A young conservative organization in Washington, D.C., is celebrating a milestone and hosting Vice President JD Vance as it tries to map out the future for the MAGA movement and the Republican Party.
The nonprofit organization American Compass is celebrating its fifth anniversary with a special ‘New World Gala’ at the National Building Museum.
The organization, founded in 2020, is working for Republicans to think differently on policy questions, including by grabbing the third rail of sacrosanct political principles that have traditionally been the core ideals of the conservative movement.
In Washington, political think tanks tend to excel after they win the attention of powerful interests.
Policy nerds and former Congressional staffers also win new status in the city after they are lifted up into the spotlight and many get employed to put their ideas into practice.
In just five years, the group has acquired significant influence in the Republican Party.
In 2023, then-Senator JD Vance appeared at a forum sponsored by the organization and celebrated the ‘familiar’ and ‘bright smiling faces’ in the room. Vance and some of his political staff are tied to the organization as they pursue new policy ideas as an ‘unconventional’ Republican.
Rather than just getting government out of the way of the markets, Vance has argued for using taxes and subsidies to incentivize better behavior for businesses.
‘Let’s tax the things we want to see less of and lets subsidize the things we want to see more of,’ he argued, clarifying he did not want to see a ‘larger federal government’ but wanted a more efficient government that responded to it’s citizens.
In the same speech, he criticized ‘all the woke bulls****,’ going on in American businesses earning him a few laughs from the audience.
The organization credits Vance and his policies for lifting up their status in Washington.
‘No figure in American politics has more effectively advocated for American families and workers than Vice President JD Vance,’ American Compass communications director Theresa Braid said to the Daily Mail.
She cited Vance’s work in the Senate and the White House as well as his book Hillbilly Elegy, which chronicles the struggles that working class voters in America face.
‘Vice President Vance has led the charge to speak for the Americans that our elites have forgotten,’ she continued. ‘It is an honor to have him join our celebration of the movement that he has helped build.’
Other prominent Republicans on the right who are connected with the group include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Todd Young and Jim Banks from Indiana and Bernie Moreno from Ohio.
Together they describe themselves as ‘The New Right’ and focus intently on the goal of building a movement that focuses on building American families, a stronger American workforce, and a more purposeful economic policy.
The organization is trying to nurture an intellectual and policy centric MAGA movement in D.C. to back President Donald Trump’s political movement that reshaped the Republican Party almost entirely based off his experience in business and gut instinct.
The organization was founded by former Mitt Romney aide Oren Cass who continues to promote the idea that policy should be focused on the American citizens first instead of focusing entirely on the growth and expansion of free markets.
Cass appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart to defend Trump’s economic policies despite the chaotic nature of his presidency, asserting that Republicans were focused on policies that would help strengthen communities and first.
‘I have a great deal of hope that as that moves to be the center of the party, you really are going to see a different Republican party that still loves markets and wants them to work, but has a much better understanding of their limitation, has much more concern for what is happening to typical working families and wants to figure out how to keep their conservative principles but apply them somehow to use public policy and make things better,’ he explained to Stewart.
Cass expressed optimism that ‘the policy wonks, researchers, writers, journalists, lawyers, folks sort of 40 and under,’ were ‘overwhelmingly oriented’ to a new way of thinking.
Cass also did a sit-down interview with Tucker Carlson to discuss Trump’s tariffs, as the former Fox News broadcaster has frequently challenged establishment thinking on issues of taxes, trade, and foreign policy on his new platform.
The group briefly employed Sen. Marco Rubio’s prominent chief of staff Michael Needham in 2024 before he left in 2025 to rejoin Rubio at the State Department.
Needham got his start at the prominent Heritage foundation think tank which helped fuel conservative ideology and shake up the Republican establishment in Washington, DC during the Tea Party era.
The fledgling group American Compass has already sparked opposition from other conservative non-profit organizations in Washington, DC who have spent decades defending Reagan-era policies the ideas of free markets, free trade, and tax cuts.
Cass is now promoting his new book: The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry which outlines some of the organization’s biggest ideas for the country.
‘We’re really trying to move all American politics especially conservatives forward to facing the challenges we have now, stuck in Ronald Reagan mode for a long time,’ Cass said in a C-SPAN interview on Monday.