Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/former-trump-cabinet-member-building-new-think-tank-bolster
February 2, 2021
President Trump's departure from the White House has left many conservative activists pondering what's next for the MAGA movement.
The answer is easy for the so-called D.C. "establishment," which hopes to leave Trump behind and return to "business as usual," according to Russ Vought, who served as Trump's Office of Management and Budget director.
Business as usual means "powerful interests have an outsized voice in setting the agenda, where policy objectives are routinely sterilized of all perceived political risk, and where elites keep their base of voters in the dark," Vought wrote in The Federalist
Vought has a different answer. He is launching the Center for American Restoration, a new think tank that aims to provide the intellectual firepower to propel the next phase of Trump's populist movement.
The center's mission is to "maintain our gains over the last four years" and "put up as much of an opposition against the Biden administration as we possibly can," Vought told "Just the News AM" television program.
"What the America First movement needs is the institutionalization of these ideas," Vought said. "And so, we're happy to play our part in that."
The Center for American Restoration will be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, researching issues like immigration reform, pro-life policies, pushing back against China, voter fraud, and Big Tech and social media censorship.
A sister organization, America Restoration Action, will be organized as a 501(c)(4) "social welfare" group, which allows for direct advocacy of policies and does not require disclosure of the names of donors to the IRS when filing annual Form 990 returns.
Vought's announcement snagged an endorsement from his former boss.
"Russell Vought did a fabulous job in my administration, and I have no doubt he will do a great job in continuing our quest to make America great again," Trump said in a launch announcement released by the organization.
Vought has already brought on board Rachel Semmel, who ran communications for Trump's OMB, and Ashlea Frazier, Vought's former chief of staff.
Center-right think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution generally shy away from the social and cultural hot button issues that Vought's group will confront head-on, including abortion, drug legalization and the impact of pornography in communities.
Given the Center for American Restoration's social conservatism, its most likely competitor is the Heritage Foundation, which last week announced it has hired several former Trump administration senior officials, including Chad Wolf, former acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Ken Cuccinelli, former deputy DHS secretary, and Mark Morgan, who was acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
In an interview with Fox Business Network's Lou Dobbs, Vought said the Center for American Restoration does not plan to take corporate funding, which would alleviate concerns that the the upstart might compete with Heritage as a fundraising rival targeting the same donor base.
A spokesman for the Heritage Foundation had no comment about the fundraising issue, but he did point Just the News to public comments via Twitter from Heritage Foundation President Kay Coles James and Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action.
"Congrats to @russvought and the Center for American Restoration team on this exciting news!" James wrote. "We're so proud of Russ for his leadership of OMB. He'll always be part of the @Heritage family and we look forward to working with @amrestorecenter."
"Congrats to .@russvought on his exciting next step! Go get em!" Anderson wrote.
Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, praised Vought's effort to build an intellectual framework around Trump's instinctive populism.
"Help is on the way," Olsen wrote of Vought in a Washington Post column praising the effort, writing: "Donald Trump entered his presidency with a clear set of instincts, but little in the way of detailed policy proposals. That cannot continue if the conservative-populist alliance that many on the right envision is to grow and flourish."
Olsen said he thinks that "establishment" conservatives "have neglected the questions of culture and religion that are so important to a modern center-right," a fact that Vought seeks to counter by explicitly stating that his group's fight is "For God, For Country, and For Community."
Vought rejects the "establishment" that has "effectively accepted the terms the left has set to govern the public square," he explained in the Federalist. "God is excluded, and faith has become a predominantly private matter. It is no longer acceptable for conservatives to argue as citizens or elected officials from a Judeo-Christian worldview."
"What is really needed is to set the fight and to frame the debates in the moment based on where the country's needs are," Vought told "Just the News AM."
American Cornerstone: A Much-Needed Endeavor By Ben Carson
Source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/02/03/american_cornerstone_a_much-needed_endeavor_145170.htmlFebruary 03, 2021
We have painted our fellow Americans as “deplorable,” “stupid,” and worse. It is this type of malicious, political rhetoric fueled by opportunistic politicians and profit-driven media organizations that has roiled our deeply divided nation.
We are better than this. Words such as compromise, compassion, and civility are twisted, maligned and tainted as somehow being dirty, or have magically disappeared altogether.
We must do better than this. I miss the days when Americans fought united for freedom and justice for all -- equally. I miss when compromise, compassion, and civility were not only encouraged but celebrated, where individuals accepted the consequences of their actions, when politicians pursued the public good, not just their own good.
My time serving as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development over the last four years taught me many things, none more important than the necessity for collaboration and mutual understanding. I saw first-hand that, when we work together as one nation, the American Dream becomes attainable for all and opportunity becomes limitless.
It is for these reasons -- and many others -- that I am launching a nonprofit conservative think tank with the goal of providing common-sense solutions to some of our nation’s biggest problems. The first step in healing is to start talking to one another again.
The American Cornerstone Institute will be dedicated to creating dialogue and smart discourse. ACI will focus on promoting and preserving individual and religious liberty, helping our country’s most vulnerable find new hope, and developing methods to maximize government’s efficiency and effectiveness to best serve all our nation’s citizens.
ACI will focus on a diverse set of issues that influence important policy discussions. We will engage with local governments and work with communities to find solutions to our nation’s problems.
We must work to improve American cities. While many of the country’s large cities face similar problems — homelessness, a higher cost of living, and rising crime, to name a few — the causes of these problems, and the best ways to address them, will vary from place to place. The institute will study in detail some of America’s largest cities, identifying the key drivers of their current issues and potential solutions that take into account the unique characteristics of each urban area.
We will serve as a check on political power in Washington. ACI will actively push and remind the powers that be to allow and even empower local communities to govern their own affairs. Washington may be home to our political arena, but it is seldom a place for finding solutions; for those we must look to the American people.
For the preservation of this great nation, for ourselves, and the next generation, we will foster a renewed focus on education. If there’s one thing I know to be true, it's that education is the key to prosperity. Without it, our communities will falter and our institutions will crumble.
We are one nation, under God. We must not forget that. The United States of America is seen as a beacon of freedom and hope across the world, a place where the practice of one’s faith should be encouraged and protected, without trepidation.
ACI will promote the value of self-sufficiency and the idea of creating equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Providing individuals with opportunities to transform and improve their lives leads to better outcomes than subsidies and welfare programs.
We are a compassionate nation, the greatest civic experiment in history, the world’s guiding light of freedom and opportunity.
The Bible says, if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. There have been many calls to heal the divide that has polarized our great nation. The American Cornerstone Institute will be a leader and part of the solution. Our goal is simple: heal, inspire, and revive America.
Dr. Ben Carson is the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Ben Carson launching new think tank to reconcile divided Americans around 'cornerstone values' By Natalia Mittelstadt
Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/culture/dr-ben-carson-division-america-we-are-not-each-others-enemiesFebruary 8, 2021
In the hope of helping Americans to reconcile around the nation's "cornerstone values and principles," the former Hud secretary has launched a new think tank, the American Cornerstone Institute.
America's polarized society is like a married couple on the brink of divorce, Dr. Ben Carson believes.
"It's like a marriage, you know, people, they love each other," Carson said in an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast. "They can't stand to be away from each other. But what about before they get divorced? They stopped talking, and next thing you know, their spouse is the devil incarnate ... and that's what's happened to us as a society, and we got to start talking to each other. "
The former Trump administration HUD secretary hasn't abandoned hope for national reconciliation — if only we can remember the ideals that brought us together in the first place and start talking to each other again.
"[We got to start talking to each other, said Carson. "We can work this out. We are not each other's enemies."
In the hope of helping Americans to reconcile around the nation's "cornerstone values and principles," Carson has launched a new think tank, the American Cornerstone Institute.
The nation needs to recover "things like our faith, things like liberty, things like community, things like life, foundational pillars," Carson said, "and watching those things melt away in our society is not something that I could do ... we can't just idly sit by and let that happen. There are common-sense principles that need to be applied to the problems that we are facing right now. And if we allow common sense and decency to once again reign supreme in our country, we will see the fruits of that very, very quickly."
For Carson, the divide in American society begins with the education system — a reality that has been exposed as never before as a result of the distance learning to which school systems across the country have resorted over the past year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Through the window into public education that digital, at-home learning has afforded to parents, "we've been able to look into some of those classrooms, and see the kind of propaganda that's being put forth," Carson said. "It starts at a very young age."
And it starts with the wholesale revision of the story American schools tell students about their nation's history.
"[W]hen you destroy the real history, you destroy people's identity," said Carson. "And when you destroy their identity, you destroy the basis of their belief system. And this is what we're finding ourselves in the midst of right now. We've got to change that."
The opening needed to begin that change, Carson suggests, lies in the decentralization and diversification of educational alternatives made possible by remote learning methods.
"One of the things that will help, ironically, is the fact that people can do distance learning now," said Carson. "And they can form groups. And they don't necessarily have to be stuck in a system where you just have people who are interested in propaganda and not in educating people. So we're going to find a way to utilize that, obviously, to our advantage."
Stephen Miller’s Next Act Finds a Stage in the Courts By Brent Kendall
Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/stephen-millers-next-act-finds-a-stage-in-the-courts-11617793216April 7, 2021
Trump senior adviser—and conservative lightning rod—launches new legal group to challenge Democratic policies through lawsuits
Washington—Stephen Miller has come to admire the effectiveness—and aggressiveness—of the legal campaign Democrats and their supporters mounted against the Trump administration’s agenda.
Now, the former senior White House adviser during Donald Trump’s presidency hopes to return fire.
Mr. Miller, an architect of the last administration’s restrictive immigration policies and a leading backer of its socially conservative initiatives, is launching this week a new organization, America First Legal, to challenge Biden administration initiatives at odds with Trump-era priorities.
“Anything the president does that we believe to be illegal is fair game,” he said.
The group, Mr. Miller said, would tap into the expertise of Trump administration lawyers, work with Republican state attorneys general and partner with lawyers around the country who need legal and financial resources for their cases.
The group also has broader ambitions, Mr. Miller said, to eventually get involved in litigation that goes beyond the Biden administration, including to support police officers, go after big tech companies and take on other business interests whose positions run counter to those he embraced in the White House.
The conservative legal arsenal is hardly bare. Republicans, much as they did during the Obama administration, already have launched a series of challenges, including to Biden limits on oil-and-gas production, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton succeeded early in blocking Mr. Biden’s planned 100-day pause on deportations.
Mr. Miller said he comes to the new project after observing firsthand how relentless litigation from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union can slow down a White House. When the Trump administration pursued a new initiative, he said, “we wouldn’t get just one lawsuit in one court, we’d get six lawsuits in six courts.”
“It was an extraordinarily effective tactic, and there’s no counterpoint to that on our side,” he said.
The 35-year-old Mr. Miller isn’t a lawyer, but a political operative who worked for conservative lawmakers including Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) before hitching his star to Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. He said he left the White House believing “that the most important thing we could do as people who philosophically believe in traditional values, conservative values…was to develop and launch a conservative answer to the ACLU.”
Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, suggested he was unfazed by that prospect. “Good luck to him pushing positions that he was unable to secure when he was sitting in the West Wing,” he said. “He’ll have a tough road to travel.”
America First Legal’s supporters include former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Matthew Whitaker, a former acting U.S. attorney general, both of whom will sit on the group’s board of directors. Mr. Miller has also received private encouragement from former Attorney General William Barr and anticipates public support from Mr. Trump.
“Conservatives and America First supporters badly need to catch up and turn the tables, which is why I applaud Stephen and Mark Meadows for rushing to fill this critical void,” Mr. Trump said in an emailed statement to The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Miller declined to disclose his initial budget or fundraising so far, saying only that he had raised “a tidy sum of money” which would pay for initial staff and finance an early round of cases. Those funds have come from donors “who can write very large checks,” he said, but the group plans to begin soliciting small and medium-size donations soon.
A White House spokesman for President Biden declined to comment.
“You can anticipate an avalanche of challenges to what we see as an abdication of any semblance of the rule of law in this administration,” South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said. “We’re all out here working together in tandem, and there’s a space out there for people like Stephen.”
Mr. Paxton said Mr. Miller already is deeply connected with Republican attorneys general around the country. “He’s going to be an invaluable resource for us to rely on,” he said.
There are many conservative public-interest groups in the legal world already, but they tend to focus on specific areas of the law, such as protecting religion in public life, opposing abortion or attacking economic regulation.
Mr. Miller said he wants to take a broader, more nimble approach and push for a maximum volume of cases. “Nobody has the attitude of, ‘Let’s find the weakest points and legally attack them relentlessly and as often—and everywhere—that we possibly can,’” he said.
Mr. Meadows said he anticipated the group would spend much of its time working behind the scenes, with “a stealth panel of lawyers who aren’t as interested in making headlines as putting limits on the executive overreach of the Biden administration. That’s hopefully going to be a hallmark of this group.”
Litigation has become a key feature of the modern presidency and was a central story line of Mr. Trump’s four years in office. The ACLU sued the administration 413 times. Democratic state attorneys general frequently sued the Trump administration; California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, now secretary of health and human services, alone sued the previous administration at least 100 times.
The administration saw an array of its plans blocked or stalled in the courts. The Supreme Court sometimes allowed its policies to be implemented but other times dealt a final blow, including to its efforts to add a U.S. citizenship question to the census and cancel an Obama-era program providing work permits and deportation protections to young immigrants.
The ACLU’s Mr. Romero said his organization sued the Trump administration “not because they were Republicans but because they were the worst administration in modern times on civil liberties and civil rights.”
“We purposely decided to carpet-bomb the administration on many of its policies,” he said. “That takes a certain type of firepower and knowledge and infrastructure that took 101 years to build.”
Mr. Romero said the Trump administration made part of the job easy “because they were overreaching and disregarded the plain language of statutes and legal precedent.”
During the Trump years, Republicans criticized left-leaning groups for pursuing nationwide injunctions in more liberal court jurisdictions, such as in Northern California, that put Trump policies on ice across the U.S.
Now, they will be looking to take the same approach—from courts that lean more conservative, a strategy Republicans have pursued before. Mr. Miller said his group already is working with a Texas lawyer to roll out a first batch of lawsuits there.
“We want to get the same injunctions, we absolutely do,” he said. “It would be unforgivable for us to say this will only be a tool that those on the left side of the spectrum use.”
Mr. Miller conceded it would take time for his group to scale up in terms of operations and resources. In addition to money, he will likely need some success in court to have staying power.
Mr. Trump’s campaign, for example, raised large sums of money to challenge the 2020 election results, but the many lawsuits he and his supporters filed were defeated in courts across the country, with judges quickly tossing out most cases.
“Motions to dismiss are not hard to file—and easy to lose,” Mr. Romero said.
Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com
No comments:
Post a Comment