Congress Republicans are distancing themselves from Tr*mp during a disastrous second term, and they’re not the only ones. The Heritage Foundation, the anti-trans force behind Project 2025, are facing the problem of having hitched their wagon to an 80-year-old warmonger whom nobody likes. But as Republicans everywhere contemplate a “post-Tr*mp” future, they’re in for a rude awakening: They already signed away that future by joining forces with Tr*mp to begin with.
In a new bombshell report from the New York Times, we’re learning the full extent of the “crack-up” inside the foundation’s gates. And it’s great news for people who love human rights.
Tr*mp’s waning ascendency has much to do with the problems haunting the anti-LGBTQ+ and bodily autonomy rights group, but he’s far from the only issue. Like the broader Republican party, the Heritage Foundation is torn between its older, less radical members, and its younger, terminally-online base. Last year, when president Kevin Roberts applauded Tucker Carlson for hosting 27-year-old virgin Nick Fuentes on his show, the blowback was extreme. Now, as Carlson, Fuentes, and even longtime Tr*mp truther Alex Jones have officially cut ties with the president, the Heritage Foundation is in danger of alienating the young people who comprise the future of the movement to destroy everyone’s civil rights.
To which we say: cry me a river! For decades, the Heritage Foundation has made it their mission to erase, or otherwise limit, core LGBTQ+ rights, including the right to marry. They’ve fought against banning conversion therapy practices, and used Project 2025 talking points to limit transgender youth access to life-saving gender-affirming care. They’ve also backed efforts to ban teachings on LGBTQ+ history, sex education, and critical race theory in schools. The Tr*mp administration’s attempt to roll back just about every advance Biden made in the realm of DEI and LGBTQ+ workplace protections comes straight from the Heritage Foundation’s playbook. But without a figure like Tr*mp to push through their radically conservative agenda, they’re flailing.
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Now, instead of signing on to the Heritage Foundation’s agenda, conservatives are moving toward Mike Pence’s think tank Advancing American Freedom, another viciously anti-LGBTQ+ organization with Project 2025-adjacent goals. Much like Turning Point USA under Erika Kirk’s leadership, the Heritage Foundation is hemorrhaging followers as the tide turns away from Tr*mpian politics. “People would just get disappeared,” one former staffer said. “There would be a weekend where you’d come in and be like, Wait, I’m sorry, how many people are no longer here?”
This disappearing act started to be known inside the organization as the “Heritage Hunger Games.”
Apparently, it all started with the organization’s greatest triumph: Project 2025. Authored with Florida governor Ron DeSantis in mind, the mandate later became associated with Tr*mp’s second term, despite Tr*mp claiming he had no prior knowledge of the document. According to the Times, “Project 2025’s showy publicity infuriated Trump. Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, Tr*mp’s campaign managers, were incensed that they hadn’t been consulted and called Heritage to demand that they stop associating Project 2025 with the next Republican administration.”
@nottherealjohnnybananas According to a New York Times report, right wing influencers are losing hundreds of millions of views as Trump and the Republicans go down in flames. #news #media #influencers #maga #congress
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By then, of course, it was too late. Whether or not Tr*mp’s feigned ignorance of the project was true, his own agenda hewed too closely to the mandate for it to seem accidental. Now, the project is sinking the entire foundation, and they only have themselves to blame. Now the times are changing, and the Heritage Foundation is to engrossed in debates about women’s suffrage and WWII to keep up.
“The reason that the whole Tucker [Carlson-Nick Fuentes scandal] thing happened to Heritage is because Tucker is more powerful than Heritage,” The Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell explains. “These think tanks don’t matter that much anymore.”
The Heritage Foundation never had anything like a soul to begin with, but that hasn’t stopped them from entering the same Faustian pact as the rest of the Republican party. By aligning themselves with Tr*mp and against progress, they’ve given away their chance at having any real future.
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