Inside the Heritage Foundation’s Plans for ‘Institutionalizing Trumpism’

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.”

You’ve taken the Heritage Foundation, once a bastion of the Reagan doctrine of peace through strength, in a different direction. Under you, Heritage has vocally opposed recent aid packages to Ukraine. It has criticized the Biden administration for what you’ve said is a lack of transparency when it comes to how the money is being spent and how you believe those packages are impacting the administration’s domestic priorities. Can you explain some of your thinking on that pivot?

Yeah, sure. But perhaps it would be helpful to start with my perception of those examples you mentioned relative to the Reagan principle of peace through strength. We believe that the manner in which the Ukraine aid packages have been put together, the manner in which they’ve been debated or really not debated in Congress, the manner in which they’ve not been analyzed, the manner in which there’s no transparency, the fact that there’s no strategy actually is a violation of the principle of peace through strength. So while much ink has been spilled about Heritage no longer believing in peace through strength, that’s not true. 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. Because what the American people are saying, conservatives in particular, but not exclusively conservatives, is why are we prioritizing any other place internationally above the problems we have in the United States?

I hear you that there are a lot of problems at home to be solved, and they’re costly problems. But we had Russia invade a sovereign country on the doorstep of a democratic Europe. Does it not seem to you squarely within the U.S. national interest to stop Russian aggression?