Tim Dunn

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM

• In 2010, Dunn reportedly told Joe Straus—a Jewish Republican serving as Speaker of the Texas House—that only Christians should hold leadership positions. (Dunn has denied saying this, though Straus has publicly confirmed it.)
• In March 2024,Texas Monthly called Dunn “the billionaire bully who wants to turn Texas into a Christian theocracy.”
• ProPublica reported that a Republican activist who once worked for Texas Scorecard, a Dunn-associated media group, said that Dunn and his close ally and fellow oil billionaire Farris Wilks “want to get Christians in office to change the ordinances, laws, rules and regulations to fit the Bible.”
• Said that “politics and religion are inseparable” and that “the Bible is mainly a book about politics.”
• Has railed against unnamed figures he considers “Marxists,” saying that “they’re becoming bolder and more brazen in their quest for tyranny. It’s becoming clear they want to kill us.”

CONTROVERSIES

• Director of The Convention of States Project, a right-wing group that advocates for a new constitutional convention. Mark Meckler, the president of the organization and a friend of Dunn’s, told Fox that the aim of the convention is to “to reverse 115 years of progressivism.” The group is largely focused on “limiting the power and jurisdiction of the federal government”—though it has also published a defense of Christian nationalism.
• In October 2023, Jonathan Stickland, president of the Dunn-backed Defend Texas Liberty, met for several hours with the white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who is well known for regularly praising Hitler and engaging in Holocaust denial. The Texas Tribune subsequently reported on the links between Defend Texas Liberty and other white supremacist figures.
  • The scandal led the Texas GOP’s executive committee to consider a resolution to bar the party from associating with individuals or groups “known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial.” The committee initially voted against the ban but months later passed a watered-down version that simply stated the party’s opposition to antisemitism or support for attacks on Israel.
• Funder of Empower Texans, which backed Bo French, former Tarrant County GOP chair, who has a history of using inflammatory and offensive language. For instance, in June 2025 he posted a poll to his X account asking his followers whether “Jews” or “Muslims” pose “a bigger threat to America.”

OBSCENE SPENDING

• Lives in a mansion on a 20-acre compound in Midland, TX, not far from Midland Classical Academy, the unaccredited private Christian K-12 school that he founded in 1998.
• Part-owner of a 2022 Cessna Citation Latitude, a private jet that can go for between $17.5 and $19.5 million.

ENABLING

Trump Administration

Dunn is a key funder of several think tanks that have been massively influential in the second Trump administration. He is a founding board member of the America First Policy Institute, which prior to the second Trump administration was home to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, among others. He has also provided funding to Stephen Miller’s America First Legal and Russ Vought’s Center for Renewing America—the latter of which explicitly listed “Christian nationalism” as a priority in internal documents.

The Climate Crisis

Dunn amassed his fortune as CEO of CrownQuest, a large fracking and oil drilling company. In accordance with his private interests, he has long funded climate denial—and personally espoused it. At a 2023 America First Policy Institute event, he said, “It would be ideal if we could get rid of this ‘CO2 as a pollutant’ business.” Dunn’s Convention of States has published blogs calling climate change a “hoax,” comparing the Green New Deal to fascism, and declaring that “the time has come for every federally-employed climate advisor to quake in their boots.”