Tomorrow morning, as MAGA Republicans hold yet another bogus hearing targeting the Biden-Harris administration, they are thrusting a spotlight on Trump’s far-right Project 2025 agenda. The witness slate includes Mandy Gunasekera a former Trump administration official who authored part of Project 2025; Brendan Carr, a Trump-appointed MAGA conspiracy theorist serving on the FCC who authored another part of Project 2025; and Meaghan Mobbs, the policy director of a right-wing public policy group with ties to the right-wing policy networks behind Project 2025 – not to mention Mark Krikorian, a white nationalist who runs a leading anti-immigrant hate group. This partisan stunt only further demonstrates how MAGA House Republicans are serving as an arm of the Trump campaign, amplifying the MAGA Project 2025 agenda instead of addressing Americans’ real priorities like health care and inflation.
WITNESSES
Mark Krikorian
Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies
Krikorian Is A White Nationalist Who Promotes Racist Rhetoric. Krikorian is a regular attendee and speaker at a notorious white nationalist workshop, and CIS has long been known for hiring white nationalists and antisemites. The group even commissioned a policy analyst known for embracing racist pseudoscience. In 2017, the SPLC documented over 2,000 mentions of white nationalist content in CIS studies.
- Krikorian Dismissed Violent, Racist Rhetoric Against President Obama. In 2014, a CIS policy analyst told a Florida crowd that he would support the lynching of then-President Obama: “We all know, if there ever was a president that deserved to be impeached, it’s this guy. All right? And I wouldn’t stop. I would think being hung, drawn, and quartered is probably too good for him.” When questioned about the vile comments, Krikorian dismissed them as “impolitic” and said he merely put a “reprimand in his personal file.”
Mark Krikorian Works for A Well-Known Anti-Immigrant Hate Group: The Center for Immigration Studies. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has designated the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) a hate group: “Since 1985, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has served as the anti-immigrant movement’s go-to think tank. The organization publishes dozens of reports and hundreds of blog pieces each year that are cited by elected officials and the media. But its reports have been widely criticized and debunked by groups such as the Immigration Policy Center, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the CATO Institute.” CIS is known for spreading anti-immigrant sentiment through reports seeking to legitimize fringe, far-right theories such as “terror babies” and narratives of immigrant criminality to push for hardline immigration restrictions like reducing quotas, shuttering the border, and even ending birthright citizenship.
- The House GOP Has Called On CIS Staffers To Testify Over One Hundred Times. As SPLC points out, “CIS currently has the monopoly when it comes to testifying before Congress. In total, CIS staffers have testified over 100 times, and 11 times since the beginning of 2016. FAIR has not testified before Congress since 2012, according to its website.”
Krikorian’s Organization Publishes Studies and Reports Plagued with Factual Inaccuracies and Omissions. The CIS has often come under fire from immigration experts and even other right-leaning think tanks for publishing factual inaccuracies, faulty statistics, and glaring omissions in their reports – all to push their preconceived anti-immigrant conclusions. In a February 2017 article, for example, CIS claimed that an internal study found that a group of asylum-seeking immigrants were convicted terrorists, though less than a third of those named faced terrorism charges. These errors and omissions don’t just demonstrate the organization’s lack of credibility—they show that the group is happy to manipulate facts and statistics to suit their narrative.
Krikorian’s Organization Held Close Ties with the Trump Administration’s Department of Homeland Security. CIS has long had a strong relationship with the Department of Homeland Security—particularly during the Trump administration, which was responsible for neglecting detained children, holding them for days or even weeks on end. On one occasion, CIS published an analysis based on non-public DHS statistics, “which have not been released to the public but were obtained by the Center,” strongly suggesting that they received early access to data and information from the Trump-era agency.
Mandy Gunasekera
Former Chief of Staff, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Gunasekera Authored Part of Project 2025, Offering Proposals To Shrink The EPA and Hasten Climate Change. Gunasekera is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025. She authored chapter 13 of Project 2025’s Mandate For Leadership, which focuses on “circumscribing” the EPA’s “structure and mission…greatly.” Her top priorities include cutting agency initiatives, revisiting a key agency finding that greenhouse gasses endanger public health and the environment, and shrinking the pool of industries required to report their greenhouse gas emissions each year to the EPA.
- Gunasekera’s Project 2025 Chapter Proposes Upending Clean Air Act Climate Regulations – Even Though The Trump Administration’s Own Lawyers Rejected The Proposal In 2021. Gunasekera proposes that the EPA “update” a 2009 finding serving as the bedrock finding behind all Clean Air Act climate regulations, that greenhouse gasses endanger public health and the environment. The finding has been targeted by some of the conservative groups behind Project 2025 for over a decade, and the Trump administration’s own EPA lawyers rejected a petition by a conservative think tank to reconsider the endangerment finding in 2021.
- Gunasekera’s Project 2025 Chapter Proposes Exempting Top Emitters From Reporting Requirements. Gunasekera also proposes that the EPA shrink the pool of industries required to report their greenhouse gas emissions each year to the agency, which currently encompasses 41 high-emitting sectors and about 8,000 facilities. Project 2025 would limit reporting to just a few sectors, primarily energy-related, and exempt major emitters like landfills, ironworks, steel and cement manufacturers, carbon sequestration, and more.
Gunasekera Wants To Withdraw From Key International Climate Agreements. Gunasekera reportedly said she would “urge ‘the next conservative administration’ to withdraw from the UNFCCC as well as Paris.” The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the bedrock agreement behind international collaboration on climate, and the Paris Agreement is widely considered “the most significant global climate agreement to date.” The Paris Agreement has been signed and ratified by all but three countries: Iran, Libya, and Yemen, and successfully encouraged the largest emitting countries like China, Japan, and members of the European Union to set carbon neutrality goals and net zero targets, leading to substantial emission cuts and efforts to mitigate climate change.
Gunasekera Was Recently Subpoenaed For Her Work In The Trump Administration. Gunasekera worked in the EPA during most of the Trump administration. She started as a senior policy advisor in March 2017 and was elevated to Chief of Staff at the EPA in March 2020, after leaving the agency for 13 months to work at a pro-energy advocacy group. She was recently subpoenaed as part of a federal probe “pertaining to work from 2017.” Gunasekera has left open the possibility of working for the EPA in a second Trump administration.
Brendan Carr
Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission
Carr Is A Trump-Appointed MAGA Election Conspiracy Theorist. Carr was appointed as a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission by former President Trump in 2017. He is a MAGA election conspiracy theorist who has used his position to spread right-wing grievances and talking points. In 2020, he even accused Rep. Adam Schiff (CA-30) of overseeing a “secret and partisan surveillance machine.” Carr has also accused social media platforms of anti-Trump bias in 2020, echoing “weaponization” claims made by other MAGA House Republicans. He called for the Disinformation Governance Board to be shut down. He has been considered to be a “leading candidate” for FCC chair under a second Trump administration.
Carr Authored Part of Project 2025, Offering Proposals To Overhaul the Executive Branch. Carr authored chapter 28 of Project 2025’s Mandate For Leadership, which focuses on restructuring the FCC and overhauling the executive branch of government. In his chapter, he calls for the FCC to overhaul legal protections that shield tech companies from liability for content posted on their platforms, feeding into right-wing grievances about a supposedly “weaponized” social media ecosystem.
- Carr’s Involvement In Project 2025 Led To Calls For An Ethics Investigation. Members of the House of Representatives have called for an ethics investigation into Carr, arguing that he improperly used his office. In July, a group of 16 lawmakers sent a letter to the Office of Special Counsel, Office of Government Ethics, and Inspector General for the FCC, suggesting Carr “may be misusing his official position as an executive-level employee of the FCC to craft and advance a political playbook to influence the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.” The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from using their office for political activities.
Meaghan Mobbs
Director of the Center for American Safety and Security, Independent Women’s Forum
Mobbs Works For A Right-Wing Policy Group With Ties To Project 2025. Mobbs currently serves as a director at the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), an advocacy group characterized in a New York Times editorial as “a right-wing public policy group that provides pseudofeminist support for extreme positions that are in fact dangerous to women.” The Forum holds ties to several right-wing policy networks behind Project 2025, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Council for National Policy, which has been described as a “secretive network of conservative activists” that “coordinates the activities of right-wing donors, media, and front organizations.” The IWF is also funded in part by the billionaire Koch Brothers, who bought and paid for Project 2025.
- The Independent Women’s Forum Worked To Stop Schools From Teaching About Global Warming And Climate Change. In 2010, the IWF launched an effort to eradicate the teaching of global warming and climate change from schools, forming a group called “Balanced Education for Everyone” concentrating efforts in Colorado. The group called global warming “junk science,” and claimed teaching it would unnecessarily frighten children.
Mobbs Has Served As A Republican Campaign Surrogate. In May 2021, Mobbs joined GOP Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s campaign as a Senior Policy Advisor. She served on the campaign for nearly 9 months until his inauguration, after which she joined a public affairs consulting firm.