Lately, there has been a lot of focus on the Heritage Foundation (Heritage) and its Project 2025 agenda – and for good reason. Heritage’s plan is a blueprint for a far-right conservative overhaul of the U.S. government. The 900-page document reads like a late-stage fascism playbook that suggests the majority of the United States must live in a racist, intolerant, and isolated theocratic society.

The similarities between Project 2025 and what hate groups promote cannot be ignored.

The idea behind Project 2025 is to strengthen a white Christian nationalist influence by placing loyal personnel across the Executive Branch while implementing a far-right agenda focused on dismantling social programs, restricting immigration, and prioritizing fossil fuels. There is also a substantial emphasis on increasing presidential power, limiting the independence of federal regulatory agencies, and reshaping foreign policy to prioritize national interests.

In the world of monitoring hate groups’ statements and activities, it would be foolish to ignore commonalities between what they say and what politicians say. Historically, politicians and racist, far-right militants have often echoed each other and parroted the same talking points — from using phrasing like an invasion when talking about nonwhite immigrants to referring to Black people as thugs.

This cross-pollination isn’t just becoming commonplace in far-right extremist political circles; it’s become a regular occurrence among hate groups, too. The connections between these nonprofits and dangerous extremist groups aren’t hard to see. The messages they promote in their major ad buys echo what hate groups are saying on the street and on social media. There is no question that they bolster each other’s messaging across mainstream society.

Likewise, it pays to understand who is funding not just the politicians but groups like Heritage and the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), where many of these far-right Republicans get their bigoted ideas, dictated talking points, and financial support. These groups often draft conservative policy ideas and legislation for politicians.

For Republicans, the goal is simple: keep white Christian nationalists in power at all costs.

Upon deeper investigation of the Project 2025 document and its funders, Unicorn Riot found that Joel Frushone, a Senior Manager at Ernst & Young, is listed as a Contributor in the 922-page document ‘Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise’, as is Jen Ehlinger, formerly a communications strategist at the U.S. State Department for much of the Trump Administration and an Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton until December 2022.

Ernst & Young is a major professional services firm that serves as a consultant for businesses and governments globally. They are considered a Big Four Player among accounting firms along with Deloitte, KPMG, and PwC – some of the largest in the world. Booz Allen Hamilton is a consulting firm specializing in helping governments and businesses with complex technology-related challenges. Booz Allen Hamilton is listed next to Jen Ehlinger’s name in the Project 2025 document’s ‘Contributors’ list; Ernst & Young is not listed next to Joel Frushone’s name on that list.

Influential contributors like Frushone and Ehlinger highlight a problem often referred to as the revolving door in government – the practice of people moving back and forth between public service (government officials) and jobs in the private sector (private contractors). Current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, is one example of a government official who benefited from the so-called revolving door.

Frushone held a leadership position at the US Economic Development Administration under the Trump Administration before later going back into the private sector at Ernst & Young. Ehlinger, also a beneficiary of the revolving door in government, now works at Strategic Engineering Solutions (SES), which provides services to the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. You can find an extensive list of contributors beginning on page 25 of the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership below. The list is a who’s who of far-right extremists associated with foundations or institutes.

Frushone and Ehlinger, however, are two of the biggest names on the list associated with major corporations that deal in finance.

“It’s not surprising that people leave government and go to work in the private sector,” said Wendy Via, co-founder, CEO, and President of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism in response to the revelations about Frushone and Ehlinger. “What is surprising is that such established, mainstream companies would allow their names to be associated with the very extreme, rights-restricting Project 2025. Have we normalized dangerous extremism to such an extent that prominent firms need to think nothing of the potential consequences to their businesses and reputations?”

Meanwhile, a recent report from investigative journalists at Documented, in partnership with The Guardian, exposes just how deep these relationships go. The structure of the organizations makes the money much harder to track as they seek to dissuade Black and Latino voters with negative ads on race and transgender issues while motivating white voters by portraying themselves as victims of racism.

Think of these complex and elaborate partnerships as shell companies that mask activity, similar to how major corporations like Enron used them to hide their financial losses. While these nonprofits aren’t worried about losses, they create dozens of other nonprofits intentionally, making their financials and advocacy difficult to expose.

The Documented and Guardian report focuses on an analysis of recently acquired tax records that revealed Citizens for Sanity, a dark money group with ties to former president Trump’s inner circle, spent $93 million in the second half of 2022. Nearly all of that money went to running ads that have been described as vile, racist, and transphobic.

Tax records also revealed that Citizens for Sanity’s offices are located at the headquarters of CPI in Washington D.C. – a key component of the infrastructure to get Trump elected. Notably, the group has ties to America First Legal (AFL), which employed three Citizens for Sanity’s board members. Many of AFL’s employees are also listed as contributors to Project 2025.

AFL is the brainchild of former Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller, who is well-known for his far-right, bigoted, and xenophobic views. AFL, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a core mission “to expose the radical left,” can be found in Project 2025 documents many times, along with its Vice President Gene Hamilton and other employees such as Michael Ding, Reed Rubinstein, and John Zadrozny. AFL also has its offices in CPI’s headquarters.

Citizens for Sanity promotes policies that would appease hate groups and is seemingly used as a tool to run more racist and bigoted ads that Heritage and CPI could later distance themselves from if they draw scrutiny. Exposing them now will only make that more of a challenge for them later.

Meanwhile, Heritage operates The Daily Signal, a website that boasts “fair, accurate, and trustworthy journalism” while running articles bemoaning Juneteenth by distorting its meaning; Latino immigrants by claiming they’re all criminals; the LGBTQ community by arguing that sexuality is divisive and others that continue to cast doubt on President Biden’s 2020 election win over former president Donald Trump.

As Heritage plays its role, so do CPI and Citizens for Sanity. Last year, Citizens for Sanity posted one of its racist ads on X (formerly Twitter). Several months later, they posted an ad targeting equity and inclusion. Both ads suggest non-white, non-cisgender people were being hired for jobs not because of their experience or knowledge but because they weren’t white, straight, or Asian.

Many far-right politicians in Congress who promote racial, ethnic, and cultural hatred across the country have offices at CPI’s headquarters. U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA14), Ralph Norman (R-SC05), Matt Gaetz (R-FL01), and Byron Donalds (R-FL19) alongside senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) call it “a home away from home,” according to CPI.

CPI was founded by Jim DeMint, the former congressman, retired senator, and former Heritage president from South Carolina. Former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows joined DeMint as a senior partner after leaving the White House, and one of Trump’s most extreme lawyers, Cleta Mitchell, rounds out the organization’s top leaders.

Meadows and Mitchell were on the call with Trump when he pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger saying he wanted to find 11,780 votes to overturn the 2020 election. While CPI employs many of Trump’s team of election deniers, Mitchell chairs CPI’s Election Integrity Network and has been vocal about conservative control of the election process

Mitchell led efforts to stop the passage of both the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act using Trump’s false claims of election fraud. Her continued efforts to tighten voting laws across the country impact Black communities and other communities of color more than any other voters. Mitchell has coordinated the advancing voting restrictions in dozens of states so far.

There’s little question about CPI’s connections to Heritage, Project 2025, and far-right autocratic political ideas. One of the more well-known names on Heritage’s board is Rebekah Mercer, who put her family’s money in Parler, a far-right extremist social media site. Her father, Robert Mercer, invested heavily in Breitbart News, the website Steve Bannon once called the platform for the alt-right. Robert Mercer was sued in 2017 by a former employee for his racist views.

It doesn’t end there.

Jay Sekulow, Trump’s personal lawyer and founder of Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), has donated $32 million to the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which was founded by Sekulow, and televangelist Pat Robertson. The ACLJ is known for spreading anti-Muslim propaganda and also provided legal support for the Trump administration’s 2017 Muslim travel ban.

Aside from the individuals mentioned here, there are many documented cases of nonprofit groups that maintain dark money transactions with hate groups. As it stands, many donations pass through these organizations undetected because they are mostly handled through anonymous donor networks known as Donor Advised Funds (DAF).

Fidelity Charitable, Charles Schwab Charitable, and BNY Mellon currently allow donations to Heritage through DAFs.

CPI, Heritage, and many other politically aligned groups generate revenue in the same way by hiding who gives them money. That financial and political power is seen in the recently adopted 2024 Texas Republican Party Platform. It highlights what far-right conservatives intend to do with their white Christian nationalist agenda as they continue to concentrate power nationally, seemingly unabated.

The entire state political platform embraces far-right extremist ideas based on blatant lies and intentional disinformation. It includes: a referendum for Texas to secede from the Union to resisting the Great Reset (a conspiracy theory claiming globalist elites are using social issues to enslave the world’s population), aspects of the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory, claiming homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice, falsely declaring President Joe Biden was not democratically elected, calling abortion homicide, and gender-transition care child abuse. It’s extremely dangerous for large portions of society.

These ideas promoted by far-right political power players are widely shared by gangs of white Christian nationalist thugs on the streets who use violence and threats of violence to further marginalize already marginalized groups. As these nonprofit groups grow, so does their political power, along with the funding that supports myriad hate groups and their ideologies that threaten non-white and non-cis-male communities across the country.

Unicorn Riot contacted Booz Allen Hamilton and Ernst & Young but has not received a response.

Title image composite element source credits: Project 2025, LinkedIn, Mike Dolan/Daily Southtown

Resources:

Project 2025 – ‘Mandate For Leadership: The Conservative Promise’ [Full Document – 922 Pages]

2024 Texas Republican Party Platform [50 pages]

Conservative Partnership Institute 2021 Annual Report [48 pages]

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