As former President Trump faces backlash from Democrats over ties to the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” the Biden-Harris administration has been working hand in hand with a prominent liberal think tank through a revolving door of employees working to turn progressive policy recommendations into executive actions and legislation, which could come back to haunt the Harris campaign.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) has been labeled the “most influential” think tank in the Biden era, while the group publicly boasts that it has turned at least 10 policy recommendations into “executive action and policy legislation.”
Patrick Gaspard, the current president of CAP, has visited the Biden White House at least 20 times between December 2021 and January 2024, which included five solo meetings with high-ranking Biden officials.
CAP’s ties to the Biden White House go even deeper than Gaspard, as at least 60 alumni from the think tank have joined the administration, including Neera Tanden, who previously served as president of CAP and has served in multiple roles in the Biden administration, including senior adviser and staff secretary.
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Neera Tanden appears beofre a Senate Committee on the Budget hearing on Capitol Hill on Feb. 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool)
She was promoted in May 2023 to the “Assistant to the President and Domestic Policy Advisor” titles, replacing Susan Rice, according to a White House press release.
President Biden also hired CAP founder and chairman John Podesta as a senior White House clean energy czar in 2022. Podesta was tasked with overseeing roughly $370 billion in climate spending appropriated by the Inflation Reduction Act.
The former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman was then tapped by Biden earlier this year to serve as his top climate diplomat after John Kerry stepped down to help with campaign efforts, which received backlash from top Republicans due to concerns over his ties to China dating back to his CAP days.
Fox News Digital first reported on his connection to top CCP official Tung Chee-hwa, who he repeatedly referred to as his “friend” and took several calls from.
CAP’s influence within the Biden White House began months before he entered office. In late 2020, a half dozen of the group’s employees joined Biden’s transition team in the Treasury, Federal Reserve, Labor Department, Interior Department, National Security Council and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
White House clean energy czar John Podesta, left, was appointed to “continue to lead our global climate efforts,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said. Podesta effectively replaced climate envoy John Kerry, right. (Getty Images)
CAP’s organization appears primed to push a policy agenda on several key issues on the progressive wish list if the Biden administration, now led by Vice President Kamala Harris on the presidential ticket, were to continue into a second term.
CAP has voiced support for both setting term limits for Supreme Court justices and packing the court, which are two efforts being pushed by Demand Justice, a left-wing dark money group that Harris’ senior campaign adviser Brian Fallon co-founded and left less than a year ago.
The liberal think tank has signed onto multiple letters pushed by Demand Justice, which was reportedly planning a $10 million offensive against conservative Supreme Court justices this year “on a range of activities, from conducting opposition research on potential Supreme Court picks to advocating for ethics reforms for the high court,” Politico reported.
“The Supreme Court has taken off its mask this term by creating unconstitutional de facto immunity for future presidents who act illegally and by gutting the ability of public agencies and Congress to protect Americans from abuse by right-wing special interests,” CAP states on its website.
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President Biden listens during an event in the South Court Auditorium on the White House complex in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
CAP has pushed a variety of other left-wing efforts, which include censoring speech it believes to be “misinformation,” taxpayer-funded student loan bailouts, taxpayer-funded reparations, DEI mandates, federal taxpayer funds for abortion by eliminating the Hyde Amendment, and phasing out gas-powered cars.
“With skyrocketing profits and expanding domestic manufacturing, U.S. automakers have everything they need to help the country switch from fossil fuel-powered vehicles to electric,” CAP said in a 2024 post, despite multiple reports highlighting how consumers have complained about the cost and lack of charging stations.
CAP’s influence on Biden also spread to his messaging on the campaign trail before he dropped out of the race. In 2022, the Washington Post reported that Biden’s move to label Trump as “ultra MAGA” was the result of a six-month research project from the CAP Action Fund that was headed by his top aide Anita Dunn, who has performed consulting work for CAP.
CAP Action Fund’s president, Navin Nayak, has visited the Biden White House at least a couple dozen times, a Fox News Digital review of White House visitor logs found.
Biden’s former chief of staff Ron Klain, who was on the CAP Action Fund board for several years, has also repeatedly praised their efforts on his X account.
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Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks at a campaign rally in Savannah, Georgia, Aug. 29, 2024. (Reuters/Elizabeth Frantz)
VP Harris has worked with the Center for American Progress dating back to her time as California attorney general, when she joined the group for a press conference via telephone. She has also participated in several events hosted by the liberal think tank and her sister, Maya Harris, joined as a senior fellow, according to a 2013 press release.
Tanden said, “Maya has worked tirelessly in many different arenas to ensure that the United States is a more inclusive country and that all Americans can live up to their potential” and looked forward to her involvement with CAP.
Despite its extensive connections to the Biden White House, CAP blasts Project 2025 on its website as a “far-right assault on America” that it claims will “serve as a road map” for a “far-right presidential administration.”
A CAP spokesperson dismissed the Heritage Foundation as “no longer a think tank” in a statement to Fox News Digital on Sunday.
“When it comes to the Heritage Foundation and their work, one needs to look no further than yesterday’s New York Times story exposing Heritage creating fake digital content and pushing lies about election integrity,” the spokesperson said. “Couple that with Heritage’s embrace of authoritarianism and their president threatening to launch a potentially violent ‘second American Revolution’ if it doesn’t get its way, and I think it’s safe to say that Heritage is on an island of its own. This is no longer a think tank.”
As a presidential candidate, Harris has repeatedly criticized Trump over Project 2025 as recently as last week when she ran an ad linking Trump to the project.
Former President Trump during a news conference at Trump Tower in New York, on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (Cheney Orr/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
While Project 2025 is staffed with several high-level individuals who have previously worked with Trump, he has strongly denied having any direct role with the group.
A Project 2025 spokesperson told Fox News Digital on Sunday that “Project 2025 does not speak for Donald Trump or his campaign” and is “continuing our decades-long legacy of preparing policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative President.”
“The Heritage Foundation has been producing its Mandate for Leadership since 1980, and President Reagan handed out copies of the book to his cabinet at their first meeting,” the spokesperson continued. “The Left always prepares recommendations for liberal presidents, and they are simply upset that two can play this game.”
“The only reason that the Left is in a tailspin over Project 2025 is that it has winning ideas that the American people support, while their own recommendations, which are currently destroying our country, are wildly unpopular,” the spokesperson added.
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Trump campaign spokesperson Danielle Alvarez told Fox News Digital earlier this year that “Agenda 47 and President Trump’s RNC Platform are the only policies endorsed by President Trump for a second term.”
“Team Biden and the DNC are LYING and fear-mongering because they have NOTHING else to offer the American people,” she added. “Remember this is the same group that lied to Americans and hid Joe Biden’s cognitive decline all these years.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Biden White House and Harris campaign for comment but did not receive a response.
Fox News Digital’s Joe Schoffstall and Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report
