Heritage Foundation Self-Destructing After Leader Embraces Racist Holocaust Denier

The alt-right Heritage Foundation is like a house on fire, with staff running for the exits and donors backing away. It’s all because its president supported a notorious, racist Holocaust denier.

Kevin Roberts, the abusive and foul-mouthed President of Heritage, defended his personal friend Tucker Carlson in a video on Halloween eve over promoting racist neo-Nazis.

“We will always defend our friends…and that includes Tucker Carlson, who…always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation,” the bullet-headed Roberts said. [Read Tucker Carlson’s Descent into Hate: Promoting Racists and Holocaust Deniers for more details.]

Roberts started Project 2025, the Trump playbook to destroy democracy.

Roberts’ video exploded like a grenade in an outhouse.

• Critics say Roberts’ video amounted to an invitation to antisemites to join Heritage.
• Roberts, age 51, is a Christian Nationalist who headed a Catholic college and openly favors Catholic employees, according to staffers who quit.
• Multiple Heritage employees have resigned in disgust, along with volunteer members of Heritage’s task force on antisemitism, including Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center.
• Former staffers say Roberts is a nightmare boss who created a toxic work environment and disrespects female staff. Insiders describe an “open rebellion,” marked by emotional staff meetings, accusations of extremism, and a climate of distrust and factionalism.
• Roberts has undone the “one voice” policy, in which scholars come up with a consensus position, and replaced it with his self-aggrandizing “MY voice” policy — namely, his own voice.
• Carson invited the repellent Tucker Carlson to be a keynote speaker at Heritage’s 50th anniversary gala, sponsored by Carlson’s racist podcasts and even raised funds for him.

The fallout was swift. At least five members of the Heritage Foundation’s antisemitism task force (Project Esther) resigned in protest over Roberts’ refusal to explicitly distance Heritage from Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, a 27-year-old nitwit who leads the extreme fringe racist “groypers.” Roberts actually called Fuentes an “enormous talent.”

Prominent Jewish groups and individuals have cut ties

At least five members resigned in protest, including prominent figures such as Mark Goldfeder (Orthodox rabbi and CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center), Ian Speir (attorney), Yaakov Menken, Malcolm Hoenlein, and David Bernstein (author of a book on antisemitism). Their departures were directly linked to Roberts’ statements in defense of Tucker Carlson and downplaying the dangers of giving a platform to Nick Fuentes. In their public resignation letters, members cited a “moral collapse.”

The resignations illustrate broader concerns over the Foundation’s direction under Roberts, including its embrace of extreme MAGA figures and its mishandling of antisemitism and internal dissent.

• Ian Spier, the lawyer who resigned from Heritage, said, “Heritage has sent signals through its president that it doesn’t seem to take the problem of antisemitism and its rise in the GOP and conservative movement seriously.”
• Stephen Moore, Senior Visiting Fellow and former Trump adviser, resigned after 12 years amid mounting donor pressure from his own “Committee to Unleash Prosperity.”
• Ryan Neuhaus, the Heritage Chief of Staff, resigned abruptly after getting backlash for his social media comments supporting Roberts and suggesting that the “outraged” staff should resign. He was swiftly demoted to a lower-role advisory job and ultimately quit. His comments and abrupt exit were viewed as an attempt to mollify critics within the Jewish and conservative communities.

In February, Heritage’s board received a detailed, anonymous complaint about Roberts’s management style from a staff member. Roberts should be dismissed, the letter said, for destroying Heritage’s “cherished legacy in record time.” It is “no longer a think tank. It is now a public relations organization that few in Washington respect.”

If scholars drift from Roberts’ position, they get called to Heritage’s 8th-floor offices, where Roberts works, for a discussion with one of his deputies, according to people who have worked there. Staff have taken to drawing comparisons with communist regimes, referring to the 8th floor as the “Politburo,” they said.

Funding setbacks

Key Republican donors are shifting their support, and Heritage is being sidelined in favor of other conservative organizations that are more closely aligned with MAGA figures and the America First movement. Heritage’s diminished role as a policy influencer is attributed in part to this decline in donor confidence and setbacks in active fundraising.

Some evidence from donor watch and nonprofit transparency groups suggests that its influence among elite donors and advisory networks within the conservative sewer system has declined, especially in the wake of Project 2025’s controversies and resignations.

Caroline Ciccone, president of the watchdog Accountable.US, warned that Project 2025 threatens to empower an executive branch set on weaponizing its powers against its political enemies, while dismantling core government accountability functions, with the Heritage Foundation enabling its efforts.

“Project 2025 is a five-alarm fire for our democracy — and groups like the Heritage Foundation are making it all possible by dumping millions into the dangerous project,” Ciccone said. “From dismantling critical checks and balances to weaponizing the executive branch, Project 2025 takes extremism to a whole new level. The project — and the dark network propping it up — must be stopped.”

The Foundation’s reputation with corporate donors and major foundations has also suffered as a result of the turmoil, especially in relation to high-profile resignations and criticism from U.S. Jewish communal organizations. This has further exposed a widening gap between the Heritage Foundation’s ideological direction and the expectations of its donor community.

Heritage leadership has sought to assure donors by emphasizing unity and commitment to conservative policy, but the internal discord and loss of high-profile staff have led to continued scrutiny and caution among major funders going into 2026.