think-tank cross-comparison model-legislation idea-laundering policy-pipeline class-analysis heritage federalist-society mercatus manhattan-institute alec
related: Heritage Foundation · Federalist Society · Mercatus Center · Manhattan Institute · Economic Policy Institute · Brookings Institution · _Think Tank Framework · Cross-Think-Tank Donor Map — The Both-Sides Illusion With Receipts
The Argument
Politicians don’t write policy. They cite research. That research is funded by the people who benefit from the policy. This analysis documents the specific pipelines through which think tank papers — produced on donor timelines, with donor money, for donor outcomes — have become enacted law, executive orders, judicial decisions, and state legislation.
The argument is not abstract. It is receipts. Below are eleven documented cases where a think tank’s research output became specific, enacted policy — with the chain of custody traced from funder to research to law.
Money
The think tank model exists to solve a problem: donors can’t walk into Congress and write legislation without triggering bribery statutes. But donors CAN give tax-deductible contributions to a 501(c)(3) research organization that produces “independent” policy papers whose recommendations happen to match the donor’s preferences. Those papers circulate on Capitol Hill. Alumni of the think tank get placed in government. The alumni implement the papers’ recommendations. The policy serves the donor. Nobody broke the law. This is the system. It is not a conspiracy — it is the publicly documented institutional structure of American governance.
How the Pipeline Works
The model is consistent across every documented case, regardless of ideological label:
Step 1: Donor funds think tank (often through dark money pass-through to obscure the chain) Step 2: Think tank produces research that recommends the donor’s preferred policy Step 3: Research circulates to congressional staff, executive branch officials, and state legislators Step 4: Think tank alumni are placed in government positions relevant to the research Step 5: Alumni implement the research as policy, citing the “independent” think tank as justification Step 6: Media covers the policy as the output of “expert consensus,” not donor preference Step 7: Think tank rehires the alumni when the administration ends, ready for the next cycle
Each step is publicly documented. None of it requires secrecy. The opacity is in the funding — the rest operates in plain sight.
I. Heritage Foundation → Mandate for Leadership → Reagan (1981)
The Pipeline: Heritage Foundation publishes a 20-volume, 3,000-page policy blueprint for the incoming Reagan administration. President Reagan distributes copies at his first Cabinet meeting and installs Mandate contributors directly into government.
The Outcome: Approximately 60% of Heritage’s 2,000 policy recommendations were implemented or initiated within Reagan’s first year in office — including tax cuts, deregulation across industries, and social program restructuring.
The Precedent: This is the proof-of-concept event for the think-tank-to-government pipeline. Heritage demonstrated that a privately funded policy organization could effectively write an incoming administration’s governing agenda. Every subsequent conservative administration has used this template.
The Funders: Joseph Coors (founding), Scaife foundations, Koch network. The same donor class that benefited from Reagan’s tax cuts and deregulation funded the document that recommended them.
Pattern: Idea Laundering, Model Legislation Pipeline, Revolving Door (Policy)
II. Heritage Foundation → Project 2025 → Trump 2.0 (2025)
The Pipeline: Heritage produces a 920-page Mandate for Leadership (the 2025 edition), a 30,000-person staffing database, a Presidential Administration Academy training program, and a 180-day action playbook. All four components are deployed simultaneously at Trump’s second inauguration.
The Outcome: Analysis by Center for Progressive Reform tracked 53% of Project 2025’s 532 domestic administrative policy recommendations implemented or initiated within Trump’s first year. TIME found nearly two-thirds of Trump’s early executive actions mirror or partially mirror Project 2025 proposals. Key placements: Russell Vought (OMB), Peter Navarro (Trade), Tom Homan (Border), and 25 of 30 Mandate chapter authors with prior Trump administration experience. Schedule F — civil service reclassification enabling mass federal worker dismissal — was reimplemented within 4 days of inauguration.
The Funders: Sarah Scaife Foundation ($18M+ to Heritage over prior decades), Bradley Impact Fund ($50M+ to Project 2025 advisory groups 2020-2024), Koch network ($5.7M+ to Heritage). Heritage’s 2023 revenue surged 26% — to $100.9M — the precise period when Project 2025 launched its staffing database and Mandate drafting.
The ROI: Koch Industries’ estimated annual savings from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act alone (a Heritage-architected 2017 policy) is $1–1.4 billion. Against $5.7 million invested in Heritage over 25 years, this represents a 170-to-1 return in year one of implementation.
Pattern: Idea Laundering, Model Legislation Pipeline, Revolving Door (Policy), Regulatory Capture Pipeline
III. Heritage Foundation → Schedule F: The Executive Order That Replaced Itself
The Pipeline: Heritage policy papers argue for reclassifying federal workers in “policy-related” roles as at-will employees, removing civil service protections. The concept circulates through Heritage’s staffing network.
The Outcome:
- October 2020: Trump signs Executive Order 13957 (Schedule F), reclassifying tens of thousands of career civil servants as at-will employees
- January 2021: Biden revokes Schedule F on his first day in office
- January 20, 2025: Trump reimplements Schedule F within 4 days of his second inauguration — the fastest reimplementation of a reversed executive order in modern American history
The Significance: Heritage’s staffing database maintained the policy across the Democratic administration gap. The 30,000-person vetted personnel list existed specifically to deploy when the administration returned. The pipeline doesn’t stop when the party is out of power — it hibernates.
Pattern: Model Legislation Pipeline, Revolving Door (Policy), Regulatory Capture Pipeline
IV. Mercatus Center → RegData → Executive Order 13771 (2017) → “10-for-1” (2025)
The Pipeline: Mercatus develops RegData (2012), a methodology for quantifying federal regulatory “burden” by counting restrictive words in the Code of Federal Regulations. Mercatus researchers publish papers advocating a “regulatory budget” — capping total regulatory costs like a fiscal budget. The OMB solicits deregulatory proposals in 2001: Mercatus submits 44 of the 71 proposals received.
The Outcome:
- January 30, 2017: Trump signs Executive Order 13771 — the “one-in, two-out” rule requiring agencies to eliminate two regulations for every new one. Mercatus research is directly cited in OIRA implementation guidance.
- 2025: Trump’s second term escalates to a “one-in, ten-out” framework — the same Mercatus regulatory budget architecture at 5x the ratio.
The Funding Chain: Charles Koch Foundation ($9.85M+ to Mercatus 2005-2018) → Koch sat on Mercatus board throughout → Mercatus produced research arguing regulations facing Koch Industries were economically harmful → Trump administration cited that research → regulations weakened. The circle is structurally closed.
The Academic Capture Layer: Koch Foundation gift agreements (2003-2011, revealed via FOIA 2018) gave Koch donors seats on George Mason University faculty selection committees — meaning Koch chose the researchers who produced the research that became the executive order framework.
Pattern: Idea Laundering, Academic Capture, Regulatory Capture Pipeline, Revolving Door (Policy)
V. Federalist Society → Trump Judicial Nominee List → Supreme Court Supermajority (2016–2025)
The Pipeline: Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo compiles a list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Trump officially adopts the list verbatim as his judicial shortlist — outsourcing judicial selection to a privately funded think tank.
The Outcome:
- All three Trump Supreme Court appointments — Neil Gorsuch (2017), Brett Kavanaugh (2018), Amy Coney Barrett (2020) — came directly from Leo’s list
- Six of nine sitting Supreme Court justices are linked to the Federalist Society
- 86% of Trump’s Supreme Court and appellate court nominees were Federalist Society members
- Key rulings: Dobbs (overturned Roe v. Wade), Bruen (expanded gun rights), SFFA (ended race-conscious admissions), Loper Bright (eliminated Chevron deference — gutting all federal regulatory agencies’ interpretive authority simultaneously)
The Funding: $1.6 billion directed to Leo’s Marble Freedom Trust (a single 2021 donation from Barre Seid, a Chicago industrialist). Leo’s network extracted $100M+ through CRC Advisors. DonorsTrust funneled $134M to Leo-affiliated groups in 2022 alone. The Federalist Society’s own budget: $22.5M (2022).
The Structural Achievement: By capturing judicial nomination rather than legislative votes, the donor class achieved something permanent. Favorable legislation can be repealed; favorable Supreme Court precedent endures for generations. Loper Bright alone — eliminating Chevron deference — simultaneously weakened every federal regulatory agency (EPA, OSHA, SEC, NLRB, FDA) without passing a single law.
Pattern: Idea Laundering (judicial philosophy edition), Revolving Door (Policy), Regulatory Capture Pipeline, Model Legislation Pipeline (judicial nominations as policy)
VI. ALEC → Model Bills → State Legislatures: The Verbatim Pipeline
The Pipeline: The American Legislative Exchange Council brings corporate donors and state legislators together to produce “model legislation” — draft bills written with corporate input that legislators can introduce verbatim. ALEC provides the bill text; legislators provide the floor vote.
The Outcome: Approximately 200 ALEC model bills become law each year across state legislatures. Documented examples:
- 2021: More than 100 ALEC lawmakers in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas introduced voting restriction bills — coordinated across six states simultaneously using ALEC model language
- 2021-2024: Personal Privacy Protection Act (PPPA) legislation adopted verbatim in Alabama (SB 59), Indiana (HB 1212), Kentucky (SB 62), Virginia (HB 970), Kansas (HB 2109), Missouri (HB 2400), New Hampshire (SB 302)
- 2025: ALEC published its own Project 2025 analog — “Essential Policy Solutions” — a 137-policy playbook for 2025 state legislative sessions, mirroring Heritage’s federal framework at the state level
The Corporate Funding Model: ALEC’s “Public Sector” members are state legislators. Its “Private Sector” members are corporations (Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, Walmart, AT&T, ALEC’s corporate sponsors) who pay $7,000–$25,000/year for annual memberships that include drafting sessions where corporations co-write the legislation their industry faces.
The Significance: ALEC is the distribution mechanism that converts think tank research into state-level law at scale. Heritage produces the federal blueprint; ALEC converts the same policy logic into template legislation deployable in all 50 states simultaneously.
Pattern: Model Legislation Pipeline, Idea Laundering, Regulatory Capture Pipeline
VII. Manhattan Institute → Rufo → DEI Bans in 18+ States (2021–2025)
The Pipeline: Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute fellow, launches a systematic rebranding campaign in 2021, describing diversity, equity, and inclusion training as “Critical Race Theory” — a legal academic term deliberately repurposed to create public alarm. Rufo coordinates with conservative legislators to draft model bills. The Manhattan Institute publishes the research framework.
The Outcome: By 2025, 18+ states had passed legislation restricting or banning DEI programs, diversity training, or “critical race theory” in public schools or universities. Florida’s STOP WOKE Act (2022) was the flagship legislation, drafted with Rufo’s direct involvement. Trump’s January 2025 executive orders eliminating federal DEI programs cited Rufo-aligned research frameworks.
The Scale: Starting from a single fellow at a $26.9M think tank, the campaign produced a coordinated national legislative movement and a presidential executive order within 4 years.
The Funding Layer: Leonard Leo’s 85 Fund gave the Manhattan Institute $450,000 in 2022. Rufo’s separate nonprofit received additional dark money from Leo-aligned networks. The DEI campaign — presented as grassroots outrage — was funded by the same dark money infrastructure that funds the Federalist Society’s judicial pipeline.
Pattern: Idea Laundering, Model Legislation Pipeline, Bipartisan Credibility Shield (reversed — manufactured controversy instead)
VIII. Brookings/Hamilton Project → Obama Economic Team → ACA (2010)
The Pipeline: The Hamilton Project at Brookings Institution launches in 2006, founded by Robert Rubin (former Goldman Sachs CEO, former Treasury Secretary) and a coalition of Wall Street-aligned centrist economists. The project produces research on healthcare cost controls, labor market reform, and fiscal policy.
The Outcome: The Hamilton Project went dormant in 2009 because its personnel left to run the Obama White House:
- Peter Orszag — Hamilton Project’s first director → Obama’s Office of Management and Budget Director
- Jason Furman — Orszag’s successor at Hamilton → key White House economic adviser, later CEA Chair
- Doug Elmendorf — Furman’s successor at Hamilton → Director of the Congressional Budget Office (which scored the ACA)
The Affordable Care Act incorporated Hamilton Project healthcare cost control frameworks. The personnel who produced the research became the officials who wrote the legislation. The Vice President’s office formally engaged the Hamilton Project in policy coordination.
The Goldman Connection: Rubin (Goldman CEO) co-founded Hamilton inside Brookings. Goldman Sachs gave $850K to Third Way (which policed progressive opposition to ACA’s private insurance structure). Goldman is a disclosed donor to CAP (which produced pro-ACA advocacy). The financial sector’s preferred ACA framework — individual mandate, private insurance preserved, no public option — was also the Hamilton Project’s preferred framework. One Goldman Sachs ecosystem, three policy shops, one legislative outcome.
Pattern: Idea Laundering, Revolving Door (Policy), Bipartisan Credibility Shield
IX. Economic Policy Institute → $15 Minimum Wage → 12 States + DC (2012–2024)
The Liberal Pipeline: The Economic Policy Institute, funded by AFL-CIO and labor-aligned foundations, produces the research infrastructure for the Fight for $15 campaign — launched by striking fast-food workers in 2012. EPI publishes economic analyses establishing that $15 minimum wages are achievable without significant job losses, providing the evidentiary foundation legislators and ballot initiatives need.
The Outcome: As of 2024, 12 states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island) plus the District of Columbia have approved minimum wages of $15 or more. These states represent approximately 40% of the U.S. workforce. The U.S. House passed the Raise the Wage Act in 2019 (Senate never voted).
The Contrast: The EPI pipeline demonstrates that the model works for labor-aligned policy too — but within structural limits set by union funding. EPI produces minimum wage research because its AFL-CIO funders benefit from higher wage floors. EPI does not produce research calling for co-determination (worker board seats) or nationalization of industries — outcomes that would benefit workers more structurally but that foundation funders don’t prioritize.
The Gates Anomaly: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation appears as an EPI funder — the same foundation that funds the Aspen Institute’s workforce programs and the Brookings Institution’s labor policy research. Gates’ preferred labor policy (credential-based mobility within existing labor markets) diverges from union-backed structural reform. Gates’ presence as a funder at EPI represents the donor class investing in the reform-bounded version of labor policy.
Pattern: Idea Laundering (labor version), Genuine Win + Structural Limit
X. Cato Institute → Social Security Privatization → Bush White House (2005)
The Failed Pipeline: The Cato Institute has advocated Social Security privatization since 1977 — nearly 30 years of consistent research output. In the early 2000s, Cato worked directly with the George W. Bush administration as the intellectual force behind Bush’s 2005 Social Security privatization proposal.
The Outcome: The proposal failed — one of the only documented cases in this vault where the think-tank-to-government pipeline produced research that was rejected by the public despite administration backing. The failure came from constituent pressure: Social Security benefits cut across class lines enough that the donor class’s interests diverged from the general public’s in visible ways.
The Lesson: The pipeline fails when the policy’s costs fall visibly on the middle class and the think tank research cannot obscure that. Social Security privatization was too concrete — polling showed immediate majority opposition. The pipeline is most effective when policy impacts are distributed over time (deregulation producing pollution, financial risk) or when complexity obscures the direct transfer (tax code changes, regulatory rollbacks).
Pattern: Idea Laundering (failed), Donor-Class Override (attempted)
The Master Timeline: From Research Paper to Enacted Law
Timeline
| Date | Event | Key Players | Amount | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1973 | Heritage Foundation founded | Weyrich, Feulner, Coors | $250K seed | Conservative policy factory established; Mandate for Leadership template created |
| Jan 1981 | Mandate for Leadership distributed at Reagan’s first Cabinet meeting | Heritage Foundation, Reagan Cabinet | Coors/Scaife founding investment | 60% of 2,000 proposals implemented in Year 1; proof-of-concept for think-tank-to-government pipeline |
| 1977–2005 | Cato publishes Social Security privatization research | Cato, Koch network, Bush WH | Koch-founded ($8.94M+ Koch to Cato) | Pipeline attempt fails 2005; public opposition overrides donor preference — rare exception |
| 2001 | Mercatus submits 44 of 71 OMB deregulatory proposals | Mercatus Center, Koch Foundation | $9.85M+ Koch to Mercatus | Rob Stein calls Mercatus “ground zero for deregulation policy” — pipeline validated |
| 2006 | Hamilton Project launched inside Brookings | Robert Rubin (Goldman), Brookings | Goldman-backed | Democratic economic policy factory established; personnel pipeline to Obama WH begins |
| 2009–2010 | Hamilton Project personnel move to Obama administration; ACA passed | Orszag (OMB), Furman (WH), Elmendorf (CBO) | N/A | Hamilton Project cost control frameworks embedded in ACA; private insurance structure preserved; no public option |
| 2012 | Mercatus RegData launched; Fight for $15 launched simultaneously | Mercatus Center (conservative); EPI/AFL-CIO (labor) | $9.85M Koch; EPI $11.9M budget | Two competing pipelines launch same year — competing research ecosystems for same policy space |
| 2012–2024 | EPI minimum wage research → 12 states + DC pass $15 minimum | EPI, AFL-CIO, state legislators | EPI budget $11.9M/yr | Liberal pipeline succeeds in labor policy; structural limits still apply (no co-determination research) |
| 2016 | Trump adopts Federalist Society’s 21-candidate SCOTUS list verbatim | Leonard Leo, Federalist Society, Trump campaign | Leo network $1.6B (Marble Freedom Trust) | Presidential candidate outsources judicial selection to privately funded think tank for first time |
| Jan 2017 | EO 13771 signed (“one-in, two-out” regulatory rule) | Mercatus Center, Trump White House, OIRA | $9.85M Koch to Mercatus | Mercatus regulatory budget concept becomes binding executive branch policy |
| 2017–2020 | Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett confirmed | Federalist Society, Leo, Trump WH | $22.5M/yr Federalist budget | 6 of 9 SCOTUS justices become Federalist Society-linked; supermajority achieved |
| 2021 | Rufo launches CRT rebranding campaign from Manhattan Institute | Christopher Rufo, MI, Leo’s 85 Fund | $450K Leo to MI (2022) | Idea-to-panic-to-legislation pipeline demonstrates speed: 4 years from op-ed to 18+ state laws |
| Oct 2020 → Jan 2025 | Schedule F: signed, reversed, reimplemented in 4 days | Heritage Foundation, Trump (twice), Biden | Heritage $100.9M (2023) | Most durable policy pipeline: think tank paper survives 4-year Democratic administration, reimplemented faster than original signing |
| 2022 | Project 2025 launched | Heritage Foundation, 100+ conservative orgs | $22M staffing investment; $100.9M annual | Most ambitious pipeline ever attempted: 920-page policy blueprint + 30,000-person staffing database + training academy |
| Jun 2024 | Loper Bright — Chevron deference eliminated | Federalist Society-vetted SCOTUS majority | $1.6B Leo network | Single Supreme Court ruling weakens EPA, OSHA, SEC, NLRB, FDA simultaneously — legislative equivalent of 50 deregulatory bills |
| Jan 2025 | Project 2025: 53% of recommendations implemented in Year 1 | Heritage Foundation, Trump administration, 31+ P2025 alumni placed | $50M+ Bradley to P2025 network | Largest successful think-tank-to-government policy transfer in U.S. history; pipeline velocity accelerating |
Money
The think-tank-to-government pipeline has accelerated across every cycle documented here. The Reagan pipeline (1981) took years to establish and produced 60% implementation. Project 2025 (2025) deployed in months and produced 53% implementation in Year 1 — but from a 532-recommendation list with 30,000 pre-vetted personnel and a 180-day action clock. The pipeline is not just faster. It is more institutionalized, better funded, and more comprehensive. The next cycle will be faster still.
The Asymmetry Problem: Conservative vs. Liberal Pipelines
The documented pipelines above reveal a structural asymmetry between conservative and liberal think-tank operations:
Conservative pipelines (Heritage, Mercatus, Federalist Society, Manhattan Institute, ALEC) are:
- Funded by industrial capital with direct regulatory interests in the policy outcomes
- Designed to produce structural change (deregulation, judicial appointments, executive reorganization)
- Coordinated across organizations (Heritage → ALEC → Federalist Society → Koch network operate as an ecosystem)
- Long-range: Federalist Society has built for 43 years; Cato has advocated Social Security privatization for nearly 50 years
- Successful at structural outcomes: EO 13771, Chevron elimination, Schedule F, SCOTUS supermajority
Liberal pipelines (EPI, CAP, Brennan Center, CBPP, Roosevelt Institute) are:
- Funded by foundations and labor unions with reform-within-system preferences
- Designed to produce programmatic wins (minimum wage, ACA, voting rights) not structural change
- Less coordinated: individual organizations with overlapping but not unified agendas
- Bounded: funders (Gates, Ford, Goldman-adjacent donors) constrain the ceiling of policy ambition
- Successful at programmatic outcomes: $15 minimum wage in 12 states, ACA passage, AVR in 23 states
The structural outcome: Conservative pipelines have produced permanent institutional change (judicial supermajority, Chevron elimination, deregulatory executive order frameworks). Liberal pipelines have produced reversible programmatic gains (ACA subject to ongoing legislative attacks; minimum wage floors subject to future reversal; voting rights subject to SCOTUS review by the same Federalist Society-vetted justices who eliminated Chevron).
Contradiction
The asymmetry is not incidental — it reflects funder preferences. Industrial capital funds structural change because structural change (deregulation, judicial appointments) produces permanent returns. Reform-oriented foundations fund programmatic change because programmatic change (social programs, safety net expansions) maintains political stability without threatening the structural arrangements that created foundation wealth. The conservative donor class invests in changing the rules. The liberal donor class invests in managing outcomes under the existing rules. Both sides fund their interests.
Class Analysis
The model legislation pipeline reveals the core mechanism of American policy formation: law is the product of privately funded research, produced by institutions whose funders directly benefit from the policy, implemented by personnel who cycle between the funder’s think tanks and the government that enacts the policy.
This is not corruption in the criminal sense. There are no bribes, no quid pro quos, no illegal exchanges. The system is explicitly designed to be legal — the 501(c)(3) tax exemption, the revolving door norms, the think tank “independence” framing are all structural features that allow private capital to produce public policy while maintaining legal and social legitimacy.
The “independence” of think tanks is the load-bearing fiction. Remove it and Heritage is a policy division of Koch Industries, the Federalist Society is a judicial placement agency for conservative donors, Mercatus is George Mason University’s Koch Industries policy shop, and the Hamilton Project is Goldman Sachs’s economic policy advisory team. With it, they are “independent research organizations” whose conclusions happen — in every documented case — to match their funders’ preferences.
The pipeline’s durability is its most important feature. It does not depend on any single administration, candidate, or electoral cycle. Heritage maintained its personnel database through Biden’s four years. The Federalist Society built for 43 years before achieving its SCOTUS supermajority. Mercatus’s RegData methodology survived multiple administrations before becoming executive order language. The pipeline is more durable than democracy because it is not subject to elections. It converts private money into institutional structures that outlast any political moment.
Money
The total investment across the documented pipelines above: approximately $400-500 million in think tank funding over 40+ years. The policy returns: $1.9 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, estimated $1 trillion+ in regulatory relief across two Trump administrations, permanent judicial control of the Supreme Court, and the structural deregulatory framework now embedded in executive branch operations. The leverage ratio between private investment and policy return is the reason the donor class funds think tanks instead of lobbying directly. Lobbying wins bills. Think tanks win frameworks. Frameworks outlast elections.
Sources
(All sources verified. 16 sources previously Chrome-verified from individual think tank profiles. 5 new sources (ALEC x3, EPI x2) verified via WebFetch/WebSearch on 2026-03-27 (Chrome unavailable); re-confirmed via WebFetch/WebSearch on 2026-03-27 in second session pass. 1 Hamilton Project source verified via cross-comparison piece. No UNVERIFIED sources remain.)
Heritage Foundation / Project 2025 (previously verified):
- Revolving Door Project: Heritage Lays the Foundation for Schedule F (Tier 2)
- 19th News: How Much of Project 2025 Has Been Implemented? (Tier 2)
- DeSmog: 6 Billionaire Fortunes Bankrolling Project 2025 (Tier 2)
- Revolving Door Project: Former Trump Officials Wrote 25 of 30 Project 2025 Chapters (Tier 2)
- The Conversation: Heritage Foundation’s 50-Year History of Steering GOP Lawmaking (Tier 2)
- Wikipedia: Project 2025 (Tier 3)
Mercatus Center (previously verified):
- ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer: Mercatus Center Inc (Tier 1)
- Inside Higher Ed: Koch agreements with George Mason gave foundation role in faculty hiring (Tier 2)
- SourceWatch: Mercatus Center (Tier 3)
Federalist Society (previously verified):
- ProPublica: We Don’t Talk About Leonard — Leo and the Supreme Court Supermajority (Tier 2)
- ProPublica: How a Secretive Billionaire Handed His Fortune to Leo (Tier 2)
- Bloomberg Law: Trump’s First Judicial Nominees Have Federalist Society Ties (Tier 2)
- Senator Whitehouse: The Third Federalist Society (Scheme Speech) (Tier 2)
Manhattan Institute (previously verified):
- The Intercept: Funded by Dark Money, Chris Rufo’s Nonprofit Stokes the Far Right’s Culture War (Tier 2)
- Manhattan Institute: Abolish DEI Bureaucracies and Restore Colorblind Equality in Public Universities (Tier 3)
- Supreme Transparency: Manhattan Institute — Leonard Leo’s 85 Fund $450K (2022) (Tier 2)
ALEC:
- Brookings: ALEC’s Influence over Lawmaking in State Legislatures (Tier 2)
- ExposedByCMD: ALEC Publishes Its Own Project 2025 — for the States (Tier 2)
- NPR: How ALEC Shapes States’ Legislation Behind The Scenes (Tier 2)
Hamilton Project / Brookings (previously verified via cross-comparison piece):
Economic Policy Institute:
- EPI: Why the U.S. needs a $15 minimum wage (Tier 2)
- EPI: Minimum Wage Tracker (Tier 1)
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