The League of American Workers is a “populist right, pro-worker organization,” according to its founder, Steve Cortes, a longtime conservative pundit and former Donald Trump spokesperson. The group’s website claims Cortes is leading “a young and growing movement of pro-worker patriotic populism.”

There’s certainly plenty of room to grow, The Intercept found. By all indications, this “league” is a one-man show without apparent ties to the “disregarded American workers” Cortes claims to represent. Instead, the League of American Workers has links to GOP dark money and a network of conservative websites dressed up to look like local news outlets.

“Of course it is astroturfing,” said Jody Calemine, director of advocacy at AFL-CIO. “Its founder is a TV personality with a far-right agenda.”

Speaking for American workers is a new gig for Cortes, a Georgetown graduate who toiled on Wall Street before landing a Trump administration role and founding a boutique consultancy for “institutional investors and sophisticated individuals” that he runs to this day. Since its launch in 2023, Cortes has used the League of American Workers as a comms shop to peddle an anti-union version of blue-collar populism. His league is also one of dozens on the advisory board for Project 2025.

Cortes would not answer basic questions about the leadership structure and funding for the League of American Workers and did not provide details about his group’s role in Project 2025.

“I’m honored to help the crucial Project 2025 effort,” he told The Intercept, “to fully staff up a second Trump term with the most talented and philosophically aligned public servants possible to implement an America First national renewal.”

John Logan, a labor historian who has written about astroturfing strategies, said it was tempting to dismiss Cortes “as a Georgetown-educated MAGA supporter trying to pretend to be this populist who cares about the working class.”

“To the extent there is a coherent message,” Logan said after reviewing the League of American Workers’ skeletal website and videos, “it is a very deliberate strategy to win in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.”

“It’s sometimes difficult to predict who will be the most effective spokesperson for right-wing populism.”

Suits to Baseball Caps

“Patriots, I am coming to you from a crime scene: the U.S.-Mexico Border,” Cortes said in the opening of a recent video bashing President Joe Biden on immigration.

The talking points are familiar terrain for Cortes, who pitched MAGA border policies as Trump’s campaign spokesperson and emissary to Hispanic voters. Something’s changed, though: Cortes, a former hedge fund trader, ditched his suit and tie for a baseball hat as he beams at a segment of the border fence he once hawked on primetime.

Cortes has burned through titles and positions over the past decade, many of them contradictory. While squawking on CNBC, he was a harsh critic of then-candidate Trump’s populism (and hat choices), then he joined Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaign teams. At Trump’s direction, he became a CNN contributor to be, as Cortes characterized it recently, “his spokesman and advocate on that network.”

Cortes’ CV also includes a brief stint at Newsmax and stumping for J.D. Vance’s Senate campaign in 2022.

Over the past year, Cortes flipped from Team Trump to Team DeSantis and back again. He helped lead a super PAC backing Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, then stepped away last October to launch a poorly watched YouTube channel, which he’s seemingly abandoned. After the Iowa caucuses in January, Cortes crawled back on the Trump train with........

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