A Republican program that could resemble a Trump rally

Steve Nagel, a North Dakota-based chiropractor and radio host, has often argued that vaccines of all types lead to worse health problems for children.

Demi Kouzounas oversaw a party platform as chairwoman of the Maine state Republican committee that defined the teaching of non-binary genders in public schools as child sexual abuse.

David Barton, an amateur historian from Texas, has long called the separation of church and state a myth.

All three are among 112 delegates on the Republican Party's national platform committee, which will meet in Milwaukee on Monday to spend the next two days drafting the GOP's first platform since 2016.

The primary goal is to craft a short 2024 document that is a pledge of allegiance to former President Donald J. Trump rather than a partisan statement of values, as the platform has traditionally portrayed it, according to interviews with a dozen platform officials and other Republicans. Mr. Trump’s top campaign advisers, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, have already signaled their intention to produce a simplified platform, with policy details reduced to a minimum.

The platform is expected to be a fraction of the 60 pages Republicans produced in 2016 and is expected to echo Mr. Trump’s America First agenda, with calls for border restrictions and increased tariffs on China. It is expected to condemn the Biden administration for ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, as well as high, if falling, inflation.

It's not yet clear whether abortion or other social issues will be discussed. But it's likely to reflect the candidates' penchant for clear, hard-hitting messages, a campaign spokeswoman said.

To be sure, all party platforms are a litany of principles that carry no legislative weight. They are not Magna Cartas. Few people outside of party activists and opposition researchers know what they contain. The Republican Party even refused to propose a new platform in 2020 and instead produced what was essentially a carbon copy of the 2016 one.

Still, they offer a glimpse into the general direction of a political party. In this case, Republicans say, that's the direction Mr. Trump wants.

To do this, the first step was to select the members of the committee, which consists of two representatives from each U.S. state and territory. Typically, each state selects two representatives from among the convention delegates, based on advice from the state party leader. The representatives are often longtime party stalwarts.

But the Trump campaign, Republican officials said, had its own ideas. “There were a lot of people who wanted to be on the platform committee but couldn’t get on it,” said Henry Barbour, who is a Mississippi committeeman for the Republican National Committee. The Trump campaign won most of those battles.

The campaign, Mr. Barbour added, has focused more on the people on the committee than previous ones.

Christine Vail was one of the beneficiaries of that decision. When Ms. Vail, a Nebraska businesswoman, was informed by local Republican officials that she had been selected to be one of the state’s representatives on the platform committee, she protested that there must be some mistake. Although deeply in love with Mr. Trump, Ms. Vail was neither a Republican activist nor a political enthusiast.

“I’m more of a Trumplian than a real Republican,” she recalls saying.

The response, Vail said, was: “That's exactly what we want.”

The co-optation of the platform committee by Mr. Trump’s campaign operation follows its hostile takeover of the Republican National Committee. The former national chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, was ousted on Feb. 26 and replaced days later by two close allies of Mr. Trump: Michael Whatley, the former North Carolina state party chairman, and Lara Trump, the Fox News commentator and wife of Mr. Trump’s son, Eric. The new leadership fired dozens of RNC staffers. Some were rehired, but only after they gave satisfactory answers to questions, including whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen.

There is growing evidence that the campaign intends to keep the platform committee under control. The committee’s political director and deputy director are two staunch Trump allies: Russ Vought, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget during the Trump administration, and Ed Martin, a prominent social conservative and co-author of a 2016 book called The Conservative Case for Trump.

The committee broke with tradition again by decreeing that the two days of meetings in Milwaukee will be closed to the media and will not be broadcast live. It also withheld the names of the representatives to protect them, an RNC spokeswoman said, from outside influence.

“When I was on the committee in 2012, I was inundated with people wanting to meet with me,” said Rep. Julie Harris, D-Arkansas and president of the National Federation of Republican Women. “This time, I wasn’t approached at all.” The federation, she said, has 27 members on the platform committee.

The New York Times obtained a full list of party platform representatives and verified most of those listed by contacting each of the state parties. One of the Florida representatives is Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

Florida’s other representative, Kevin Marino Cabrera, was Trump’s campaign manager in 2020. In an interview, Mr. Cabrera was unequivocal about the kind of document he intended to co-author. “The platform has to reflect the views of our candidates,” he said. He became our candidate with the overwhelming support of Republican voters and it’s important that we unite around him.

Florida isn’t the only one sending Trump affiliates to Milwaukee. One of the representatives on the New Hampshire platform committee is Stephen Stepanek, who led the campaign’s operations in that state earlier this year. John Fredericks was Trump’s Virginia campaign chairman in the previous two cycles. He has since moved to Pennsylvania and is one of his two representatives.

Jennifer Korn of California and Bronwyn Haltom of Michigan both worked in the Trump White House. Jessica Hart Steinmann of Texas was a Justice Department lawyer in the Trump administration, while Derek Harvey, a Maryland representative on the committee, worked on the former president’s National Security Council. An Ohio representative, Emily Moreno Miller, is the wife of Representative Max Miller, who previously served as a senior adviser in Mr. Trump’s White House. Alex Kolodin, an Arizona representative and attorney, filed multiple lawsuits seeking to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss in that state and was sanctioned by the state bar for doing so.

Jennifer Nerbonne of Rhode Island also served on the committee. She said in an interview that she considers Trump’s rallies a life-changing experience and that she listens to the ones she can’t attend live while she jogs. Nerbonne added that her goal on the committee would be to align the platform with Trump’s priorities. “I trust all of his decisions.”

In an interview, Mr. Barbour supported the idea of ​​a shorter, more focused policy agenda. Conventions are about winning, he said, not publishing an encyclopedia of all our views.

But other Republicans are pushing back against the idea of ​​a platform tailored to the needs of a single candidate. “This is not about the triumph of ideas,” said Marc Racicot, the former Montana governor who chaired the RNC from 2002 to 2004. “This is about the triumph of Donald Trump. It’s frankly embarrassing.”

The prospect of a drastic ideological dilution of its content has stirred discontent even among some Trump loyalists. “This has to be a founding document, bigger than any individual or any race,” said Jim Dotson, a former Arkansas senator who sits on the platform committee. “In particular,” Mr. Dotson said, “I hope there’s broad agreement that we’re not going to backslide from the solidly pro-life position that we’ve always had as a party.”

For several platform committee representatives gathered in Milwaukee, including Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Tim Huelskamp, ​​the former Kansas congressman’s opposition to abortion remains a defining issue. Their fervor is not shared by Mr. Trump, who has said abortion restrictions should be left to the states.

A tepid reference to abortion in the platform is unlikely to go down well with outside conservative groups like Advancing American Freedom, founded by Mr. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence. In a letter sent to all Republican delegates earlier this week, the group insisted that the platform was a promise to unborn Americans that they would never stop fighting for their right to life. The group’s policy director, John Shelton, predicted in an interview that the result would be a perfunctory nod to anti-abortion activists: There will be a revolt.

Michael Steele, the former GOP national chairman who is now a vocal critic of his party, was skeptical of Mr. Shelton's prediction.

If Trump suddenly announced he was pro-choice, Mr. Steele said, they would say, “I wish you wouldn’t say it so loudly, but okay, sir.”

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