The debate over the direction of the post-Trump right is underway, and one of the first casualties is the Heritage Foundation. On Monday some of its most important conservative scholars and their policy departments said they are leaving Heritage to join Mike Pence’s policy shop.
Some 15 or more Heritage employees, including the leaders of three prominent policy departments, are jumping to the Advancing American Freedom foundation that the former Vice President established in 2021.
The defectors include the leaders of Heritage’s most important policy shops: The Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, the Center for Data Analysis, and the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies.
The move by John Malcolm and his colleagues at the Meese Center is especially notable. We’re told it is endorsed by Mr. Meese, the Reagan-era Attorney General who is now 94 years old and has been a fixture at Heritage.
The Roe Institute is the think tank’s free-market shop — or it was before Heritage embraced Trumpian industrial policy. One data project stifled at Heritage is to map the district-by-district impact of the Trump tariffs.
“They called us first,” says Mr. Pence about the defectors. “They see us as being a consistent, reliable home for Reagan conservatism.”
Or maybe simply conservatism, which Heritage was founded to promote and did for decades. But that changed with the arrival of Kevin Roberts as president, who tried to play the game of populist politics rather than promote the think tank’s traditional principles.
Heritage once supported free trade; now it is protectionist. It once supported a robust American foreign policy; Heritage purged its defense hawks two years ago. Heritage was a supporter of the originalist judicial revolution and the rule of law; now it defends Mr. Trump’s expansion of executive power whether or not it has a constitutional basis.
The Heritage turn has been the work of Mr. Roberts and the young Tucker Carlson admirers he brought on board. Conservatives need to “know what time it is,” Mr. Roberts likes to say as a sneer at conservatives who believe the movement should still stand for more than a lunge for power.
Tension has been building inside Heritage for a long time. It broke into the open after Mr. Roberts said there should be no enemies to the right as he defended Mr. Carlson’s softball interview with Nazi fanboy Nick Fuentes.
Several Heritage board members have resigned, as has Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore.
Monday’s departures are the largest so far, and they underscore how far Heritage has wandered under Mr. Roberts. Mr. Pence and his board have set a target of $15 million from donors to finance the defecting analysts for three years, and as of Friday we hear they had raised more than $13 million.
Later on Monday two other Heritage stalwarts, Cully Stimson and Hans von Spakovsky, also resigned with what they called “a heavy heart and profound sadness.”
Mr. Trump’s agenda has dominated the right for nearly a decade, but the presidential race of 2028 will go a long way to determine what the Republican Party and especially its conservative wing will stand for in the future.
Heritage might still play a role under new leadership, but its board has been slow to appreciate the internal dissatisfaction.
A think tank is fundamentally a collection of people and donors who believe in certain ideas and principles. Heritage abandoned its principles, it is losing its people, and soon there might not be much left to donate to.
