Former Vice President Mike Pence looks on before the funeral services for former Vice President Dick Cheney at the Washington National Cathedral, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025.Mark Schiefelbein/AP
Former Vice President Mike Pence poached over a dozen senior officials from the Heritage Foundation to join his own conservative think tank in the latest sign that all is not well in right-wing politics.
The Heritage Foundation is arguably the most prominent conservative think tank in America. Pence, meanwhile, started his competing think tank, Advancing American Freedom, to promote “exactly what the Trump-Pence Administration did every day.” Many prominent Republicans framed this to the Wall Street Journal as a return to conservative fundamentals, blocking out “what they see online.”
As my colleague Anna Merlan recently reported, MAGA is eating itself alive. Pence’s move came after the Heritage Foundation’s leader, Kevin Roberts, defended Tucker Carlson for hosting white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes on his show, according to the Journal.
The Heritage Foundation notably published Project 2025, the policy document that detailed Trump 2.0’s slash-and-burn approach to governance. But this specific beef dates back to October, when Carlson, a high-profile conservative political commentator, interviewed Fuentes.
Fuentes asserted that we need “to be pro-white,” promoted conspiracy theories of “organized Jewry in America,” and decried Christian Zionism. There was immediate outrage within the right: US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to name a few. Roberts disagreed, describing the criticism as an attempt to cancel Carlson.
“Conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington,” he said.
Roberts’ remarks led to further fallout. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) countered, “Last I checked, ‘conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats.”
That’s when top Heritage Foundation members began resigning. John Blackman, who stepped down on Sunday, wrote that the think tank had abandoned its principles and conformed to President Trump and a coalition of the right’s “rising tide of antisemitism.”
“Heritage has always welcomed debate, but alignment on mission and loyalty to the institution are non-negotiable,” Andy Olivastro, the foundation’s chief advancement officer said in a statement to the Journal. “A handful of staff chose a different path.”
All of this calls into question what the future of the Republican Party will look like after Trump. Turning Point USA, which showed signs of unraveling during this past weekend’s convention, has its hopes pinned on JD Vance, but other factions of the political party may have a different idea come 2028.