Meet the Trump-Linked Think Tank Waging a Legal War on Elections

By Matt Cohen

An outline of Donald Trump's shadowy profile in front of a collage featuring images of a voting machine, ballot drop box, a voter registration form, and the AFPI logo.

By all accounts, the May presidential primary election in Georgia went as smoothly as it could have. There were no reports of long lines or malfunctioning voting machines. “Virtually none, nothing I really can report on,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) told reporters when asked if there were any irregularities in the election. “So it’s been very, very quiet. So we’re pleased with that.”

But Julie Adams, an election board member in Fulton County — the state’s most populated county — wasn’t satisfied with the election process and refused to certify the county’s election results. Adams, who is a member of the controversial right-wing Election Integrity Network, said she wouldn’t certify because she was denied access to data and “key election information” that she claimed was necessary to see to sign off on the county’s election results. Her abstention didn’t matter, the other four board members voted to certify the election. But Adams soon filed a lawsuit against the board’s director, Nadine Williams, over the election certification process. 

The lawsuit was filed on Adams’ behalf by America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a conservative think tank founded in 2021 by a handful of prominent Republicans with ties to former President Donald Trump. Although AFPI’s work spans the spectrum of right-wing policies and issues — like promoting free enterprise, immigration policy, foreign policy and other policies championed by the Trump administration — the Georgia litigation is one of several recent voting-related lawsuits that the group is involved with.

AFPI is hardly the first right-wing think-tank to get involved in election litigation. Groups like the Public Interest Legal Fund, America First Legal and Judicial Watch have made a name for themselves in the past few years for their legal assault on voting rights. But AFPI’s recent pivot to election litigation is part of a larger right-wing focus on rolling back voting rights and sowing discord in elections through the courts. 

Given AFPI’s leadership ties to the Trump administration, it’s no secret that their litigation efforts in Arizona, Georgia and Texas are strategic legal moves that, should they prove successful, could have far-reaching implications in the 2024 election. 

A Team Trump think tank

AFPI was founded in 2021 by two former Trump administration alums: Brooke Rollins, an attorney who had roles in the United States Domestic Policy Council and the White House Office of American Innovation, and Larry Kudlow, who was the Director of the National Economic Council. “AFPI is truly the defender of the American dream, but also the American people,” Rollins said in an interview at the time of the group’s founding. 

What that mission translated to was a well-funded think tank composed of Trump administration officials working to push the former president’s policies across the political spectrum. As Axios reported at the time of the group’s launch, AFPI’s founding team included Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner as advisors, former Small Business Administration head Linda McMahon, former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, and former White House Spiritual Advisor Paula White-Cain. 

In its three years of existence AFPI has mainly operated as a thorn in the side of President Joe Biden’s administration. AFPI has filed a number of high-profile lawsuits targeting the Biden administration — including one in November of 2021 that led to a federal court halting a White House COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private businesses with 100 or more employees. 

Apart from lawsuits, AFPI has made a name for itself attacking Biden administration policies and agenda: immigration, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and the Respect for Marriage Act, among others. The group has also launched campaigns to block a number of Biden’s political nominees, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. 

But the bulk of AFPI’s $23 million budget in 2022 went toward crafting the America First Agenda — a comprehensive, nearly 300-page policy plan to further push Trump’s MAGA agenda into action. It’s something like a Project 2025-lite, consolidating Trump’s political positions and policies — in areas like economy, healthcare, immigration, education, energy and election reform — into a single agenda.

“Election integrity” has always been one of the target areas of AFPI — the group’s law and justice center is led by former Trump attorney and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi — but only recently did the group begin to use the courts to push that agenda. 

The group is leading a multistate legal effort to overturn a pro-voting Biden executive order that expands voting access — by directing federal agencies to share data with states to help with automatic voter registration. In early July, AFPI filed a lawsuit — along with Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R), U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas) and former Texas State Rep. Matthew Krause (R) — to overturn the executive order, arguing that it violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and other federal laws because it “requires the head of every federal agency to develop programs to register voters and to increase voter participation.” The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of Texas — a federal court favored by Republicans because of its conservative bend. 

In April of 2024, AFPI joined a lawsuit filed by the right-wing Arizona Free Enterprise Club against Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) challenging portions of the state’s Elections Procedural Manual (EPM). A portion of the EPM allows local election officials in Arizona to prevent various groups or individuals from observing polling places and drop boxes in any way that might be deemed as harassing or intimidating to election workers and voters. The lawsuit argued that this provision of the EPM limits free speech. 

It’s not the only lawsuit challenging Arizona’s EPM that AFPI is attached to. 

On July 8, the group sued Fontes, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) and Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs (D) over two other provisions of the state’s EPM. Specifically, the lawsuit argues that the EPM’s “vote nullification provision” — which allows the secretary of state to conduct a vote canvass and certify statewide election results when local officials refuse to do so — is an “egregious violation” of the 14th Amendment, according to the lawsuit. 

Like in the Georgia lawsuit, the outcome of this Arizona lawsuit could have severe implications for election certification — a largely procedural task that isn’t typically controversial. Election officials tasked with certifying an election simply confirm all of the ballots have been counted, that the process is complete and the ballots tabulated were accurate. Should any irregularities or fraud be discovered in an elections process, it’s not handled during the certifying process — rather during one of what can end up being a number of audits. 

In its lawsuit, AFPI is asking an Arizona district court to prohibit Fontes and Mayes from implementing the “vote nullification provision” in the state’s EPM. Should the court grant such a ruling, it could give rogue election officials more power when they refuse to certify an election, or at least make it harder for the secretary of state to step in and ensure an election is finalized. It’s not exactly the same legal argument that AFPI makes in their lawsuit representing Adams, the Fulton County election board member challenging the duties to certify election results. But it has the same effect: sowing discord in the election certification process and amplifying a narrative that such a procedure is more involved and discretionary than it actually is.