On December 22, 2025, the American conservative think tank “Advancing American Freedom” (AAF), founded in April 2021 by former Vice President Mike Pence, announced the expansion of its staff, an increase in donor support, and the buildup of its own research and personnel capabilities.
Mike Pence remains a separate institutional pillar for the Republican Party outside the Trumpist core after his break with Trump due to the events of January 6, 2021, when, despite pressure from the White House, he certified the election results and has since been portrayed as a political opponent in Trump’s circle.
Along with a large-scale increase in funding for current projects, a team of 13 researchers from the Heritage Foundation transitioned to AAF, a structure involved since 2022 in developing Project 2025, which played a significant role in shaping the priorities of the Trump administration during his second term.
This move signified the transfer of part of the conservative policy apparatus and personnel networks into a platform associated with an intraparty alternative to Trump.
Unlike the think tank “America First Policy Institute,” whose leader Linda McMahon became co-chair of Donald Trump’s presidential transition team and headed the Department of Education after the start of his second term, the Republican leader has consistently distanced himself from analysts at the “Heritage Foundation.”
Thus, during the 2024 election campaign, on his social network Truth Social, Trump stated that he has no relation to this research center and disagrees with a number of theses in their project for the political transformation of the country.
Despite such statements, the political initiatives proposed in Project 2025 were partially implemented in the political agenda of Trump’s second term.
The policy implemented by the White House throughout 2025 in the economic, educational, and immigration spheres, measures aimed at reducing the number of federal employees, as well as the politicization of a number of state institutions, were proposed by the “Heritage Foundation” even before the start of the active 2024 election campaign.
The first year of Trump’s new term was marked by a struggle for influence within the Republican environment between conservative ideologues of MAGA, Big Tech elites, supporters of traditional neoconservative groups of influence, as well as representatives of business structures and Donald Trump’s closest circle.
The President and the White House in this confrontation retained the role of a restraining factor that maintained Republican unity through balancing between intraparty groups.
However, a few months after the start of the new presidential term, the Republican administration changed its approach, resorting to limiting the political influence of alternative Republican centers and building a more centralized intraparty model around the White House.
The consequence of transformations within the Republican Party was the successful removal by the Trump administration of opposition from MAGA movement ideologues and politicians disloyal to the President, as well as limiting the influence of tech entrepreneurs on shaping the Republican political course.
Internal conflicts in the party throughout 2025 and the neutralization by Trump’s team of informal factions pursuing political and entrepreneurial goals different from those of the White House left key groups in the Republican environment that advocate opposing approaches to foreign policy confrontation, tariff policy, and ideological values.
One such group, the neoconservatives, is formed by elites and officials of the Republican Party whose political careers were shaped during the presidency of George W. Bush, and who are oriented toward a traditional understanding of American global leadership, which consists of consistent containment of authoritarian regimes and support for allies in the democratic bloc.
For this group, the strengthening of protectionist measures, strict immigration policy, as well as the revision of ideological principles that were laid in the Republican Party back in the 1980s, remain unacceptable.
Despite the fact that traditional conservative groups have an internally consistent vision of US development on most key issues, in the political struggle, this faction is currently unable to compete with Donald Trump’s team.
Since the end of George W. Bush’s second term, its personnel potential has not been properly renewed, and attempts to return to national politics have failed.
In 2016, presidential nominee Jeb Bush received less than 1% of the votes from primary participants. Oriented toward cooperation with traditional party elites, Mike Pence, after refusing to declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 elections, lost the support of the President’s entourage and was removed from decision-making processes during the new Republican term.
Beyond being driven by the political ambitions of neoconservatives seeking to reclaim control over the Republican agenda, the confrontation between traditional Republican groups and the presidential administration reflects deeper internal tensions.
Specifically, the conflict is also fueled by differing visions for the future development of the American conservative political establishment after Donald Trump’s resignation.
The President’s strategic goal is to ensure the transfer of political and ideological control over the Republican Party to a group of his successors led by Vice President Vance, who is already consolidating voters and party elites around his ability to ensure the continuity of the political course laid by Donald Trump.
The results of polls conducted from August to December 2025, averaged by RealClearPolitics research, indicate that J.D. Vance is the clear favorite in the fight for the 2028 presidential nomination among Republican voters.
The Vice President’s nomination is supported by 48.8% of Republican respondents, while Vance’s closest potential competitor is Donald Trump Jr., who also shares his father’s political course and accumulates 11% support in the conservative environment.
The inability of the neoconservative faction to offer a viable alternative to Trump’s team in the 2028 presidential election has pushed traditional party elites to search for a different candidate.
They are seeking someone who is recognizable to American voters, embedded in the existing power structure, and capable of consolidating a political course acceptable to traditional groups of influence.
Among the representatives of the current administration, Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets such criteria, who is currently the most influential advocate of a strategy to deprive autocratic states of global advantage through restoring US political-ideological leadership.
The main instrument for implementing such an approach is Washington’s ability to offer the world a universal and consistent vision of the future, based on principles of freedom, economic competition, and the rule of law.
The approach implemented by Rubio, aimed at containing autocracies through consistent active actions and limited force operations, has proven its effectiveness in practice.
After a series of fruitless attempts by the White House to continue diplomatic contacts with Latin American authoritarian governments, which over the past decade had increasingly been turned by China into footholds in the Western Hemisphere, the Republican administration abandoned its previous approach. It replaced it with a strategy of maximum U.S. pressure across the continent.
This policy was most consistently applied to Venezuela and Cuba, where regime change through democratic means or gradual transformation of local regimes became impossible.
The most active lobbyist for the transition to a tough and decisive political course toward Latin American autocracies was Secretary of State Rubio. On January 31, 2025, he renewed the validity of the “Cuba Restricted List”—a document that prohibits financial transactions with companies associated with the government in Havana.
In July 2025, the State Department imposed sanctions on the country’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Ministers of Defense and Interior Álvaro López Miera and Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas, as well as other representatives of security structures close to the state leadership.
Other signs of intensified economic and diplomatic pressure on the island included the cancellation of the humanitarian entry mechanism that had allowed Cuban citizens to enter the United States with temporary legal status, as well as the introduction of a tax on money transfers.
These measures also became consequences of the activities of Rubio-aligned groups within the administration.
The policy of pressure on Latin American autocracies produced its most pronounced results in Venezuela. After several months of U.S. troop deployments in the Caribbean Sea and the establishment of American military bases in regional countries open to cooperation with the United States, a military operation was conducted against the Maduro government.
Rubio was part of a narrow circle of officials who, over several months, conducted continuous interagency management of the Venezuelan track, keeping it in a mode of regular coordination meetings and direct telephone approvals at the level of political leadership.
While other members of President Trump’s team refrained from actively commenting on the Latin American direction, in the public sphere, Rubio institutionalized himself as the main communicator and political curator of events in Venezuela and the Latin American region.
The successful consequences of applying a geopolitical approach that prioritizes limited use of force over seeking compromises are already manifesting in the level of support for the Secretary of State among Republican voters.
While in September 2025, according to the sociological company AtlasIntel, the nomination of Rubio’s candidacy for the next presidential elections was approved by 12% of Republican Party supporters, as of December 2025, AtlasIntel reported 23% of Republican respondents who support such a proposal.
Despite the fact that the level of approval for nominating Marco Rubio for the 2028 presidential elections still significantly lags behind J.D. Vance’s electoral positions, the asymmetry in support for these key representatives of the Republican administration is shrinking.
According to AtlasIntel, in the September poll, the level of Vance’s support among the Republican electorate was 43% ahead of Rubio’s ratings among conservative voters, but in December 2025, the electoral difference between the candidates shrank to 24%.
The US campaign in Venezuela, the implementation of which was coordinated by Rubio and part of the intraparty environment oriented toward him, laid the conditions for the activation of neoconservatives in the Republican political discourse.
Despite the fact that as of the end of 2025, the absolute majority of American citizens were skeptical about the US operation in Venezuela, the results of the conducted campaign allowed supporters of forceful response to quickly consolidate support around the decision to use weapons against the Maduro regime.
Already in the first hours after the attack, Senators Tom Cotton and Rick Scott publicly supported the administration’s actions, and their statements became a benchmark for further public comments by Republican politicians.
On January 3, 2026, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, as well as Congressmen Lisa McClain, Elise Stefanik, Carlos Giménez, Brian Mast, Rick Crawford, and other political figures synchronized their comments with the political approach to Venezuela that gained predominance in the US.
In the conditions of situational consolidation of the Republican political establishment around the strategy of pressure on Latin American autocratic governments, neoconservatives are attempting to transform the current support for the White House’s forceful decisions into a stable intraparty course.
The key instrument for institutionalizing their geopolitical vision and gaining support among a wide circle of conservative voters is currently determined by traditional Republican elites as control over think tanks that will offer their consistent vision of the US future.
Despite the fact that proposals from think tanks, key positions in which are held by opponents of Donald Trump, will not influence decision-making processes in the presidential administration, they lay alternative approaches that will find support among part of the Republican electorate.
The reduction in the President’s approval rating from over 50% at the beginning of his term to 43% by December 28, 2025, along with the drop in the share of Republicans identifying with MAGA from 57% in April 2025 to 50% at year’s end, indicated a crisis of trust in the political course set by Trump. Neoconservatives are attempting to capitalize on this situation.
A way to update the neoconservative political vision in the current conditions was the involvement by the “Advancing American Freedom” research center, founded by Mike Pence, of the heads of the legal, economic, and data departments of the “Heritage Foundation.”
The creation of new research directions within AAF, which will accelerate with the approach of the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential campaign, is also facilitated by the availability of stable and diversified funding that the think tank founded by Mike Pence receives.
While in 2023 “Advancing American Freedom” received $11 million from donors, and in 2024 increased its revenues to $15.8 million, already in the spring of 2025, the organization announced plans to raise $20 million by the end of the year.
To expand its staff and implement new projects in which former “Heritage Foundation” analysts will work, AAF has accumulated over $10 million.
“Advancing American Freedom” attracts funds from several Republican funds and advocacy structures, among which are The Concord Fund, “American Leadership Fund,” James and Joan Lindsey Family Foundation, Freedom’s Future Fund, as well as other organizations.
The Concord Fund, which became the largest donor to AAF and allocated $3.25 million to this think tank over the period 2020-2023, is part of a conservative network of organizations associated with American lawyer Leonard Leo.
During Trump’s first term, Leo was involved in shaping the composition of the US Supreme Court, personally lobbying the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to judicial positions, and before that—participated in campaigns to support the candidacies of Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito.
Establishing cooperation with Leonard Leo became one of the main achievements of AAF, as his personal connections with the majority of Supreme Court justices are an important resource for neoconservatives in the intra-Republican political struggle.
Leo’s connections are particularly important because, since the beginning of November 2025, the Supreme Court has been holding hearings on the legality of Donald Trump’s tariff policy.
During these hearings, conservative judges—including those appointed during Trump’s first term—have been critical of arguments regarding the President’s authority to impose tariff restrictions.
Thus, through establishing cooperation between AAF and The Concord Fund, neoconservatives gain an indirect but politically significant lever of influence on a branch of government capable of limiting the implementation of Trump’s team initiatives.
Through this instrument, traditional Republican groups of influence expect to strengthen their position in the intra-Republican discourse on tariff and trade policy.
The institutional and personnel strengthening of “Advancing American Freedom,” along with the attraction of new donors and the establishment of relationships with Republican lobbyists, marked the first systemic attempt in this political cycle by neoconservatives to challenge Trump’s team.
This effort aimed to oppose their vision in an organized way and counter the “America First” domestic political agenda.
The activation of developing their own political program, as well as the development of analytical institutions that promote the political course of traditional Republican groups of influence, precisely at the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, became a consequence of the coincidence of several political trends.
The circumstances that developed in December 2025 – January 2026 demonstrated that further passivity of neoconservatives would lead to their final loss of opportunities to influence the formation of the party course and strategic decisions in subsequent political cycles.
On the one hand, Republican non-profit organizations and conservative opinion leaders are increasingly consolidating around supporting J.D. Vance as the Republican candidate in the next presidential elections.
Thus, during the conservative conference “AmericaFest” held in December 2025, which is annually organized by the Turning Point USA movement, a number of opinion leaders declared support for Vance in the next presidential campaign.
In favor of nominating the Vice President spoke Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika, his current radio program producer Andrew Kolvet, as well as other public figures who were present at the event.
At the same time, the success that Secretary of State Rubio demonstrated in implementing limited US pressure on autocracies in the Western Hemisphere created for traditional party groups a short-term window of opportunities, which they are using to restore their own agency in the intraparty discussion.
The results of the policy Marco Rubio implemented throughout 2025 gave neoconservatives an opportunity to argue that the U.S. should return to the role of political and ideological leader of the democratic world.
They claimed that rejecting agreements with autocracies in favor of their consistent containment is the only effective approach in the current global confrontation.
Traditional Republican elites perceive this line as the basis for a broader reformatting of the party message, where the foreign policy imperative of containing autocracies must be reinforced by a systemic return to the classic Republican agenda in domestic political issues as well.
For this group, the full implementation of the “Peace through Strength” approach is possible only under conditions of significant internal transformation of the United States.
In the neoconservative environment, the thesis is increasingly clearly articulated that US external effectiveness directly depends on internal political consistency and the ability to offer allies and partners a holistic strategic framework that goes beyond situational decisions.
It is about restoring trust in the American model as the institutional standard of the Western world. It is this connection between the quality of internal governance and the external legitimacy of American leadership that is seen as the key condition for the long-term retention of the US global role.
