WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.”
Members of Congress, Trump administration officials, donors and right-wing pundits gathered this week for the annual National Conservatism Conference — a gathering once seen as fringe, now asserting itself as the GOP’s dominant ideological force. Panel titles ranged from “The Threat of Islamism in America” to “The Bible and American Renewal” to “Overturn Obergefell,” the Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage.
It all underscored the movement's vision of an America rooted in limited immigration, Christian identity and the preservation of what speakers called the nation’s traditional culture.
Schmitt, a first-term senator, followed a GOP donor’s speech on “The Problem of Our Time: White Guilt” with a talk of his own titled “What is an American?” In it, Schmitt criticized some legal immigration, declared that “America doesn’t belong to them — it belongs to us,” and insisted, “We can no longer apologize for who we are.”
“Our people tamed the continent, built a civilization from the wilderness,” Schmitt said. “We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims who poured out onto the ocean’s shores.”
‘America is not just an idea’
In July 2024, then-Sen. JD Vance used his Republican National Convention speech after accepting the vice presidential nomination to declare: “America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”
That idea is central to what national conservatism is. With its first conference in the U.S. in 2019, the national conservatism movement is a project of the Edmund Burke Foundation, a conservative U.S. think tank. Its founder, Israeli political theorist Yoram Hazony, defines national conservatism as a political philosophy centered on the restoration and preservation of national and religious traditions — ideals he says are essential to a nation’s long-term strength and cohesion.
Vance has spoken at multiple National Conservatism Conferences and in 2021 credited Hazony as “quite influential to me.” His elevation to vice president — and the policy shifts that followed — signaled that the movement had fully arrived in power.
In 2021, while campaigning for the Senate, Vance delivered the conference keynote, calling on conservatives to “honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” Four years later, the Trump administration has done just that, targeting universities by cutting their funding.
In the shadow of the White House
This year's conference was held in the heart of Washington, just blocks from the White House.
High-profile speakers included Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, White House budget director Russell Vought, Trump border czar Tom Homan, and three U.S. senators. The speaker list also featured more controversial figures, such as John Eastman — an ex-Trump attorney central in efforts to overturn the 2020 election after Trump's loss to Democrat Joe Biden — and Calvin Robinson, a Michigan priest who lost his license after mimicking a straight-arm gesture interpreted by some as a Nazi salute.
Many of the top speakers used their time to defend Trump administration policies and lash out at critics. Vought declared that the Government Accountability Office “shouldn’t exist” after it said his latest effort to claw back funds already approved by Congress is illegal. On the broader push for the rollback of appropriated funds, or rescissions, he said, “If Congress has given us authority that is too broad, then we’re going to use that authority aggressively to protect the American people.”
On an “Overturn Obergefell” panel, Katy Faust, a right-wing author, argued that legalizing gay marriage had weakened the rights of biological parents: “The moment the state has the power to assign parenthood to strangers, it can unassign it from you. Your legal relationship to the children you’ve begotten is weaker than it was a decade ago.”
Thomas Klingenstein, a top Republican donor, argued in a speech that the greatest problem facing the nation is “white guilt.”
“Many Americans voted for President Trump in 2016 because he told them what they knew but needed to hear: America could be great again,” said Klingenstein. "Now, Trump must tell them something else they know but need to hear: America is no longer guilty of systemic racism, or most any racism for that matter.”
'What winning looks like'
The 2025 conference served in part as a celebration. The founder, Hazony, opened the event with a speech about “what winning looks like.” Vought urged attendees to further push forward the movement “so that the movement built around President Trump is a durable intellectual river.”
But no one made a louder entrance than Missouri’s junior senator, Schmitt.
Opening his 30-minute address with force, Schmitt declared the moment “a revolt within the right.” He offered immigration policy as the prime example.
“The old conservative establishment may have opposed something like illegal immigration on procedural grounds, simply because it was illegal,” he said. “At this point, it should be clear that the fact that something is sanctioned by our government does not mean it’s good for our country.
“That much is obvious with various forms of legal immigration today.”
He closed by outlining his view that America is “a nation and a people, with its own distinct history and heritage and interests.”
That heritage, he said, is one of pilgrims and settlers who repelled “wave after wave of Indian war band attacks.” He said “every great feat of the modern world bore American fingerprints,” calling those who built skyscrapers, split the atom, invented the airplane and walked on the moon.
“America, in all its glory, is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, our heritage, our destiny,” Schmitt said.
Though the ballroom was only half full, Schmitt’s remarks quickly reverberated online, as his team pushed out clips across social media.
In just over two years, he has built a close alliance with Trump, helping move key legislation through the Senate. But this speech marked something more: a signal that national conservatism now has a firm foothold in the halls of Congress.
“We’re not sorry. Why would we be sorry?” Schmitt said in closing. “America is the proudest and most magnificent heritage ever known to man.”