A Right-Wing Think Tank Has a Plan to Prevent Democrats From Being Seated in Congress

With polls indicating that the Democrats are poised to win big in the midterm elections, the Trump administration is already attempting to mount legal challenges in certain races and cast doubt on the results.

A post published last month by the Center for Renewing America, an influential right-wing think tank, suggests a more radical strategy, asserting that a number of Democrats could be prevented from holding office even if they win their elections.

The post, titled, “Can Congress Seat a Member-Elect Who Vows to Destroy our Constitution?” argues even winning candidates from what it believes to be a purported “Red-Green Alliance” between “neo-Marxist progressives and anti-Western Muslims,” can and should be kept from being seated in Congress. The post, in effect, claims that Muslim and progressive candidates don’t have to be legally accepted into their elected positions.

“This is another attempt to contort and twist basic norms that have never been used this way for their own partisan purposes,” says Richard Pildes, a professor at New York University’s School of Law.

The CRA was founded by Russell Vought, one of the main architects of Project 2025 and now the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought faced criticism for his anti-Muslim comments—he once said that Muslims had a “deficient theology” and “do not know God”—when was nominated for OMB director during the first Trump administration.

The Center for Renewing America (CRA) did not respond to a request for comment.

Though Vought has described himself and allies, including members of the CRA, as “radical constitutionalists,” he has taken several steps that have infringed on the powers of other branches of government to expand the power of the executive branch. Most notably, although Congress is tasked with allocating and approving funds for the operation of the federal government, Vought has impounded, refused, or delayed the disbursement of funds, including billions of dollars that Congress has approved. Last year, Vought put a freeze on $5 billion in foreign aid funding, which was followed up by clawing back more than $800 million this year, a move that may violate the Impoundment Control Act, Maine senator Susan Collins said in late September.

The recent CRA piece—authored by Benjamin Osborne, a Georgetown Law School graduate who is serving as the organization’s legal fellow—argues that the beliefs the organization has imputed to so-called Red-Green politicians are against the US Constitution. Osborne writes that “when someone elected to Congress has personally embraced the destruction of the constitutional order espoused by these groups, he or she cannot truthfully swear to support that order as a condition of taking office.”

According to another CRA publication from earlier this year written by the organization’s executive director, Wade Miller, the so-called Red-Green Alliance includes the “Squad,” the nickname for the group of four progressive women of color who all won seats in Congress in 2018: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar. It also includes politicians like New York mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. These politicians, the publication claims, are purveyors of “ideology dedicated to destroying capitalism, Christianity, and the Western political tradition.” None of the politicians named in the piece have self-identified as Marxists, though some, including Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani, are Democratic Socialists.