“People will lose their jobs,” the think tank’s president says about federal workers. “Hopefully their lives are able to flourish in spite of that.”

Since taking over the Heritage Foundation in 2021, Kevin D. Roberts has been making his mark on an institution that came to prominence during the Reagan years and has long been seen as an incubator of conservative policy and thought.

Roberts, who was not well known outside policy circles when he took over, has pushed the think tank away from its hawkish roots by arguing against funding the war in Ukraine, a turnabout that prompted some of Heritage’s policy analysts to leave. Now he’s looking ahead, to the 2024 election and beyond.

Roberts told me that he views Heritage’s role today as “institutionalizing Trumpism.” This includes leading Project 2025, a transition blueprint that outlines a plan to consolidate power in the executive branch, dismantle federal agencies and recruit and vet government employees to free the next Republican president from a system that Roberts views as stacked against conservative power. The lesson of Trump’s first year in office, Roberts told me, is that “the Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start. And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.”

Non-paywall link

  • SuperDuper
    link
    4510 months ago

    Don’t worry, the Supreme Court would never allow them to do such brazenly unconstitutional - what’s that? The heritage foundation hand picked the conservative majority in the supreme court?

    Oh, nevermind. We’re fucked.

    • pingveno
      link
      fedilink
      710 months ago

      The Federalist Society handpicked the the conservative majority, not the Heritage Foundation.

        • @RGB3x3
          link
          English
          210 months ago

          Fascist together.

        • pingveno
          link
          fedilink
          110 months ago

          Nah, that’s a bit reductive. There’s internal dissent within the conservative movement. Not everyone’s willing to go full fasc with Trump. A good chunk of the judges that were ruling against him in the 2020 election were Federalist Society members.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    3810 months ago

    Hate is a strong word…and I hate the Heritage Foundation.

    I had an RSS feed of them recently that I had to delete. You know how intellectuals bought into Hitler’s vision? That’s what Heritage is for Trump’s American fascism. They wholeheartedly believe in it and will lie through their teeth to make it happen.

    I’m just sayin’…if I lose my job, I’m gonna sign up for Hexbear. net and…uhh…we’ll see what happens…

    • PugJesus
      link
      fedilink
      33
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      Hexbear will tell you that Trump is no worse than Biden. Legitimately, they constantly repeat that. It’s insane.

      Start making molotovs instead.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1010 months ago

        Yeah I know. They’re insane and basically agents of chaos sleeper cells. That’ll be me

        • PugJesus
          link
          fedilink
          1210 months ago

          They’re just trolls who like being contrarians. In 30 years’ time they’ll be your uncle on Facebook-equivalent making racist posts and Just Asking Questions.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            -610 months ago

            Incorrect. Goddamn pug Jesus, you should at least make an effort to lurk enough over there to know wtf you’re talking about. That way you could make accurate accusations or insults towards them.

            • PugJesus
              link
              fedilink
              410 months ago

              No, I’ve been dealing with tankies for… Christ, over a decade and a half at this point.

              I’ve seen their life cycle. Hexbear aren’t the subspecies who turn into bitter old Trots college professors.

                • PugJesus
                  link
                  fedilink
                  110 months ago

                  … yeah. I imagine in another decade and a half I’ll be bitterly musing about how I’ve been arguing with tankies for most of my life, lmao.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        -1610 months ago

        They’re pretty much right. You don’t see many liberals worried about the wall these days

    • @Alteon
      link
      110 months ago

      I think that’s a lot of people if America becomes a dictatorship. If they think the populace is going down without a fight, they have a whole fucking nother thing coming to them. The only way an American dictator survives the first year is if they’re hidden in a bunker underground.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    1810 months ago

    Friendly reminder that, relatively speaking, almost nobody is aware of this. Almost nobody has heard of Project 2025. People literally see Trump as “not that bad”.

    • @RGB3x3
      link
      English
      8
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      Project 2025 is fucking dangerous. They essentially want to make LGBT+ people illegal, indoctrinate school kids with alt-right history propaganda, and remove any climate-focused and environmental-focused regulations. And that’s just the beginning.

      They’re going to take away people’s freedoms while dismantling democracy. It’s bad.

  • @ramenshaman
    link
    810 months ago

    If you go to Darude Sandstorm on Spotify, the guy on the album art is almost identical to the thumbnail of this post.

  • AutoTL;DRB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    310 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Since taking over the Heritage Foundation in 2021, Kevin D. Roberts has been making his mark on an institution that came to prominence during the Reagan years and has long been seen as an incubator of conservative policy and thought.

    Roberts told me that he views Heritage’s role today as “institutionalizing Trumpism.” This includes leading Project 2025, a transition blueprint that outlines a plan to consolidate power in the executive branch, dismantle federal agencies and recruit and vet government employees to free the next Republican president from a system that Roberts views as stacked against conservative power.

    But I don’t want to dismiss the part of your question about the shift in the conservative movement toward more skepticism, if not restraint, in foreign policy, and I think a lot of that is prudent.

    At CPAC last year, he said Hungary is “the place where we didn’t just talk about defeating the progressives and liberals and causing a conservative Christian political turn, but we actually did it.”

    We believe it is the proper constitutional understanding of our government, provided — and this is a vital thing for us — that the legislative branch is much more active and maybe even proactive and ambitious in the assertion of its authority.

    I know you don’t endorse candidates, but given that Trump is both the front-runner for the Republican Party’s nomination and currently under four different indictments, would a conviction on any of those counts be enough to give you pause that he’s the right person to be enacting Heritage’s agenda?


    The original article contains 3,555 words, the summary contains 257 words. Saved 93%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • @raynethackery
    link
    310 months ago

    The problem I see now is that even if Trump loses, they will still push this vision of America.