Think Tank Quickies (#517)

• In Feb. 2025, former Chinese ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai quietly led the first of multiple delegations to Washington, meeting with think tank representatives and exploring how Beijing might engage the Trump Administration.
  
• World Economic Forum (WEF) founder Klaus Schwab is under investigation by the organization he created after a new whistleblower letter alleged financial and ethical misconduct by the longtime leader and his wife.
• Dr. Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer has been appointed as the new president of the German Marshall Fund (GMF).  She will be the think tank's first European president.
• Project 2049 has rebranded as the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security.
  
• The roots of Vladimir Putin aligning himself with a small cadre of conservatives inside the US who shared his disdain for modern liberalism can be traced back to 1995 - before Putin was even president - when two Russian sociologists, Anatoly Antonov and Viktor Medkov, summoned Allan C. Carlson, an academic and the president of a conservative think tank in Illinois, to Moscow. 
• Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution among the think tankers kicked off the Defense Policy Board.
• Navy leadership concerned that criticism of Trump by invited speakers could cause another outcry from conservative think tanks. 
• American Compass' "membership group" - an off-the-record confab that has seminars, salon dinners and an annual retreat to the Eastern Shore of Maryland - crossed 200 members in 2024.
• Saikat Chakrabarti is the president and co-founder of New Consensus, a think tank "that has been trying to think through what it would take to build at Green New Deal scale and pace." 
• From The Atlantic: The Project 2025 Presidency.

Can a New Think Tank Fix the Democratic Party?

Here is more from Politico:

At a private meeting last month, a top Democratic strategist pitched party leaders and donors: We need to break down ideological lanes and reject interest group agendas if we plan to win again.

Adam Jentleson, former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) and top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), used the retreat to preview his new policy research and messaging hub, called Searchlight. Its goal: push the Democratic Party toward the most effective, broadly popular positions regardless of which wing of the party they come from, with an eye toward 2028, according to five people who have spoken directly to Jentleson and were granted anonymity to describe private conversations. Seth London, an adviser to major Democratic donors, is working with Jentleson on the effort.

 

Meanwhile, think tanker Tevi Troy asks if a new think tank can fix the Democratic Party.

Think Tank Quickies (#516)

• The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace canceled a conversation with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at their nuclear policy conference, and both sides blamed each other.
  
• Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has returned to Brookings as a Distinguished Fellow.
  
• Jeremy Symons, most recently a principal at Symons Public Affairs, launched a nonpartisan think tank, the Center for Energy & Environmental Analysis. 
• Pro-Trump think tank AFPI is launching a "farmer first" policy agenda led by ag insiders who boast ties to Trump and Capitol Hill.
• Julie Margetta Morgan has been named the next president of The Century Foundation.
  
• The Trump Administration's push to cast pro-Palestinian protesters as Hamas supporters - and then use anti-terror and immigration laws to quiet campus demonstrations - was forecast in a little-known plan last year from the creators of Project 2025. It was called "Project Esther."
• The Heritage Foundation, which has called for ending the Department of Education for decades, had three of its education policy experts present for President Trump's executive order signing to begin winding down the DOE.
• A Heritage Foundation-linked group, the Oversight Project, is seeking free legal help from major law firms to support conservative causes, suggesting they provide pro-bono work worth $10 million to avoid scrutiny from the White House.
  
• CSIS on Russia's shadow war against the West.
• Did Georgetown University researcher Badar Khan Suri have ties to the United Association for Studies and Research, a Hamas-affiliated think tank that operated in the US from 1989 to 2004?