Since Donald Trump emerged as a major political force a decade ago, observers have struggled to define his ideology.
Even in his second term, the president resists easy categorization. Aside from his long-standing support for tariffs and tighter immigration policies, his positions on everything from cryptocurrency to foreign policy have shifted repeatedly.
As Republicans start to look ahead, influential conservative thinkers have tried to sketch out what Trumpism without Trump would look like. But that starts with figuring out what Trumpism meant in the first place.
This particular fight isn’t happening in campaign ads or speeches in the Senate, but rather in the pages of obscure policy journals and the halls of Washington think tanks.
Just as he’s upended so much of national politics, Trump has thrown a monkey wrench into the traditionally staid right-of-center world of policymaking, transforming or pushing aside established institutions and boosting startups such as the America First Policy Institute, American Compass and Advancing American Freedom that are hoping to rebuild a new conservative order.
The new generation of organizations emerged as conservatives sought to make sense of Trump’s first term.
The new generation of organizations emerged after 2020 as conservatives sought to make sense of Trump’s first term and develop an intellectual framework that would better align with the party’s evolving base.
That has placed them in quiet but persistent competition with legacy institutions such as the Heritage Foundation, which for decades functioned as the central hub of conservative policy development in the capital. But what once appeared to be a relatively unified intellectual pipeline has fractured into overlapping networks, each claiming to represent the future of the modern right.
Even before Trump’s second term began, the fault lines were already visible. Internal tensions around Heritage-linked efforts such as Project 2025 became a political flash point, prompting Trump to distance himself from aspects of the initiative during the campaign, even as he embraced many of its backers and ideas once in office.
But Trump didn’t lean only on Heritage to flesh out his second-term agenda. His administration has also drawn more directly from this newer constellation of conservative think tanks. The America First Policy Institute in particular has functioned less like a traditional outside think tank and more like an extension of the administration. Founded in 2021, it has become a major personnel pipeline to the administration, with former Trump officials, advisers and policy architects moving through its orbit.
At the same time, American Compass has become a different kind of influence center within the same realignment. Under founder Oren Cass, the group argues that decades of free-market orthodoxy failed American workers and hollowed out communities, and that conservative economics must shift toward industrial policy, labor strength and domestic investment.
Cass has openly framed the project as an effort to move conservatism away from what he calls “market fundamentalism,” arguing that Republicans face a choice between returning to a pre-Trump economic model or constructing a post-Trump political economy centered on workers, families and domestic manufacturing.
Advancing American Freedom has carved out a parallel role — less as a mass policy operation and more as a strategic hub for constitutional messaging, personnel development and intra-movement coordination. Taken together, these organizations reflect a broader evolution in how conservative ideas are developed and deployed: not through a single intellectual center, but through a decentralized network competing for influence inside the same governing coalition.
That fragmentation has also put pressure on older institutions to adapt. Heritage has faced both ideological and organizational strain as it tries to balance its traditional role as the Republican Party’s policy engine with the demands of a movement increasingly shaped by populist and nationalist currents. Internal battles over Project 2025, leadership decisions and the organization’s relationship to the Trump-aligned “New Right” have exposed growing tensions inside the conservative establishment.
Trump has not just transformed the policy ideas, he has also changed their role.
Trump has not just transformed the policy ideas, he has also changed their role. In the past, think tanks crafted policy ideas that could be adopted or modified by anyone. In fact, some of the Affordable Care Act’s most important features — including the individual mandate requiring people to obtain health insurance — originated in conservative policy circles before being adopted by Democrats and later rejected by Republicans.
The new Trumpist think tanks are much more entwined with the administration, supplying personnel, shaping campaign narratives and working out new policies in real time.
The key test will come after Trump leaves office, however. For think tanks that have become closely entwined with the administration, maintaining that influence with the next Republican nominee may prove more difficult, especially if Trump’s approval ratings continue to slide. The GOP might move on from some of Trump’s positions, just as Trump himself pushed it away from President George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.”
Until then, these groups will continue to battle over what Trumpism means — and what comes next.
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Lily Becker is a producer on “The Weeknight” for MS NOW.