Heritage Foundation Undergoes Mass Staff Exodus as Cracks Open on the New Right
The divisions are no longer just between pro-Trump and anti-Trump conservatives.
Nearly the entire legal and economic policy staff of the Heritage Foundation is departing the conservative think tank, and many will be taking up posts at Advancing American Freedom (AAF), a nonprofit founded in 2021 by former Vice President Mike Pence. The mass exodus represents a dramatic rebuke of Heritage President Kevin Roberts in the wake of his refusal to retract an October video defending Tucker Carlson for conducting a friendly interview with the antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes.
"Why these people are coming our way is that Heritage and some other voices and commentators have embraced big-government populism and have been willing to tolerate antisemitism," Pence told The Wall Street Journal.
More than 30 employees at the Heritage Foundation's Institute for Constitutional Government, Ed Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, Center for Data Analysis, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, and Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget have resigned or were fired in the last few days. Those departing include Amy Swearer, who told Roberts he had lost her confidence as a leader during an all-staff meeting in November that leaked to the press, and John Malcolm, a Heritage vice president and the foundation's top legal scholar, who was fired last Thursday after Roberts caught wind of the plan to leave for AAF, according to multiple sources. E.J. Antoni—who was briefly President Donald Trump's nominee for Commissioner of Labor Statistics—is staying on and will serve as acting director of several of the aforementioned teams.
The departures follow resignations by three Heritage Foundation trustees: Princeton professor Robby George, businessman Shane McCullar, and philanthropist Abby Spencer Moffat. Sources say Moffat, who serves as president and CEO of the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, has also withdrawn millions of dollars in funding from Heritage—and that she's not the only one. (Some of that money may have been redirected to Pence's group; "AAF said it was able to raise more than $10 million in a few weeks to make the new hires," the Journal reports.) And last month an antisemitism task force cut ties with the think tank.
Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, Josh Blackman shares a letter he wrote to Roberts explaining his decision to step down as senior editor of the latest edition of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution. "Your actions have made my continued affiliation with Heritage untenable," Blackman writes. "First, your comments were a huge unforced blunder, and gave aid and comfort to the rising tide of antisemitism on the right. Second, in the wake of your remarks, jurists, scholars, and advocates have made clear to me they can no longer associate with the Heritage Guide they contributed to. Third, and perhaps most tragically, your actions have weakened the ability of the storied Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies to promote the rule of law. My resignation is effective immediately."
The personnel changes are the latest of many recent incidents that together show serious instability on what is often called the New Right. Other examples include reformicon wonks like Henry Olsen and Oren Cass publishing blistering critiques of Roberts' judgment as a leader and Ben Shapiro unloading on Carlson, Fuentes, Megyn Kelly, and Candace Owens at last week's Turning Point USA confab.
The conservative movement has undergone something of a sea change over the last 12 months. Heading into 2025, the conventional wisdom was that the New Right and its muscular, grievance-fueled political approach were the GOP's future. A jubilant atmosphere surrounding Trump's second inauguration did little to foreshadow the cracks that have since broken open (although those with ears to hear were noticing tremors a year ago involving the Tech Right–New Right divide).
Today, the divisions on the right are not just between pro-Trump and anti-Trump conservatives (or pro-Trump conservatives and never-Trump former conservatives). There is now a schism within the MAGA coalition over how big the tent should be and what exactly it should stand for.
One of the key sources of disagreement has to do with whether "legacy" or "heritage" Americans—those who can trace their bloodlines to the land for many generations—have more of a claim to belonging and status than do relative newcomers and others without an Anglo-Protestant pedigree. Carlson and Fuentes have both pushed versions of that line, as have large numbers of "very online" young conservatives, particularly in recent weeks.
But not everyone on the right is comfortable with such notions. Last month, while accepting an award at the American Enterprise Institute's annual gala, the Revolutionary War–era historian Gordon Wood pointedly rejected the idea that American nationhood is rooted in blood, soil, religion, or race. More recently, both Ben Shapiro ("we are, in fact, a creedal country, and there is no other definition of Americanism that tends to hold historical water") and Vivek Ramaswamy ("you are an American if you believe in the rule of law, in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, in colorblind meritocracy, in the U.S. Constitution, in the American dream, and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation") have echoed the same theme.
Although some of the emerging critics of Carlson's wing of the movement support deregulation and free trade, this is not merely an ideological proxy battle over the role that libertarian economics should play in the Post-Trump GOP. Ramaswamy's op-ed calls for the creation of a new multibillion-dollar entitlement, while Cass has made his bones imploring Republicans to reject what he derisively calls "market fundamentalism." Yet both men have broken with many erstwhile MAGA allies over the movement's identitarian turn.
After Carlson interviewed Fuentes in October, Bulwark journalist Will Sommer wrote that the American right "has no immune system against hatemongers and grifters." But that no longer seems correct. The immune response over the last two months has been ferocious.
It may not be enough to overcome the Black Death of bigotry and conspiracism that has festered in the conservative movement for the better part of the last decade. And it's fair to note the many ways in which figures like Shapiro (who chose to employ Owens at The Daily Wire despite her long history of disturbing comments) and Ramaswamy helped create the problems they're now decrying. But it's a relief to know there are, in the end, limits to what a prominent swath of the conservative movement will stand for.
"Heritage has always welcomed debate, but alignment on mission and loyalty to the institution are non-negotiable," reads an emailed statement from the think tank, the full text of which was published this morning at National Review. Unfortunately for Roberts—but perhaps fortunately for the health of American politics—many of his own people seem to feel a loyalty to something higher than the ideas and ethos with which he has aligned that institution.
