Think Tank Quickies (#518)

• US Institute of Peace staff received termination notices.  But now judge says Trump lacked authority to dismantle USIP.
• Project Esther: Inside the Heritage Foundations' plan to crush the pro-Palestinian cause.
  
• Jared Bernstein, previously the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), is now a senior fellow for economic policy at CAP.
• Trump Administration quietly holding discussions and consulting outside experts, including those in think tank land, as it considers options for potentially restarting dialogue with North Korea.
• The Library of Congress' Kluge Center "invites into residence top thinkers from around the world to distill wisdom from the rich resources of the Library and to foster mutually enriching relationships with lawmakers and other policy leaders."
• Stephanie Sutton is joining the Center for American Progress as COO.
• CNAS named Kurt Campbell and Anne Neuberger to its board of directors.
  
• European think tanks launch interactive tool on China-Russia trade relations.
• The not-so-secret society (Ben Franklin Fellowship) whose members run the State Department.
  
• The think tanks who do most of the talking for Britain's Labour party.

Democrats Trying to Copy Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 Model

Here is more from the New York Times:

Mr. AndreiCherny, the co-founder of a nearly two-decade-old liberal policy journal, is organizing a group of Democratic thinkers to recreate what Mr. Trump’s allies did when he was voted out of office: draft a ready-made agenda for the next Democratic presidential nominee.

They’re calling it Project 2029.

The title is an unsubtle play on Project 2025, the independently produced right-wing agenda that Mr. Trump spent much of last year’s campaign distancing himself from, and much of his first few months back in power executing.

They plan to roll out an agenda over the next two years, in quarterly installments, through Mr. Cherny’s publication, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. The goal is to turn it into a book — just like Project 2025 — and to rally leading Democratic presidential candidates behind those ideas during the 2028 primary season. 

Ms. Neera Tanden, leader of the Center for American Progress, is part of a sizable advisory board for Project 2029 that includes Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.; Anne-Marie Slaughter, the chief executive of New America; the economist Justin Wolfers; Felicia Wong, until recently the president of the progressive Roosevelt Institute; and Jim Kessler, a founder of the centrist group Third Way. 

 

A number of others are involved in Project 2029, including Marc Dunkelman, a fellow at the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy at Brown University.