Heritage Foundation

Zia Yusuf Cosying Up to Group Behind ‘Authoritarian’ Project 2025 Agenda

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Article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog. [Article was published 10 June 2026]

A DeSmog collage of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and the party’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf. Credit: Reform UK / YouTube (Farage), Yusuf (Z979)

Reform has been chasing even closer ties to Trump’s allies.

Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf is set to speak tomorrow at the Heritage Foundation, the group behind the “extreme” ‘Project 2025’ playbook for Donald Trump’s second term.

Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesperson, is jetting to Washington, D.C., for an event with Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s ‘Thatcher Center’.

The event description states that the pair will be discussing “key transatlantic priorities, including mass migration, border security, deportation policy, and the broader challenge of safeguarding Western institutions and values.”

The Heritage Foundation organised Project 2025, the 900-page document which proposed a series of radical, ultra-conservative policies that have served as a blueprint for Trump’s second-term agenda.

The dossier recommended banning abortion pills, restricting access to contraceptives, and removing federal funding for groups providing abortion services. “Conservatives in the states and in Washington, including in the next conservative administration, should push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America,” it stated.

It also proposed bulldozing U.S. climate policies – slashing restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrapping state investment in renewable energy, and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency. 

The Heritage Foundation said that the federal government should “eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere” – a policy carried out by Trump, who has called climate science a “hoax”.

A core recommendation of Project 2025 was to “dismantle the administrative state” by centralising power with the president, slashing government funding, and replacing career civil servants with ideological loyalists. Russell Vought, a Heritage Foundation alumni and one of the main co-authors of Project 2025, now serves as Trump’s director of Office of Management and Budget – wielding significant power in restructuring the federal government.

Much of this agenda is shared by Reform and its leader Nigel Farage. After years of silence on abortion, Farage recently called for the UK’s abortion limit to be reduced, labelling the current 24-week limit “utterly ludicrous”. The Reform leader has been forging alliances with U.S. anti-abortion groups, while appointing anti-abortion figures to key positions in the party – including its head of policy James Orr, who doesn’t think abortion should be allowed at any stage of foetal development, even in pregnancies resulting from rape.

“Zia Yusuf should be ashamed to share a platform with the Heritage Foundation,” said Abortion Rights chair Kerry Abel. “The architects of Project 2025 are a global threat to abortion rights, climate action and democracy.

“You cannot flirt with the far right in Washington and pretend it has no consequences here. Anyone giving credibility to this extreme agenda must be called out.”

Reform is a pro-oil party that calls for the UK’s climate targets to be scrapped. Farage has said it’s “nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant. The party has also launched a ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE) to identify public spending cuts in local authorities – mirroring Trump’s agency with the same name, which has overseen billions in cuts to vital public services.

“Advocates of this brand of right-wing politics, championed by Donald Trump and embraced by Reform UK politicians, are aiming to spread their divisive rhetoric and regressive policies, from opposing abortion to actively undoing climate progress,” said Cary Mitchell, executive director of operations at Best for Britain, which campaigns against populism. “Brits have been clear that they don’t trust Trump – and a knock-off version of his authoritarian approach here in the UK would only risk all our rights.”

Farage has received £52,000 in speaking fees and £12,500 in flights and accommodation for addressing pro-Trump, MAGA events since being elected to Parliament in July 2024.

In recent days, Farage announced that he would be making a keynote address to CPAC GB, a pro-Trump conference being held in London in July. The British spin-off is being organised by disgraced former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss, and Farage initially indicated that he would be “steering well clear” of the event, only to now reverse his decision.

A version of this article was published by The New World.

Farage, a longstanding Trump supporter, has recently been attempting to put some distance between his party and the U.S. government, following the president’s unpopular war in Iran, which Farage has supported.

However, Yusuf’s appearance at the Heritage Foundation – and Farage’s at CPAC GB – underscores Reform’s MAGA loyalty. According to The Spectator, key figures behind Project 2025 have been “shuttling between London and Washington” to bestow their wisdom on Farage, while Gardiner has reportedly been acting as a bridge between the White House and Reform.

Reform politician Matthew Goodwin and its economic spokesperson Robert Jenrick have also made speeches to the Heritage Foundation in recent years.

Gardiner and the Heritage Foundation have regularly been given a platform on the right-wing media channel GB News, Farage’s largest income source since becoming an MP in July 2024.

Gardiner, who served as a foreign policy researcher and aide to former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, has made dozens of appearances on GB News. During those appearances, he has called for the UK to reintroduce the death penalty, labelled the UK government “a bunch of cowardly appeasers” for not supporting Trump’s military intervention in Iran, and called for pro-Palestine protestors to be deported if they have been arrested and are foreign nationals.

Reform has been forging close ties to a number of pro-Trump groups for a number of years. In December 2024, Farage helped to launch the Heartland Institute, a co-author of Project 2025, in the UK and is now being advised by the climate science denial group.

As reported by DeSmog, two thirds of the party’s funding has come from those with financial interests in fossil fuels.

“Reform make out like they’re your mate down the pub, standing up for everyday people. But they’re actually working closely with the establishment think tanks that helped put Trump into power, and raking in millions in donations from billionaires,” said Green Party peer Natalie Bennett. “We can see who’s pulling the strings and who they’re really working for.”

Reform and the Heritage Foundation were approached for comment.

Article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Nigel Farage objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Continue ReadingZia Yusuf Cosying Up to Group Behind ‘Authoritarian’ Project 2025 Agenda

[Mirror] EXCLUSIVE: Nigel Farage’s shameless recruit Braverman bankrolled by think-tank backing Trump’s ICE

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https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/nigel-farages-shameless-recruit-braverman-36630914

Tory defector Suella Braverman speaks with Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage(Image: Getty Images)

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s latest high-profile recruit, Suella Braverman, had a trip paid for by The Heritage Foundation — a supporter of the controversial US immigration agency ICE

Reform defector Suella Braverman has been bankrolled by a think-tank backing the US immigration agency behind a deadly shooting.

The ex-Home Secretary became the latest high-profile Tory to join Nigel Farage‘s party this week. But we can reveal she accepted a freebie trip worth more than £9,000 from The Heritage Foundation — a supporter of controversial ICE in the wake of a mum being killed. In recent weeks, the award-winning poet’s death and that of an ICU nurse at the hands of another US agency have sparked outrage. In an interview on Tuesday, Donald Trump said his administration was “going to de-escalate a little bit” in Minnesota. “Bottom line, it was terrible. Both of them were terrible,” the US president said.

…

Hope Not Hate’s Director of Research, Joe Mulhall, added: “Sadly, it is no surprise that Suella Braverman has accepted funds from the Heritage Foundation. Her own increasingly radical politics, which have seen her defect to Reform UK, align well with much of the output of this infamous US think-tank. Braverman was the Home Secretary who described asylum seekers arriving in the UK by boat as an ‘invasion’, adopting and normalising the language of the far right. She’s now in Reform, a party that has called for ‘mass deportations,’ a plan that if enacted would require something akin to a British version of ICE.”

Braverman, who represents Fareham and Waterlooville in Hampshire, accepted flights, accommodation and airport transfers valued at £9,358.71 from The Heritage Foundation in January last year, her register of interests shows. During the visit, she delivered the annual Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture. In a tweet promoting her speech, she echoed Trump’s rhetoric, writing: “Too many people are coming into our country who do not abide by our laws, sign up to our values or respect our culture. In fact, too many wish to do us harm. We have all had enough. It’s time to Make Britain Great Again.”

…

Original article at https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/nigel-farages-shameless-recruit-braverman-36630914

Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.
Continue Reading[Mirror] EXCLUSIVE: Nigel Farage’s shameless recruit Braverman bankrolled by think-tank backing Trump’s ICE

Media Faces Reckoning After Helping Trump Downplay Project 2025 on Campaign Trail

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Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

The Democratic National Committee sponsors a billboard about then-Republican candidate Donald Trump and Project 2025 at 12th & Vine Streets on September 9, 2024, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Lisa Lake/Getty Images for the Democratic National Committee)

“A Trump denial is not a fact,” said one media critic.

As President Donald Trump openly embraces Project 2025, mainstream media outlets are facing criticism for their role in helping him downplay his ties to the wildly unpopular far-right governing playbook in the lead-up to his reelection last year.

After she became the Democratic nominee in July, former Vice President Kamala Harris made the Heritage Foundation’s over 900-page manifesto for “the next conservative president” central to her case against Trump during the 2024 election, often referring to it as “Trump’s Project 2025.”

She and other Democrats warned that if he retook power, he would swiftly enact many of its most extreme and unpopular proposals and dramatically expand executive power while doing it.

Among those proposals were steep cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the “mass deportations” of millions of immigrants, the elimination of the Department of Education, new restrictions on abortions, the gutting of climate protections, and the replacement of career civil servants with political appointees, among many others.

Democrats amplified the plan’s danger at the Democratic National Convention and in campaign ads, and Trump began to distance himself from the platform. Despite the fact that as many as 140 people who’d worked in his first administration—including Paul Dans, Heritage’s director of Project 2025—had a hand in its creation, Trump said: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.”

This was demonstrably untrue, even at the time. Media Matters for America dug up a clip from as far back as May 2023 of Dans stating that “President Trump’s very bought in with this,” speaking of the program.

Project 2025 was almost inconceivably unpopular. An NBC News poll from September 2024 showed that while 57% of registered voters viewed the plan negatively, just 4% viewed it positively.

But in the critical months leading up to the election, many media outlets took Trump’s denial at face value, publishing fact checks and other commentary that painted Democrats’ warnings about his connection to the plan as alarmist or misleading.

Responding to a social media post in July stating that “Trump has made his authoritarian intentions quite clear with his Project 2025 plan,” a fact check by USA Today rated the statement “false,” because, as the headline said, “Project 2025 is an effort by the Heritage Foundation, not Donald Trump.”

In September, after Harris confronted Trump about Project 2025 at the first and only debate between the two, the paper published another fact-check with the headline: “Harris repeats claim that Project 2025 is Trump’s plan. That’s still not right.”

In response to Harris’ claim during the debate that Project 2025 was “a detailed and dangerous plan… that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected,” Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, whose coverage received a fair bit of criticism during the 2024 cycle, reported in bold text that “Project 2025 is not an official campaign document.”

A CNN fact check of the Harris campaign’s social media in September remarked that one account “frequently invokes Project 2025,” before caveating that “Project 2025 is not Trump’s initiative, and he has said he disagrees with some of its proposals.”

In an October interview on CBS‘s“Face the Nation,”anchor Norah O’Donnell, Harris attempted to warn about Project 2025, before O’Donnell responded: “You know that Donald Trump has disavowed Project 2025. He says that is not his campaign plan.”

After nine months back in power, the website Project 2025 Tracker estimates that Trump has already implemented approximately 48% of the objectives outlined in the policy document.

In addition to his key campaign promises many of his second administration’s policies are highly specific to Project 2025, such as his pledge to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), his efforts to privatize the National Weather Service (NWS), his reconfiguration of Title X funding to promote pregnancy, and his elimination of the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Trump is no longer hiding his connection to Project 2025, having brought in many of its hiring picks and authors to staff his administration almost immediately after his victory last November.

This week, he began to boast about it openly. As his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director, Russ Vought, one of Project 2025’s architects, began using the current government shutdown to unilaterally cut off funding to infrastructure projects in blue states and cities, Trump lauded him as “he of PROJECT 2025 Fame.”

“This was always the plan,” Harris responded on social media.

While many commentators expressed outrage that Trump blatantly lied about his connections to Project 2025, others dredged up old clips of newspapers and anchors taking him at his word.

“All those 2024 media fact checks that said, ‘Donald Trump and the Trump campaign deny any connection to Project 2025’ look pretty ridiculous right now,” said MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski. “A Trump denial is not a fact. You just used his lies to ‘debunk’ a reality that was obvious to anyone paying attention.”

Mehdi Hasan, the founder of the independent media company Zeteo, highlighted the CBS interview, saying Trump’s embrace of Project 2025 was “embarrassing not just for Norah O’Donnell but a whole host of leading American anchors and reporters who echoed Trump’s false denials.”

“Nothing showed the difference between mainstream and independent media better than the response to Trump’s obvious lie about not knowing anything about Project 2025,” said David Pepper, author of the book Saving Democracy: A User’s Manual. “Most mainstream media started fact-checking those who claimed a connection to be somehow false. Others ‘both sides’ed’ it. Far more in independent media called it out as a whopping lie.”

Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.

Continue ReadingMedia Faces Reckoning After Helping Trump Downplay Project 2025 on Campaign Trail

Farage to Share Stage with Architects of Trump’s Anti-Climate Agenda

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Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.

Nigel Farage at the National Conservatism conference in Brussels. Credit: Belga News Agency / Alamy

The Reform leader will be skipping Parliament again in favour of a conference in Washington DC.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage will speak next week alongside the authors of Donald Trump’s plans to “dismantle the administrative state” and scrap climate policies. 

Farage is a featured speaker at the National Conservatism (NatCon) conference in Washington DC – at least his tenth visit to the U.S. since being elected as an MP.

As reported in The Mirror, Farage’s trip – during which he will also reportedly speak to Congress about free speech in the UK – means he will miss Parliament’s return from summer recess. 

A version of this article was published by The Mirror

DeSmog’s analysis reveals that more than a fifth of the speakers at the NatCon event have roles at groups which contributed to Project 2025, the radical blueprint for Trump’s second term convened by the Heritage Foundation.

They include Russell Vought, Trump’s budget chief. Before entering office, Vought was a key author of Project 2025 and the vice president of Heritage Action, the campaign arm of the Heritage Foundation, whose president Kevin Roberts will be speaking at NatCon.

The listed speakers also include senior members of the Trump administration, including his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who launched her book For Love of Country at a Heritage Foundation event with Roberts last year; and Tom Homan, Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who is a former visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a contributor to Project 2025.

NatCon is organised by the Edmund Burke Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington DC. Its UK chairman James Orr runs the pro-Reform think tank the Centre for a Better Britain, is a close friend of U.S. Vice President JD Vance, and recently told BBC Radio 4 that he admires the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. Farage spoke at a NatCon event in Brussels last year.

The lengthy Project 2025 policy document, titled ‘The Mandate for Leadership’, proposed reversing climate policies, unleashing fossil fuel extraction, scrapping investment in clean energy, and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – policies imposed by the Trump administration. 

As DeSmog has reported, 70 percent of Trump’s cabinet has ties to Project 2025, which also seeks to “dismantle the administrative state”, further restrict abortion, and access to contraception.

A Liberal Democrat source told DeSmog: “Nigel Farage is far more interested in pleasing Trump and jostling for his affections than he is in turning up to Parliament on time or standing up for British values.”

Farage in DC

Farage will speak on a panel alongside Larry Arnn, who sits on the Heritage Foundation’s board of directors.

It will be the second time Farage has shared a stage with Arnn following a fundraiser in September 2024 for the Heartland Institute, which also contributed to Project 2025 and has described itself as “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting scepticism about man-made climate change”.

At the fundraiser, Farage claimed that the UK’s efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions don’t “make any bloody difference at all” – and reiterated Trump’s call to “drill baby drill” for fossil fuels.

Farage and Trump have both denied basic climate science. The Reform leader has claimed it’s “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant, while Trump has called climate change a “giant hoax”.

Next week’s event in Washington lists at least 22 speakers with current or recent roles at the Heritage Foundation and other Project 2025 member groups.

Other UK speakers at the event include Rupert Darwall, who has claimed there is “strong evidence for the non-existence of a climate crisis,” and former GB News presenter Calvin Robinson.

Senior members of the Conservative Party including shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick and shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel have met with Heritage Foundation leaders or spoken at their events in recent years. 

Reform UK did not reply to DeSmog’s request for comment.

Project 2025 speakers at NatCon Washington DC

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts. Credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Kevin Roberts – president of the Heritage Foundation

Russell Vought – director of the Office for Budget Management, and former vice president of Heritage Action

Tom Homan – director of Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE), and a former visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation

Christopher DeMuth – Heritage Foundation Fellow

John Backiel – visiting fellow for the Capital Markets Initiative at the Heritage Foundation

Robert Greenway – director of the Allison Center for National Security at the Heritage Foundation

Rob Bluey – executive editor of the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal

Victoria Coates – vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy

Tom Klingenstein – chairman of the board of directors at the Claremont Institute

Spencer Klavan – associate editor at the Claremont Review of Books

Ryan Williams – president of the Claremont Institute and publisher of the Claremont Review of Books

John Eastman – senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a contributor to the Heritage Guide to the Constitution

Will Thibeau – director of the American Military Project at the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life, and previously a policy analyst in the Heritage Foundation’s Tech Policy Center

Kristen Waggoner – CEO, president, and general counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom

Gene Hamilton – president and co-founder of America First Legal

Curt Mills — executive director of the American Conservative

Mark DiPlacido — policy advisor at American Compass, and a former Heritage Action staffer

Rachel Bovard — vice president of programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute

Rupert Darwall — strategy consultant and policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute

Mark Krikorian — executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies

Alex Petkas — a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America

Clare Morell — fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center

Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.

Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Continue ReadingFarage to Share Stage with Architects of Trump’s Anti-Climate Agenda

Donald Trump’s Fossil Fuel Executive UK Ambassador Donated $4 Million to President’s Inauguration Fund

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Original article by Adam Barnett and Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

U.S. ambassador to the UK Warren Stephens. Credit: Arkansas Inc / YouTube

Warren Stephens made the donation alongside big tech firms and oil giants.

Donald Trump’s ambassador to the UK donated $4 million to the new U.S. president’s inauguration on the same day he was nominated for the diplomatic position, DeSmog can report.

Billionaire Warren Stephens gave $4 million (just under £3 million today) to the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee on 2 December, according to the official record of donations. The committee is appointed by the president-elect to arrange the inauguration ceremony, when a U.S. president is formally sworn into office.

“It’s not so surprising that a transactional president hands out favours to people who give him money, but that doesn’t make it any less outrageous,” said Agustina Oliveri, head of campaigns and communications at the Good Law Project.

There is no direct evidence that Warren secured the position due to this donation. However, U.S. presidents have a long history of handing out diplomatic roles to major donors, while the Trump administration has bestowed his patrons with a number of senior positions. Of the 37 people who gave $1 million or more to the inauguration committee, six have either been given a role in the administration or have been nominated for a role.

Tom Brake, a former Liberal Democrat MP and the director of the transparency campaign group Unlock Democracy, urged the UK government not to follow Trump’s lead.

“Whatever approach the U.S. administration adopts towards the appointment of its ambassadors, the UK government should make it clear that when it comes to appointing UK ambassadors or high commissioners, donating substantial sums of money directly or indirectly to the party of government will block an appointment not facilitate it,” he said. “There must never be a question mark over whether UK appointments are made on merit, or driven by a donor’s deep pockets.”

As DeSmog revealed on 5 December, Warren Stephens holds significant oil and gas interests. Prior to his appointment as Trump’s UK ambassador, he ran Stephens Inc. – one of the largest privately-owned investment banks in the United States. Stephens has since stood down as CEO, but remains its chairman.

The firm’s portfolio includes a number of companies that make their money from oil and gas exploration and production — including one, Stephens Natural Resources, which “has a rich history of drilling and producing both oil and natural gas”, according to its website.

The UK’s ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson also co-founded a public affairs agency with major fossil fuel clients.

Trump’s inauguration committee – which raised almost $240 million – received donations from fossil fuel giants Chevron ($2 million), ExxonMobil ($1 million), the U.S. branches of BP and Shell ($500,000 each), and Valero ($250,000).

It also accepted donations from major tech platforms including Amazon and Meta, whose founders Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg received a front row seat to the event.

Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and others at Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Credit: WSJ / YouTube

The inauguration committee received a further $1 million from the Heritage Foundation, a hard-right U.S. research and lobby group which drafted the “autocratic” Project 2025 blueprint for Trump’s second term.

Trump denied knowledge of Project 2025 during the election campaign but has subsequently appointed Russell Vought, one of its advisory board members and co-authors, as director of the Office for Management and Budget (OMB), a key department within the president’s office that helps to oversee and co-ordinate policy.

Project 2025 urged Trump to “dismantle the administrative state”, slash restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrap state investment in renewable energy, and gut the Environmental Protection Agency.

Since his inauguration on 20 January, Trump has announced a series of policies that have mirrored these demands.

The new president, who received more than $75 million from oil and gas interests for his re-election campaign, has pledged to once again withdraw the U.S. from the flagship 2015 Paris Agreement, which set an international target for limiting global warming. He has also declared a “national energy emergency” to allow the U.S. to “drill, baby, drill” for new fossil fuels.

“When we look at the dumpster fire of U.S. government policy – from trashing the planet to attacking basic human rights – there’s no point in asking ‘What are they up to?’. The question we need to focus on is ‘Who paid for that?,’” said Oliveri.

The U.S. embassy in London referred DeSmog’s enquiry to the U.S. State Department. The Heritage Foundation was approached for comment.

Original article by Adam Barnett and Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Continue ReadingDonald Trump’s Fossil Fuel Executive UK Ambassador Donated $4 Million to President’s Inauguration Fund