New MAGA Weapon: ‘Fight Tanks’ For Rural America

Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics,

Another conservative satellite has joined the Trump constellation.

Jenn Pellegrino, formerly chief spokesperson for the America First Policy Institute, has launched twin think tanks in time for a brewing fight on Capitol Hill over health care and ahead of the coming midterms. The GOP is scrambling to build legislation from scratch to lower health care costs when Biden-era Obamacare subsidies expire on Dec. 31. Those same Republicans are hoping to keep their seats in the election next year.

Enter Defend Forgotten America (DFA). Enter also Defend Forgotten America Action (DFAA).

The names are pulled directly from President Trump’s first victory speech when he vowed in 2016 that “the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.” The goal is to bridge the divide between flyover country and the D.C. beltway, between what Pellegrino describes as rural and small urban communities and “unelected Washington bureaucrats.”

Though still in its infancy, the groups already have a window into the White House. Chris LaCivita, Trump’s 2024 campaign manager, serves as an advisor to the mission, RealClearPolitics is first to report.

DFA will focus specifically on health care policy. The DFAA policy portfolio will include everything from agriculture to housing policy. Internally, they call themselves “fight tanks.” The shared mission statement: “Championing forgotten communities and restoring power to the people who built America.”

The right-wing universe is already vast – and increasingly decentralized. Mammoth organizations, like the Heritage Foundation and the America First Policy Institute, anchor the landscape, but numerous small upstarts now dot the horizon. All of them orbit one man, President Trump, who has redefined conservativism for the last decade, much in the same way as he remade the GOP in his own image.

The Pellegrino operation will be distinct in its emphasis on the local. A key issue, one that some Republicans feel has become a blind spot, is affordability.

“President Trump has done a great job on inflation. Look at gas prices – they’re down. The cost of eggs is certainly way down from what it was several months ago. But there’s still work to be done,” she told RCP in a brief interview.

“Just like Secretary Scott Bessent was saying recently, we’re not going to speak like the Biden administration did and say that everything is great,” she added, referencing the head of the Treasury Department. “We understand and see that Americans are still feeling pain on so many issues from health care to housing. Especially in rural communities, like the blue-collar one I grew up in upstate New York, a lot of them are living paycheck to paycheck. We are focusing on their issues.”

And two recent humanitarian disasters provide a rubric for just exactly what the organizations plan to do: the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and Hurricane Helene that ravaged North Carolina. A breakdown in communication, in both cases, slowed the response from the federal government.

In the face of future disasters, Pellegrino said the twin think tanks would get on the ground, not to write white papers, but to develop immediate policy proposals to guide the response. And then absent catastrophe, the organizations will seek to bring the concerns of rural Americans directly to D.C.

The Democratic brand has become radioactive in rural America. A former Newsmax host, Pellegrino is unabashedly conservative. The organization immediately makes clear its dissatisfaction with the left and liberal policy prescriptions. “They don’t understand us,” she says of Democratic politicians in a promo video, “because they have never lived like us.” Unsurprisingly, prominent Republicans have already welcomed the new group with open arms.

“We proved in 2024 that when you speak directly to working Americans in the communities the establishment ignores, you build an unstoppable coalition,” LaCivita said in a statement. “These organizations are built in that same spirit.”

New York Rep. Claudia Tenney heralded the new endeavor as “a strong advocate for the hardworking Americans who have been left behind for far too long.” Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, meanwhile, described it as a bulwark against “corporations who have taken over via special interest efforts in Washington.”