National Conservatism Asserts Dominance in Trump’s Washington

The nation­al con­ser­vatism move­ment has trans­formed from a fringe gath­er­ing to the Repub­li­can Party’s dom­i­nant ide­o­log­i­cal force under Pres­i­dent Trump’s sec­ond term. On 5 Sep­tem­ber 2025, the Asso­ci­at­ed Press report­ed from the annu­al Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, where Mis­souri Sen­a­tor Eric Schmitt declared that “nation­al con­ser­vatism is an idea whose time has arrived” while advo­cat­ing for an Amer­i­ca root­ed in lim­it­ed immi­gra­tion, Chris­t­ian iden­ti­ty, and preser­va­tion of tra­di­tion­al cul­ture through pan­els includ­ing “Over­turn Oberge­fell” and “The Threat of Islamism in Amer­i­ca.” The arti­cle begins:

It’s an ide­o­log­i­cal fac­tion trans­form­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty in Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s sec­ond term. Now firm­ly in pow­er, its lead­ers gath­ered this week beneath a down­town Wash­ing­ton hotel to bask in their tri­umph — and to chart what comes next. “Don­ald Trump’s vic­to­ry was not just a win for his move­ment but for the ideas of the peo­ple in this room,” Mis­souri Sen. Eric Schmitt told the crowd. “Nation­al con­ser­vatism is an idea whose time has arrived.”

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/national-conservativism-conference-schmitt-a27e3b489dcf768dbebfc927f5e4a1d0

Key Points

• High-pro­file speak­ers includ­ed Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence Tul­si Gab­bard, White House bud­get direc­tor Rus­sell Vought, bor­der czar Tom Homan, and con­tro­ver­sial fig­ures like John East­man and Calvin Robinson
• Schmitt crit­i­cized legal immi­gra­tion and declared “Amer­i­ca doesn’t belong to them — it belongs to us” while describ­ing Amer­i­cans as “sons and daugh­ters of the Chris­t­ian pilgrims”
• The move­ment cen­ters on Israeli polit­i­cal the­o­rist Yoram Hazony’s phi­los­o­phy of restor­ing nation­al and reli­gious tra­di­tions, with JD Vance cred­it­ing Hazony as “quite influ­en­tial” in 2021
• Repub­li­can donor Thomas Klin­gen­stein argued the great­est nation­al prob­lem is “white guilt,” while pan­els dis­cussed over­turn­ing same-sex mar­riage legal­iza­tion and attack­ing universities
• Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Con­fer­ences Reshape the Transat­lantic Right’s Ide­ol­o­gy, Alliances, and Ambitions

Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive con­fer­ences have rapid­ly become focal points for the intel­lec­tu­al and polit­i­cal reshap­ing of the West­ern right, bring­ing togeth­er lead­ing thinkers, activists, and politi­cians in a transat­lantic forum that seeks to define a post-lib­er­al, sov­er­eign­ty-focused con­ser­vatism for the 21st cen­tu­ry. These gath­er­ings are not mere­ly sym­bol­ic; they serve as incu­ba­tors for cross-bor­der coali­tion-build­ing, where Euro­pean and Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives dis­cuss strate­gies for com­bat­ing per­ceived lib­er­al hege­mo­ny and reassert­ing nation­al iden­ti­ty as a polit­i­cal prin­ci­ple.

The con­fer­ences have wit­nessed grow­ing coop­er­a­tion between Hun­gar­i­an, Pol­ish, and U.S. con­ser­v­a­tive fac­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in areas such as media, edu­ca­tion, and advo­ca­cy, with Hungary’s Vik­tor Orbán often posi­tioned as a cen­tral fig­ure in this emerg­ing alliance. Yet, these events also high­light ide­o­log­i­cal fault lines, as par­tic­i­pants have clashed over the strate­gic direc­tion of the move­ment, espe­cial­ly regard­ing for­eign pol­i­cy alliances, with notable divi­sions over how close­ly the move­ment should align with Israel and oth­er inter­na­tion­al part­ners.

The rise of the con­fer­ences has been matched by efforts to orga­nize a Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance, aim­ing to insti­tu­tion­al­ize these transna­tion­al con­nec­tions and project them into inter­na­tion­al pol­i­cy debates. Despite grow­ing orga­ni­za­tion­al ambi­tion, the con­fer­ences reveal a move­ment still wrestling with the ten­sion between nation­al­ist rhetoric and the prac­ti­cal demands of sus­tain­ing a cohe­sive inter­na­tion­al bloc, often expos­ing the gap between ide­o­log­i­cal aspi­ra­tion and polit­i­cal real­i­ty on the ground.

Exter­nal References:

1. How ‘Nation­al Con­ser­vatism’ Has Changed the Right
2. What You Missed at the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Conference
3. A Down­beat Gath­er­ing at MAGA’s Dead End

Exter­nal References:

1. How ‘Nation­al Con­ser­vatism’ Has Changed the Right
2. What You Missed at the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Conference
3. A Down­beat Gath­er­ing at MAGA’s Dead End

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.