The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, best known as a Reaganomics champion, is using anti-LGBTQ+ politics to advance its broader political goals. But that wasn\u2019t always part of its strategy. Then-Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt canceled his planned speech at the far-right think tank, the Manhattan Institute, to avoid significant opposition from New York environmental groups and and other community leaders on June 21, 2017. (Erik McGregor \/ LightRocket via Getty Images) <\/p>\n
Originally published by Uncloseted Media<\/a>, \u201cWhy This Wall Street-Backed Conservative Think Tank Attacks LGBTQ Rights.\u201d<\/p>\n In April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced the latest move in his fight against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs when he\u00a0signed a bill<\/a>\u00a0into law that prohibits any local government in the state from spending money on DEI-related initiatives. The restrictions could threaten nondiscrimination ordinances, local pride events and other services, leading some LGBTQ+ advocates to label it a \u201cpride ban.\u201d<\/p>\n The law\u2019s definition of DEI is adapted from a model bill by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a New York City-based conservative-leaning think tank that formed in 1978. Since its model bill was released in 2023, at least 10 states have introduced anti-DEI bills that include nearly identical language. Additionally, MI has informed the Trump administration\u2019s policy on gender-affirming care through collaboration on the Department of Health and Human Services\u2019 (HHS)\u00a0controversial pediatric gender dysphoria report<\/a>.<\/p>\n Prior to the 2020s, efforts to undermine LGBTQ+ rights were not a focus for MI. But since then, it began parroting many of the talking points of the anti-LGBTQ+ movement. While the shift may seem random, an assessment of MI\u2019s history and strategy reveals how these attacks fit into its broader political goals.<\/p>\n \u201cAttacking LGBTQ+ rights is an effective strategy because bluntly, people don\u2019t like gay people and don\u2019t like trans people,\u201d says Quinnehtukqut McLamore, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Missouri. \u201cIt\u2019s effective because it makes it really easy to get \u2026 Folks who usually don\u2019t sign on with right-wing agendas to back anti-trans positions which set precedent for greater advancement of right-wing goals.\u201d<\/p>\n The Manhattan Institute Didn\u2019t Originally Care About LGBTQ+ Issues <\/p>\n Since its founding nearly 50 years ago, MI has influenced conservative policy by crafting model legislation and publishing reports for lawmakers and lobbyists. Some of its longtime goals have included promoting libertarian economic policies,\u00a0discrediting teachers unions<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0deregulating healthcare<\/a>. Funded primarily by conservatives on Wall Street, MI has over $30 million in net assets as of its\u00a0most recent tax filings<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 1990, MI began publishing City Journal, where writers would advocate for conservative issues such as\u00a0lowering requirements to get a medical license<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0promoting charter schools<\/a>\u00a0over the public system.<\/p>\n Robert Asen, a professor of communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that this journal, which\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0over 350,000 monthly online visitors, helps MI maintain its influence.<\/p>\n \u201cThe City Journal gets, comparatively speaking for a public affairs journal, a lot of engagement \u2026 certainly more than any academic equivalent,\u201d Asen told Uncloseted Media. \u201cThere\u2019s the power of promotion that the Manhattan Institute provides: They are well-resourced in lots of ways, and that includes finances, connections, and other ways they can promote their ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n Paul Singer and Trump Ties <\/p>\n MI expanded its influence under the leadership of Paul Singer, who was\u00a0appointed<\/a>\u00a0chairman of the board of trustees in 2008. Singer, the founder of hedge fund Elliott Management and a major donor to conservative causes,\u00a0helped push<\/a>\u00a0MI further right in the 2010s, with Bloomberg later reporting he wanted it to become a \u201cWall Street equivalent of the Federalist Society,\u201d referencing the right-wing legal group best known for their\u00a0campaign to spot and groom<\/a>\u00a0potential federal judges, including all three of Trump\u2019s Supreme Court appointees.<\/p>\n Initially opposed to Donald Trump, Singer\u00a0cozied up<\/a>\u00a0to him after the 2016 election earned Singer\u2019s firm over $42 million through a spike in stock prices for private prisons.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to thank Paul Singer for being here. \u2026 He was a very strong opponent and now he\u2019s a very strong ally,\u201d Trump said in a 2017 press conference.<\/p>\n Their relationship became so friendly, Bloomberg reports, that staffers were allegedly \u201cdirected to write favorably about Trump\u2019s tax cuts for the wealthy\u2014or not write about them at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the next decade, members of MI would go on to be\u00a0employed<\/a>\u00a0by Trump. And officials from the president\u2019s first administration, including former Attorney General William Barr and former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, were later appointed to MI\u2019s board.<\/p>\n The Anti-Woke Pivot <\/p>\n While MI didn\u2019t originally prioritize social issues, Asen says that began to change in 2020. Public outcry and protests against the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers led many organizations to introduce changes to how they handled racism, often under the framework of DEI.<\/p>\n These moves drew intense backlash from social conservatives. Asen says MI played off this frustration and melded it with existing anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment to go all in on an ideology of \u201canti-wokeness.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese two things start to converge as what this right-wing advocacy group calls \u2018woke,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThis is wokeness, and wokeness is this oppressive discourse, wokeness is a threat to what we believe to be basic American values, and so we wish to stand against it.\u201d<\/p>\n As the anti-woke craze started taking over the Republican party, Christopher Rufo, a contributing editor at the time for City Journal, began writing articles with headlines like \u201cTeaching Hate<\/a>\u201d and \u201cAgainst Wokeness<\/a>.\u201d This advocacy led him to appear on Tucker Carlson\u2019s\u00a0show<\/a>\u00a0to urge President Trump to end racial sensitivity trainings for federal employees, calling them \u201ccritical race theory\u201d trainings. Days later, Trump\u00a0signed<\/a>\u00a0an executive order doing just that after retweeting the Fox News segment, and Rufo has since been widely credited with starting the national movements against\u00a0critical race theory<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0DEI<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThat kind of direct influence is something that is pretty remarkable about this network,\u201d Asen says.<\/p>\n Attacking Universities <\/p>\n Seeing the potential of this new rhetorical strategy, MI hired Rufo as a senior fellow and the director of the initiative on critical race theory in 2021. And by 2023, the institute released its\u00a0model legislation<\/a>, which Rufo penned, to ban DEI at public universities.<\/p>\n Language from that bill would be adopted, often verbatim, in bills introduced in Florida, Texas<\/a>, Iowa<\/a>, Mississippi<\/a>, Missouri<\/a>, South Carolina<\/a>, Oklahoma<\/a>, Pennsylvania<\/a>, West Virginia<\/a> and Arizona<\/a>. For example, several states use the verbatim definition of DEI from MI\u2019s model legislation, describing it as \u201cany effort to promote differential treatment of or provide special benefits to individuals on the basis of race, color, or ethnicity.\u201d<\/p>\n According to University of Michigan-Flint sociologist David J. Luke, this is a distortion of what the programs are actually about. \u201cIf I don\u2019t know what DEI is and someone is telling me that it is some policies that give Black people an unfair advantage, then I\u2019m not gonna like that,\u201d Luke told Uncloseted Media. \u201cThey are really designed to try to make things more fair, but groups that are advantaged by the status quo don\u2019t want things to be more fair.\u201d<\/p>\n Rufo has\u00a0remained the face<\/a>\u00a0of the anti-DEI campaign, which has been most successful in Florida. Documents obtained by\u00a0American Oversight<\/a>\u00a0show that DeSantis\u2019 office communicated directly with Rufo about his model legislation. In one email, a third party introduces DeSantis\u2019 director of external affairs to MI as a \u201cfriend of the movement.\u201d And in 2023, as part of his\u00a0efforts<\/a>\u00a0to root out \u201cwoke\u201d ideology at the New College of Florida, DeSantis\u00a0appointed<\/a>\u00a0Rufo to its board of trustees.<\/p>\n Joanna Wuest, a political scientist and professor at Stony Brook University, says that going after so-called \u201cwoke\u201d or \u201cDEI\u201d programs at universities allows MI to push its ideological opponents out from institutions where younger generations learn new ideas.<\/p>\n \u201c[It\u2019s] attacking anyone who is providing a counter-narrative to their idea that free market principles should undergird every part of American society,\u201d she told Uncloseted Media.<\/p>\n In an\u00a0article for City Journal<\/a>, Rufo boasted that his efforts at the New College of Florida, including abolishing the school\u2019s gender studies department and reworking the core curriculum, had led 36 left-wing faculty members to resign in just the first few months of his leadership.<\/p>\n \u201cThrough a combination of cultural incentives and good fortune, many of the most ideological, left-wing faculty members \u2026 have left the university \u2026 clearing the way for a large number of new hires interested in pursuing the great human questions rather than maintaining a stifling, left-wing echo chamber,\u201d Rufo wrote.<\/p>\n Luke warns Rufo\u2019s efforts are contributing to existing social disparities.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people that are losing their jobs are disproportionately people that hold marginalized identities \u2026 who are in these roles trying to help create these environments that support all students and their success,\u201d Luke says.<\/p>\n Even in states that haven\u2019t seen direct attacks, the hostile environment towards DEI and so-called woke policies has led many to fear speaking up about diverse topics. Asen says one of his graduate students, who was teaching a class that discussed demagoguery, approached him with concerns that they could be targeted if right-wing groups learned about the class.<\/p>\n \u201cThe issue about this discourse is that it creates a chilling effect regardless of whether there are formal laws or policies in place,\u201d Asen says. \u201cPeople feel more measured and more inclined to self-censor, and that\u2019s the point.\u201d<\/p>\n The Proxy War Against Public Schools <\/p>\n MI\u2019s attacks on education also target K-12 schools.\u00a0Starting in 2022<\/a>, it began\u00a0frequently<\/a>\u00a0demonizing schools<\/a>\u00a0for teaching \u201cradical gender\u201d ideology and \u201ctransitioning kids<\/a>\u00a0without parental consent.\u201d Wuest says this is because disparaging public schools supports its longtime policy goals related to school choice. She cites a 2022\u00a0speech<\/a>\u00a0by Rufo at Hillsdale College.<\/p>\n \u201cTo get universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust,\u201d Rufo said in the speech.<\/p>\n In another instance, Rufo has\u00a0labeled<\/a>\u00a0teachers unions \u201cthe enemy,\u201d\u00a0calling<\/a>\u00a0them \u201cinherently corrupt\u201d and\u00a0calling on<\/a>\u00a0Americans to \u201clay siege to the universities, abolish the teachers unions, and overturn the school boards.\u201d<\/p>\n MI\u2019s opposition to public schools in favor of the charter model is part of a\u00a0longtime battle<\/a>\u00a0against teachers unions, which it\u00a0claims<\/a>\u00a0have a \u201cdeath lock on education policy in the Democratic Party.\u201d Charter schools are rarely unionized, which MI has\u00a0cited<\/a>\u00a0as a benefit.<\/p>\n By fearmongering about teachers putting kids in danger through LGBTQ+-friendly policies, Wuest says MI is able to use anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment to help with its broader goal of discrediting the public school system.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Manhattan Institute and other libertarians are extremely opposed to labor unions, and so going after the public education system for being a bastion of woke indoctrination is a way of going after public sector teachers unions, which provide higher wages, benefits, protections for those workers,\u201d Wuest says. \u201cBut also the teachers unions are an important political mobilizing arm of the Democratic party, and so it\u2019s also a way of going after liberal\/progressive politics more generally.\u201d<\/p>\n Anti-Trans Attacks Fuel Healthcare Goals <\/p>\n In addition to opposing DEI, MI began establishing itself as a key player in the fight against gender-affirming care in 2022. Over the next two years, billionaire Joseph Edelman, the founder and CEO of healthcare-focused investment firm Perceptive Advisors,\u00a0donated\u00a0$500,000<\/a>\u00a0to the group to provide support for a \u201cgender identity initiative.\u201d MI has not publicly identified the mission of the initiative.<\/p>\n The same year, MI\u00a0hired<\/a>\u00a0Leor Sapir, a political scientist who wrote his\u00a0dissertation<\/a>\u00a0in 2020 about how trans activism had gone too far. Sapir began writing for both MI and City Journal about the alleged excesses of trans activism. He penned articles including \u201cTransgender Confusions<\/a>\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t Say \u2018They.\u2019<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n The institute also hired Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist who joined Sapir in leading what MI\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0its \u201cglobal effort to end pediatric sex-trait modifications,\u201d referring to gender-affirming care for kids. Wright was previously an academic advisor for the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine, a\u00a0Southern Poverty Law Center-designated<\/a>\u00a0anti-LGBTQ+ hate group.<\/p>\n Since then, they\u2019ve helped steer the Trump administration\u2019s trans policy. Sapir led the\u00a0HHS<\/a>\u00a0report on pediatric gender medicine, which health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u00a0cited<\/a>\u00a0in a thwarted attempt to cut federal funding to hospitals providing gender-affirming care to minors. Sapir\u00a0later said<\/a>\u00a0that the Trump administration approached him directly for this role.<\/p>\n And MI\u00a0claims<\/a>\u00a0that two of Trump\u2019s executive orders that prohibit federal funding for transition surgeries for minors and that reject trans identities by defining \u201cbiological sex\u201d were inspired by Sapir\u2019s and Wright\u2019s work.<\/p>\n \u201cThe original strategies that [MI]\u00a0articulated<\/a>\u00a0were basically what is happening in blue states right now\u2014basically, intimidate the clinics out of offering the care in the first place,\u201d Quinnehtukqut McLamore says.<\/p>\n Wuest says anti-LGBTQ+ healthcare policy gives MI and its funders an avenue to attack medical professional organizations, which has been a goal of the organization since its inception.<\/p>\n For example, the American Medical Association (AMA) aims to improve the quality of U.S. healthcare by holding medical schools to certain standards of rigor to obtain accreditation and by lobbying the government for more regulations. MI, strong proponents of an unfettered free market, have\u00a0come<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0blows<\/a>\u00a0with the AMA numerous times, arguing that these regulatory measures hold back progress.<\/p>\n \u201c[MI] has been especially concerned with these associations\u2019 role in crafting healthcare regulations that protect patient health and safety while boosting licensed healthcare workers\u2019 wages,\u201d Wuest says. \u201cLicensure and other healthcare regulations, Manhattan writers have often argued, are an undue and inefficient imposition on the free market.\u201d<\/p>\n She adds that MI\u2019s entry into anti-trans policy allows them to capitalize off of souring public sentiments on gender-affirming healthcare. This helps them leverage new\u00a0attacks<\/a>\u00a0on the\u00a0credibility<\/a>\u00a0of the AMA and other organizations like it. Susan Lebovitz-Edelman, an MI trustee and wife of Joseph Edelman, has\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that to fight wokeness in healthcare, the industry must \u201chold accreditors [like the AMA] accountable and end their stranglehold on medical education.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAttacking the AMA\u2019s role in buttressing gender-affirming care \u2026 is part of their larger effort to show that these groups are ideologically captured and that they\u2019re otherwise abandoning their duty to guide Americans in finding evidence-based care,\u201d Wuest says. \u201cThe gender-affirming care stuff is a way of de-legitimating the AMA\u2019s role in guiding best healthcare practices.\u201d<\/p>\n The Impact <\/p>\n MI\u2019s advocacy has helped undermine institutional support for trans healthcare, which\u00a0most major medical organizations<\/a>\u00a0support and has been described as\u00a0life-saving<\/a>.<\/p>\n A 2023\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0by Rufo covered details from the\u00a0leaked personal healthcare records<\/a>\u00a0of trans kids at the Texas Children\u2019s Hospital and sparked an investigation that\u00a0forced<\/a>\u00a0the hospital to stop providing gender-affirming care to minors and open the nation\u2019s first \u201cdetransition clinic.\u201d And Sapir\u2019s lobbying through the HHS report\u00a0helped influence<\/a>\u00a0the American Society of Plastic Surgeons\u2019 decision to recommend against gender-affirming surgeries for people under 19.<\/p>\n In higher education, Luke says that while some of Trump\u2019s anti-DEI attacks on universities have been\u00a0legally dubious<\/a>, universities have been quick to comply anyway.\u00a0More than 300<\/a>\u00a0colleges and universities have rolled back their DEI policies under Trump\u2019s second term, and schools like Texas A&M have\u00a0fired professors<\/a>\u00a0for allegedly teaching gender identity concepts in class.<\/p>\n \u201c[MI\u2019s] attacks have aligned successfully with policy goals, as various states have passed anti-trans laws and the federal government has adopted an anti-trans posture,\u201d Asen says.<\/p>\n The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research did not respond to Uncloseted Media\u2019s request for an interview or comment for this story.<\/p>\n Editor\u2019s note: This piece benefited from the extraordinary work of Ms. fact-checking fellow Ava Slocum<\/a>.<\/p>\nA protest outside the Cipriani event venue, which hosted a gala costing $50,000 per table to fund the Manhattan Institute, a right-wing think tank, in Midtown in New York City on May 7, 2025. (Mostafa Bassim \/ Anadolu via Getty Images) <\/p>\n