While America First Policy Institute (AFPI) is providing former President Donald Trump with a less extreme policy agenda compared to Project 2025, the think tank still warns against unfounded issues and relies on the use of fearmongering to push forth hypocritical policies.
AFPI classifies themselves as a “non-profit, non-partisan research institute,” though the truth of the latter claim is questionable. Established in 2021 by Brooke Rollins, Trump’s former director of the United States Domestic Policy Council, the group has a clear right-wing alignment evident within the plethora of articles slamming the Biden-Harris administration and warning against a Harris-Walz presidency.
The institute has spent the last three years monitoring Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ time in office to prep their policy propositions, making notes on any discussed subject that could incite fear in Americans and connecting it to the left as soon as possible. The group has circulated severe articles asking “Could another 9/11 happen?” and accusing the Biden-Harris administration of not taking threats of “terrorism” seriously.
AFPI asserts their position on the upcoming election by using images of fear, failure and illegality to discuss a hypothetical Harris-Walz presidency while only referring to Trump and running mate J.D. Vance with neutral to positive perspectives.
Unsurprisingly, Brooke Rollins is not the only familiar face among Republicans in AFPI. In fact, the group’s staff is essentially made of former staff from the Trump administration, including former cabinet member Linda McMahon, former Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow and former Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf — who was ruled to be unlawfully appointed to his previous position — among various others.
Just by looking at AFPI’s chosen staff, it is fairly easy to dispute their claims of non-partisanship. Though they use the all-encompassing rhetoric that they do not advocate for a certain party but instead for Americans as a whole, it is clear that they truly aim to speak for a slim demographic.
If their staffing is not enough evidence, their policies show their undoubtably right-leaning bias.
AFPI’s agenda says they aim to create policies that put American citizens first to provide them with “a better and brighter future.” The group proposes 10 pillars that vary in levels of extremity, ranging from discussions on how to improve America’s economy and healthcare system to inciting fear towards leftist perspectives on crime, education and baseless claims surrounding their attacks on “religious liberty.”
Looking first towards the group’s perennially discussed topic of crime, their ninth pillar uses frightening statistics showing increased homicides, shootings and violent crime. They connect these troubling statistics — to which the origin of said statistics are cited predominantly from either AFPI themselves, the Trump administration or Fox News — to what they call the leftist “decriminalization movement.”
AFPI’s warnings about decriminalization do not fit in here though, since the movement fights for less harsh sentences for petty crimes, like drug possession for example, not murder. Here, the group is misrepresenting the movement to villainize the left and make Americans feel frightened about the possibility of a Democratic presidency.
Ironically though, while warning against the 104 per cent increase in shootings in New York City, they also advocate for wider access to firearms.
AFPI accuses the Biden-Harris administration of being “hostile to the notion of an armed citizenry in its own country” because Biden recently signed the Extreme Risk Protection Orders bill into law, allowing judges to confiscate a citizen’s guns if they appear to be a danger to themselves or others.
AFPI argues that this violates their Second Amendment rights.
Somehow, the group can warn against an increase in gun violence, yet advocate for wider access to the weapons themselves, even when a citizen is determined by a judge to be unfit to carry a firearm.
This is just one example of the endless hypocrisies found in AFPI’s policies. Some of their policies aren’t even hypocritical, they are just downright harmful.
Pillar three displays some of the group’s most outrageous policies. In this pillar, AFPI argues that social media platforms’ removal of political misinformation is an act of “censorship,” and advocates for Americans to use their right to “free speech” online. What’s more, it threatens to defund Planned Parenthood clinics and make abortion services harder to access in response to the left’s so-called “radical pro-abortion agenda” as well as argues that the left is creating “a culture in which it is deemed permissible to infringe on religious freedom.”
This is all in an attempt to “restore America’s historic commitment to freedom, equality and self-governance,” according to AFPI.
AFPI’s policy propositions could place America’s democracy in an increasingly less stable state than it is now if given enough power — and this possibility is on the path to becoming a reality with Trump’s previous support for the group as well as his lack of public recognition calling out the group’s harmful policies, as he previously did to distance himself from Project 2025.
AFPI hypocritically demonizes countless demographics while portraying the left to be senseless and dangerous to American citizens. By looking at their core principles, proposed policies and chosen staff, AFPI poses a far larger threat to both American citizens and to the state of their democracy.
Relying on baseless claims and exaggerated fearful images, AFPI provides a polarized populace with illogical reasons to put their vote for the Republican Party out of fear to any other political reality.