Heritage in hot water

Last Thursday, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts posted a video to social media in support of his longtime friend Tucker Carlson. The popular conservative media personality had recently held a controversial interview with Nick Fuentes, a self-described white nationalist. Roberts urged conservatives who disagreed with Fuentes to nevertheless avoid “canceling” Carlson for hosting him. Roberts characterized those who tried to do so as a “venomous coalition.”

Now Heritage staffers, partner lawmakers, and advocates concerned about anti-Semitism are heading for the exits.

“I’ve been sounding the alarm about conservative anti-Semitism for years, and people wouldn’t listen to me,” said Luke Moon, co-chair of the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, hosted by the Heritage Foundation. “But I didn’t see this coming.”

Founded in 1973, the Heritage Foundation is one of the largest conservative think tanks in the country. According to LegiStorm, a federal employee tracker, some 30% of Republican members of Congress employ at least one former Heritage staffer. It’s the second most frequent organization on congressional staffers’ resumes. In 2023, it had a revenue of $101 million and a staff of 517. In 2016, the foundation aligned itself with President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” philosophy. It authored Project 2025, a set of presidential policy suggestions, ahead of the 2024 elections, and while Trump distanced himself from the project at the time, his administration has now adopted many of its recommendations.

The anti-Semitism task force is a working group with over 100 voluntary partners. It authored Project Esther last year, a national blueprint to combat left-wing anti-Semitism. But since Roberts’ video, at least a dozen partners have resigned from the task force. Now the remaining members of Heritage’s anti-Semitism task force have given Roberts, the think tank’s president since 2001, an ultimatum.

On Monday, task force members met with Roberts and then followed up with a letter, which WORLD has viewed. Among their demands: remove the video, apologize to Zionist Christians and Jews, condemn any “anti-Semitic content” from Carlson, and hire a visiting fellow to identify ways to win back young conservative men who ascribe to Nick Fuentes’ views. The letter also requested that Heritage allow task members to hold Shabbat dinners for junior staff and interns to discuss Judaism.

Roberts has not yet publicly responded to the letter. In a Monday night speech at Hillsdale College, he called his video a “mistake made with the best of intentions” and apologized to his Jewish friends. He affirmed that the Heritage Foundation fights anti-Semitism in all forms, adding that he had only meant to stand up for the conservative value of allowing debate.

Fuentes, 27, is a right-wing podcaster known for incendiary comments and nationalistic views he refers to as “America First.” He has praised Adolf Hitler and claimed the Holocaust was not as serious as reported. In past videos, he called for the death penalty for “perfidious Jews.” Fuentes describes himself as Catholic. Although most social media platforms have banned him for hate speech violations, his videos on Rumble regularly garner 500,000 views.

In the interview with Carlson, Fuentes claimed that Jewish people cannot assimilate to any other country or political system because their identity is tied to the nation of Israel. He also said the conservative movement should be largely white with few exceptions. Carlson was friendly in the interview and criticized U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, whom he called “Christian Zionists” who’d been “seized by this mind virus.”

“I dislike them more than anybody because … it’s Christian heresy,” Carlson said.

“This is really, really bad because what we are seeing is the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism from the far-right fringes,” Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told me. “Two years ago it went from Kanye to Candace [Owens] to Tucker and now to Heritage. We need to draw a red line before it becomes mainstreamed in conservative politics that a little anti-Semitism here and there is OK or even worse.”

In his video response, Roberts affirmed that Carlson was a friend of Heritage and that conservatives should stand against cancel culture. He also said that Christians are not anti-Semitic when they criticize Israel. (Later, Roberts clarified that he “abhors” Fuentes’ views.)

“I noticed that a lot of what [Roberts] did was gaslighting,” Goldfeder said. “He conflated the idea of cancellation with not platforming a Nazi. … There’s a difference between canceling someone and giving them a massive platform and elevating their ideas.”

Goldfeder agreed with Roberts’ point that criticism of Israel and good-faith debate are not anti-Semitism. But Carlson crossed the line when he allowed Fuentes to spew anti-Semitic rhetoric and did not attempt to fact-check or push back on it, he argued.

After watching Roberts’ video, Goldfeder, too, withdrew his organization from the anti-Semitism task force. In the six days since Roberts’ video, dozens of task force members have resigned. Heritage distinguished fellow Chris DeMuth also left in protest, and staffers are considering whether to jump ship or risk being blacklisted among Washington employers. Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., announced at a weekend Republican Jewish Conference that his office would no longer partner with Heritage, and he canceled a speaking engagement for Wednesday.

At the same conference, Sen. Cruz spoke about the Carlson interview. “Now is a time for choosing,” he said. “If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very cool and that their mission is to defeat ‘global Jewry,’ and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil.”

In a phone call with me on Tuesday, Moon said he’d lost several members of the task force already, and he couldn’t blame them. “What we’re seeing is the Zionist wing versus the Tucker wing of the [Republican] party,” he said.

Moon wants the former to win out, so he said he’s giving Roberts a chance. But if Roberts does not comply with any of the requests laid out in the letter, Moon said the task force will seek a different host organization.

“I don’t expect him to throw Tucker under the bus, but the target here is Tucker, not Heritage,” Moon said. “What I would like to see is some leadership where you can be friends with somebody but not platform them.”

The Heritage Foundation has a “one voice” policy, meaning that whenever its many researchers and scholars speak out, they support one position. When one member sends out a message, it represents the entire organization.

But not every employee is behind Roberts’ video or his subsequent apologies. In an all-staff meeting on Wednesday afternoon, Roberts took questions for more than two hours. The Washington Free Beacon obtained a video of the meeting and published it online.

“Dr. Roberts, over the last week, you have shown a stunning lack of both courage and judgment,” senior legal fellow Amy Swearer said during the meeting. “Tucker Carlson invited a Holocaust-denying neo-Nazi onto his show and then spent roughly two hours doing little more than flirting with him.”

At the meeting, Roberts told staffers, “I made a mistake and I let you down, and I let down this institution. And I am sorry for that. Period. Full stop.” He then explained that his former chief of staff, who resigned on Monday, scripted the video and had led him to believe that it had been approved by other departments. Nevertheless, Roberts said he took responsibility and wanted to remain at Heritage to clean up the mess. He said he knew little about Nick Fuentes and apologized for referring to critics of Carlson as a “venomous coalition.”

But some staffers at the meeting did not appreciate the task force’s letter of requests. One adviser, Evan Myers, claimed that as a Catholic, his faith would not allow him to attend a Shabbat dinner. Another unnamed staffer said that she, and many Gen Zers around the country, have an unfavorable view of Israel. She said that Catholics, in particular, see Zionism as a heresy.

Task force co-chair and Heritage vice president Victoria Coates pushed back at the meeting, saying the Shabbat dinners were only a recommendation.

Outside of the Heritage Foundation, lawmakers have condemned Nick Fuentes’ views but were less clear over whether they would continue to partner with the think tank.

“I’m not going to get into that,” Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., told me. “I will just say this, that everybody needs to speak out against anti-Semitism. It’s an awful thing, and we can’t let it grow roots anywhere. And I’m the type of guy that forgives people for making mistakes. So I hope those will get remedied soon.”