The America First Policy Institute, AFPI, an influential conservative think tank, was founded in 2021 by a number of Trump associates.
According to The New York Times, the institute has had significant influence in shaping Trump’s policy during his second term and was described as a “White House in waiting” before his return to office.
One of its founders, Brooke Leslie Rollins, became Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture in February 2025, and many other members of the institute have also taken positions within the Trump administration.
In May last year, RealClearPolitics reported that more than 86 per cent of federal policies recommended by the institute were implemented within the first 100 days of Trump’s second administration.
According to Axios, informal advisers to the institute include Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Trump’s daughter and son-in-law.
Jared Kushner’s company, Affinity Partners, was supposed to build Trump-style tower on the site of the Yugoslav Army HQ, a cultural monument destroyed by NATO bombs in 1999 during the Kosovo war, but the firm withdrew after Serbian anti-graft prosecutors charged a cabinet minister with illegally pressurising public officials to lift protections on the site.
A pseudo-documentary produced by CZDS lauded the project and lambasted its critics, among a series of such films broadcast on national television channels in Serbia despite containing unfounded allegations independent media and journalists.
CZDS counts among its former members Nemanja Starovic, Serbia’s Minister for European Integration and a rising star in the ruling SNS.
Last year, the organisation helped stage counter-rallies in answer to mass student-led protests over the Novi Sad railway canopy collapse in November 2024 that killed 16 people. While the CZDS was formally listed as organiser of the rallies, SNS officials, cabinet ministers and even Vucic himself turned out.
On Sunday, CZDS member Marko Blazic, a 28-year-old a former SNS member of the City Assembly of Novi Sad, in northern Serbia, and current chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Belgrade Fair, will act as interpreter for one of the US observers, Brian Brown.
As president of the International Organization for the Family, IOF, and a vocal Trump supporter, Brown is a key figure in the US conservative movement, known for promoting so-called ‘traditional values’ around the world. He has warned that defeat for Orban in next month’s Hungarian election would be “devastating for Hungary, Europe, and the world”.