Think Tank Quickies (#509)

• Project 2025 leader back in the fold.
• Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), the GOP think tank stocked with former staffers and allies of Trump, had steep drop in revenue in 2023.
  
• Trump gives speech at AFPI gala.
• In recent days, Trump has tapped nearly a half-dozen Project 2025 authors and contributors for roles in his administration. 
• Pam Bondi, who Trump picked for his Attorney General, was chairwoman of AFPI.
  
• The Hudson Institute announced that Palantir CTO and EVP Shyam Sankar will join its board of trustees. 
• The prospect of a new foreign policy has attracted some relatively newer think tanks to Mar-a-Lago.
• Counselor to the Ukrainian Embassy Kateryna Smagliy and senior adviser to the German Marshall Fund Heather Conley traveled to Kentucky to make the case for Ukraine aid.  Ukrainian officials have traveled to Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Ohio, and Iowa as part of a tour of the American heartland organized by GMF.
  
• Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) launches new tech and innovation institute.
• Ember: "A global energy think think tank and go-to organization for open-source data about the clean-energy transition."
  

Neera Tanden Returing to Helm Think Tank CAP

Here is more from the New York Times:

Neera Tanden, a longtime fixture of Democratic politics in Washington, is taking back her old post leading the party’s top think tank, where she served as one of President Trump’s most energetic and vocal antagonists during his first term.

The group, the Center for American Progress, announced on Thursday that Ms. Tanden would return as its chief executive. Since its founding more than two decades ago, the center, which is based in Washington, has served as a locus of Democratic opposition whenever Republicans have held the White House.

She is returning to C.A.P. alongside its founder, John Podesta, who was Mr. Biden’s global representative on climate. Mr. Podesta was recently named chairman of the group’s board. Patrick Gaspard, who has been serving as the organization’s president, will shift to a senior adviser position.

C.A.P. is one of several liberal groups plagued by financial troubles in the early days of the Trump administration. This month, the center laid off 22 employees, a cut of about 8 percent of its staff. Ms. Tanden said she was confident that there would not be additional layoffs.

 

Democratic donors have said they would withhold funds from think tanks until the groups generate a coherent strategy for the party. 

Some have suggested that CAP could build a "Project 2029," a Democratic version of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025.

Chinese Companies Threatening Think Tankers Over Unflattering Research

An increasing number of Chinese businesses are threatening think tanks and universities with legal action in an attempt to stop damaging research.

Here is more from the New York Times:

Chinese companies have sued or sent threatening legal letters to researchers in the United States, Europe and Australia close to a dozen times in recent years in an attempt to quash negative information, with half of those coming in the past two years. The unusual tactic borrows from a playbook used by corporations and celebrities to discourage damaging news coverage in the media.

The budding legal tactic by Chinese firms could silence critics who shed light on problematic business practices inside one of the most powerful countries in the world, researchers warn. The legal action is having a chilling effect on their work, they say, and in many cases straining the finances of their organizations.

One of the first examples occurred in 2019 when Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications giant, threatened to sue the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, an Australian think tank. ASPI had released a report containing allegations that servers provided by Huawei to a coalition of African nations were sending data to Shanghai. 

Eric Sayers, who focuses on U.S.-Chinese technology policy at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, received a letter in September from lawyers demanding that he take down an opinion article he co-wrote about a Chinese drone company, Autel Robotics. The article, which was published by Defense News, a trade publication, said Chinese-made drones posed a national security risk because they could map American infrastructure.

In May, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University published a report by Anna Puglisi, a researcher who had recently departed. The report said the Chinese government was most likely involved in funding the growth of BGI, a Chinese biotechnology company.

In a June letter, BGI accused Ms. Puglisi of making defamatory claims and demanded that she retract the report.

 

For years, the Chinese government has used sanctions against Western think tanks and think tank experts.

Think Tank Quickies (#508)

• Tom Jones' Heritage Foundation-funded DHS Bureaucrat Watch List names 51 federal policy experts and high-ranking leaders to fire.
  
• Some 80% of Hill "experts" take money from arms makers, foreign interests. 
• CSIS analysts gamed out a "climate club."  The outcomes weren't great.
  
• With an "epic name," this conservative think tank (Economic Policy Innovation Center) sees opening.
• One person's think tank is another's propaganda organ.
• FT: "Inside the radical Trump-backing group behind Project 2025."
• Jeff Bezos's Amazon donates to Tony Blair's influential think tank.
• Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCFA) changes name and mission.
• Telegram channel Rybar, a popular military blog tracking the war in Ukraine, has been defined as a think tank "defending the nation's information borders."
• Heritage is back. 
  

USIP on the Chopping Block with New Executive Order

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order (EO) that will significantly shrink the size and scope of the US Institute of Peace (USIP).

The EO calls for the "non-statutory components and functions of [USIP to] be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law," and calling for it to "reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law."

Within 14 days, the head of USIP must submit a report to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) confirming compliance with the order.

Established in 1984 by the US Congress (during the Reagan Administration), it has an annual budget of around $55 million and employs some 300 people. 

The secretaries of State and Defense and the president of the National Defense University (NDU) serve on USIP’s Board of Directors, with 12 distinguished Democratic and Republican leaders nominated by the US president and confirmed by the Senate.

The think tank, which has an established presence in 15+ countries, asked the federal government for around $55 million for FY2025.

Trying to cut USIP funding is nothing new.

Here is a 2024 Heritage Foundation piece entitled "The US Institute of Peace is Politicized and Unaccountable."

Much more coming soon...

Trump Wields Army of MAGA Think Tanks

Here is more from Politico:

President Donald Trump took office eight years ago as the ultimate outsider whose rhetoric often shocked Washington but was seldom taken seriously by the policy shops that have long helped administrations transform their agenda into action.

Now, he has an army of think tanks and other advocacy groups behind him, reverse-engineering even his off-the-cuff statements into white papers, training legions of his acolytes — and jockeying for influence.

There are now MAGA-specific think tanks, like the Center for Renewing America and the America First Policy Institute; MAGA recruiting and training organizations, like American Moment; and MAGA incubators, like the Conservative Partnership Institute, all aimed at not only bolstering the Trump cause but strategizing how to sustain it with just four years until his successor is named, according to interviews with more than a dozen Trump allies, former administration officials and other conservatives who work for think tanks or other outside groups, many of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly about dynamics between the organizations.

Democrats have long leaned on the Center for American Progress, the Urban Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, among other groups, for progressive brain power. For Republicans, that intellectual heft has for decades come from think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. But the massive political realignment Trump ushered in has knocked many of those onetime mainstays from their vaunted position, with the MAGA movement dismissing some of them as liberal.

 

Among other things, that article notes that the Center for Renewing America (CRA) is positioning itself to fill the void as a nimbler, more MAGA Heritage Foundation.