Trump Nominates Heritage Economist to Lead BLS

Here is more from Reuters: 

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said he was nominating economist E.J. Antoni as the new Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, 10 days after firing the agency's previous leader following a weak scorecard of the job market, accusing her without evidence of manipulating the figures. 

Antoni is currently the chief economist at the influential conservative think tank Heritage Foundation. He has been critical of the BLS, the Labor Department's statistical agency, whose monthly figures about the state of the job market and inflation are consumed by a global audience of economists, investors, business leaders, public policymakers and consumers.

The nomination of Antoni, who contributed to "Project 2025," the controversial conservative plan to overhaul the government, was met with reservations from economists. 

 

Antoni is the second Heritage economist picked by Trump to run BLS. 

Think Tank Quickies (#522)

• Ed Feulner, founder, trustee, and longest serving president of the Heritage Foundation, has died.
• China urges think tanks to halt stablecoin promotion amid fraud concerns. 
• The roles of Chinese think tanks in AI governance.
• Dialog - a secretive, invite-only network founded two decades ago by Peter Thiel and Auren Hoffam - is preparing a major expansion, including a real estate purchase to build a campus in the DC suburbs. 
• DAWN: "A Washington-based think tank that focuses on American policy in the Middle East."
• Why this early Google investor is funding think tanks in the US and India. 
• Heritage Foundation is creating a "Defense Advisory Panel" of 13 retired General and Flag Officers to counsel its Allison Center for National Security.
• Mark Meadown, from his perch at the Conservative Partnership Institute, helped craft the OBBBA.
• Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, is joining Heritage Action. 
• The Institute for Global Affairs at the Eurasia Group (IGA) named Kerry and Obama campaign veteran Mark Hannah as new CEO. 

Project 2025 Architect Mounting Primary Challenge to Sen. Graham

Here is more from the New York Times:

The Republican architect of Project 2025 — the right-wing blueprint that Democrats made a rallying cry in the presidential election last year — is mounting a primary challenge to Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, saying he isn’t sufficiently devoted to President Trump’s political movement.

As he begins his challenge, Paul Dans, who is not originally from South Carolina, starts out as a distinct underdog. Mr. Graham, who has the support of Mr. Trump, has won past primaries handily despite appearing vulnerable, and he is likely to have a significant financial edge.

But Mr. Dans plans to run highlighting the work of Project 2025, from which Mr. Trump distanced himself during his campaign before enacting significant portions of it into his government.

 

Mr. Dans joined the Heritage Foundation in 2022 and started Project 2025, although he later had a falling out with the think tank that led to his departure. 

Controversial Academic to Lead USIP

Here is more from Politico:

An academic who has drawn criticism for inflammatory statements on race and praise of the Chinese government has been chosen by the Trump administration to lead the U.S. Institute of Peace.

The State Department said Friday that Darren Beattie would be acting president of the USIP, an independent, congressionally funded organization that the administration sought to eliminate earlier this year.

Beattie, who was fired from his job as a speechwriter during the first Trump administration for speaking at a conference attended by white nationalists, will keep his current role running the State Department’s worldwide public diplomacy efforts.

Beattie, who previously served as a visiting instructor at Duke University, has since been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul the State Department’s Fulbright Program and shutter its Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub.

Trump signed an executive order firing USIP President George Moose and most of USIP’s board in February. The remaining board members, including Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, subsequently installed Department of Government Efficiency staffer Kenneth Jackson, as acting president. DOGE staffer Nate Cavanaugh later took over as acting president.

The Trump administration laid off most of the embattled institute’s staff in March following a tense standoff between USIP staffers and DOGE employees at the institute’s headquarters. A federal judge subsequently blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the organization, which was founded in 1984.

 

It is unclear how many people now work at USIP.

Think Tank Quickies (#521)

• RAND Corp.: China's Evolving Industrial Policy for AI. 
• European Marine Board: "An ocean-policy think tank."
• Flashback: French think tank chief Laurent Bigorgne, who was head of Institut Montaigne and a close associate of the French president, was convicted for attempted spike rape.
• China's think tank diplomacy in Africa.
• The Heritage Foundation launched a new Defense Budget Builder, which allows people to search through defense budget line items more easily. 
• US think tank report (from Defense Priorities) calls for removal of all 500 US military trainers in Taiwan. 
• The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) was founded in Oct. 2009 "as a result of the Great Recession, and runs a variety of affiliated programs at major universities such as the Cambridge-INET Institute at the University of Cambridge." 
• Movement Advancement Project: "A think tank that studies state policies affecting the LGBTQ+ population." 
• Shift Project: "A French environmental think tank." 

DoD Suspends Participation in Think Tank Events

Here is more from Politico:

The Pentagon has suspended participation in all think tank and research events until further notice, according to an email sent Thursday to staff and obtained by POLITICO, a major shift in engagement from the country’s largest federal agency.

The decision comes a week after the Defense Department pulled out of the high-profile Aspen Security Forum citing “the evil of globalism” and indicating the event did not align with the Trump administration’s defense policies.

The Pentagon’s public affairs office is also reviewing the agency’s participation in other top security conferences, according to the email. It specifically banned attendance at the Halifax International Security Forum, which takes place in Nova Scotia each winter and where the Pentagon chief is usually a top guest. It was not immediately clear why that forum had been singled out.

The move would sideline the Pentagon from national security dialogues that it has used for decades to advance its policy and explain the department’s rationale. Former Defense Secretaries Jim Mattis, Mark Esper and Lloyd Austin have also used think tank events, such as the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Shangri-La Dialogue and the Reagan National Defense Forum, to give major policy speeches and hold sideline meetings with both allies and adversaries.

The Pentagon’s public affairs, general counsel and policy teams will review all requests for participation at events and will ask for officials’ remarks and talking points in advance, according to the email. The directive, which took effect Tuesday, applies to all DOD military officers, civil servants and senior enlisted leaders. The Pentagon’s public affairs team must approve any future events. 

 

The Pentagon also funds numerous think tanks, including the RAND Corporation, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Atlantic Council, Brookings Institution, and Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

 Here is a piece from The Atlantic entitled "The Pentagon Against the Think Tanks." 

Korea Funneling Millions to Think Tanks While Avoiding FARA

Here is more from Korea Pro:

A South Korean nonprofit affiliated with Seoul’s foreign ministry has funneled at least $9.4 million to U.S. think tanks in recent years, a Korea Pro investigation has found, making it one of the top global funders of American policy research despite avoiding registration under foreign agent laws.

The findings show that the Korea Foundation (KF), which maintains offices in Washington and Los Angeles, provided grants to at least 31 different organizations from 2019 to 2023.

But while KF claims to be a non-governmental body and a “nonprofit public institution,” Korea Pro’s findings show that the foundation is closely tied to the South Korean government and explicitly seeks to advance Seoul’s interests, at times pressuring scholars to promote the positions of the administration in power.

KF’s activities reportedly caught the attention of U.S. authorities before, and last year’s indictment of Korea expert Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst accused of failing to register as a foreign agent for Seoul, has exacerbated KF’s fears of being seen as a foreign agent itself, Korea Pro’s investigation found.

 

Think tanks that have received Korea Foundation money in recent years include the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Center for a New American Security (CNAS), RAND Corporation, Atlantic Council, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Stimson Center, and the Brookings Institution.

Korea Pro said it could find only $731,592 of Japan Foundation donations recorded for US-based think tanks and research organizations between 2019-2023, compared to the over $9.4 million provided by Korea Foundation.

Korea Pro also pointed out that in 2021, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) National Security Division allegedly wrote to KF, recommending that it consider FARA registration for work in the US. But the Foundation reportedly objected on the grounds that it is an “independent organization … engaged in cultural and academic exchanges exempt from FARA.” 

Think Tank Quickies (#520)

• Pro-Trump think tanks and advocacy groups paid top Trump Administration officials including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and policy adviser Stephen Miller, and a number of officials received payments from Trump's campaigns and consultants before being appointed to positions in the administration.
• Think tankers, including Julianne Smith, are part of former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's consulting firm, Clarion Strategies. 
• Think tankers join the Washington Post's new WP Intelligence Councils. 
• Quorum is now curating research from top think tanks. 
• Tracking the murky world of think tanks. 
• Islamabad think tank hires US lobbyist for $1.5 million a year. 
• Columbia's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law teams up to launch "Model Climate Laws Initiative" to draft state laws countering Trump Administration rollbacks.  While there have been universities and think tanks, such as the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, that provide resources for state-level policymakers looking to write climate laws or exchange information, this is the first instance of such a coordinated project to pass climate legislation that is actively seeking to get draft laws in the hands of US state lawmakers.
• Institute for Progress (IFP): "A think tank for accelerating scientific, technological, and industrial progress." 
• The Abigail Adams Institute: "An independent institute that is part of a broader network of about a dozen centers near elite universities, including Yale, Princeton, and Stanford.  The goal is to create an intellectual community that supplements what students can find on their own campuses." 
• Columbia University's energy think tank: Center on Global Energy Policy. 

Harvard Explores Starting a Hoover-like Think Tank

Here is more from the Wall Street Journal: 

Harvard leaders have discussed creating a program that people briefed on the talks described as a center for conservative scholarship, possibly modeled on Stanford’s Hoover Institution, as the school fights the Trump administration’s accusations that it is too liberal.

The idea has circulated at the university for several years but gained steam after pro-Palestinian protests began disrupting campus in late 2023. Harvard has discussed the effort with potential donors, people familiar with the matter said. The cost of creating such a center could run somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion, a person familiar with Harvard’s thinking estimated.

The Hoover Institution, which resides on Stanford’s campus and champions free markets and small government, dates back decades. Academic institutes elsewhere devoted to civics, American history and Western civilization began popping up, mostly at public universities in red states, about a decade ago.

Arizona State University launched its School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership in 2016. Founding director Paul Carrese said there are now more than a dozen centers on public university campuses and several more at private schools.

At the University of Florida’s Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education, University of North Carolina’s School of Civic Life and Leadership and Yale University’s Center for Civic Thought, students read classic texts, apply lessons to current problems and hash out differences in small group discussions.

 

The Hoover Institution was founded in 1919 and has annual revenues of around $100 million. 

Think Tank Quickies (#519)

• The night USIP was taken over, March 17th, staffers from Elon Musk's DOGE walked around its headquarters smoking cigars and drinking beers while they dismantled the signage and disabled the computer systems.
• Think tanks are helping the DoD dodge DOGE. 
• This small but influential think tank is charting a controversial course for Trump's populism. 
• JPMorganChase announced it launched the Center for Geopolitics, a new client advisory service led by Derek Chollet, the former State Department counselor and former chief of staff to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. 
• Christine Largarde discussed leaving the ECB early to head the World Economic Forum (WEF).
• Jordan Brewer is leaving the Cato Institute to join the State Department as special adviser in the bureau of cyberspace and digital policy. 
• The Burning Glass Institute: "A labor market think tank." 
• JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both addressed the American Compass New World Gala in Washington, DC. 
• Nada Hamadeh, a member of the Middle East Institute's Board of Governors, was named Lebanon's ambassador to the US. 
• Defense Priorities, the other think tank influencing US intelligence. 

Russia Targeting Personal Emails of Think Tankers

Here is more from CNN:

The second campaign, according to the cable, began in April and involves a “Russia-linked cyber actor” who “conducted a spear phishing campaign targeting personal Gmail accounts associated with think tank scholars, Eastern Europe-based activists and dissidents, journalists, and former officials.”

The cyber actor “posed as a fictitious Department official, inviting targeted users to a meeting and attempting to convince them to link a third-party application to their Gmail accounts” that “would almost certainly grant the actor persistent access to the contents of the users’ Gmail.”

The campaign was highly detailed and the actor “demonstrated extensive knowledge of the Department’s naming conventions and internal documentation,” the cable said.

That hacking activity matches what researchers from Google and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab documented last month: a stealthy effort to pose as US diplomats and infiltrate the digital lives of prominent academics and critics of Russia.

 

No specific think tanks or think tankers were named in the article.  But Cyberscoop reported that think tanker Keir Giles, a Russian military expert with the Chatham House, was targeted by Russia.

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.

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?

Think Tanks Helping Government Use AI for Peace Deals

Here is more from The Economist:

In a messy age of grinding wars and multiplying tariffs, negotiators are as busy as the stakes are high. Alliances are shifting and political leaders are adjusting—if not reversing—positions. The resulting tumult is giving even seasoned negotiators trouble keeping up with their superiors back home. Artificial-intelligence (AI) models may be able to lend a hand.

Some such models are already under development. One of the most advanced projects, dubbed Strategic Headwinds, aims to help Western diplomats in talks on Ukraine. Work began during the Biden administration in America, with officials on the White House’s National Security Council (NSC) offering guidance to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think-tank in Washington that runs the project. With peace talks under way, CSIS has speeded up its effort. Other outfits are doing similar work.

The CSIS programme is led by a unit called the Futures Lab. This team developed an AI language model using software from Scale AI, a firm based in San Francisco, and unique training data. The lab designed a tabletop strategy game called “Hetman’s Shadow” in which Russia, Ukraine and their allies hammer out deals. Data from 45 experts who played the game were fed into the model. So were media analyses of issues at stake in the Russia-Ukraine war, as well as answers provided by specialists to a questionnaire about the relative values of potential negotiation trade-offs. A database of 374 peace agreements and ceasefires was also poured in.

 

Here is a link to CSIS's Futures Lab, which is run by Dr. Benjamin Jensen.

Jill Biden Joins Milken Institute

Here is more from the Milken Institute:

While women make up half the U.S. population and nearly half the workforce, women’s health has faced decades of underinvestment, which is critical for wider economic productivity. Today, the Milken Institute announced the launch of the Women’s Health Network to serve as a global collaborative to collate, elevate, and advance existing and new efforts across the women’s health ecosystem. The Milken Institute has also announced that Dr. Jill Biden, the former First Lady of the United States, has joined its new Women’s Health Network as Chair.

 

The Milken Institute is a California-based think tank and the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream (MCAAD) is expected to open this summer in Washington, DC.

Think Tank Quickies (#515)

• Former Project 2025 chief Paul Dans has first major interview of Trump's presidency. 
• EPA moves forward with Project 2025.
• Trump, who said Biden's 11th-hour pardons were void because Biden signed them with an autopen, were made following similar arguments from the Heritage Foundation.
• Demonstrators protest Project 2025 outside Heritage Foundation.
• Well-connected think tank Third Way will launch an 18-month Signal Project, including polling, to identify Trump Administration actions "that are most relevant to key voters and how best to frame those issues."
  
• Heritage Foundation prepared report calling for ending US aid to Israel.
• Biden's former national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, is taking up two new university roles.  He will be Harvard Kennedy School's inaugural Kissinger professor of the practice of statecraft and world order.  He'll also be a faculty affiliate of Harvard's Belfer Center.  He's also taking up a role at the University of New Hampshire as a senior fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy and the Franklin Pierce School of Law.
• FAS: Chinese Nuclear Weapons - 2025.
  
• Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity: "A think tank that promotes free markets." 
• After Jan. 6, 2021, Elbridge Colby published fewer of the deeply researched think tank papers that had defined his career in favor of harder-edged social media posts.

Chinese Intelligence Posing as Think Tanks to Lure Fired USG Employees

Here is more from the New York Times:

The National Counterintelligence and Security Center warned on Tuesday that China’s intelligence services were using deceptive efforts to recruit current and former U.S. government employees.

The center, along with the F.B.I. and the Pentagon’s counterintelligence service, said in an advisory that foreign intelligence agencies were posing as consulting firms, corporate think tanks and other organizations to recruit former U.S. officials.

The American government has long said that China uses social networks to secretly recruit people. But former U.S. officials say China now sees an opportunity as the Trump administration shuts down agencies, fires probationary employees and pushes out people who had worked on diversity issues.

The warning advised former officials who have security clearances of their “legal obligation to protect classified data” even after they leave the government. It added that China and other foreign countries were targeting a variety of former officials.

 

Reuters has previously reported on this.

Heritage Foundation Goes After Prince Harry

Here is more from Newsweek:

Prince Harry's visa papers have been the subject of a now two-year court battle about his past use of drugs—but in reality there may be more private information than that at stake in the case.

New documents released this week referenced the fact a disclosure of the Duke of Sussex's visa status could expose him to harassment or manipulation.

The case, brought by the Heritage Foundation, has always been about whether he lied on his application form about taking drugs or alternatively told the truth and was given favorable treatment.

 

Dr. Nile Gardiner, Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom and Bernard and Barbara Lomas Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has been working to "unlock the truth" about Harry's visa.

Kamala Harris to Start a Think Tank?

Here is more from the New York Times:

Yet some of [Kamala Harris's] closest allies say she is leaning against another White House run in 2028 and, instead, toward a campaign for governor of California in 2026. Her political choice is binary, she has told people: She can run for governor or president, but not both.

Ms. Harris, who jokes to friends that she is unemployed for the first time, has explored options beyond pursuing electoral office, too. She hired the Creative Artists Agency to gauge interest in speaking engagements and a potential book. An aide has held preliminary talks with universities about establishing a policy institute, though some warned that could complicate her political aspirations.

 

Harris is being mocked on social media for her interest in creating a think tank.  Some names those people have suggested for her think tank: The Coconut Tree Institute, The Kamala D. Harris Institute for Examining the Importance of Understanding What Needs to Be Done, and The Kamala Harris Center for the Unburdening of What Has Been.

Think Tank Quickies (#514)

• The Bonn-based IZA Institute of Labour Economics is set to close at the end of December after its main financial backer, Deutsche Post Foundation, a non-profit institution set up by logistics operator DHL Group, announced that it will "discontinue" the IZA's "operations."
• Daniel Davis, a commentator with a record of controversial comments about Israel and a senior fellow at the Koch-backed think tank Defense Priorities, will be the deputy director of national intelligence under Tulsi Gabbard.
  
• Karim Haggag, a professor at the school of global affairs and pubic policy at the American University in Cairo, has been appointed the new director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
• Former Republican Rep. Garrett Graves (LA) and former independent Sen. Joe Manchin (WV) have joined the Bipartisan Policy Center's Energy Advisory Council.
  
• AFL-CIO, together with affiliated unions and the think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI), file emergency lawsuit against DOGE to protect privacy of worker data.
• Onion (satire): Think tank called 'The Himmler Institute' assures nation this is legal. 
• The Economic Security Project is adding Mike Konczal and Adriane Brown, both from the Biden White House.
• As a child, Microsoft founder Bill Gates visited a local think tank owned by Batelle.
  
• Korean policy think tank launches national budget simulation game. 
• Why think tank experts matter less and less for Trump.

Top China Think Tank Shuts Down Research Center After Questions of Party Loyalty

Here is more from the South China Morning Post:

China's top think tank has shut down its public policy research centre amid a new round of ideological reinforcement, with any activities carried out in its name declared "illegal," with immediate effect.

In a statement on Sunday, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said the centre was closed in accordance with an internal regulation and its research projects transferred to the Institute of Economics.

Part-time researchers affiliated with other departments were returning to their original institutions while the remainder had been dismissed, according to the statement on the CASS website.  The centre's social media accounts and website have also been shut down.

The now-defunct centre was once headed by economist Zhu Hengpeng, who was also deputy director of the Institute of Economics.  He was last seen in public at the end of April 2024.

Sources familiar with the matter said that Zhu had been investigated and removed from his post in May for criticizing China's economic policies in a group discussion on WeChat.

 

The report notes that CASS, once home to many liberal academics who were vocal in their criticism of the authorities, is undergoing a major shift towards greater loyalty to the ruling Communist Party.

Hot New Trend at Think Tanks: Trade War Simulations

Here is more from the New York Times:

Last month, two dozen trade experts from the United States and other countries gathered at a Washington think tank to try to simulate what could happen if Mr. Trump moves ahead with his plan to impose punishing tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners.

Teams representing China, Europe, the United States and other governments spent a day running between conference rooms, offering proposals to remove the tariffs and make trade deals to forestall economic collapse.

The game, which took place at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan think tank focused on security issues, included think tank experts and former officials in the Trump and Biden administrations. The exercise was not aimed at predicting the future. Instead, by acting out what might happen, the participants were trying to reveal some of the dynamics that might be at play as Mr. Trump pursues an aggressive trade approach against allies and adversaries alike.

 

Think tanks are well known for holding war game simulations, but this is the first time Think Tank Watch is aware of trade war simulations.

DOGE Works to Shut Down Wilson Center

Here is more from the New York Times:

The head of the Wilson Center, a storied foreign policy think tank, resigned on Tuesday, a day after employees from Elon Musk’s government-overhauling team arrived at the group’s Washington headquarters to dismantle it, according to people familiar with the actions at the center.

The resignation of the president, Mark Green, a Republican, and the visit from Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, indicated that the Trump administration was carrying out an executive order President Trump signed last month directing that the organization, a nonpartisan policy group, be largely dismantled.

After DOGE team members visited the center on Monday and Tuesday, some of the leadership staff and senior government employees were ousted, including Mr. Green, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution by political appointees in the Trump administration. The center’s dozens of federal employees, about a third of its work force, were also set to be placed on administrative leave.

 

Ms. Natasha Jacome, a senior adviser to Mr. Green, is the center’s new president. 

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on Trump's signing of an executive order to dismantle the Wilson Center.

Secret Pentagon Memo Has Heritage Foundation Fingerprints

Here is more from the Washington Post:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reoriented the U.S. military to prioritize deterring China’s seizure of Taiwan and shoring up homeland defense by “assuming risk” in Europe and other parts of the world, according to a secret internal guidance memo that bears the fingerprints of the conservative Heritage Foundation, including some passages that are nearly word-for-word duplications of text published by the think tank last year.

The document, known as the Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance and marked “secret/no foreign national” in most passages, was distributed throughout the Defense Department in mid-March and signed by Hegseth. It outlines, in broad and sometimes partisan detail, the execution of President Donald Trump’s vision to prepare for and win a potential war against Beijing and defend the United States from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama Canal.

The interim guidance is nine pages. Several passages throughout are similar to a longer 2024 report by the Heritage Foundation, some of which are nearly identical, according to The Washington Post’s analysis of both documents. One of the Heritage report’s co-authors, Alexander Velez-Green, is now in an interim role as the Pentagon’s top policy official.

The Heritage report, published in August, recommends that the Pentagon prioritize three core issues: Taiwan invasion deterrence, homeland defense, and increased burden sharing among allies and partners — which the Hegseth guidance mirrors. The congressional aide said it was readily apparent to Capitol Hill staff that the document bore the influence of the conservative think tank.

 

The article goes on to note that Maj. Gen. Garrick Harmon, the head of strategy and plans at Africa Command, recommended that they read the Heritage report, which has been circulated by at least one official within the command.

Think Tank Quickies (#513)

• Career civil servants and foreign service officers who staffed the State Department's Policy Planning Staff office, which has historically served as the secretary of State's in-house think tank, were all let go and reassigned into limbo without clarity on their next jobs. 
• Despite Trump's past disavowals, many of the individuals involved in drafting Project 2025, such as Russell Vought and Brendan Carr, have been tapped to serve in prominent positions in his Administration.
• Several Cabinet-level officials, including the secretaries of education, agriculture, veterans affairs, and housing, have worked for AFPI. Trump's attorney general, Pam Bondi, reported earning $520,000 from AFPI in 2024. John Ratcliffe and Kash Patel, Trump's directors of the CIA and FBI, served as members of the group's American Security Team.  All told so far, AFPI doled out nearly $2.6 million to incoming Trump Administration officials in recent years.
• Former acting Labor Secretary Julie Su is joining The Century Foundation as a senior fellow.
• Left-leaning economic policy think tank Groundwork Collaborative has added a pair of former Biden Administration staffers as progressives gear up to try and extract policy wins in this year's tax fight.
• Former Biden economist Jed Kolko has joined JPMorgan's think tank.
  
• National Institute for Deterrence Studies (NIDS), a "think tank" based in Fairborn, Ohio.
• Atlantic Council Global Foresight 2025 survey of hundreds of experts reveals that most believe the world will be worse off in 2035 than it is today.
• The Treasury Department has frozen funding disbursements to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). 
• A fairly new group known as the Ben Franklin Fellowship is helping pick who to place where at the US State Department.

New Zealand Sacks Top Diplomat Over Talk at Think Tank

Here is more from the New York Times:

New Zealand on Thursday recalled its top diplomat in Britain after he made comments questioning President Trump’s understanding of history at a public event, in a sign of the unease and sensitivities around expressing disagreements with the Trump administration.

Phil Goff, New Zealand’s high commissioner to Britain — the equivalent of an ambassador between Commonwealth countries — made the comments in London on Tuesday at an event about the war in Ukraine and peace in Europe.

Mr. Goff spoke up with a question after a speech by Finland’s foreign minister, Elina Valtonen, at the Chatham House think tank, in which she spoke about the role of Europe in the face of Russian aggression and resolving the war in Ukraine.

 

While so-called Chatham House Rules, which say that the speakers at an event can be quoted but not identified, are often used by the think tank, the institute does hold events that do not adhere to that restriction.

Trump-Aligned Think Tank AFPI Planning 100-Year MAGA Plan

Here is more from Axios:

Well-funded MAGA forces close to the White House are preparing a "100-year plan" to try to sustain Trumpism long after President Trump leaves office.

Why it matters:

Top executives at the America First Policy Institute tell Axios that the group is scaling up as an incubator for the America First movement beyond Jan. 20, 2029 — promising to proselytize its policies for the next century.

The big picture: The institute was launched in 2021 — by now-Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, now-Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Larry Kudlow, a Fox Business host who was a first-term Trump official — to help keep Trump's ideas in the political ether after he left office.

• During the president's Mar-a-Lago exile and through his 2024 comeback bid, the institute became something of an administration in waiting, pumping out policy papers and staffing up with Trump 1.0 alums.

Now AFPI is retooling as a shadow White House policy shop — and training ground for future administration talent.

• The group — along with America First Works, a sister organization focused on political work and policy advocacy — just moved into a posh new office on Pennsylvania Avenue next to the Willard InterContinental, wedged between the White House and Capitol.

 

Axios notes that Greg Sindelar, CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), is interim president and CEO, replacing Rollins.  Also, Chad Wolf, Trump's former acting Homeland Security secretary, will be AFPI's executive vice president and chief strategy officer.

Think Tank Quickies (#512)

• Biden's Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo joins the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) as a distinguished fellow.
  
• An armed man arrested at the US Capitol said he planned to burn down the Heritage Foundation.
  
• Brooke Rollins' disclosures show she made $1 million at AFPI.
• AFPI executive, Heidi Overton, expected to join Trump Domestic Policy Council.
  
• The Cato Institute is launching an external affairs department, led by Chad Davis and with Simone Shenny as director of external affairs.
• A new analysis from FOIAengine, a product developed by online data journalism platform PoliScio Analytics, found that the Heritage Foundation, which spearheaded Project 2025, used more than 7,700 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to research 1,400 federal officials in preparation for implementing the Trump agenda.
• Jessica Chen-Weiss is the inaugural director of the new Johns Hopkins SAIS Institute for America, China and the Future of Global Affairs.
  
• Alexander Velez-Green is now performing the duties of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.  He was previously named senior adviser to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy nominee Bridge Colby.  He most recently was senior policy adviser at the Heritage Foundation and has worked for Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), the RAND Corporation, and the Center for a New American Security (CSAS).
• Mastermind of Iran's US influence effort appointed head of ministry think tank.
  
• Trump tried to destroy USDA's in-house think tank.
  

Defense Department's In-House Think Tank to Be Cut

Here is more from Breaking Defense:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is “disestablishing” the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, a key office responsible for high-level strategic analysis, according to a memo obtained by Breaking Defense.

The memo, dated today and signed by Hegseth, directs the Pentagon’s Performance Improvement Officer and Director of Administration and Management to reassign all civilian employees to other “mission critical positions” inside the department, while military personnel will return to their service to receive new billets.

Simultaneously, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official is directed to “ensure that the necessary steps are taken” by department contracting authorities to terminate “all ONA contracts awarded for ONA and ONA-related requirements.” A number of DC think tanks and research organizations will likely be impacted by these cancelled contracts.

 

ONA is often described as the in-house think tank for the US Defense Department.

DOGE "Breaks Into" US Institute of Peace

Just days after Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) officials, accompanied by the FBI, tried to enter the US Institute of Peace (USIP), the (now former) Acting President and CEO George Moose said that DOGE "broke into" the think tank.

Here are more details from the New York Times: 

A simmering dispute between the Department of Government Efficiency and an independent agency dedicated to promoting peace broke into an open standoff involving the police on Monday, as Elon Musk’s government cutters marched into the agency’s headquarters and evicted its officials.

The dramatic scene played out in Washington on Monday afternoon as Mr. Musk’s team was rebuffed from the U.S. Institute of Peace, an agency that President Trump has ordered dismantled, then entered it with law enforcement officers. Agency officials say that because the institute is a congressionally chartered nonprofit that is not part of the executive branch, Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk do not have the authority to gut its operations.

“DOGE just came into the building — they’re inside the building — they’re bringing the F.B.I. and brought a bunch of D.C. police,” Sophia Lin, a lawyer for the institute, said by telephone as she and other officials were being escorted out.

George Moose, who was fired as the institute’s acting president last week but is challenging his dismissal, accused Mr. Musk’s team of breaking in. “Our statute is very clear about the status of this building and this institute,” he told reporters. “So what has happened here today is an illegal takeover by elements of the executive branch of a private nonprofit corporation.”

A spokesman for Mr. Musk’s team directed an inquiry to the White House. An administration official blamed the institute for not complying with an executive order signed by Mr. Trump in February, which listed the institute as one of four governmental entities to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law” and directed them to “reduce the performance” to the minimum required by law within 14 days.

 

On Friday, DOGE sent all but three of USIP's board members an email telling them they have been terminated. 

The remaining board members — Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Peter Garvin, the president of the National Defense University — later replaced Mr. Moose as acting president with Kenneth Jackson, a State Department official who was involved in the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

USIP lawyers said the think tank is preparing to sue the Trump Administration over the removal of the board. 

Update: USIP staffers reportedly removed locks and disabled internet and phone lines to try to stop the takeover, according to the Daily Caller.

Think Tank Quickies (#511)

• The Heritage Foundation made a $200,000 ad buy supporting Trump's Cabinet nominations. 
• The Heritage Foundation erected a 30-by-60-foot banner on the side of its Capitol Hill building congratulating Donald Trump.
  
• Asian companies asking which think tanks will rise under Trump.
• Dark Money is tainting Washington think tanks.
• Hanwha launches Korea Chair at UK think tank IISS.
  
• Former head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, named the new co-chair of the Bilderberg Group.
• Michael Anton, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute going into the Trump Administration, recorded a podcast in 2021 with "dark enlightenment" blogger Curtis Yarvin.
• As China's think tanks seek wider influence, is more autonomy the answer?
  
• "Hosted annually by the Tax Foundation, a think tank that generally favors lower taxes, and sponsored by major corporations, Tax Prom is Washington networking par excellence." 
• Why are Hong Kong think tanks facing a bleak future?
• American Compass has launched a new online magazine, Commonplace, aiming to be the "intellectual home of the new right-of-center" with a focus on political, economic, and cultural concerns.
  

DOGE, FBI Try to Enter Think Tank on Trump's Chopping Block

Here is more from The Hill:

U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) officials said several members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) arrived unannounced with FBI agents on Saturday but were denied access to the building after being approached by their counsel.

“They were met at the door by the Institute’s outside counsel who informed them of USIP’s private and independent status as a non-executive branch agency.  Following that discussion, the DOGE representatives departed,” Gonzo Gallegos, USIP’s director of communications, said in a statement to The Hill.

 

 Here is a statement from USIP about the incident.

Last month, President Trump signed an executive order that will significantly shrink the size and scope of USIP.