Steve Corbin is emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa and a contributing columnist to 246 newspapers and 48 social media platforms in 45 states, who receives no remuneration, funding, or endorsement from any for-profit business, nonprofit organization, political action committee, or political party.
Since the 1960s, think tanks and advocacy groups have been key influencers of presidential policymaking. For decades, Democratic and Republican presidents have relied on think tanks for research and policy ideas. Most recently think tank roles have shifted from advisory to actual policy formulation and implementation, whereby the president can be seen as a marionette controlled by the think tank puppeteers.
Research shows that in the first 285 days of Donald Trump’s second presidency, seven conservative organizations have had hundreds of their recommendations implemented. If your mind has been spinning over the drastic changes to the federal government and how Trump has abandoned many norms of domestic policy and international diplomacy, you may wonder who is pulling the president’s strings.
Let’s examine the seven think tank puppeteers that have influenced Trump’s administration since January 20 and will likely continue to play that role until January 2029.
Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025
Donald Trump posted on Truth Social in mid-2024, “I know nothing about Project 2025” despite an April 2022 speech at a Heritage Foundation event where he endorsed or acknowledged the project’s efforts.
Project 2025, a 922-page blueprint, contained 735 detailed policy proposals for Trump to implement across 20 federal agencies. Several polls from September and October 2024 found that the plan was extremely unpopular among Americans who knew about it.
The Trump administration has implemented numerous domestic and foreign policy ideas drawn from Project 2025. By some counts, as many as 251 policies (nearly half of the blueprint) are already in place.
Additionally, about 70 percent of Trump’s cabinet appointees and more than 50 senior government officials had prior roles with Heritage or its Project 2025 partner groups.
Here’s are nine high-profile recommendations from Project 2025 that Trump has implemented:
1) disbanding U.S. Agency for International Development
2) prohibiting transgender individuals from serving in the military
3) allocating funds for 100,000 ICE detention beds
4) laying off thousands of IRS employees and eliminating new funding for tax enforcement
5) deploying Secret Service and other federal officers as law enforcement in Washington, D.C.
6) canceling federal contracts supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion
7) defunding NPR, PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
8) withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, and
9) expanding tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China. (The Hill and BBC)
America First Policy Institute
The America First Policy Institute prepared nearly 300 executive orders ready for Trump’s signature immediately after his inauguration. This organization dominates Trump’s “America First” economic nationalism, immigration restrictions and deregulation task forces personnel. The group’s co-founder Linda McMahon is now Secretary of Education.
Center for Renewing America
The Center for Renewing America was founded by Russel Vought, a Project 2025 architect who is now director of the Office of Management and Budget. This organization has been instrumental in shaping policies around Schedule F (civil service reclassification), Christian nationalist faith-based governance and federal budget restructuring.
Claremont Institute
The Claremont Institute has contributed ideological frameworks promoting “national conservatism,” advancing “constitutional conservatism,” state-level resistance to the federal bureaucracy, DEI reforms and climate-related executive orders.
Hillsdale College
Hillsdale College-trained figures have taken education posts across Trump’s agencies, promoting the nationalization of curriculum and the rollback of federal education standards.
America First Legal
Stephen Miller’s organization, America First Legal, advises Trump on litigation and executive acts aimed at neutralizing federal civil rights enforcement, immigration enforcement, Department of Justice strategies and border governance.
Council for National Policy
The Council for National Policy (founded in 1981) is the hub for political appointments and helps integrate religious nationalist proposals into agencies’ missions, including Health and Human Services and Education (DeSmog).
Assessing Trump 2.0 after 285 days
Trump has followed the playbooks presented to him by seven self-serving organizations. His administration has already implemented 251 policies that span from federal agency restrictions to immigration crackdowns, rollback of environmental civil rights protections and significant centralization of the executive branch.
In the foreign policy arena, dozens more policies created by think tanks are in force. They have enabled Trump’s sharp pivot toward isolationism, trade protectionism, and militarized deterrence that is consistent with the “America First” concept.
But, hold on to your hat. The Project 2025 Tracker and other independent observers note that another 309 objectives of the marionette masters remain “in progress. Reformation of America has only just begun as we’re still facing around 1,170 days of Trump 2.0.
Top photo was taken in April 2022, when Trump flew with Kevin Roberts to speak at a Heritage Foundation conference. First published by the Washington Post on August 7, 2024; republished on the Kamala Harris campaign’s social media.