There are numerous think tanks in the United States that seek to influence local, state, and national policy. A relative newcomer gaining attention in President Donald Trump’s Washington is the Texas-based Brownstone Institute.
Liberal writer Jeffrey Tucker founded the institute in 2021 on the strength of: Backlash against COVID-19 lockdown and other pandemic-era policies. Opponents of his institute seek to limit the government’s role in protecting people from disease. In recent months, people associated with the group have risen to the highest levels of the U.S. government.
At least eight people linked to Brownstone Institute have held senior positions in federal health agencies or have had key roles advising the government, including on a key vaccine panel that advises the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
They are already changing the direction of American public health policy. For example, people associated with the institute have sowed doubts about COVID-19 vaccines and routine childhood immunizations, dismissing extensive evidence that they are safe and that the benefits outweigh the risks.
“They have successfully placed their ideology inside the mechanism that determines U.S. vaccine policy,” said Jake Scott, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University School of Medicine. “I am very, very concerned.”
Brownstone Institute’s website states: It works “We support writers, lawyers, scientists, economists and other courageous people who have been professionally purged and exiled during the upheavals of our time.”
“There are risks associated with state-imposed orthodoxy,” Tucker told KFF Health News. “I think Brownstone has a moral obligation to look after dissidents and create an environment where they can test their ideas against people with whom they disagree.”
Brownstone’s critics say his colleagues are making extreme claims about vaccines and promoting anti-vaccine messages.
“They were willing to publish articles by very extreme anti-vaxxers,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco School of Law who focuses on vaccine-related legal and policy issues.
The nonprofit reported about $7.4 million in donations, grants and other payments from 2021 to 2024.
Despite the rise of people associated with his group, Tucker said, “Anyone who thinks Brownstone is some big conspiracy is crazy.” He said he is not in regular contact with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the CDC, FDA and NIH.
“I don’t have any influence,” Tucker said.
