From Scaife to Trump

Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty

by Rich Lord/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty isn’t political, executive director Kris Mauren is quick to say. It’s far from the Beltway, in Grand Rapids, Mich., he noted, vowing that the institute won’t “be used as anybody’s partisan hammer.”

If the institute’s former board member Betsy DeVos is confirmed as education secretary, though, its philosophy of free markets and religiosity — primarily Christian — will be in the Trump administration’s mix. “I think our ideas are almost identical,” he said of the institute and Ms. DeVos. “She knows how to reach us if she needs us, but she hardly needs us for the idea part.”

The conservative institute, though, could sometimes be at odds with Ms. DeVos’ boss. Acton opposes the tariffs called for by Donald Trump, trumpets free trade as an antidote to poverty and decries “crony capitalism” that “favors those with political connections,” said Mr. Mauren. When the rich manipulate the powerful, he said, “You know the poor will get the short end of the stick every time.”

The quarter-century-old institute holds conferences and an annual four-day "Acton University" at which it promotes its philosophy to religious, business and academic leaders. It produced the documentary Poverty, Inc., which criticizes the effects of the international aid system.

Acton also runs a feisty blog that recently provided fodder to critics of Ms. DeVos by posting an entry originally titled “Bring back child labor: Work is a gift our kids can handle." Critics used Acton’s connection to Ms. DeVos to suggest that the nominee, who has criticized traditional public schools, wanted poor kids to go straight to the workforce. The post’s author, Joseph Sunde, felt compelled to write an update: "[P]ermit me to clarify that I do NOT endorse replacing education with paid labor, nor do I support sending our children back into the coal mines or other high-risk jobs."

The liberal Center for Media and Democracy has characterized the institute as a part of the web of conservative organizations associated with billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Mr. Mauren said the institute has gotten a tiny fraction of its donations from Koch-related sources.

The Sarah Scaife Foundation was an early backer of the institute, Mr. Mauren said, and has “been consistent for the last 10 years” with “modest” grants. Edwin Feulner, a foundation trustee and Trump transition leader, is also a past Acton board member.

Mr. Mauren knows he may soon have more cause to travel to Washington. “Do I expect that we will have more invitations to participate in things?” he asked. “That’s probably quite likely.”

America's Future Foundation

by Julian Routh/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

America’s Future Foundation has worked to cultivate a nationwide network of conservative-minded young professionals, which some say has become a career pipeline for the future of the movement.

Its job board, for example, has listings for employment opportunities at the Mercatus Center, Institute for Justice and Cato Institute, all of which are bastions of the ideological right.

It’s all part of the foundation’s goal of persuading young people toward conservatism, which it does by hosting seminars, roundtables, galas and networking events in Washington D.C. and 21 other cities across the country, including Pittsburgh. In its latest annual report, Executive Director Roger Custer writes, “Progressives believe they have millennials on their side, but current polling indicates this age group is confused and searching for the best solutions.”

If the young generation is truly up for grabs ideologically, the foundation wants to be there with its stated values of free enterprise, limited government and personal responsibility – striking a similar tone of several other Scaife-funded conservative groups. The Scaife Foundation gave it $75,000 in 2015, a substantial sum in comparison to the organization’s most recent expense total of just over $560,000.

Though he declined an interview request, Mr. Custer wrote in an email to the Post-Gazette that the Scaife donation helped his organization host programs all over the U.S. and that “we share a commitment to educating and inspiring young people” with its values.

The foundation appears to be well connected in the conservative universe; the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese and Ed Feulner are both on its advisory board, and both are high ranking members of the Trump transition team. Scaife Foundation President Michael Gleba sits on its board, too. In 2016, AFF gave its Emerging Leaders Award to three former Heritage Foundation interns.

According to the liberal Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch, as part of the Koch-funded State Policy Network, America’s Future receives interns through the “Koch Summer Fellow Program.”

The center’s Lisa Graves said the foundation, which isn’t shy about its mission to identify and develop young professional leaders, represents “the big fight going on in the right wing about who is training the younger generation.”

americasfuture.org

American Enterprise Inst. for Public Pol. Research

by Rich Lord/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The American Enterprise Institute is the granddaddy of conservative think tanks, at 72 years old, and so far its thinkers aren't deferring to the less doctrinaire views of the younger Donald Trump, 70.

After Mr. Trump pressured Carrier Corp. to keep air conditioner factory jobs in Indiana, for instance, an AEI scholar called the precedent "terrible for a nation’s economic vitality if businesses make decisions to please politicians rather than customers and shareholders." In late December, another AEI scholar predicted in a New York Times piece that Mr. Trump's budget proposal could lower overall savings, inflate the dollar and balloon the trade deficit, calling the president-elect "oblivious to this basic math."

However, when some editorial writers attacked Mr. Trump's education secretary nominee, Betsy DeVos, an AEI scholar jumped to her defense, calling for civil treatment of "a timely choice with more than a little appeal." The writer disclosed that Ms. DeVos is an AEI board member.

"AEI is very influential both on domestic and foreign policy," said Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy.

At one point Richard Mellon Scaife was AEI's largest donor, wrote journalist Jane Mayer in her book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. The Sarah Scaife Foundation’s latest contribution to AEI amounted to around 2 percent of the institute’s budget.

The Heritage Foundation — also backed by the Sarah Scaife Foundation — appears to be more thoroughly embedded than AEI in Mr. Trump's team. But some of AEI's roughly 100 scholars are now positioned to change agencies they've railed against, including the Department of Education and the Federal Communications Commission.

AEI visiting fellow Roslyn Layton, for instance, has been critical of the FCC's measures to bolster privacy protection and “net neutrality” -- which holds that Internet service providers shouldn't favor some websites over others -- arguing that the commission’s stances stifle the marketplace. She is now part of the transition team looking at the commission.

AEI fellow Mackenzie Eaglen, who isn’t on the transition team, recently called out Republicans for failing to bring women into the upper echelons, and urged Congress to increase defense spending without waiting for Mr. Trump’s proposals.

She said this year, with a Republican sweep of national power, “is absolutely a ripe moment” for conservative policymakers. It’s not, though, easy to predict the outcome. Mr. Trump, she said, “is so unique, a lot of people think he’s our first third-party president, not a Republican.”

Heritage Foundation

by Rich Lord/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Heritage Foundation may be nearly as central to Donald Trump's transition as is the president-elect himself.

Heritage has deep ties to Congressional Republicans and appears likely to be embedded in the executive branch. As if to cement the alliance, Heritage in December had incoming Vice President Mike Pence keynote one of its annual gatherings, and held that speech at the Trump Hotel in Washington.

Edwin Feulner, Heritage's co-founder and former president, has had a top role in the transition, focused on recommending appointees.

The coziness shocked Mickey Edwards, one of Heritage's founders who went on to become a Congressman from Oklahoma. “I would not have thought that Feulner would be associated with Donald Trump," in light of the president-elect's protectionism, unfamiliarity with the Constitution and comfort with "interfering with private corporate activities,” Mr. Edwards told the Post-Gazette.

Heritage was created in 1973 by people who wanted more than conservative ideas: They wanted action. And they had a rich friend in Pittsburgh named Richard Mellon Scaife.

“Heritage was created largely with Scaife money," said Mr. Edwards.

Mr. Feulner sits on the board of the Sarah Scaife Foundation, whose grants now make up less than 1 percent of Heritage's budget.

Heritage has a staff of nearly 600 employees, holds more than 200 annual events attracting more than 12,000 attendees and boasts 470,000 newsletter subscribers. Its talking heads made more than 4,000 media appearances in 2014. Its reach is furthered by a charity called The Heritage Institute, an advocacy group called Heritage Action for America, and a media arm called American Dream Broadcasting Inc.

Heritage declined interview requests from the Post-Gazette.

“Over the years, Heritage has gotten increasingly aggressive and partisan," said Erica Payne, who is chief strategist at Patriotic Millionaires, a group of rich people on the political left. "I think they’ve become unhinged.”

Mr. Edwards, who characterizes himself as a Goldwater/Reagan conservative and runs a bipartisan leadership program with The Aspen Institute, called today's Heritage "an extreme part of the partisanship." He pointed to Heritage's campaign to browbeat Republicans to defund the Affordable Care Act, despite the fact that some of Obamacare’s core principles came out of the foundation’s past proposals.

In the Trump administration, Mr. Edwards said, Heritage could provide conservative intellectual groundwork for Republican Washington, or -- less likely, he hopes -- could become a blowtorch used to "take on Republicans who do not support the Trump agenda."

Hoover Institution at Stanford University

by Julian Routh/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Hoover Institution, the influential think tank long hidden in plain sight on Stanford University’s campus, doesn’t seem to be hiding its potential inroads to Donald Trump’s White House.

Observers say the right-leaning think tank, which was well connected during the George W. Bush years, could be one of the organizations most plugged in to the next administration.

And its executive director, Thomas Gilligan, appears to agree. Touting the institution’s access to defense secretary nominee and retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, a distinguished visiting fellow, Mr. Gilligan wrote in a memo to donors, “The Hoover Institution now has an opportunity to influence the course of American and world history in a way no one could have foreseen.”

“[Mattis] will no doubt rely on his colleagues at Hoover who already have extensive military and national security experience,” Mr. Gilligan said in the Dec. 27 memo, first reported by Bloomberg.

Officially established in 1959 as an independent entity at Stanford, the institution has driven national policy discussions by pumping out a heavy flow of research and writing, with emphasis on conservative values of free markets, limited government and individual freedom. The Economist magazine once declared Hoover as “hard to match for sheer intellectual firepower.”

On foreign policy issues, Hoover’s scholars have pushed for a buildup of the military, a reassessment of the Iran nuclear deal and a greater check on China’s power, ideas that Mr. Trump supported during his campaign but offered little in the way of policy.

With six substantial ties to the Trump administration and an anticipated flurry of potential foreign policy remedies, analysts are preparing for the Scaife-funded institution to become more powerful in D.C. Along with Mr. Mattis, Trump team members Edwin Meese III, Kiron Skinner and Williamson Evers are Hoover fellows. Peter Thiel is a board of overseers member, and Newt Gingrich is a former distinguished visiting fellow.

Leslie Lenkowsky, former CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service in the Bush administration and former director of the Scaife-funded Philanthropy Roundtable, said he anticipates Hoover to join the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute as the most influential conservative organizations over the next four years.

“The think tank universe is going to be a bit more open in terms of people having lines into the administration,” Mr. Lenkowsky said.

The Sarah Scaife Foundation has been one of the institution’s biggest donors over the last three decades, and gave $350,000 to it in 2015. Since it’s closely affiliated with Stanford, a private university, it isn’t required to release its tax returns publicly.

hoover.org

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

by Julian Routh/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research has ideas about healthcare, climate change and market regulations, and it wants powerful people to use them.

It’s right in the first sentence of the New York institute’s most recent annual report, in which president Lawrence Mone wrote of what’s to come for his organization as administrations turn over in Washington.

“The best way to support the next president and the incoming class of congressmen, governors, mayors, and state and local legislators is to provide them with ideas that can respond to the frustration, alienation, and despair clearly – and correctly – felt by so many citizens,” Mr. Mone declared.

Since its founding in 1977, the Scaife-funded institute has worked to move the needle on topics of economic choice and individual responsibility. Its scholars pump out policy papers and books – most recently, “The War on Cops,” which alleges that race-based attacks on the criminal justice system are “eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk.”

For years, the Scaife Foundation – which gave the institute $400,000 in 2015 – was the organization’s single largest contributor, according to Jane Mayer, author of “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.”

“The donations paid off, from Scaife’s viewpoint, when they helped launch the careers of conservative social critic [Charles] Murray and the supply-side economics guru George Gilder, whose arguments against welfare programs and taxes had huge impacts on ordinary Americans,” Ms. Mayer wrote.

When asked for an interview, an institute spokeswoman pointed the Post-Gazette to the organization’s 2016 report, and added that its mission of providing ideas to the public and policymakers doesn’t change in light of elections.

On healthcare, the institute’s writings have called for a more cost-effective option than the Affordable Care Act. Its research routinely dismisses the “apocalyptic fears” surrounding climate change and criticizes the EPA for negatively impacting the economy with its regulations.

Though the institution’s scholars may “say the science is unsettled” behind climate change, “the new shift has been for these groups to say they’re not [climate] deniers, they just don’t agree with any of these policies trying to mitigate climate change,” said Lisa Graves of the liberal Center for Media and Democracy.

The institute has at least two inroads to the incoming presidential administration: Trump transition team members Rebekah Mercer and David Malpass are Manhattan trustees.

manhattan-institute.org

Media Research Center

by Julian Routh/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

If Donald Trump’s campaign lit the fire that badly damaged the public’s trust of the media, the Media Research Center poured the gasoline.

Brent Bozell’s Virginia-based organization, which calls itself the “nation’s premier media watchdog,” has railed against the national news media for nearly three decades, putting millions of dollars annually into studies and initiatives aimed at combating what it perceives to be liberal bias on the airwaves, online and in newspapers.

The center, which received a modest $300,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2015 that went toward its $14.2 million expenses that year, runs a news analysis division that monitors broadcast news 24/7, posting findings on its popular watchdog blog, NewsBusters, and on a handful of other news websites and channels it operates.

Nicole Hemmer, a University of Virginia professor who studies conservative media extensively, said the center has helped popularize the idea that the media isn’t just biased, but biased toward the left.

“Conservative media has been pushing that idea since the 1940s,” Ms. Hemmer said, “and you have this relentless push from these organizations like the [Media Research Center] that provide the evidence that people need to believe it.”

In recent weeks, NewsBusters has lambasted “neurotic” editorials by the New York Times, criticized the mainstream media for using the term “fake news” and promoted a study showing that Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world. It also launched a campaign called Save the Snowflakes, which pokes fun at the college students – or “America’s precious young snowflakes” – who reacted negatively to Mr. Trump’s election.

Officials from the center did not respond to several requests for interviews.

It was Mr. Trump who gave the organization’s message a national platform during the campaign season, frequently referring to the mainstream media as “rigged” and targeting news organizations and journalists for what he deemed to be unfair coverage. Analysts say Mr. Trump’s hostility toward the news media altered the public’s attitude toward it; in September, Americans’ trust and confidence in the media dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history. http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx

With those levels of distrust, the center is well-positioned to have a greater role in the anti-media push popularized by the Trump campaign. Bill Walton and Rebekah Mercer, who both hold executive positions on the president-elect’s transition team, are on its board.

“Having the ear of a president who really wants to hear what you have to say and is eager to spread any evidence that the press is biased, well, the Media Research Center is certainly well positioned to be a part of the anti-media push of the Trump camp,” she said.

mrc.org

Sarah Scaife Foundation

by Rich Lord/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Sarah Scaife Foundation was funding conservative thinkers before it was in vogue.

The year after conservative Barry Goldwater suffered one of the worst drubbings of any presidential nominee, the foundation's namesake died. Her son, Richard Mellon Scaife, promptly steered the foundation right into the political headwinds. He’s widely credited for funding the growth of today’s pillars of conservative thinking, including the Heritage Foundation.

Since Mr. Scaife's 2014 death, as a result of his bequests and a merger with a smaller philanthropy, the foundation's assets have swelled from $321 million to $709 million.

"Oh, my gosh, I didn’t realize they had that much money," said Erica Payne, chief strategist at Patriotic Millionaires, a liberal group. "They’re now the sun of the conservative Milky Way.”

The transition is “a good opportunity for the types of groups that the Sarah Scaife Foundation has always supported,” said H. Yale Gutnick, who was Mr. Scaife’s chief attorney and has worked for the foundation. “We’ve been very supportive of most of the groups that are playing a very important role in the Trump organization.”

Of the foundation’s nine trustees, two are on the Trump transition team: Edwin Feulner of Heritage and Republican National Committeewoman Christine Jack Toretti. Dozens of associates of the foundation's grantees are advising the Trump team or heading for posts in his administration.

"I think it gives them an opportunity to carry out the work of the foundation,” said Allan H. Meltzer, a foundation board member and professor of political economy at Carnegie Mellon University.

The foundation is led by its chairman and CEO Michael W. Gleba, 47, of Edgewood, who Mr. Meltzer described as “a very conscientious, careful person who knows a great deal about the people he’s supporting.”

Mr. Gleba is involved with three other groups that are plugged into the transition: He's a trustee at The Heritage Foundation, a board member at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and an executive committee member for one of the Federalist Society's practice groups.

“He’s not ultra-conservative,” said Mr. Gutnick. “I don’t think he’s that far to the right.”

Nonetheless, the foundation’s resources and connections inspire fear on the left.

“It’s a potent threat to modern American institutions,” said Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy. and so who funds them? “These ideologically right-wing foundations tend to be free-market fundamentalists whose primary focus is to undo the New Deal and all of the progress that came after."

The Federalist Society - Law & Public Pol. Studies

by Rich Lord/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Studies is just a big group of lawyers and law students. But it is poised to rebalance the Supreme Court and name candidates to promptly fill one out of every eight benches in the federal judiciary.

The society's reach, its conservative bent and its impending role in Donald Trump's court appointments "means the weakening of unions and collective bargaining," said Danielle McLaughlin, a New York attorney and co-author of The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals. "This means the continued chipping away at the right to abortion. This may put a question mark over same-sex marriage. This means more money in politics. This means more religion in public life. ... And I think this means that we’re going to see more power to the states.”

The society declined interview requests.

Mr. Trump in November met with Federalist Society executive vice president Leonard Leo, and emerged saying he'll pick a justice to replace Antonin Scalia from a list approved by the group. Included on that list is Thomas Hardiman, who was a Pittsburgh lawyer before George W. Bush nominated him to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court seat is just one of the 112 vacant slots in the 890-bench federal judiciary, depleted due to the Republican Senate’s inaction on President Barack Obama's appointments. That may be an unprecedented opportunity for the society, started in 1982 by three law students and now boasting 60,000 members.

During Mr. Bush's administration, the society vetted potential judicial appointees before even the White House Counsel and Department of Justice reviewed them, according to Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, who was a deputy assistant attorney general in 2001. That ensured that new judges shared "their world view ... that is incredibly pro-corporate, pro-Citizens United ... and to the detriment of ordinary citizens," she said.

A society member, James Bopp, spearheaded the Citizens United lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court and opened the way for unlimited donations to SuperPACs. That’s typical of the way society members staff conservative legal foundations, which file lawsuits tailored to set conservative precedents, which eventually reach judges vetted by the society, Ms. McLaughlin said.

Richard Mellon Scaife's philanthropies have backed the society, and supported many of the legal foundations that bring lawsuits in pursuit of conservative rulings. The society lists Sarah Scaife Foundation chairman Michael Gleba as a member of its International and National Security Law Practice Group Executive Committee.

"The vision," said Ms. McLaughlin, "is that you have folks at all levels of government who agree with your ideas."

Young America's Foundation

by Julian Routh/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Young America’s Foundation sees college campuses as liberal political machines, so it is prepping students to wage a war for conservative values.

Take it from foundation president Ron Robinson, who in public settings evokes battle terminology – once referring to his young members as being “on the front lines of the fight to preserve our country” – as much as he evokes Ronald Reagan.

For nearly half a century, the foundation has brought its messages of free enterprise, individual freedom and traditional values to students by bringing conservative speakers to college campuses, hosting conferences and training future journalists through its National Journalism Center.

Last year with help from an Allegheny Foundation grant of $200,000, Young America’s spent $8 million on holding conferences and lectures on campuses and distributing materials, including U.S. Constitutions.

In addition to its journalism offshoot, the foundation runs the Reagan Ranch – President Ronald Reagan’s famous vacation house in California – which it acquired in 1998, accompanying a center in Santa Barbara that serves as a “Schoolhouse for Reaganism.”

Lisa Graves of the liberal Center for Media and Democracy said groups like Young America’s and the America’s Future Foundation have been instrumental in the “longstanding effort by the right to get active on campus,” and have long outmatched the left in creating a career pipeline for college students.

“The right wing has this belief that has an accurate component, and a component that is inaccurate. The accurate component is that younger Americans tend to be more progressive,” Ms. Graves said. “The untrue part is this blame that it's because colleges are so liberal and they're assaulting the right.”

Foundation officials did not respond to several interview requests.

The organization’s most recent annual conference in November, attended by hundreds of students from across the country, featured speeches from national security analyst K.T. McFarland and retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, both of whom are deeply involved in the Trump transition.

The connections to Mr. Trump’s White House transition don’t stop there, and YAF isn’t shy in pronouncing them: a recent statement on its website congratulated its “allies” in the Trump campaign for being appointed as members of his administration. Transition team members Rebekah Mercer and Edwin Meese III are both on the Reagan Ranch’s board, and Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon have worked with the organization in the past.

As a result, the YAF could be in a better position to get its motto, “The Conservative Movement Starts Here,” to young people all across the country.

yaf.org