
As Virginia’s Attorney General, Cuccinelli challenged the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, attacked climate change researchers, defended laws banning sodomy, opposed same-sex marriage, fought discrimination protections for gender identification, and authorized state law enforcement officials to investigate the immigration status of anyone they stopped. Cuccinelli unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2013, becoming the first acting attorney general to run for governor without resigning since 1985. He served as an advisor to Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign and as general counsel for Koch-funded think tank FreedomWorks. Cuccinelli was an integral part of the 2016 Republican National Convention initiative to convince delegates to nominate Ted Cruz over Donald Trump.
Cuccinelli was one of the most outspoken anti-immigrant Trump administration staffers. He was appointed Acting Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services amid controversy surrounding his qualifications and the legality of his appointment, leading his appointment to be considered Trump’s “most controversial.” As head of USCIS, Cuccinelli instituted policies that made legal immigration more difficult, including a so-called “wealth test” that would make it green cards and visas more likely to be denied to those who also qualified for government benefits. Cuccinelli also signaled a desire to end birthright citizenship. In 2020, a federal judge ruled that Cuccinelli’s appointment to USCIS was illegal.
In 2019, Cuccinelli was named deputy to the acting Secretary of Homeland Security while concurrently holding his role at USCIS. As with his previous federal appointment, the legality of this move was called into question. Despite the Government Accountability Office finding that Cuccinelli was ineligible to serve in this position, he continued to serve his position until the end of Trump’s term. At DHS, Cuccinelli forced international students at American universities to attend in-person classes during the COVID-19 pandemic or risk deportation, and he defended the use of unmarked cars by federal officials to detain racial justice protests. Cuccinelli also reduced oversight of DHS intelligence operations and ordered the agency to downplay the threat posed by white supremacists, encouraging focus on “left-wing” movements instead. As he was departing his position at DHS, Cuccinelli made a deal with the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement union and a number of state attorneys general to prevent the incoming Biden administration from changing immigration policy.
Cuccinelli was a “notable figure” in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and later testified before a federal grand jury about election interference. During the Trump administration, Cuccinelli was considered for a special appointment to investigate voter fraud, and was asked to use DHS authority to seize voting machines. Cuccinelli has continued to advocate against voting rights through his Election Transparency Initiative in partnership with Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America, which opposed the voting rights bill H.R. 1, worked to mobilize in Senate battleground states, and pushed for state-based election reform laws “primarily in states with close 2020 margins.”
Wesley Denton was listed as the CRA’s chair and treasurer on the organization’s 2021 990 form. Denton is also a director at the American Accountability Foundation, a right-wing dark money group, which The New Yorker called a “slime machine” that has escalated “partisan warfare” in the post-Trump era with its “obstructionism” towards the entire Biden slate of executive branch nominees, with a particular focus on “blocking women and people of color.”
Denton also serves as chief operating officer for the Conservative Partnership Institute, which shares an address with CRA and AAF (though AAF denies its close ties to Conservative Partnership Institute). Prior to his time with the AAF and CRA, Denton served in Trump’s Office of Management and Budget. He is also a former group vice president of communications and senior policy advisor at the Heritage Foundation, serving under its then-President and former Senator Jim DeMint, who went on to start the Conservative Partnership Institute. Denton also previously worked in the official offices of Senator DeMint (R-SC) and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), and in the press office of the House Armed Services Committee.
Ed Corrigan, a long-time Republican operative and a former Trump administration staffer, is also CEO of the Conservative Partnership Institute in addition to his role at the CRA. Early in his career, Corrigan interned for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when it was under the stewardship of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), known as an “advocate for segregation.” He also served as the legislative director for former Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH), who vehemently opposed LGBTQ rights and once “[waved] a plastic fetus on the floor of the US Senate in an anti-abortion speech.” He is the former executive director of the Senate Steering Committee under former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and was also DeMint’s senior advisor. While on the Hill, Corrigan received the Weyrich Award for Hill Staffer of the Year, named Paul Weyrich, the first president of The Heritage Foundation.
Corrigan followed DeMint to Heritage, where he started as a senior advisor and later was promoted to vice president. After working informally with the Trump administration for months, Corrigan was tapped to help Trump’s transition team staff domestic agencies. In addition to his roles at CPI and the CRA, Corrigan is also the treasurer of the American Accountability Foundation.
Jeffrey Clark is a former Trump and George W. Bush administration staffer, as well as a member of the Federalist Society. Clark is perhaps best known for his role in attempts to overturn the 2020 election. In December 2020, Clark, then head of the Department of Justice’s civil division, drafted a letter urging top officials in Georgia to dispute the state’s election results over baseless claims of voter fraud. After acting AG Jeffrey Rosen refused to sign the letter, rejecting Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, Trump and Clark met to discuss firing Rosen and elevating Clark to serve as acting AG in his place. The plan was ultimately abandoned after Justice Department officials threatened mass resignation in response. Clark’s attempted subversion of Rosen sullied his reputation, and Clark went from being known as an “establishment lawyer” to a Trump loyalist. Clark resigned from the Justice Department within ten days of the January 6th Capitol attack.
For his role in attempts to overturn the election, Clark was the subject of an ethics complaint. He was also accused of violating ethics rules and subpoenaed by the House committee investigating January 6th. He was deposed by the committee last year, where he invoked the Fifth Amendment over 100 times. Clark later praised the conspiratorial film 2000 Mules, which falsely alleged the 2020 election was stolen. In June 2022, Clark’s home was raided by the FBI as the agency carried out a search warrant and seized his devices.
Clark calls himself a longtime “climate hysteria lawyer” and fought climate regulations as a staffer in both the George W. Bush and Trump administrations. He has also promoted climate change denial. As a partner at law firm Kirkland & Ellis, Clark represented the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s legal challenges to federal carbon regulations and was part of the team that defended BP in the aftermath of the cataclysmic Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Just this year, Clark spoke at the climate-denial think tank The Heartland Institute, claiming that the Biden administration’s climate agenda was “for communistic purposes” and for “meta control” of American life. He also claimed that concerns about climate change are “religious” and “self-interested from dark forces.”
Clark praised Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the country’s leading anti-vaccine conspiracists. Clark also served as the chief of litigation and director of strategy at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a Koch-funded group that opposed COVID-19 regulations and vaccine mandates — though Clark’s name was removed from the organization’s website after he was subpoenaed by the House January 6th Committee.
Clark was allegedly one of Trump’s initial picks for Attorney General and is widely considered to be a serious contender for the post in a potential future Trump administration.
Kash Patel served on Trump’s National Security Council after time spent at the Department of Justice , the House Oversight Committee, and in Rep. Devin Nunes’ office (R-CA). While working for Nunes, Patel was the primary author of the “Nunes memo,” which pushed the disputed claims surrounding the FBI’s surveillance of Trump 2016 campaign aide Carter Page.
In his role at the National Security Council, Patel was suspected of serving as an independent backchannel to Ukraine. He became a person of interest in investigations into allegations that Trump improperly sought help from the Ukrainian government to boost his reelection chances. Patel was considered to lead Trump’s CIA and served as chief of staff to acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller after Trump fired former Secretary Mark Esper; Patel argued that Esper was disloyal to Trump for refusing to deploy the military to quash racial justice protests in Washington D.C. in 2020. Patel pushed Trump to dispute the results of the 2020 election and reportedly blocked Department of Defense officials from working with the Biden transition team.
Patel has maintained close ties to Trump, serving as a personal adviser and holding a seat on the board of Truth Social, Trump’s social media company. Patel is also set to testify in a case concerning Trump’s unauthorized retention of classified documents after leaving the White House. Patel wrote a children’s book that promotes conspiracies regarding investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia.
Steve Friend is a former FBI agent who was suspended after complaining about the “politicized” Bureau’s “overzealous” January 6th investigations and refusing to participate in SWAT raids against insurrection suspects. With support from other right-wing groups like Empower Oversight, Friend has submitted formal whistleblower complaints to the Office of the Inspector General, Office of Special Counsel, and Congress. Friend was invited to privately testify before the House Weaponization Committee, created by the 118th Congress’ Republican majority to attack enemies of the right, about the supposed politicization of the FBI.
Friend has spread falsehoods about the January 6th attack, as well as other conspiracy theories and right-wing talking points. He is also frequently a featured guest on conservative extremist media and plans to publish a book on the “politicization” of the FBI in 2023.
Fellow CRA staffer Kash Patel paid fellow Friend “almost immediately” after the two met in 2022. In addition to financially compensating Friend, Patel helped promote Friend’s forthcoming book on social media.
The Center for Renewing America received $583,701 from a Conservative Partnership Institute grant 2021. The grant constituted over half of the CRA’s reported $1,042,274 revenue that year. The CRA was founded as a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute in 2021; the organizations share an address and both are led by many former Trump administration staffers.
CRA’s budget proposal, “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government,” has helped shape House Republican priorities in the 118th Congress.
In anticipation of a Republican majority assuming control of the House, the CRA released “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government,” an aggressive budget proposal that called for cutting $9 trillion over the next decade from government programs. The proposal, which Russ Vought had reportedly shopped around to top Republicans, combines concerns over “America’s fiscal brokenness” and “the current grip of woke and weaponized government.” The CRA’s proposal targets the so-called “deep state” by attacking a “seemingly endless spate of corrupt and weaponized activity […] conservative citizens, and politicians disfavored by the governing elite” and also opposes what the CRA describes as a “cultural revolution that divides the country on the basis of race and ‘identity,’ disintegrates the institutions of western civilizations from within[.]”
The budget is a departure from traditional fiscal conservatism, as it defends popular retirement programs (CRA claims their budget “makes no reductions to Social Security retirement or Medicare benefits”) but takes aim at other spending – including social safety net programs for low-income Americans such as the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program and subsidies for the American Care Act. The CRA’s budget also takes aim at the FBI and the Department of Justice, accusing the former of attacking conservatives and calling the latter “a department that has gone rogue.”
In the background of the CRA’s massive proposed cuts is the group’s commitment to radically transform the federal government should a Republican take the Oval Office in 2025. As part of a coalition including Heritage and other conservative groups, the CRA has proposed passing an executive order that could result in the firing of tens of thousands of formally nonpartisan federal workers — an “unprecedented scale” of federal staffing changes. The coalition is building a “conservative LinkedIn” of ideologically trained future presidential appointees to fill the absences that would be created in federal agencies. The CRA’s budget proposal, which would historically downsize the federal government, would leave fewer positions to fill in such an event.
The budget barely acknowledges — and refuses to directly address “the most pressing long-term problems facing the country,” including the extreme proposition that “the families of the West are not having enough babies for their societies to endure.” This theory echoes the white supremacist “great replacement theory,” a conspiracy alleging that non-white immigrants are “replacing” white people in Western countries. CRA’s budget also goes so far as to praise the family policies of Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán, which have been compared to the same “great replacement theory.” CRA founder Russ Vought claimed that a “biblical” worldview centers the organization’s work and he wrote a Newsweek op-ed titled “Is There Anything Actually Wrong With ‘Christian Nationalism?’” At CPAC 2022, Orbán called for European and American Christian nationalists to “unite.”
The CRA is also part of a larger coalition including the Heritage Foundation, FreedomWorks, and groups within the Koch network working to push congressional Republicans to oppose future aid for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has “morphed into a far-right savior,” attacking “woke” enemies in recent years.
CRA’s “Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government” overlaps with the creation of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government by the 118th Congress’ Republican House majority. The subcommittee shares many priorities with the CRA, including the dominance of “woke” culture in the federal government and supposed abuses of power by the FBI and Department of Justice. The CRA is recognized as the mastermind of the subcommittee’s creation, with Rolling Stone calling the subcommittee the CRA’s “brainchild.”
The “Weaponization” subcommittee was born out of the early 2023 fight for Speaker of the House, which Rep. Kevin McCarthy ultimately cinched after facing hard-line opposition from far-right members. The creation of the Weaponization Subcommittee was one notable concession this far-right coalition extracted from the new Speaker. CRA founder and president Russ Vought was publicly critical of McCarthy and celebrated the anti-McCarthy coalition during the speakership fight. CRA board member Ed Corrigan proposed that the House Freedom Caucus, representing the furthest-right members of the House, could rule in tandem with Republicans, similar to a “European-style coalition government.” Corrigan is also CEO of the Conservative Partnership Institute, which incubated and helped launch CRA. Conservative Partnership Institute senior partner Mark Meadows was a key member of the House Freedom Caucus in his time as a House representative from North Carolina.
The Republican House majority also indicated it would threaten to allow a default on US debt in the debt ceiling fight in order to force spending cuts, as the GOP did in 2011 and 2013. Refusing to vote to raise the debt ceiling could result in catastrophic consequences such as federal debt default, a domestic financial crisis and recession, a temporary government shutdown, and potential chaos in the global economic order. The CRA’s budget proposal has become a blueprint for House Republicans’ own proposal they intend to present in the fight over the debt ceiling.
The CRA takes a wide range of right-wing policy positions in opposition to civil rights, racial justice, social spending, immigration, and free and open elections, all united under a supposedly “biblical” worldview.
The Center for Renewing America doubled down on their commitment to extreme immigration policy by hiring former Virginia Attorney General and Trump Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli as a Senior Fellow for Immigration in August 2021. The group later shared a “legal roadmap” to governors of border states to assist them in “unilaterally securing” the border.
The CRA released a policy paper urging the U.S. government to formally declare war on Mexican cartels and their leaders in order to supposedly strengthen the border. The organization reportedly reached out to officials in Arizona and Texas, claiming states have a constitutional right to declare undocumented immigration an “invasion” and expel immigrants by state forces, eschewing federal law enforcement. The CRA claimed victory after several counties in Texas declared an “invasion.” CRA’s policy proposal also called for a trigger mechanism to shut down legal ports of entry, as well as for the Department of Treasury and the Navy to engage in efforts to combat smugglers and cartel leaders.
CRA Senior Fellow Ken Cuccinelli attacked efforts to resettle Afghan refugees in America following the Taliban takeover of the country calling refugee resettlement a “security risk” and a threat to “broader social cohesion.” Republican leaders criticized Cuccinelli’s statements, deeming them “un-Christian and mean-spirited.”
The CRA strongly opposed H.R. 1 (also known as the For the People Act), legislation to expand voting rights, claiming that measures like automatic voter registration and vote-by-mail would threaten “election integrity.” CRA Senior Fellow Ken Cuccinelli’s other organization, Election Transparency Initiative, also opposed H.R. 1 and has pushed for state-based election reform laws “primarily in states with close 2020 margins.”
In September 2022, CRA filed IRS complaints against Mark Zuckerberg as well as the nonprofit Center For Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), to which Zuckerberg substantially contributed in the 2020 election cycle to support election administration. CTCL distributed much-needed funding to election systems to ensure that elections were safely administered in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. CTCL’s grants were widely praised by election officials. Despite clear evidence that the grants did not impact voter turnout in favor of either political party, the grants sparked right-wing conspiracies alleging that they were a tool for Zuckerberg to rig the 2020 election for Joe Biden. The CRA’s complaint echoed these conspiracies, claiming that Zuckerberg used the CTCL to “throw” the 2020 election in Biden’s favor.
Through the CRA, Russ Vought has led the charge against “critical race theory,” pushing conservatives across the nation to make it a policy and campaign focus. The Washington Post characterized the growing anti-CRT movement as “conservative backlash” to efforts to increase anti-racism initiatives in public schools. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund called the anti-CRT movement a “panic” that works to pass “truth ban laws” and hold back racial justice progress.
The CRA’s 501(c)(4) sister organization Citizens for Renewing America produced an “A to Z” handbook for parents to “stop critical race theory and reclaim [their] local school boards.” The 33-page guide begins with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. and proceeds to claim that critical race theory is being taught in K-12 schools.” The handbook also includes strategies for developing anti-critical race theory networks in school districts with the goal of “winning back” school boards.
Citizens for Renewing America also released model legislation meant to be taken up by school boards and state legislatures to ban critical race theory and prescribe harsh penalties for violators. Concepts that purportedly instill critical race theory and could result in punitive action under the CRA’s model legislation include: “diversity training,” “white privilege,” “equity,” “patriarchy,” “racial justice,” whiteness,” “white supremacy,” “institutional bias,” “cultural awareness,” and “multiculturalism.” The CRA has also attacked social-emotional learning, which teaches students how to “manage their emotions, how to make good decisions, how to collaborate, and how to understand themselves and others,” as a vessel of critical race theory. Since 2021, 44 states have introduced bills or otherwise taken action against “critical race theory.”
CRA founder and president Russ Vought has a long history of attacking LGBTQ Americans, including claims that fighting the “transgender contagion” should be a “front and center issue” in order to save “our civilization,” and that “the LGBT movement […] demands not only to be left alone but also a license to indoctrinate children in the public schools.” The CRA endorses the offensive term “grooming” to describe the presence of LGBTQ culture and education in media and public schools, the reappropriation of which has led to increased harassment of LGBTQ communities and has been condemned by civil rights activists.
The CRA has advanced Vought’s anti-LGBTQ agenda by supporting legislation to ban trans athletes in public schools in Utah and Tennessee and to ban gender-affirming healthcare in Arkansas. The CRA also penned a letter in opposition to the Fairness For All Act, which would prohibit “discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.” The CRA’s opposition letter claimed that the bill pushes “a lie about who we are as Americans at a most fundamental level.”
Vought praised a controversial bill passed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis banning public schools from discussing topics of sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms from kindergarten to third grade. The law also requires parents to be notified of any health services offered to their children — sparking concern that schools might “out” children to their parents. According to the LGBTQ advocacy group The Trevor Project, the bill erases “LGBTQ identity, history, and culture — as well as LGBTQ students themselves.” The CRA has also claimed that the term “gender-affirming” is part of a larger conspiracy to introduce critical race theory into American society.
The CRA is part of a Heritage Foundation project advisory board that aims to create an administration-in-waiting for a potential Republican president in 2025. The project is working to build a “conservative LinkedIn” of trained future presidential appointees who subscribe to a policy playbook crafted by nearly 50 member organizations, meeting monthly to negotiate ideological disagreements on critical issues such as Ukraine aid. CRA fellow Jeff Clark and founder Ross Vought are key architects of this project.
The project would go beyond typical targets for the right, such as the EPA and IRS, and would attempt to radically alter and reorganize key agencies such as the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, the FBI, and the State Department. The project is moving at an “unprecedented scale,” with plans to pass an executive order that could result in the firing of tens of thousands of formally nonpartisan federal workers. The coalition behind the project is also preparing for legal challenges and defenses, planning to take advantage of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
Separately, Vought stated that the CRA’s plan for a future Republican administration would be to “deconstruct the state” and generally gut the federal government, eliminating the EPA, CDC, NIH, and other regulatory and protective bodies. Vought also expressed a desire to make it easier for political appointees and other federal workers to obtain security clearances in order to “crush the deep state.”
In February 2024, Politico reported that CRA had developed “plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas” in a potential future Trump administration. Furthermore, these plans also called for invoking the Insurrection Act against domestic protestors in the United States and allowing the executive branch to override spending projects authorized by Congress.
Founded in 2017, the Conservative Partnership Institute is a nonprofit organization established by former Senator Jim DeMint to “fortify the presence of conservatives in Washington.” The Center for Renewing America and the Conservative Partnership Institute share an address and both are led by many former Trump administration staffers, including CRA board member and CPI CEO Ed Corrigan. Conservative Partnership Institute has been coined an “extension of the Trump infrastructure” and “the most powerful messaging force in the MAGA universe.” The Institute and its nearly one dozen affiliate groups employ a roster of key January 6th figures,, earning it the title of “ insurrectionists’ clubhouse.” The organization is also an incubator for numerous right-wing groups such as the CRA and its affiliated groups.
In late January 2021, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows joined the Conservative Partnership Institute. While Meadows courted a position at the Institute, he simultaneously advised Trump on how to handle his second impeachment over his role in instigating the Capitol riot. In a public statement, the Conservative Partnership Institute claimed that Meadows would help the organization “operate behind the scenes to help create more members like Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley,” all of whom voted to overturn the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021.
After the House voted to recommend charging Meadows for his refusal to cooperate with Jan 6 investigations, and shortly before Congress launched its own investigations, Trump’s “Save America” PAC gave $1 million to the Conservative Partnership Institute. Congressional investigations later revealed Meadows as the “chief enabler to a president who was desperate to hold on to power” and claimed he was “at the center” of the events of January 6. Despite the swirling investigations surrounding him, Meadows continued to promote 2020 election denial conspiracies at the Conservative Partnership Institute. Weeks after Trump’s donation, the Conservative Partnership Institute hosted a summit in Mar-a-Lago to discuss their shortcomings in the 2020 election and strategize about how to build up a network of pro-Trump organizations to cement his power on the right.
In 2022, the Conservative Partnership Institute held summits focused on voter suppression efforts in Georgia, Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Michigan. At these summits, the Institute screened a documentary by the Capital Research Center featuring claims that Mark Zuckerberg “manipulated” the 2020 election, and held panels promoting conspiracies about mail-in and absentee voting. They also featured keynote speeches from GOP leaders like Mark Meadows, with titles like “What Happened in 2020 and What We Must Do to Protect Future Elections in Arizona.” Leading election conspiracist Cleta Mitchell also used these summits to train right-wing activists to act as election monitors; volunteers trained by Mitchell have reportedly harassed and undermined local election boards while they search for and promote tenuous evidence of systematic voter fraud.
Founded in 2021, the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) is a conservative opposition research organization. AAF is listed as an affiliated group on the Center for Renewing America’s 2021 form 990 and AAF’s director, Wesley Denton, is CRA’s chairman and treasurer.
AAF created a website called BidenNoms.com to attack the administration’s nominees across various cabinet agencies. The BidenNoms.com effort has:
AAF denies having close ties to the Conservative Partnership Institute, despite:
The America First Legal Foundation is a nonprofit legal organization led by former Trump White House senior advisor Stephen Miller, credited with “shaping the racist and draconian immigration policies of President Trump.” America First Legal is listed as an affiliated group on the CRA’s 2021 form 990.
The AFL focuses on organizing Republican attorneys general and opposing Biden administration policies, from border enforcement policies to COVID-19. Per Politico, lead Clinton impeachment lawyer Ken Starr helped Miller form the organization.
America First Legal and the Conservative Partnership Institute together launched the Center For Legal Equality, which aims to “drag liberal elites kicking and screaming into court and then into compliance with the law” for alleged discrimination against conservatives.
The Heritage Foundation is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization and conservative think tank. Since its founding in 1973, Heritage has become one of the world’s most influential think tanks through its relationships with Republican administrations and its influence in Congress. High-profile CRA staffers such as founder Russ Vought and chairman and treasurer Wesley Denton are former Heritage staffers. The CRA is also part of a larger Heritage project that aims to create a policy playbook for a potential Republican administration in 2025.
Although historically a research institution, Heritage has increasingly ventured into political advocacy and grassroots organizing through Heritage Action. Both the think tank and Heritage Action, its 501(c)4 arm, have advanced debunked claims of widespread voter fraud that have been used to enact restrictive voting laws across the country following the 2020 presidential election. The organization has also been active in the fight to limit access to abortion, roll back environmental regulations, and curtail the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans.
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