The Decline of Heritage

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.  Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, defended Tucker Carlson after his softball interview with Nazi wannabe Nick Fuentes.

 Jonah Goldberg:

Harvard, MIT, Columbia, et al., should be ashamed of their records of policing speech and providing cover for people who incite hatred. But you know what Harvard doesn’t have that Heritage does? A “one voice” policy.

Unlike other think tanks, scholars at Heritage are not permitted to publicly deviate from the party line. It shouldn’t surprise us that Roberts thinks the whole of the right should have a one-voice policy too. His statement is a call for a popular front on the right. He doesn’t think conservatives should actually argue among themselves because that “sows division” and serves the interests of those “bad actors” serving “someone else’s agenda.” For Roberts, Tucker Carlson is the right made flesh, so if his policy is to bring neo-Nazis inside the tent, we should all honor the “one voice” policy and stay focused on attacking the left. “Speaking with one voice is a distinguishing piece of the Heritage Foundation’s strategic advantage. While other organizations may have experts advocating contradictory points of view, Heritage employees are always rowing in the same direction.”

I have real sympathy for the scholars, staffers, and board members of the Heritage Foundation, because I know many of them have problems with this. Some obviously don’t. But some must. And because the Heritage Foundation has a “one voice” policy that rejects the robust debate Roberts claims to cherish, they are left with a dilemma. I am free to disagree with my colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute. I’m expected—rightly—to be professional and respectful in my disagreements, but disagreement—public or private—is actually valued and protected.

Not so at Heritage, which is why so many people left when Heritage changed many of its traditional stances to better align with Donald Trump and MAGA small donors. Now the people still at Heritage are left in a similar bind. Do you stick around as the president of your institution labors to carve out a safe space inside the tent for bigots and anti-American cranks? If you stay, you can’t complain too loudly—literally and figuratively—when outside observers assume you, too, speak with that same, single voice. That is, again literally, the whole point of the “one voice” policy. And Kevin Roberts has put everyone who works for him in a moral and intellectual trap. All because he loves Tucker Carlson so much.

I am one of those people who left Heritage for this reason. And I was Executive Vice President. https://t.co/rdRvQBuUym

— Kim R. Holmes (@kimsmithholmes) November 2, 2025

Antisemitism on the Right

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.

Nicholas Riccardi at AP:

As Republicans accuse Democrats of tolerating antisemitism in their party, the GOP on Friday was roiled by its own schism after the leader of a powerful right-wing think tank defended prominent conservative commentator Tucker Carlson for his friendly podcast interview with a far-right activist known for his antisemitic views.

The comments from Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, sparked outrage from some Heritage staffers, senators and conservative activists. But they also reflect increasing skepticism toward Israel and of Jews among some on the right, complicating the GOP’s efforts to cast the Democratic Party as antisemitic.

The outrage began when Roberts on Thursday posted a video in which he denied his group was “distancing itself” from the former Fox News host, one of the most powerful voices on the right, after Carlson’s podcast hosted Nick Fuentes , whose followers see themselves as working to preserve America’s white, Christian identify.

“The American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right,” said Roberts, adding that, while antisemitism is wrong, conservatives do not need to always support Israel.

...

Earlier this month, Vice President JD Vance dismissed criticism of a Telegram chat among members of a New York Young Republicans group that included racist comments and flippant remarks about gas chambers.

He raised eyebrows again this week for his response to an attendee at a Turning Point USA event who asked why the U.S. was spending foreign aid on the “ethnic cleansing in Gaza” and said Judaism, as a religion, “openly supports the prosecution of ours.”

Vance responded without addressing the premise of the question and instead stressed the administration’s “America First” approach.

“Sometimes they have similar interests to the United States and we’re going to work with them in that case. Sometimes they don’t have similar interests to the United States,” Vance said of Israel.

Goodbye Libertarian Tea Party, Hello Authoritarian MAGA

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments .

Never in the history of the US has any president openly and repeatedly called for the investigation, arrest & prosecution of his political opponents. While many continue to shrug these things off and normalize them, I will never stop pointing out that this is what autocrats do. pic.twitter.com/r0dmeSvdAE

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 29, 2025

At WP, Naftali Bendavid reflects on how MAGA supplanted the Tea Party.

The current spending fight reflects the dizzying shift. The tea party’s core demand was fiscal responsibility, but Trump’s signature spending bill adds $3.4 trillion to the deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and passed with overwhelming GOP support. In the current dispute over the government shutdown, Republicans are pushing not for cuts but for an extension of Biden-era spending levels.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a rare Republican who opposes his party’s spending measures, said the tea party spirit has evaporated. “I think it’s largely been supplanted by something else,” Paul said in an interview. “We aren’t organized around ideas anymore. We’re organized around a person.”

...

[M]any Trump policies appear to contradict tea party ideals. The tea party abhorred taxes; Trump has imposed high taxes on imports with his tariffs. The tea party revered the Constitution; Trump routinely tests its limits, for example by seizing power over spending and tariffs. The tea party championed the rule of law; Trump openly targets his opponents using the legal system.

More fundamentally, the tea party — driven by anger at President Barack Obama — called for a modest presidency to allow homegrown democracy to flourish. Trump is a dominant, attention-seizing leader who brooks no opposition and regularly pushes to expand his power.

...

 The tea party and MAGA movements are linked by at least one striking quality — a fury at liberal elites who, they contend, have coddled unworthy groups at the expense of ordinary, hardworking Americans. That is evident from the two seminal moments that launched these political tidal waves. [The Santelli rant and the Trump announcement.]

A similarity:

Liberal critics charged that the tea party was motivated at least in part by racial animus, especially as a backlash against the first Black president. Others challenged its claims of grassroots credibility, noting that billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch contributed substantial funds to build up the movement.

Similar criticism has been leveled at MAGA — that it is driven by racism and funded by billionaires.

 

GOP Problems in World War G

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

The California Legislature has approved a special election to redraw congressional district lines. Democrats stand to pick up five seats to offset a recent Texas gerrymander.  The war is spreading, but the GOP plans is running into problems.

Will McCarthy at Politico:

Republicans appear to have all but abandoned their efforts to defeat a Democratic gerrymander of California’s House districts one week before it goes before voters.

As Democrats pummel the state with Yes on 50 advertising, the Republican side of the battle has gone quiet. Major GOP donors and party leaders have effectively vanished from the front lines.

 Andrew Howard at Politico:

At the urging of the White House, Republicans have already drawn seven new GOP-leaning House seats via mid-decade redistricting in three states, with more on the way. But the nationwide remapping effort is losing steam, largely due to these state-level Republicans refusing to blink at the Trump team’s threats of primaries. And while cracks are forming in Trump’s strategy, Democrats are waking up to the dangers ahead, POLITICO reported this week.

The few Republicans willing to defy the president constitute a dying breed in a party that’s become solidly MAGA under Trump’s thumb.

“If they want to threaten me with something, I don’t know what it’d be,” Kansas Republican Rep. Mark Schreiber, who is among holdouts in the state, said in an interview. “I’m fine with the stance I’m at.”

As Trump desperately tries to cling to control of Congress for the remainder of his term, he’s leaned heavily on redistricting congressional lines to block Democrats from their coveted takeover of the House. They need to net just three seats to regain a measure of influence in Washington.

But despite support from within Congress and the broader base, Republicans in state houses are showing that Trump and his team cannot coerce veteran local politicians, many of whom are elderly, in safe seats and unconcerned with the national political landscape.

Trump, Politics, and the Military

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

"I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad." -- Donald J. Trump, March 13, 2019

JACK BLANCHARD with DASHA BURNS at POLITICO:

In the early hours of this morning, Trump gave another highly partisan speech to the U.S. military, hailing his own political achievements and repeatedly condemning his Democratic opponents and critics in the media.

War fighters unite: Trump was addressing hundreds of U.S. Navy personnel onboard the USS George Washington aircraft carrier in Tokyo Bay, Japan, about 6,500 miles from D.C. In a raucous, rambling, hourlong speech that flipped between jokey asides and fiery rhetoric, Trump told the troops that the U.S. military is “no longer politically correct” and should “defend our country whatever way we have to.”

Close your ears, Norway: Trump expressed regret that the U.S. military no longer seeks “the spoils” of war. And the rank-and-file cheered as he told them: “No enemy will ever even dream of threatening America’s Navy ... And if they do, the American sailor stands ready to crush them, and sink them, and wreck them, and blast them into oblivion.” Trump joked that such sentiments could cost him the Nobel Peace Prize. (And he might be right.)
...

But what’s most striking is Trump’s willingness to use the troops as a foil for his highly partisan rhetoric. He repeatedly condemned his predecessor Joe Biden, told his audience the 2020 election had been rigged and savaged Democratic governors who resist military incursions into their cities. “People don’t care if we send in our military, our National Guard,” Trump told the troops. “They just want to be safe.”

Trump also called out the “fake news media,” encouraging the troops to deride the gathered journalists, before admitting later, a little grudgingly: “They’re getting better. They’re not there yet.”

The new normal: This was the third politically charged speech Trump has made to members of the U.S. forces in a month, following his highly controversial address to hundreds of generals in late September and his self-described “rally” to U.S. Navy sailors in Virginia the following week. It’s a clear break from any of his predecessors of recent times, and is happening at the very moment Trump is increasingly seeking to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement here in the U.S. And it’s making some members of the military — privately — very nervous indeed.

Shutdown, Obamacare, and the Debt

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments.  Americans are noticing.

Chris Stirwalt at The Hill:

Two big data points in the headlines this week: 1) The average cost of a family health insurance plan will be $27,000 for coverage next year and 2) The federal debt grew faster than any time other than the pandemic and surpassed $38 trillion Wednesday.

...

Democrats have already won the shutdown. Whether it ends today or on Nov. 1, when the open enrollment period for health insurance begins in most places, the shutdown will have dramatically increased the pressure on Republicans over rising health costs. The GOP has already agreed to extend enhanced ObamaCare subsidies, but is insisting the vote will come after the government is reopened, not as a condition for reopening it.

...

Which is all a long way of saying that in that way, Democrats have already won the shutdown. Whether it ends today or on Nov. 1, when the open enrollment period for health insurance begins in most places, the shutdown will have dramatically increased the pressure on Republicans over rising health costs. The GOP has already agreed to extend enhanced ObamaCare subsidies, but is insisting the vote will come after the government is reopened, not as a condition for reopening it.

Either way, when they do, Republicans will be acceding to Democrats’ demands to have the government provide more subsidies to offset the consequences of a cost spiral that itself is partly caused by … subsidies.

So Washington’s response to those two big new numbers this week will most assuredly make them both worse.

World War G: The Battlefield Expands

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

The California Legislature has approved a special election to redraw congressional district lines. Democrats stand to pick up five seats to offset a recent Texas gerrymander.  The war is spreading.

Reid Epstein at NYT:

The next front in the nation’s pitched battle over mid-decade congressional redistricting is opening in Virginia, where Democrats are planning the first step toward redrawing congressional maps, a move that could give their party two or three more seats.

The surprise development, which was announced by legislators on Thursday, would make Virginia the second state, after California, in which Democrats try to counter a wave of Republican moves demanded by President Trump to redistrict states to their advantage before the 2026 midterm elections. No other Democratic state has begun redistricting proceedings, while several Republican states have drawn new maps or are deliberating doing so.

Bruce Mehlman:

Traditionally redistricting is usually done once per decade, though this is not dictated by the Constitution or a specific law. President Trump is pushing Republican states to redraw maps in 2025 to maximize GOP advantage for 2026, and three have already done so (TX, NC, MO) with two more coming (OH, UT). Many Democratic governors such as California’s Gavin Newsom are moving to “fight fire with fire” with hyper-partisan gerrrymanders of their own. Up to 15 states in total (so far) are considering or acting: the 5 above plus CA, FL, IL, IN, KS, LA, MD, NE, SC, VA & WI.

...

Democrats could be in danger of losing around a dozen districts across the South if the court strikes down Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, a case the court heard two weeks ago. “Without Section 2, which has been interpreted to require the creation of majority-minority districts, Republicans could eliminate upward of a dozen Democratic-held districts across the South.” (NYT)