SOURCE: Wikipedia, 2020-05-23
CNP Action is the 501(c)(4) nonprofit affiliate of the Council for National Policy (CNP)
See also:
Funded (in part) by the Bradley Foundation -- see, e.g., [2020-07-15] Bradley Foundation Bankrolled Right-Wing Reopen Effort Despite Rising Coronavirus Cases. The political pressure generated by the lobbying and litigation efforts of Bradley-funded groups and President Trump led many states to prematurely roll back stay-at-home safety measures and reopen businesses.
[2020-07-16] American Legislative Exchange Council Backs Trump on Confederate Monuments, Policing. ALEC's decision to align itself with a racist and divisive president marks a dramatic return to the organization's earlier support for racist policies, and comes at a time when 90 percent of Black Americans disapprove of Trump's response to the murder of George Floyd.
ALEC, a pay-to-play organization that facilitates bill writing by state lawmakers and business interests, has created a secret task force on voting and redistricting, and is dragging its corporate members back into race-related issues around police reform and protection of monuments. In a preview of what may occur at its virtual annual meeting this week, ALEC has sided with President Trump's latest executive orders on those issues.
On July 02 2020, ALEC's Executive Director Lisa Nelson, along with largely conservative and right-wing groups and individuals, signed a letter supporting Trump's executive order that instructs the attorney general to prioritize criminal prosecutions for the destruction of monuments on federal property, with prison sentences of up to 10 years. The executive order also directs federal agencies to withhold federal funding from cities that do not protect monuments from demonstrators.
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In addition to ALEC's Executive Director Lisa Nelson, other signers of the letter supporting Trump's order include anti-LGBTQ hate figures such as Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, Rob Chambers, Vice President of the political arm of the American Family Association, and Frank Wright, CEO of D. James Kennedy Ministries. Several leaders of the secretive Council for National Policy, which has had ties to multiple white supremacists, signed the letter, as did Koch operative Sean Noble, President of American Encore.
Many of the same signers of the Conservative HQ letter also signed a June 12 2020 letter, including Al Regnery, chairman of the Council for National Policy's Conservative Action Project. The letter, which called for "justice, not chaos" after the George Floyd murder, "rejects the sweeping claim that all of law enforcement is racist."
Regnery's own cousin, William, is a white nationalist who has funded multiple white nationalist groups run by alt-right leader Richard Spencer.
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[2020-05-23] Secretive Right-Wing Nonprofit Plays Role in COVID-19 Organizing
[2020-05-23]: United in Purpose: Inside the Influential Evangelical Group Mobilizing to Reelect Trump
The Council for National Policy (CNP) is an umbrella organization and networking group for conservative activists in the United States. It has been described by The New York Times as "a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country," who meet three times yearly behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference. The Nation has called it a secretive organization that "networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy." It was founded in 1981 by Tim LaHaye as a forum for conservative Christians seeking to strengthen the political right in the United States. The organization has been described as a "pluto-theocracy."
Marc J. Ambinder of ABC News said about the Council: "The group wants to be the conservative version of the Council on Foreign Relations." The CNP was founded in 1981. Among its founding members were: Tim LaHaye, then the head of the Moral Majority, Nelson Bunker Hunt, T. Cullen Davis, William Cies, Howard Phillips, and Paul Weyrich.
Members of the CNP have included: General John Singlaub, shipping magnate J. Peter Grace, Edwin J. Feulner Jr of the Heritage Foundation, Rev. Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Jerry Falwell, U.S. Senator Trent Lott, Southern Baptist Convention activists and retired Texas Court of Appeals Judge Paul Pressler, lawyer and paleoconservative activist Michael Peroutka, Reverend Paige Patterson, Senator Don Nickles, former United States Attorneys General Edwin Meese and John Ashcroft, gun-rights activist Larry Pratt, Col. Oliver North, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, philanthropist Elsa Prince (mother of Blackwater founder and former CEO Erik Prince and Trump Administration Secretary of Education Betsy Devos), and former California State Assemblyman Steve Baldwin.
Membership is by invitation only. The organization's membership list is considered "strictly confidential." Guests may attend "only with the unanimous approval of the executive committee." Members are instructed not to refer to the organization by name to protect against leaks. The New York Times political writer David D. Kirkpatrick suggested that the organization's secrecy since its founding was intended to insulate it "from what its members considered the liberal bias of the news media."
CNP's meetings are closed to the general public, reportedly to allow for a free-flowing exchange of ideas. The group meets three times per year. This policy is said to be similar to the long-held policy of the Council on Foreign Relations, to which the CNP has at times been compared. CNP's 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status was revoked by the IRS in 1992 on grounds that it was not an organization run for the public benefit. The group successfully challenged this ruling in federal court. A quarterly journal aimed at educating the public, promised in the wake of this incident, has not substantially materialized. The organization has a website that contains many policy speeches from past gatherings (covering the years from 2013 up to the present).
While those involved in the organization are almost entirely from the United States, their organizations and influence cover the globe, both religiously and politically. Members include corporate executives, legislators former high ranking government officers, leaders of 'think tanks' dedicated to molding society and those whom many view as "Christian leadership."
In May 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a leaked copy of the membership directory for 2014.
Leading members of the CNP voted in a meeting at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, on September 29, 2007, to consider launching a third party candidate if the 2008 Republican nominee were pro-choice. (The candidacy of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who held liberal opinions on social issues such as abortion, gay rights and gun ownership, had disturbed the Christian right.) The CNP's statement read, "If the Republican Party nominates a pro-abortion candidate, we will consider running a third-party candidate." Attending the meeting were notable social conservatives, including James Dobson, Richard Viguerie, Tony Perkins and Morton Blackwell.
CNP has membership links to the Committee for the Free World, whose many other members included, among others, some members of the Unification Church of the United States, some Republican Party leaders, and counter-revolutionaries in Latin America, particularly during the 1980s. Midge Decter served as Executive Director of its Committee. Other members included Jeane Kirkpatrick, Leszek KoĊakowski, Irving Kristol, Melvin J. Lasky, Seymour M. Lipset, Donald Rumsfeld, Tom Stoppard and George Will. Eugene V. Rostow, then serving as Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under President Ronald Reagan, was a speaker at a CFW event on Poland.
CNP's membership also overlaps significantly with that of the Arlington Group, a coalition of conservative Christian organizations which spearheaded ballot initiatives banning gay marriage in thirty-two states in the 2000s; and with the second, third and fourth iterations of the Committee on the Present Danger.
In 1999, a speech given to the CNP by Republican candidate George W. Bush is credited with helping him gain the support of conservatives in his successful bid for the United States Presidency in 2000. The content of the speech has never been released by the CNP or by Bush.
In February 2007, the organization planned to be involved in the 2008 presidential election campaign and actively sought candidate that would represent their views. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney spoke at a four-day conference that the Council held in Salt Lake City, Utah during the last week of September 2007. The Council for National Policy scheduled a conference in late October 2007; other than Giuliani, most Republican presidential candidates pledged to appear.
On May 18, 2018 House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, gave a speech to the Council for National Policy in which he asserted that the American political climate was "increasingly belittling Christian conservatives for their beliefs" and forcing Christians "'out of the public square.'"
CNP was founded in 1981 by Southern Baptist pastor Tim LaHaye, author of "The Battle for the Mind" (1980) and the "Left Behind" series of books. Other early participants have included W. Cleon Skousen, a theologian within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and founder of the Freemen Institute; Paul Weyrich; Phyllis Schlafly; Robert Grant; Howard Phillips, a former Republican affiliated with the Constitution Party; Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail specialist; and Morton Blackwell, a Louisiana and Virginia activist who is considered a specialist on the rules of the Republican Party.
The Council's first executive director was Woody Jenkins; later, Morton Blackwell and Bob Reccord served in this role. Organization presidents have included Nelson Bunker Hunt of Dallas, Amway co-founder Richard DeVos of Michigan, Pat Robertson of Virginia Beach, retired Judge Paul Pressler of Houston, former Reagan Cabinet secretaries Edwin Meese and Donald Hodel, former Reagan advisor and President of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Kenneth Cribb, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, and current President (as of 2014) Stuart Epperson, founder of the Salem Media Group.
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