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| Formation | April 6, 2021 |
|---|---|
| Founders | Stephen Miller |
| Type | 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization |
| 86-2190372 | |
| Purpose | Public interest law |
| Headquarters | 611 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., U.S. |
Key people |
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America First Legal (AFL) is an American conservative public interest organization founded in 2021.
America First Legal is led by a president, vice president, and executive director. Stephen Miller, the former senior advisor to president Donald Trump, is the organization's founder and president. The vice president is Gene Hamilton, a Department of Justice official under Trump, and the executive director is Matthew Whitaker, the acting U.S. attorney general under Trump following Jeff Sessions's resignation. [1] America First Legal's board of directors includes Whitaker and former chief of staff for Trump, Mark Meadows. [2]
America First Legal is a conservative legal entity that focuses on administrative law and executive overreach in response to litigation during the Trump administration, including legal challenges to the Trump travel ban, an attempt to ban TikTok, and barring migrants from seeking asylum. [2] The organization has filed lawsuits regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion, [3] Title 42 expulsions, [4] the First Amendment and social media services, [5] Title IX and transgender people, [6] and affirmative action. [7] In January 2023, the organization joined a lawsuit led by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton claiming a federal migrant parole program was unlawful. [8]
In October 2022, America First Legal sent flyers to voters in Colorado's 8th congressional district that were characterized as transphobic by the Latino Action Council. [9] During the 2022 elections, the organization became involved in legal efforts relating to claims of apparent voter fraud in the election. [10] Flyers obtained by The New York Times targeted Asian Americans with anti-affirmative action messaging. [11] America First Legal ran advertisements accusing the Biden administration of "anti-white bigotry", spending US$5 million on radio advertisements, second to the Senate Leadership Fund. [12] Following Trump's federal indictment on charges of retaining classified documents, the organization sent out fundraising emails. [13]
America First Legal was a member of the advisory board of Project 2025, a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican nominee win the 2024 presidential election, until July 2024. [14] [15]
In March 2021, Politico reported that Stephen Miller, the former senior advisor to president Donald Trump, began forming America First Legal after Trump's loss in the 2020 presidential election. According to Politico, Miller consulted the Conservative Partnership Institute and lawyer Ken Starr, who authored the Starr Report that led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and requested funding from Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts. [2] Miller launched America First Legal on April 6, 2021. [16] The name refers to America First, an isolationist policy observed by the United States and reinterpreted by Trump as a political slogan. [17]
America First Legal represented white farmers in Texas who sought to undo debt relief for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers as part of the American Rescue Plan Act. [18] In June 2021, judge Marcia Morales Howard issued a preliminary injunction halting the Department of Agriculture's loan program. [19] Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled in America First Legal's favor in November 2022 that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. [20]
The Heritage Foundation, sometimes referred to simply as "Heritage," is an activist American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1973, it took a leading role in the conservative movement in the 1980s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose policies were taken from Heritage Foundation studies, including its Mandate for Leadership.
Laurence Allen Elder is an American conservative political commentator and talk radio host. Elder hosts The Larry Elder Show, based in California. The show began as a local program on Los Angeles radio station KABC in 1993 and ran until 2008, followed by a second run on KABC from 2010 to 2014. The show is nationally syndicated, first through ABC Radio Networks from 2002 to 2007 and then Salem Media Group from 2015 to 2022. He maintains ties to The Epoch Times, a far-right newspaper published by the Falun Gong movement.
The Conservative Political Action Conference is an annual political conference attended by conservative activists and elected officials from across the United States. CPAC is hosted by the American Conservative Union (ACU). The first CPAC took place in 1974.
Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
John Charles Eastman is an American lawyer and academic. Due to his efforts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, attempting to keep then-president Donald Trump in office and obstruct the certification of Joe Biden's victory, he has been criminally indicted, ordered inactive by the State Bar of California, and recommended for disbarment. Eastman has lost eligibility to practice law in California state courts, pending his appeal of the state bar judge's ruling that recommended him for disbarment. Eastman is also a co-conspirator in the federal indictment brought against Trump over his attempts to subvert the 2020 election results and prevent the certification of Biden's election.
Robert Hunter Biden is an American attorney and businessman. He is the second son of U.S. President Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden. Biden was a founding board member of BHR Partners, a Chinese investment company, in 2013, and later served on the board of Burisma Holdings, one of the largest private natural gas producers in Ukraine, from 2014 until his term expired in April 2019. He has worked as a lobbyist and legal representative for lobbying firms, a hedge fund principal, and a venture capital and private equity fund investor.
The 2020 United States presidential election was the 59th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. The Democratic ticket of former vice president Joe Biden and the junior U.S. senator from California Kamala Harris defeated the incumbent Republican president, Donald Trump, and vice president, Mike Pence. The election took place against the backdrop of the global COVID-19 pandemic and related recession. The election saw the highest voter turnout by percentage since 1900, with each of the two main tickets receiving more than 74 million votes, surpassing Barack Obama's record of 69.5 million votes from 2008. Biden received more than 81 million votes, the most votes ever cast for a candidate in a U.S. presidential election.
Stephen Miller is an American political advisor who served as a senior advisor for policy and White House director of speechwriting to President Donald Trump. His politics have been described as far-right and anti-immigration. He was previously the communications director for then-Senator Jeff Sessions. He was also a press secretary for U.S. representatives Michele Bachmann and John Shadegg.
Donald Trump, a member of the Republican Party, unsuccessfully sought reelection in the 2020 United States presidential election. He was inaugurated as president of the United States on January 20, 2017, and filed for re-election with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on the same day.
The 2024 United States presidential election will be the 60th quadrennial presidential election, set to be held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. Voters in each state and the District of Columbia will choose a slate of electors to the U.S. Electoral College, who will then elect a president and vice president for a term of four years.
Mary E. Miller is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for Illinois's 15th congressional district since 2021. She serves on the House Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Education & Labor. Miller is a member of the Freedom Caucus and has been described as a far-right politician.
This is a timeline of major events leading up to, during, and after the 2024 United States presidential election. This will be the first presidential election to be run with population data from the 2020 census. In addition to the dates mandated by the relevant federal laws such as those in the U.S. Constitution and the Electoral Count Act, several milestones have consistently been observed since the adoption of the conclusions of the 1971 McGovern–Fraser Commission.
Joe Biden's tenure as the 46th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2021. Biden, a member of the Democratic Party who previously served as vice president for two terms under President Barack Obama, took office after his victory in the 2020 presidential election over the incumbent president, Donald Trump of the Republican Party. Upon his inauguration, he became the oldest president in American history, breaking the record set by Trump.
Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, who served from 2017 to 2021, announced his campaign for a nonconsecutive second presidential term in the 2024 U.S. presidential election on November 15, 2022. He was officially nominated on July 15, 2024 at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, and accepting his nomination to the presidency of the United States for the GOP during the final day of the convention on July 18, 2024, where was announced JD Vance, the junior U.S. Senator from Ohio, as the nominee for vice president and campaign partner. If elected into office, Trump will become the oldest president in American history and the second to serve a second non consecutive term after Grover Cleveland.
Joe Biden, the 46th president of the United States, has been in the national spotlight for over half a century, ever since he won his first election to the United States Senate in 1972. Biden is seen as a figure with the tendency to commit gaffes. His capacity for empathy has been noted, as has his tendency for exaggeration. Biden's approval ratings as president started strong, but declined after the fall of Kabul on August 15, 2021. As the oldest president in US history, Biden's age and health been the subject of discussion, with some polls finding the issue a subject of concern to a significant majority of Americans. A long-standing parody of Biden by The Onion, popular during his time as Barack Obama's vice president, is thought by some to have contributed positively to his public image.
Joe Biden, the 46th and incumbent president of the United States, announced his candidacy for re-election for a second presidential term on April 25, 2023, with Vice President Kamala Harris as his running mate. He suspended the campaign on July 21, 2024.
In October 2020, a controversy arose involving data from a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden. The owner of a Delaware computer shop, John Paul Mac Isaac, said that the laptop had been left by a man who identified himself as Hunter Biden. Mac Isaac also stated that he is legally blind and could not be sure whether the man was actually Hunter Biden. Three weeks before the 2020 United States presidential election, the New York Post published a front-page story that presented emails from the laptop, alleging they showed corruption by Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee and Hunter Biden's father. According to the Post, the story was based on information provided to Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of incumbent president and candidate Donald Trump, by Isaac. Forensic analysis later authenticated some of the emails from the laptop, including one of the two emails used by the Post in their initial reporting.
Gene P. Hamilton is an American lawyer and policymaker who served within the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security during the presidency of Donald J. Trump. In these positions, he played key roles in ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, creating the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" family separation policy, and in revoking the Temporary Protected Status of immigrants from Sudan and South Sudan.
The United States Republican Party has undertaken a broad range of efforts to disrupt the 2024 United States presidential election so that its candidate, Donald Trump, might win. These unprecedented efforts include searching for and exploiting vulnerabilities in the election system; challenging ballots and the certification of results; flooding the election system and courts with allegations of fraud; baselessly alleging large-scale unlawful voting by undocumented migrants; and monitoring polling places in Democratic Party stronghold districts on the baseless premise of voting fraud. The Republican strategy involves first persuading voters that the election is about to be stolen by Democrats, despite lacking evidence.