AFPI: The MAGA-Dominionist Partnership to Put Trump in Office – and Wield Power

The New York Times this week profiled the MAGA movement organization America First Policy Institute. AFPI was founded as a kind of Trump government-in-exile after voters ousted Donald Trump from office. AFPI has provided jobs and salaries to many Trump loyalists working to bring Trump — and themselves — back to power. And they are preparing to make the most of that power.

AFPI's own version of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 agenda for a new administration reportedly contains nearly 300 executive orders that a returning Trump must sign. Right Wing Watch reported last year on an AFPI summit called “Laying the Groundwork for the Next America First Administration,” where the group’s president, Brooke Rollins, boasted about the “revolutionary” nature of its ambitions to “take control of “to take over and use the administrative state”. it — and dismantling it at the same time,” he described “an America First confrontation against anti-conservative institutions.”

Now that there is bad blood between MAGA insiders and the Heritage Foundation over the unfavorable publicity the 2025 project brought to Trump's campaign, AFPI is positioned to have control of the transition team and domestic policy agenda if Trump wins. An example of what that might look like: The Times reports that AFPI's plan to allow Trump to fire federal workers and replace them with political loyalists is even more radical than Project 2025's proposal – it would essentially… Turn the entire federal workforce into a political patronage system.

An important aspect of AFPI's work that was not explored in this week's Times story is AFPI's partnership with Dominionist Lance Wallnau and his “Courage Tour” to appeal to conservative Christian voters in key swing states in the upcoming election -districts to win. As the Times noted, one of AFPI's donors and board members is Texas pastor and billionaire Tim Dunn, whose funding and theocratic vision have aggressively pushed the Texas Republican Party further to the right.

Right Wing Watch has reported that the Courage Tour blends religious revivalism, spiritual warfare rhetoric, right-wing politics and targeted turnout work, all aimed at overcoming “demonic strongholds” and putting Trump back in the White House. Some other media reports on the Courage Tour have noted the partnership, describing the involvement of America First Works – AFPI's political action affiliate – and its voter registration efforts. Wallnau and AFPI have focused on 19 crucial districts in swing states that they believe could swing the election for Trump through increased turnout by MAGA-aligned Christians.

The extent of the partnership between AFPI and New Apostolic Reformation Dominionists like Wallnau is revealed in a video from a Michigan stop of the Courage Tour in May. Wallnau described AFPI as “the group I work with,” adding that it “holds the key appointment for what we hope will be the Trump administration… They have all the placeholders for who will come in.”

Wallnau introduced Richard Rogers, who is affiliated with Georgia-based MAGA pastor Jentezen Franklin's Free Chapel church and serves as AFPI's national director of faith engagement. He received this assignment, Rogers said, when AFPI called Franklin and told him that the movement did not have enough local resources to actually conduct the necessary voter registration and turnout in targeted districts. Rogers got to work, he said, and now AFPI has a “faith division” built “to get a foothold on the ground and motivate voters in these states to turn the tide in the 2024 election.” – and that's what we do.” It.”

Rogers said AFPI has developed closer collaboration among other groups working on voter registration and turnout among conservative Christians, citing Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA and Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition as examples. Rogers also said AFPI has raised enough money to pay attorneys willing to intervene in key districts and counties.

The increasingly Christian nationalist orientation of the MAGA movement – ​​and the agenda of AFPI donor Dunn – is also reflected in the think tank's effort to claim a biblical basis for every part of its social, economic and foreign policy agenda.

AFPI calls its political agenda “10 Pillars for Restoring a Nation Under God,” although some of its supposed biblical underpinnings seem overwhelmed, to say the least. To support its opposition to “Marxist and socialist ideology in our health care,” AFPI offers four Bible verses, including ones that describe our bodies as a temple of the Holy Spirit and a prayer for good health.

AFPI's Biblical Foundations Project was launched last year at an event with Trump's spiritual adviser and former White House adviser Paula White, who directs the AFPI Center for American Values. At the event, AFPI President Rollins said that in her role leading Trump's domestic agenda in the White House, “we have seen the benefit of faith-based policy.” Politics, White said, must be guided by “eternal truths, biblical truths.” Jentezen Franklin and the New Apostolic reformer Jim Garlow also spoke.

Goya CEO and AFPI board member Bob Unanue stated: “We are in a spiritual war.”

This type of spiritual warfare rhetoric is also found in the “Biblical Foundations” section of the AFPI website, which states: “This battle is not just about the culture of America; It is about the kingdom of God and the divine mission of the church to be the salt and light of our time in a time of increasing darkness.”