WSJ: Crack-Up at Heritage

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The Heritage Foundation is no ordinary think tank. Since the days of Ronald Reagan, it has been the conservative movement on the march, delivering ready-made policies and battle-hardened pundits to Republican presidents. Heritage spoke proudly with “one voice,” insisting that its scholars take a unified stand on key issues.

Today, that almost military discipline has collapsed, and many current and former staffers blame Kevin Roberts, who took over as the foundation’s president in 2021. They joke that the group’s operating principle is now more of a “one man” policy, with Roberts moving aggressively to align the think tank with the Make America Great Again movement. As Democrats revel in their electoral success this week, the divisions at Heritage highlight growing fractures facing President Trump’s winning 2024 coalition.

The long-simmering conflict between Roberts and the institute’s old guard spilled into public view in recent days. The immediate cause was a video posted by Roberts late last month defending Tucker Carlson, who drew widespread condemnation for his respectful interview with the right-wing influencer Nick Fuentes, an avowed white supremacist and Holocaust denier....

Roberts is now facing the biggest threat to his leadership in his four years at the helm of Heritage. His handling of the unfolding crisis is a test not just of the MAGA right’s entanglement with antisemitism but of its often hostile relationship to longstanding Republican principles....

In a nearly three-minute video posted on social media on Oct. 30, Roberts defended Carlson from the “venomous coalition attacking him” for giving a platform to Fuentes and not asking him tough questions about his positions. “I disagree with, even abhor, things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer either,” Roberts said.

Heritage staff were stunned by the video and confused about why Roberts felt the need to weigh in at all. Multiple Heritage employees have resigned in recent days, along with several volunteer members of the think tank’s task force on antisemitism. Heritage’s Board of Trustees, stacked with Reagan-loving conservatives, has come under pressure to take action against Roberts.....

While Trump himself has been supportive of Israel, a growing anti-interventionist wing in the Republican Party is questioning U.S. support for the country. Some conservative influencers have gone even further, repeating antisemitic tropes about Israel’s influence over the U.S. and falsely suggesting that the country was tied to the killing of activist Charlie Kirk.....

His efforts to walk back his earlier remarks come as board members and staff have publicly posted their criticism of him on social media, including a meme that reads, “Nazis are bad.” The backlash from within the organization has angered Roberts’s allies at the think tank.

Roberts, 51, the former president of a small Catholic college, has the credentials of a think tank intellectual with a dash of MAGA’s pugnacious branding. He previously served as CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a training ground for some future Trump administration officials. When he was hired, Heritage board members hoped he would be able to walk the line between old and new as Heritage expanded to include more pro-MAGA intellectuals.

One of the ways Roberts has reshaped the group is by changing how Heritage’s long-time “one voice” policy is carried out. Unlike other think tanks, which encourage open debate, Heritage expects scholars to come up with a consensus position for the think tank instead of presenting a set of differing opinions on a particular topic. Former employees say Roberts has used that policy to align Heritage with the MAGA movement, especially in moving away from hawkish foreign-policy views and free-trade principles.

If scholars drift from the think tank’s position, they may get called to Heritage’s 8th floor offices, where Roberts works, for a discussion with one of his deputies, according to people who have worked there. Staff have taken to drawing comparisons with communist regimes, referring to the 8th floor as the “Politburo,” they said.

The outcry from staff over the video caused one Roberts ally to leap into action. After several Heritage staffers spoke out on social media about the Carlson interview, Tom Jones, head of the American Accountability Foundation, which received a grant from Heritage, sent an email to congressional offices advising them against hiring staff who had publicly criticized Roberts. The email listed the staff by name and included screenshots of their social media posts, according to a copy of the document reviewed by the Journal....

The Heritage staff meeting on Wednesday illustrated a generational divide among conservatives over Carlson. Several veteran staffers expressed concerns. At least one staffer said Gen Z staff at the think tank agreed with the substance of Roberts’s video and expressed support for Carlson....

Critics viewed Roberts’s video as part of an ideology characterized as “no enemies to the right” (a reference to the French Revolution’s concept of “no enemies to the left”), which is gaining ground in the MAGA movement. Proponents argue that infighting undermines the movement’s broader effectiveness, so it should stop.

“Any tent that is big enough for them,” said Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, referring to Fuentes and others with extremist views, “is too big for me.” Goldfeder resigned from Heritage’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism in the aftermath of Roberts’s video.

Leaders of the task force said in an email Thursday that they would distance themselves from Heritage and continue their work outside of the think tank. Goldfeder said he plans to rejoin....

“For me, that’s when I knew the ‘one voice’ policy was gone and it was a ‘one man’ policy,” said Coffey, who resigned as a result of the organization’s policy reversal on Ukraine....

The group has also backed away from its long-standing free-trade philosophy to support Trump’s tariff policies.

“The strategy that we’ve really outlined is we want free-er trade and we want fairer trade, and Trump’s strategy may deliver both,” said Stephen Moore, who has served as an economic adviser to Trump and until this week was a visiting fellow at Heritage....

Moore said Thursday in a post on X he was resigning from Heritage to focus on other projects....

Roberts’s efforts to tie Heritage to Trump initially surprised some who didn’t view him as a diehard Trump supporter. Before it became clear that Trump would win the 2024 Republican primary, Roberts expressed disappointment in some of Trump’s positions, including his reluctance to embrace abortion restrictions, according to people familiar with his comments. In a since-deleted post on X, Roberts also condemned the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021....

In February, Heritage’s board received a detailed, anonymous complaint against Roberts’s management style from a staffer. A copy of the letter was reviewed by the Journal at the time. Roberts should be dismissed, the letter said, for destroying Heritage’s “cherished legacy in record time.” It is “no longer a think tank. It is now a public relations organization that few in Washington respect.”...

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