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An internal battle has broken out among rival Republican groups over staffing of a possible second Trump administration, with one loyalist of the former US president accusing another ally of being a “Trojan horse” for the “establishment” to control his agenda.
Two rightwing think-tanks — the Heritage Foundation and America First Policy Institute — have each launched projects to influence the staffing of thousands of government positions following the 2024 election in the hopes of another Republican White House.
But the competition for influence turned nasty on Tuesday, when James Bacon, a senior adviser at Heritage, criticised AFPI and warned that more traditional conservatives would be excluded from a future Republican administration.
“I understand that all the America Last Republicans are afraid of being cut out of the next Administration. They should be,” Bacon wrote in an email to AFPI obtained by the Financial Times.
Bacon, who worked as a young staffer in Donald Trump’s presidential personnel office, added that the AFPI was a “Trojan Horse by which the establishment can retake control of personnel”.
Bacon’s comments reflect a battle for control of the Republican party being waged by traditional conservatives and supporters of Trump, who remains the runaway leader in the GOP primary race despite criminal charges against him relating to his efforts to subvert the 2020 election won by Joe Biden.
The tensions between the two groups came as former vice-president Mike Pence, a rival of Trump in the primary, said in a New Hampshire speech on Wednesday afternoon that it was time for the party to choose between populism and traditional conservatism.
“Today, I ask my fellow Republicans this: in the days to come, will we be the party of conservatism or will our party follow the siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles?” he said, according to prepared remarks.
He also sought to portray Trump’s populism as similar to progressive Democrats on foreign policy and economic matters.
“Donald Trump, along with his populist followers and imitators — some of whom are also seeking the Republican presidential nomination — often sound like an echo of the progressive they would replace in the White House.”
Bacon sent his email to Doug Hoelscher, a top AFPI official, after Hoelscher invited guests to attend a star-studded event on September 20 featuring Trump’s former acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf and former interior secretary David Bernhardt. Bacon viewed AFPI’s work as a copy of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which is creating an online database of potential hires and a training academy for future political appointees.
“AFPI is ripping off the Heritage Foundation’s Presidential Transition Project, down to the name, language, and logo, without providing any of the substance,” Bacon wrote in his emailed response to the invitation.
Brooke Rollins, head of the AFPI, responded that she and Heritage’s president Kevin Roberts were “fully aligned” on transition preparedness.
“We need all America First organisations involved because reining in the administrative state is too big a task for one organisation or even two,” she said. “Clearly, this one individual is not fully informed on our efforts, which is why he was invited in the first place.”
Roberts said in a statement that he and Rollins were “longtime friends” and that he was grateful that AFPI was “alongside us in this critical moment”, adding that the conservative movement needed to unify “to ensure the next president is prepared to dismantle the administrative state on day one”.
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