Conservatism

Stephanie Slade | 12.22.2025 10:10 AM

Nearly the entire legal and economic policy staff of the Heritage Foundation is departing the conservative think tank, and many will be taking up posts at Advancing American Freedom (AAF), a nonprofit founded in 2021 by former Vice President Mike Pence. The mass exodus represents a dramatic rebuke of Heritage President Kevin Roberts in the wake of his refusal to retract an October video defending Tucker Carlson for conducting a friendly interview with the antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes.

"Why these people are coming our way is that Heritage and some other voices and commentators have embraced big-government populism and have been willing to tolerate antisemitism," Pence told The Wall Street Journal. 

More than 30 employees at the Heritage Foundation's Institute for Constitutional Government, Ed Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, Center for Data Analysis, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, and Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget have resigned or were fired in the last few days. Those departing include Amy Swearer, who told Roberts he had lost her confidence as a leader during an all-staff meeting in November that leaked to the press, and John Malcolm, a Heritage vice president and the foundation's top legal scholar, who was fired last Thursday after Roberts caught wind of the plan to leave for AAF, according to multiple sources. E.J. Antoni—who was briefly President Donald Trump's nominee for Commissioner of Labor Statistics—is staying on and will serve as acting director of several of the aforementioned teams.

The departures follow

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