The Wall Street Journal editorial board weighed in on Monday over the rapidly accelerating collapse of the Heritage Foundation.
A longtime haven for far-right legal scholars and the birthplace of President Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda, Heritage has been in freefall ever since its president, Kevin Roberts, defended Tucker Carlson’s interview with neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, triggering a mass exodus of scholars who revolted over the organization’s flirtation with antisemitism.
“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,” wrote the board. “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.”
These particular defections are remarkable, the board continued, because Edwin Meese, the legendary former attorney general for Ronald Reagan who is now in his 90s, endorsed the move of his namesake center himself.
Moreover, wrote the board, the cracks were beginning to show even before the Fuentes scandal broke the camel’s back.
“Heritage once supported free trade; now it is protectionist,” wrote the board. “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.”
“Heritage might still play a role under new leadership, but its board has been slow to appreciate the internal dissatisfaction,” the board concluded. “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.”
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