The $50 Million That Bought Trump's Executive Orders

All those Christian nationalist policies didn't just emerge out of nowhere.

In January 2025, on the very first day President Trump retook office, it was obvious that rightwing lawyers and strategists had been preparing. On that first day, Trump signed 26 executive orders, including one ending birthright citizenship, another establishing DOGE, and another withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization. Those executive orders – and the hundreds more Trump has signed – were years and many millions of dollars in the making. We all know there’s a network of rightwing donors and strategists, but who specifically is behind the Trump Administration’s strategy to transform the country to match Christian nationalists’ fantasies and try to take over our elections so we can’t fight back?

By now we’ve all heard of Project 2025, the rightwing Heritage Foundation-backed Christian nationalist policy blueprint from which the Trump Administration has borrowed all manner of ideas, like dismantling the Department of Education, issuing declarations against trans identity, and rescinding Title IX rules on sexual assault and discrimination.

America First Policy Institute, though, has mostly flown under the radar. But its strategists are behind Trump Administration actions related to every major issue you can imagine, from immigration to elections to energy. America First Policy Institute, which reportedly brought in $50 million in donations in 2024, has been called “the largest pro-Trump operation launched after his [first term].” The organization has drafted lots of model executive orders, many of which mirror Trump Administration orders and policy.

Former officials from Trump’s first term like Brooke Rollins (currently Secretary of Agriculture), Larry Kudlow, and Linda McMahon founded America First Policy Institute soon after he lost the 2020 election. It has paid current Trump officials like Lee Zeldin, now the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, lucrative consulting contracts. And for context on how extreme its political vision is: One of its international partners is the Center for Fundamental Rights, a Hungarian organization that organizes the rightwing conference CPAC Hungary and supports the recently defeated Prime Minister Viktor Orban, widely recognized as an authoritarian.

America First Policy Institute spent the Biden years preparing for the moment when their allies would have federal power again – and fanning the flames of Trump’s election denialism and promoting Christian nationalist rhetoric in the meantime. Because America First Policy Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, we don’t know for sure who is funding it. The New York Times reported that Tim Dunn, a rightwing fracking billionaire who has given many millions to Republican causes, is one of its big donors. According to Open Secrets, Dunn has given at least $18 million to the rightwing PAC Jefferson Rising Fund and $5 million to Trump’s Make America Great Again Inc. super PAC.

In 2021, soon after America First Policy Institute was incorporated, one of its first actions was to give a $1 million donation to Citizens United. Yes, that Citizens United, the rightwing organization whose lawsuit against the Federal Elections Commission prompted the Supreme Court to issue its landmark and truly devastating decision that opened the floodgates to unlimited political spending, enabled billionaires like Dunn to dump millions into elections, and brought our country to the calamitous situation we’re in today. According to investigative reporting from Documented and The Guardian, in 2021, just before America First Policy Institute gave Citizens United that donation, the think tank had just received $1 million from Trump’s Save America Committee, a PAC. Then, Citizens United gave $1 million to a Georgia-based LLC called Cheeley Law Group, LLC, which describes itself as a “personal injury law firm,” for the purposes of “election integrity litigation.”

Remember, this was soon after Trump had tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia by pressuring elections officials. He was later indicted on four felony counts for those actions. In 2021, when that $1 million was moving between Trump allies, Cheeley was representing clients that invented fraud claims in Georgia, all part of a sustained and ultimately unsuccessful effort to overturn the election.

Put simply: It sure seems as though a Trump PAC gave $1 million to America First Policy Institute, which gave the money to Citizens United, which gave it to an LLC in Georgia that was trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The organization served as a training ground where numerous current Trump Administration officials cultivated the policy goals they’re now executing – many America First Policy Institute alums are in major positions in the Trump Administration. One influential example: Robert T. Law is currently Under Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, meaning he oversees policies for agencies including ICE. He was America First Policy Institute’s Director of Center Homeland Security and Immigration for three years starting in 2022. There, he wrote all kinds of dispatches calling for punitive measures against immigrants, including Asylum Cooperative Agreements, which deport detained immigrants to third countries that aren’t their home country. Toward the end of his tenure, during the 2024 presidential campaign, Law was also a volunteer for the Trump transition team. And, look, the Trump Administration has reinstated Asylum Cooperative Agreements and is currently sending people to countries they’re not from and might never have even visited. That’s just America First Policy Institute’s influence on one corner of one issue.

Given the daily headlines, it’s easy to get numb to the influence of the ultrawealthy megadonors. But it should be shocking: An oil and gas billionaire funded the design of extreme policies while simultaneously spending millions to elect the presidential candidate, Trump, who would enact those policies not through the legislative process but through immediate executive orders, one man signing away our rights and protections with his pen. And many of those policies will be upheld because allied donors stacked the courts with rightwing ideologues. I end so many newsletters this way, but it’s always still true: The underlying problem is that we need to overhaul our campaign finance system so ultrawealthy donors can’t buy this level of influence.