For more than fifty years, the Heritage Foundation has been a major force within American politics, setting the intellectual course for the conservative movement. It also played a key role in the creation of Project 2025, a collection of policy proposals for the second Trump Administration’s agenda. But, during the past year, the organization has undergone some very public internal strife. In a new piece from this week’s issue, Emma Green went inside the Heritage Foundation, and her reporting provides a snapshot of simmering tensions within the institution—including the rise of competing factions, and the fallout from Tucker Carlson’s controversial interview with the white-nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes. This morning, I sat down with Green to talk about her reporting.
Our interview has been edited and condensed.
How would you describe the competing sides within the foundation?
There’s one side, which is the MAGA camp. This is populist, culturally conservative, and on board with a sort of nationalist-revival agenda. Then there are people who you might call the foreign-policy hawks, part of what some call “MIGA”—“Make Israel Great Again”—which is a term that’s used online by critics of Israel and of Republicans who are closely aligned with Israel. And then there’s what are called the “free cons,” the freedom conservatives—people who are kind of old-school libertarians, but maybe with a bit of a social-conservative streak.
These three camps have been shifting in terms of their power within the Republican coalition—and there’s been a lot of questioning of the old consensus.
Why did Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes cause such turmoil within Heritage?
A lot of people online in the conservative movement had big feelings about someone like Tucker Carlson, a more mainstream conservative, giving a platform to someone who has those kinds of views. The way that Heritage got pulled into it was almost by accident. They had entered into a deal with Carlson to advertise, and they’d forgotten to take down an old promotional page for him. When this interview came out and was controversial, somebody at Heritage was, like, “Ah, I gotta take that down.” And the internet freaked out. Suddenly, what had been a story about a podcast became a story about Heritage. This event came to be a sort of petri dish for all of the tensions in the Republican Party: Whose ideas are acceptable?
When you were reporting, could you sense a palpable tension in the building?
I don’t think Heritage would deny that over the last year they’ve had internal discord, especially around the time of this whole blowup online. There was a sense of just a lack of collegiality. People felt like they couldn’t trust their colleagues. They felt betrayed by the organization.
Did anything from your reporting surprise you?
One thing that became clear to me is how much this was a media story. Heritage is a think tank, but the media environment is fundamentally reshaping how old institutions work and how relevant they can be. White papers don’t necessarily have the same relevance in the policy landscape that they used to. There’s a lot of discussion about whether Heritage should have a stable of content creators like the ones you can find on YouTube or TikTok—a way to compete with right-wing influencers.
Can the organization be relevant to younger conservatives in a post-Trump world?
I just don’t think it’s possible to take Heritage off the map. First of all, they have so much money. Second, they have this legacy status—they have such a long reach into the conservative movement that it’s almost impossible to believe that Heritage’s influence is going to dissipate entirely. To me, the bigger question is: Will younger conservatives who have different visions for the future of conservatism be able to successfully take control of the movement? And, if so, what role will Heritage play in cultivating them and being a home base for them?
