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By Kate Plummer
Senior US News Reporter
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An individual listed as a contributor to Project 2025 has resigned from the think tank responsible for it, the Heritage Foundation, over its president's "indefensible" comments regarding Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.
Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, drew scrutiny in October after he defended Carlson, a former Fox News host, for interviewing far-right commentator Fuentes - a Holocaust denier and extremist who has praised Hitler. In the interview, Fuentes blamed "organized Jewry" for challenging American cohesion.
Roberts said at the time that Carlson "will always be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation" and said those criticizing him were "the globalist class" and a "venomous coalition." While he later apologized, he faced calls to step down and has continued to face the ire of Jewish faith leaders.
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Now, in a newly published letter to Roberts, Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, who contributed to Project 2025, said he was resigning over the scandal.
He wrote: "Your initial remakes were indefensible. Your apology was underwhelming. And the lack of any meaningful follow-up over the past three months has been telling."
Newsweek reached out to the Heritage Foundation by email to comment on this story outside of normal business hours.
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Why It Matters
The resignation shows divisions within the influential think tank continue. This is particularly significant given the Heritage Foundation spearheaded Project 2025, a 900-page document of policy proposals that advocates limited government, border security and tough immigration laws among other conservative measures and is thought to have influenced President Donald Trump's agenda during his second term in office.
Before the election, Trump called parts of Project 2025 "ridiculous and abysmal." After his electoral victory, he told Time that he disagreed with parts of the document, but not all of it. He also enlisted several of the project's contributors to serve in his second administration. If the Heritage Foundation falters, it may affect its ability to come up with policy ideas that Republicans can use.
What To Know
Writing in the letter, published in libertarian magazine Reason, Blackman said that while he had "cherished" his "close ties with The Heritage Foundation," he was resigning because Robert's "actions have made my continued affiliation with Heritage untenable."
He said the "comments were a huge unforced blunder, and gave aid and comfort to the rising tide of antisemitism on the right." He also said they made others no longer want to associate with Heritage.
Blackman wrote: "Your initial remakes were indefensible. Your apology was underwhelming. And the lack of any meaningful follow-up over the past three months has been telling."
He added that Roberts "wounded Heritage's moral standing," made contributors pull out of Heritage projects and made Heritage's brand "toxic."
He said his resignation was "effective immediately."
Blackman is not the only Heritage Foundation figure to resign over the comments. Robert P. George, a jurisprudence professor at Princeton University who had served on the think tank's since 2019, resigned in November, saying on Facebook that he "could not remain without a full retraction of" Robert's X video in which he made his comments about Carlson and Fuentes.
What People Are Saying
Jill Geisler, a journalism and ethics professor at Loyola University of Chicago called Blackman's statement "powerful" in a post on X.
David M Friedman, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel during Trump's first term, said on X about Roberts' October comments: "When the head of a leading conservative think tank publicly declares that he stands with a vile pundit who detests Christian Zionists (e.g. Billy Graham or Charlie Kirk) 'more than anyone' but defends Sharia Law and considers Hamas a 'political organization,' you know that the conservative movement has a problem.
"Under President Trump, Republicans are dominating the political discourse with common sense ideas and good policies. But the woke right within the party is insistent on destroying all that because it can’t get the antisemitic virus out of their bloodstream. This is a major unforced error and self-inflicted wound that needs to be corrected fast!"
What Happens Next
The Heritage Foundation is yet to publicly respond to Blackman's comments.
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