Insiders complain right-wing think tank infested by 'extremists and trolls'

The Heritage Foundation has long been one of the key institutions in conservative politics, helping to shape the policies of Republican presidents dating back to Ronald Reagan. But now, insiders say it is breaking apart due to an internal struggle that has also gripped the wider Republican Party in general: “how to harness the energy unleashed by Trumpism without being completely overrun by its conspiracy- and nativist-minded elements, particularly among the rising generation that has known little else.”

According to a new report from the New York Times, while the Heritage Foundation has been “long accustomed to placing its experts in key positions in Republican administrations, as it did in Trump’s first term,” once he returned to office, Heritage was “pushed to the side” regardless of the major role its notorious Project 2025 played in the 2024 election debate.

“As it tried to work its way back into the center of power, the foundation was consumed by a vicious in-house conflict,” explains the Times. “An old guard of establishment experts saw themselves swamped by an influx of more radical, often younger conservatives eager to remake the institution for the post-Trump right in their image: terminally online, ruthless in fighting the culture wars and vehement in rejecting the dogmas of postwar conservatism.”

According to the Times, a key breaking point came after Heritage president Kevin Roberts refused to back down from his support for Tucker Carlson, who had recently drawn accusations of antisemitism for hosting far-right white nationalist Nick Fuentes on his podcast. Roberts went on to argue the need to bring them into a conservative coalition, but many longtime Heritage employees disagreed, saying that “the people they usually collaborated with in congressional offices, circuit courts, foreign embassies and other institutions no longer wanted to be publicly associated with Heritage and what they perceived as its fidelity to Carlson.”

This incident prompted dozens of staff members to quit, defecting to Mike Pence’s new think tank, Advancing American Freedom, which is geared toward more traditional Republicans. “It’s good that they’re gone,” declared Roberts.

Around this time, there was a wave of firings and other resignations across the organizations, prompting some employees to call it the “Heritage Hunger Games" as their colleagues disappeared. Paranoia rose as staff began to suspect their devices were being monitored. One former senior analyst told the Times that the exodus was driven by “this movement that’s been brewing on the right,” that had “crept into a variety of mainstream conservative institutions and taken over.” The analyst declared that “it was planned, and it was a coup.”

By late 2025, most of the Heritage old guard had been replaced by Roberts’ hirees, who brought explicitly MAGA bona fides and often dubious pasts. For example, “Mario Enzler, who served in the Vatican’s Swiss Guard, joined Heritage as a senior adviser. According to The Houston Chronicle, Enzler resigned from his previous position at the University of St. Thomas, a private Catholic school in Houston, amid allegations that the Italian university where Enzler claimed to have earned his Ph.D. did not offer Ph.D.s, and that the institution where he supposedly earned his bachelor’s degree was actually a high school.” Another recent top recruit was a former DOJ official who had been indicted for his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Others openly promote racism, misogyny, and Holocaust denialism.

According to the Times, “Many of the staff members who left Heritage quit because they were exasperated by what they saw as the institution’s failure to firmly distance itself from extremists and trolls. As the former senior analyst put it…these groups ‘always existed out there, but they never seized main institutions before. That’s what’s new.’”

While MAGA conservatives like Roberts say they’re glad the more traditional conservatives have left Heritage, it turns out that the feeling is mutual.

“Kevin Roberts says (referring to me & my colleagues who left Heritage to join Advancing American Freedom) that he’s glad we’re gone,” posted former Heritage Vice President John Malcolm. “I couldn’t agree more. Although there are some great people who are still there, we are glad we’re gone too.”