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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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| Website | aflegal |
America First Legal Foundation (AFL) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit [1] 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. [2] America First Legal's board of directors includes Whitaker and former chief of staff for Trump, Mark Meadows. [3]
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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. [3] The organization has filed lawsuits regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion, [4] Title 42 expulsions, [5] the First Amendment and social media services, [6] Title IX and transgender people, [7] and affirmative action. [8] In January 2023, the organization joined a lawsuit led by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton claiming a federal migrant parole program was unlawful. [9]
In October 2022, America First Legal sent flyers to voters in Colorado's 8th congressional district that were characterized as transphobic by the Queer and Trans People of Color Program of the Latino Action Council. [10] During the 2022 elections, the organization became involved in legal efforts relating to claims of apparent voter fraud in the election. [11] Flyers obtained by The New York Times targeted Asian Americans with anti-affirmative action messaging. [12] 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. [13] Following Trump's federal indictment on charges of retaining classified documents, the organization sent out fundraising emails. [14]
Until July 2024, 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. [15] [16]
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. [3] Miller launched America First Legal on April 6, 2021. [17] The name refers to America First, an isolationist policy observed by the United States and reinterpreted by Trump as a political slogan. [18]
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. [19] In June 2021, judge Marcia Morales Howard issued a preliminary injunction halting the Department of Agriculture's loan program. [20] 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. [21]
Political action committee Citizens for Sanity is run by America First Legal employees. [22]
The Heritage Foundation is an 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.
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. He won the 2024 presidential election as the nominee of the Republican Party and is scheduled to be inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025.
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the court held that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions processes violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. With its companion case, Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court effectively overruled Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which validated some affirmative action in college admissions provided that race had a limited role in decisions.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on 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. 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, sought re-election 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.
James David Vance is an American politician, attorney, author, and former United States Marine who is the vice president-elect of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, he has served since 2023 as the junior United States senator from Ohio. He was Donald Trump's running mate in the 2024 presidential election.
Russell Thurlow Vought, or Russ Vought is an American former government official who was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from July 2020 to January 2021. He was previously deputy director of the OMB for part of 2018, and acting director from 2019 to 2020.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 5, 2024. The Republican Party's ticket—Donald Trump, who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, and JD Vance, the junior U.S. senator from Ohio—defeated the Democratic Party's ticket—Kamala Harris, the incumbent U.S. vice president, and Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota. Trump and Vance are scheduled to be inaugurated as the 47th president and the 50th vice president on January 20, 2025, after their formal election by the Electoral College.
The Mexico–United States bordercrisis is an ongoing migrant crisis in North America concerning the illegal migration of people into the United States.
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.
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 from 2009 to 2017, 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 Ronald Reagan. Biden entered office amid the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic crisis, and increased political polarization. He withdrew his bid for a second term in the 2024 presidential election due to low popularity and concerns over his age and health. He is to be succeeded by Trump in January 2025, who won the aforementioned election.
Donald Trump, who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, announced his campaign for the 2024 U.S. presidential election on November 15, 2022. After he won a landslide victory in the 2024 Iowa Republican presidential caucuses, Trump was generally described as being the Republican Party's presumptive nominee. He was officially nominated on July 15, 2024, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, when he also announced JD Vance, a junior U.S. Senator from Ohio, as the nominee for vice president. On November 5, 2024, Trump and Vance were elected president and vice president of the United States. Trump is the oldest person to be elected to the presidency and will be the oldest president in American history by the end of his term. He will also become the second president to serve a non-consecutive term after Grover Cleveland.
After Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election, Republican nominee and then-incumbent president Donald Trump pursued an unprecedented effort to overturn the election, with support from his campaign, proxies, political allies, and many of his supporters. These efforts culminated in the January 6 Capitol attack by Trump supporters in an attempted self-coup d'état. Trump and his allies used the "big lie" propaganda technique to promote claims that had been proven false and conspiracy theories asserting the election was stolen by means of rigged voting machines, electoral fraud and an international conspiracy. Trump pressed Department of Justice leaders to challenge the results and publicly state the election was corrupt. However, the attorney general, director of National Intelligence, and director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency – as well as some Trump campaign staff – dismissed these claims. State and federal judges, election officials, and state governors also determined the claims were baseless.
The immigration policy of American President Joseph Biden initially focused on reversing many of the immigration policies of the previous Trump administration, before implementing stricter enforcement mechanisms later in his term.
A Title 42 expulsion is the removal by the U.S. government of a person who had recently been in a country where a communicable disease was present. The extent of authority for contagion-related expulsions is set out by law in 42 U.S.C. § 265. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under the Trump administration used this provision to generally block land entry for many migrants. This practice was initially continued by the Biden administration before the program was terminated with the end of the COVID-19 national emergency on May 12, 2023. Title 42 of the United States Code includes numerous sections dealing with public health, social welfare, and civil rights, but, in the context of immigration, the phrase "Title 42" came to be used to refer specifically to expulsions under section 265.
The 2024 United States presidential election in Georgia took place on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, as part of the 2024 United States elections in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. Georgia voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote. The state of Georgia has 16 electoral votes in the Electoral College, following reapportionment due to the 2020 United States census in which it neither gained nor lost a seat. Georgia was considered to be a crucial swing state in 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 Mac 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 first presidency of Donald 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 Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) is a United States-based conservative 501(c)(3) political education and advocacy nonprofit organization. The stated purpose of CPI is the professional development of conservative staffers and elected officials. Under the leadership of Mark Meadows, since 2017 the nonprofit has grown sixfold to become the "nerve center" of the MAGA movement, bolstering notable figures such as U.S. Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, according to The Washington Post. It has also been called a well-financed network of about two dozen right-wing organizations, the next Trump Administration "in waiting", and a "base of operations" for conservatives who not only target Democrats but other Republicans who they believe to be insufficiently conservative. According to one supporter, the staff of the organization have "thought deeply about what’s needed to create the infrastructure and the resources for a more anti-establishment conservative movement”.
