Washington – 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 A

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