In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation (@Heritage). Heritage is best-known for opposing military aid to Ukraine and for their political initiative called Project 2025, a potential blueprint for a Trump presidency.

Before we begin, I want to justify this soup that focuses heavily on US domestic politics. As a strong supporter of Ukraine, I see Donald Trump as a threat to Ukraine’s existence, and the reasoning for that can be found in this previous soup:

Donald Trump

Heritage was founded in 1973, but it took a leading role in conservative politics during the Reagan presidency, whose policies were mostly taken from the foundation’s book series called Mandate for Leadership. Project 2025 is the ninth iteration of this series.

The influence of the Heritage Foundation on US public policy shouldn’t be underestimated — it’s been often ranked as one of the most influential think tanks in the US. They were a central organization in developing the Reagan Doctrine, which provided military and other…

…support to anti-communist resistance movements in Afghanistan, Cambodia and other countries. Historically, Heritage has been hawkish, supporting US-led wars like the Gulf War and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq during the “war on terror”.

In 2015, after Trump announced his candidacy for the 2016 US presidential elections, Heritage were highly skeptical of him. The leader of Heritage’s advocacy group even stated that “Donald Trump’s a clown. He needs to be out of the race.”

After Trump won, the foundation started lobbying their own candidates for his cabinet. Hundreds of people from their database received jobs in government agencies, and in 2018 Heritage claimed that Trump had embraced 64% of proposed policies in the foundation’s agenda.

After Trump lost the re-election in 2020, Heritage hired a bunch of former Trump administration officials, including Mike Pence, and in 2021 they hired Kevin Roberts as the president. Roberts claimed that he considered the role of Heritage as “institutionalizing Trumpism.”

Just like Viktor Orbán of Hungary (who they later invited to visit the US), the Heritage Foundation began embracing national conservatism as its main ideology around 2022. They’ve even established a co-operational friendship with the Hungarian-state funded Danube Institute.

After Roberts took over the foundation, it has completely reversed its position on sending military aid to Ukraine. This came to many as a surprise, as in February 2022, one Heritage paper stated that “Without question, supporting Ukraine is in U.S. and European interests.”

Many prominent anti-Ukraine and pro-Kremlin figures have been associated with the think tank, including conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson and Soros-funded conspiracy theorist Vivek Ramaswamy:

Vivek Ramaswamy

Today, Heritage Foundation is also the most quoted think tank in the Russian media. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has parroted Heritage rhetoric, and Zvezda, the news site of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation shows clips from “The Kevin Roberts Show”.

In April 2023, Heritage also published their latest entry to the Mandate for Leadership series, Project 2025. The foundation has called the series its “policy bible”, and many have suggested that Project 2025 would be a blueprint for a potential Trump presidency.

Project 2025 would give Trump control over the Justice Department, giving him the right to cut entire federal agencies. It would also integrate Christian Nationalism to level of government policy, and calls for ban on pornography and further limitations on abortions.

Another interesting aspect of the proposal is the recommendation for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to stop its “efforts to curtail online propaganda campaigns”, stating that the federal government shouldn’t make judgment on what’s true and what isn’t.

The project suggests that nonpartisan civil servants should be replaced with Trump loyalists, education budgets should be slashed, and that the president should be in control of the FBI and would have power to investigate his political opponents.

When it came out in 2023, Project 2025 went mostly unnoticed. But in 2024, the Democrats started warning the public of the project’s extreme and potentially dangerous agenda. Soon after this, a NBC poll results stated that just 4 percent viewed Project 2025 favorably,…

…while 57 percent held a negative view. Perhaps due to this, Trump completely distanced himself from the project, stating that some of the proposals were “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal”, even though some of the most controversial ideas in it were his.

Trump even claimed to “Have no idea who is in charge of it,” even though he took a private flight with its leader in 2022 to a Heritage conference, where he stated that “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

After the controversy, the foundation had to add a disclaimer to their website stating that Project 2025 is not Trump’s plan, also creating a web page “to counter the left’s worst lies about Project 2025.” Washington Post called it a “huge blunder from Trump’s allies”.

Interestingly, the foreword for the Heritage president Kevin Roberts’ book was written by the VP candidate JD Vance. In it, JD praises Roberts’ “conservative vision.” For some reason, the book’s publishing date was pushed for after the November 2024 elections.

But, there’s more! In 2024, multiple reports accused Trump loyalist and Project 2025 operative John McEntee for sending sexually explicit messages to girls as young as 18. Incidentally, McEntee has said that he supports a total ban on pornography.

What worries me about Project 2025 is that an organization that has so much power over US foreign policy seems to be siding with authoritarian regimes like Orban’s Hungary, and is turning the US into one at the same time. I personally see it as an attack against democracy.

The 2nd edition of Vatnik Soup — The Ultimate Guide to Russian Disinformation is officially out!

You can order your copy here:

The Book | Vatnik Soup