Council for National Policy: Coordination Network

The Council for National Policy is the node in this network that no other node can function without understanding. Founded by Tim LaHaye in 1981, it has operated continuously for over four decades as the private coordination body for the Religious Right coalition — the place where the movement's donors, strategists, media figures, politicians, and religious leaders meet twice yearly without press access, without public records, and without the accountability that public organizing requires. Anne Nelson's 'Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right' (2019) is the definitive documentary account, based on leaked membership rosters and internal documents. CNP membership has included: - Financiers: Richard DeVos Sr., Betsy and Dick DeVos, the Prince family (Betsy's family), Howard Ahmanson Jr., Rebekah Mercer, the Koch network - Strategists/organizers: Paul Weyrich (founder), Tim LaHaye (founder), Ralph Reed, Phyllis Schlafly, Morton Blackwell (Leadership Institute) - Politicians: Edwin Meese, John Ashcroft, Dick Armey, Michele Bachmann, Mike Pence, Ken Blackwell - Media: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Tony Perkins, Franklin Graham - Religious leaders: James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Sr., Jerry Falwell Jr., Pat Robertson, Robert Jeffress, Tony Perkins - Legal: Leonard Leo (Federalist Society), Mike Farris (HSLDA/ADF) - Think tanks: Heritage Foundation leadership, Family Research Council leadership The CNP's operational significance: 1. Coordination without accountability: CNP meetings allow the movement's leaders to align strategy, allocate resources, and coordinate messaging without any of this coordination being visible to the public, to journalists, or to regulatory agencies. 2. Donor-to-activist pipeline: Major donors meet directly with organization leaders and elected officials at CNP meetings, creating direct relationships that shape organizational priorities and funding flows. 3. Long-term strategy development: The CNP's continuity — it has met regularly for 40+ years — provides a strategic coherence across election cycles that no single organization could maintain. 4. The 2016 Trump accommodation: Anne Nelson's reporting documents that CNP members were divided on Trump in 2015–2016 but that a consensus emerged through CNP meetings that Trump's Supreme Court commitment made him acceptable. The August 2016 CNP meeting — attended by Steve Bannon, who had just been named campaign CEO — was described by attendees as a pivotal moment in the Religious Right establishment's accommodation of Trumpism. 5. Specific documented interventions: The 'Contract with America' strategy (1994), the George W. Bush evangelical mobilization (2004), the anti-Obergefell coordination (2015), and the 2016 Trump evangelical board were all discussed and coordinated through CNP networks. The CNP is why this network has the coherence it does. Without the CNP, the individual nodes would be less coordinated and less effective. With it, they function as a unified political movement.

Documented themes

• Christian Nationalism
• Anti-Democratic
• Political Strategy

Connections from Council for National Policy: Coordination Network

• influenced → Trump Evangelical Advisory Board (2016) (2016) — The Council for National Policy's August 2016 meeting — attended by Steve Bannon as Trump's newly appointed campaign CEO — was a pivotal moment in the Religious Right establishment's accommodation of Trump, according to Anne Nelson's 'Shadow Network.' CNP members who had been divided or reluctant converged at this meeting on the calculation that Trump's Supreme Court commitment and his Federalist Society-vetted nominee list made him acceptable. The meeting's participants included figures who subsequently served on or supported the evangelical advisory board.
• influenced → Project 2025 (2023) — The Council for National Policy's network provided a significant portion of Project 2025's contributor base. CNP members and their organizational affiliates — Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, American Family Association — were among the most active contributors to the document. The CNP's 40-year function as the coordinating council of the Christian right meant that its agenda priorities — restricting reproductive rights, eliminating LGBTQ protections, restructuring education policy around Christian values, consolidating executive power — were embedded throughout Project 2025's chapters.

Sources

• Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right — Anne Nelson (2019), pp. 1–320
• Secretive Conservative Group Has Bulk of Its Money Going to Influence Elections — New York Times (2020)
• The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism — Katherine Stewart (2020), pp. 196–220