CNP Coordinates National COVID-19 Anti-Lockdown Protest Movement

In April 2020, CNP Action (the 501(c)(4) affiliate of the Council for National Policy) began hosting weekly conference calls to coordinate conservative response tactics to the COVID-19 pandemic, mobilizing Tea Party-like protests against virus-related public safety lockdowns in swing states.

The coordination effort demonstrated CNP’s power as a command-and-control hub for the conservative movement. CNP Action organized weekly calls with conservative figures to promote anti-lockdown protests and publish action memos around reopening states’ economies, working alongside close allies who helped coordinate the on-the-ground protests.

The first conference call featured Stephen Moore (who founded the Committee to Unleash Prosperity), Heritage Foundation’s Ed Meese (former Reagan Attorney General and early CNP member), and Al Regnery (chairman of CNP’s Conservative Action Project). Moore and FreedomWorks helped coordinate the actual lockdown protests.

The second call featured ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson and State Policy Network CEO Tracie Sharp, with the announcement email linking to information about an April 21 car protest at the Alabama Capitol Building in Montgomery. This demonstrated the coordination between CNP and its institutional partners - ALEC and SPN - in executing coordinated grassroots mobilization.

The anti-lockdown protest coordination revealed CNP’s operational model: the secretive organization hosted strategy calls among elite conservative institutional leaders, who then activated their respective organizations’ grassroots networks to execute coordinated protests that appeared spontaneous but were centrally planned.

This represented the same coordination infrastructure that had built the Tea Party movement, applied to COVID-19 public health policy. CNP’s ability to rapidly deploy coordinated protests across multiple states demonstrated the operational sophistication of the conservative coordination network.

The effort prioritized economic reopening and opposition to public health measures over pandemic response, revealing how CNP coordinated conservative messaging and mobilization across institutional boundaries. The weekly calls functioned as a strategic coordination mechanism linking Heritage, ALEC, FreedomWorks, and other CNP member organizations in real-time response to current events.