"I'm gonna keep fucking you up
until you give me permission
to fuck you up.
And then I'm gonna
fuck you up."
Nov 6, 2025
Today's Erika
"Money illusion": When your screen says you're winning, but the fridge says otherwise.
Trouble In Paradise
First off, I'd like to know why some of the main bad guys have to be named 'Roberts' all of a fuckin' sudden. Roberts used to be an OK name.
- Fireball Roberts
- Pernell Roberts
- Julia Roberts
Now we've got an authoritarian Chief Justice named Roberts, and John Birch-style reactionary running the show at The heritage Foundation named Roberts.
Fake lord, I beseech thee -
please don't make it so I have to
change my fucking name.
Anyway, my own little problems aside, I don't know how this isn't a True Colors thing.
And I don't quite know how to untangle the pretty convoluted mess it seems to be.
ie: We've got this Roberts guy supporting a guy who's a straight up anti-semitic asshole who supports a straight up Nazi asshole, but then we've got some senior members expressing worry that they'll be forced to participate in "Jewish rituals" ?
ie: We've got this Roberts guy supporting a guy who's a straight up anti-semitic asshole who supports a straight up Nazi asshole, but then we've got some senior members expressing worry that they'll be forced to participate in "Jewish rituals" ?
And the kicker is that these "smart guys" are trying to tear down our democracy, and one of their tactics is to enlist (ie: co-opt) authoritarians they believe they can control to do the dirty work for them. The mistake is, as always: Those leopards will turn on you, and they are going to eat your face too.
Heritage staff in open revolt over leader’s defense of Tucker Carlson
The departures and condemnations built on brewing frustrations with Kevin Roberts’s handling of Project 2025 and internal sexism allegations.
The Heritage Foundation is erupting in open revolt against its president, Kevin Roberts, as the right-wing think tank struggles to deal with internal and external anger over his defense of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
The furor began after Carlson invited Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who routinely espouses antisemitic views, onto his popular podcast. Roberts then posted a video that castigated a “venomous coalition” and “the globalist class” for attacking Carlson, whom Roberts called “a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.” Numerous Heritage staffers and conservative figures said the comments played on antisemitic tropes.
A staff meeting Wednesday — Roberts’s latest attempt to quell a week of resignations and condemnations over his defense of Carlson — was marked with calls for him to resign and squabbles over whether Christian employees would be forced to participate in Jewish rituals.
At least five members of Heritage’s antisemitism task force have now resigned in protest, and distinguished fellow Chris DeMuth left the organization.
The turmoil has implications for more than Roberts’s job. Founded in 1973, the Heritage Foundation has been a pillar of the conservative movement and was the ideological and policy engine behind the Reagan administration. But as Reagan’s party transformed into Trump’s, younger think tanks have gained traction with the donors and advisers closest to the president; this year, Heritage officials were mostly frozen out of senior roles. The issues at Heritage echo other battles at right-wing institutions and in the conservative movement that have been aggravated by Trump’s embrace of people and views once relegated to the fringes of Republican politics.
At the meeting Wednesday, Roberts said Heritage was “wordsmithing and workshopping” language over how to distance itself from Carlson, though Roberts said he would remain a personal friend. He called Fuentes an “evil person” but one who “has an audience of several million people, and at least some of that audience might be open to be converted” to mainstream conservatism. Fuentes did not respond to a request for comment.
Legal fellow Amy Swearer during the meeting called Roberts’s handling of the controversy “a master class in cowardice that ran cover for the most unhinged dregs of the far right” and described a loss of confidence in his leadership. Asked later in the meeting about his use of the term “globalists” — a common dog whistle for a conspiratorial view of world “Jewry” — Roberts said he didn’t mean to imply criticism of anyone of any particular faith.
Some staffers defended Roberts and pushed back against his critics. One wanted to know what would happen to those who agreed with Roberts and Carlson, and another likened employees talking to reporters to “Judas.” Roberts’s speechwriter, Evan Myers, suggested that Heritage’s attempts to address accusations of antisemitism would eventually mean he would be required to attend a Shabbat dinner, which he said would conflict with his faith.
Another Heritage executive shot back, “I’m deeply sorry that you could not see that as a generous offer but rather a personal attack on you.”
Wednesday’s revolt reflected longer-running tensions with Roberts’ four-year-old tenure atop the $335 million foundation. During the 2024 campaign, he antagonized President Donald Trump’s team by initially favoring his top primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and then by promoting Heritage’s “Project 2025” as a Trump-aligned initiative, fueling Democratic attacks. Roberts stunned traditional conservatives with policy positions that spurned long-standing orthodoxies, such as his opposing aid to Ukraine in its defense against Russian incursion. And he is facing complaints from female staffers that they face demeaning treatment.
“This was the final straw for me. It’s just the last one, but there are many that have come before it,” researcher Rachel Greszler told Roberts at the staff meeting Wednesday. “You have always been kind to me, but I do not believe that you are the right person to lead the Heritage Foundation.”
This report is based on interviews with 22 current and former Heritage employees and senior figures in the Republican Party, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. It’s also based on recordings of Heritage meetings and phone calls obtained by The Washington Post, drafts of policy papers and organization chat logs.
In a statement, Heritage Chief Advancement Officer Andy Olivastro said Wednesday’s meeting included “our usual spirit of candor.”
“Our work at Heritage is difficult — but necessary — and requires open dialogue like the one we had today,” he added.
Roberts said in a statement that employees who spoke up will not be punished. “That’s not how we operate at Heritage,” he said. “We value all of our people, appreciate their service, and stand unequivocally with those denouncing antisemitism.”
There is little sign that Roberts’s standing has been weakened with the foundation’s 14-member board. One trustee, Princeton professor Robert George, posted on social media disagreeing with Roberts’s tolerance for Carlson and Fuentes but not calling for his resignation. George and other board members did not respond to requests for comment.
“The white supremacists, the antisemites, the eugenicists, the bigots, must not be welcomed into our movement or treated as normal or acceptable,” George wrote. “Defending their rights [to free speech] does not mean allying with them, welcoming them into our movement, or treating them as representing legitimate forms of conservatism.”
‘A huge public relations misstep’
Roberts became Heritage’s president in 2021, after leading the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a well-funded right-wing think tank. With Republicans then out of power in the White House, Heritage embarked on its quadrennial exercise of producing a policy blueprint for the next conservative administration, known since 1981 as the “Mandate for Leadership.”
This time, Heritage convened a coalition of other think tanks and policy shops — eventually more than 100 in all — to produce an agency-by-agency plan presented as a movement-wide consensus, known as Project 2025. A notable exception was the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), which housed many alumni of the first Trump administration and declined to participate — a split that would later prove consequential.
Heritage released its coalition’s 900-page policy at a conference in 2023 with DeSantis as its headliner. Trump was not invited. But as Trump ran away with the GOP primary the following year, Roberts started discussing the project in more pro-Trump terms, even as his personal press secretary left to work for DeSantis.
Trump’s advisers, however, would not so quickly overlook how Roberts had contributed to DeSantis’s campaign. They repeatedly objected to Heritage purporting to speak for Trump’s agenda without his approval.
“Project 2025 was a huge public relations misstep,” said a former AFPI official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because their job doesn’t permit them to speak with reporters. “It really put the presidential campaign on the defensive.”
The conflict escalated as Democrats made Project 2025 central to their campaign messaging, highlighting (and sometimes misrepresenting) unpopular proposals and tying them to Trump. Trump aides announced that Heritage employees would be unwelcome in the next Trump administration, and Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, left Heritage in a messy dispute with Roberts.
“Kevin is a patriot,” said Dans, who is now running a long-shot primary challenge to Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. “I don’t participate in cancel culture. Tucker Carlson is a leading light of America First, and anyone taking out after him is not America First by definition.”
Roberts’s handling of Project 2025 was one subject of an anonymous complaint sent to Heritage board members in February. The letter, drafted by three Heritage employees but written from a singular perspective and obtained by The Post, called the foundation’s sidelining by the Trump administration a “historic failure” by Roberts.
The letter also accused Roberts of angry and profane behavior in meetings that the employee said made him or her “frightened for my physical safety.” The letter alleged that Roberts favored Catholic employees and humiliated female employees by saying single women without children had “no skin in the game.”
A Heritage spokesperson said the letter, which had not been previously reported, was “neither new nor noteworthy” and “no real reporter would take it seriously.” The spokesperson alleged there was a “malign and coordinated effort to silence Heritage and defame Dr. Roberts for fighting against the Swamp.”
One of Roberts’s executive vice presidents and new chief of staff, Derrick Morgan, said in an all-staff meeting that he encouraged summer interns to “make yourselves marriageable and go out and seek marriage,” according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Post.
Weeks later, an attorney advising executives on labor law specifically warned that those kinds of remarks created significant legal liability for Heritage, according to two people present at the meeting.
In response to questions from The Post, Morgan pointed to a quotation from slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk encouraging people to get married and have children that Heritage displayed on its building.
Such views also surfaced in the think tank’s research. A draft policy paper called for robust incentives to induce heterosexual married couples to have more children. Subsequent drafts suggested awarding straight married couples an additional “half vote” in federal elections for each of their children, according to people involved.
A Heritage spokesman said the group has not announced such a policy.
“Ideas and proposals are debated at Heritage every day,” the spokesman said.
During a meeting with one Heritage employee who has since left, Roger Severino, the group’s vice president of domestic policy, allegedly suggested that she and her husband have six children, according to people familiar with the meeting.
Severino and his wife have six children, and the people said he is enthusiastic in meetings about sharing what he feels are the virtues of a large family.
After a different meeting, a former intern raised Severino’s behavior with the Heritage human resources department, saying that he allegedly suggested during a mentorship session that she consider skipping law school in favor of motherhood, the people said. Heritage declined to comment on Morgan and Severino.
‘It will literally destroy us’
Then, last week, came Carlson’s interview with Fuentes. Fuentes used the episode to criticize “organized Jewry in America” and described himself as “a fan” of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader who killed millions of his own people, including many Jews.
As pressure built online from conservatives to denounce Carlson, Roberts posted an online video on Oct. 30 in which he refused to “cancel” Carlson or Fuentes. The backlash was swift and widespread, including from Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), who criticized associating with antisemites.
In a speech Monday at Hillsdale College in Michigan, Roberts acknowledged making the mistake of letting his desire to defeat cancel culture “override” his intention of appealing to “disaffected young men who are looking for belonging and identity by following the wrong people.”
But because Roberts also reiterated his friendship with Carlson and interest in reaching out to Fuentes’s audience, the apology fell flat for at least one member of Heritage’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, lawyer Ian Speir, who resigned.
“When Kevin Roberts repeatedly defended Tucker Carlson after his kid-glove treatment of Nick Fuentes, I lost faith that Heritage is the right institution to lead this important fight,” Speir said in an email to The Post. “We cannot let this malevolent evil make further inroads into our politics and civil discourse. It will literally destroy us.”
Other task force members who resigned include Mark Goldfeder, Yaakov Menken and Malcolm Hoenlein.
Tucker Carlson speaks at a memorial for Charlie Kirk on Sept. 21. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
Roberts apologized in private to the task force leaders and asked them for advice on how to handle the crisis. The group proposed deleting the original video, apologizing publicly, condemning Carlson’s antisemitic content, hosting a conference on the debate within the conservative movement, and hiring a visiting fellow dedicated to Gen Z outreach, according to an email obtained by The Post.
“If we are not able to come to an agreement soon, the relationship between the Heritage Foundation and the Task Force will be irrevocably harmed,” the group’s leaders said. One of the co-chairs said the group would look for a different host organization.
On Monday, Roberts reassigned his chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, to a lower-ranking role. By Tuesday, Neuhaus was no longer employed by Heritage. On Wednesday, Roberts called him a “good man” who “made a mistake,” and said he was largely responsible for drafting Roberts’s controversial remarks.
Two people close to Neuhaus said he views his departure as an attempt to appease Jewish Republicans. Neuhaus did not respond to a request for comment.
People in touch with Roberts said the notoriety around Project 2025 and the frequent protests it drew outside the foundation’s headquarters have hardened his resolve to stand up to pressure.
“It’s important to understand the mindset of Heritage, which has been under sustained attack since Project 2025,” a Heritage employee said. “The place is not really shakable.”
Heritage staff in open revolt over leader’s defense of Tucker Carlson
The departures and condemnations built on brewing frustrations with Kevin Roberts’s handling of Project 2025 and internal sexism allegations.
The Heritage Foundation is erupting in open revolt against its president, Kevin Roberts, as the right-wing think tank struggles to deal with internal and external anger over his defense of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
The furor began after Carlson invited Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who routinely espouses antisemitic views, onto his popular podcast. Roberts then posted a video that castigated a “venomous coalition” and “the globalist class” for attacking Carlson, whom Roberts called “a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.” Numerous Heritage staffers and conservative figures said the comments played on antisemitic tropes.
A staff meeting Wednesday — Roberts’s latest attempt to quell a week of resignations and condemnations over his defense of Carlson — was marked with calls for him to resign and squabbles over whether Christian employees would be forced to participate in Jewish rituals.
At least five members of Heritage’s antisemitism task force have now resigned in protest, and distinguished fellow Chris DeMuth left the organization.
The turmoil has implications for more than Roberts’s job. Founded in 1973, the Heritage Foundation has been a pillar of the conservative movement and was the ideological and policy engine behind the Reagan administration. But as Reagan’s party transformed into Trump’s, younger think tanks have gained traction with the donors and advisers closest to the president; this year, Heritage officials were mostly frozen out of senior roles. The issues at Heritage echo other battles at right-wing institutions and in the conservative movement that have been aggravated by Trump’s embrace of people and views once relegated to the fringes of Republican politics.
At the meeting Wednesday, Roberts said Heritage was “wordsmithing and workshopping” language over how to distance itself from Carlson, though Roberts said he would remain a personal friend. He called Fuentes an “evil person” but one who “has an audience of several million people, and at least some of that audience might be open to be converted” to mainstream conservatism. Fuentes did not respond to a request for comment.
Legal fellow Amy Swearer during the meeting called Roberts’s handling of the controversy “a master class in cowardice that ran cover for the most unhinged dregs of the far right” and described a loss of confidence in his leadership. Asked later in the meeting about his use of the term “globalists” — a common dog whistle for a conspiratorial view of world “Jewry” — Roberts said he didn’t mean to imply criticism of anyone of any particular faith.
Some staffers defended Roberts and pushed back against his critics. One wanted to know what would happen to those who agreed with Roberts and Carlson, and another likened employees talking to reporters to “Judas.” Roberts’s speechwriter, Evan Myers, suggested that Heritage’s attempts to address accusations of antisemitism would eventually mean he would be required to attend a Shabbat dinner, which he said would conflict with his faith.
Another Heritage executive shot back, “I’m deeply sorry that you could not see that as a generous offer but rather a personal attack on you.”
Wednesday’s revolt reflected longer-running tensions with Roberts’ four-year-old tenure atop the $335 million foundation. During the 2024 campaign, he antagonized President Donald Trump’s team by initially favoring his top primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and then by promoting Heritage’s “Project 2025” as a Trump-aligned initiative, fueling Democratic attacks. Roberts stunned traditional conservatives with policy positions that spurned long-standing orthodoxies, such as his opposing aid to Ukraine in its defense against Russian incursion. And he is facing complaints from female staffers that they face demeaning treatment.
“This was the final straw for me. It’s just the last one, but there are many that have come before it,” researcher Rachel Greszler told Roberts at the staff meeting Wednesday. “You have always been kind to me, but I do not believe that you are the right person to lead the Heritage Foundation.”
This report is based on interviews with 22 current and former Heritage employees and senior figures in the Republican Party, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. It’s also based on recordings of Heritage meetings and phone calls obtained by The Washington Post, drafts of policy papers and organization chat logs.
In a statement, Heritage Chief Advancement Officer Andy Olivastro said Wednesday’s meeting included “our usual spirit of candor.”
“Our work at Heritage is difficult — but necessary — and requires open dialogue like the one we had today,” he added.
Roberts said in a statement that employees who spoke up will not be punished. “That’s not how we operate at Heritage,” he said. “We value all of our people, appreciate their service, and stand unequivocally with those denouncing antisemitism.”
There is little sign that Roberts’s standing has been weakened with the foundation’s 14-member board. One trustee, Princeton professor Robert George, posted on social media disagreeing with Roberts’s tolerance for Carlson and Fuentes but not calling for his resignation. George and other board members did not respond to requests for comment.
“The white supremacists, the antisemites, the eugenicists, the bigots, must not be welcomed into our movement or treated as normal or acceptable,” George wrote. “Defending their rights [to free speech] does not mean allying with them, welcoming them into our movement, or treating them as representing legitimate forms of conservatism.”
‘A huge public relations misstep’
Roberts became Heritage’s president in 2021, after leading the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a well-funded right-wing think tank. With Republicans then out of power in the White House, Heritage embarked on its quadrennial exercise of producing a policy blueprint for the next conservative administration, known since 1981 as the “Mandate for Leadership.”
This time, Heritage convened a coalition of other think tanks and policy shops — eventually more than 100 in all — to produce an agency-by-agency plan presented as a movement-wide consensus, known as Project 2025. A notable exception was the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), which housed many alumni of the first Trump administration and declined to participate — a split that would later prove consequential.
Heritage released its coalition’s 900-page policy at a conference in 2023 with DeSantis as its headliner. Trump was not invited. But as Trump ran away with the GOP primary the following year, Roberts started discussing the project in more pro-Trump terms, even as his personal press secretary left to work for DeSantis.
Trump’s advisers, however, would not so quickly overlook how Roberts had contributed to DeSantis’s campaign. They repeatedly objected to Heritage purporting to speak for Trump’s agenda without his approval.
“Project 2025 was a huge public relations misstep,” said a former AFPI official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because their job doesn’t permit them to speak with reporters. “It really put the presidential campaign on the defensive.”
The conflict escalated as Democrats made Project 2025 central to their campaign messaging, highlighting (and sometimes misrepresenting) unpopular proposals and tying them to Trump. Trump aides announced that Heritage employees would be unwelcome in the next Trump administration, and Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, left Heritage in a messy dispute with Roberts.
“Kevin is a patriot,” said Dans, who is now running a long-shot primary challenge to Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. “I don’t participate in cancel culture. Tucker Carlson is a leading light of America First, and anyone taking out after him is not America First by definition.”
That's classic Identity Fusion:
If you're against Tucker Carlson, then you're against America First.
If you're against America First, then you're against America.
If you're against America, then you're an enemy of the state.
If you're an enemy of the state, then we will hunt you down and punish you.
After the 2024 election, AFPI officials had the edge in the Trump transition, and its affiliates went on to fill eight Cabinet-level positions. Many Heritage alumni also joined the administration, but usually with more recent stints at other think tanks, such as Stephen Miller’s America First Legal or Russell Vought’s Center for Renewing America. Miller is now Trump’s deputy chief of staff, and Vought runs the powerful Office of Management and Budget. Even with Heritage on the outs, the administration has implemented numerous ideas in Project 2025.
“Kevin was the one pushing the narrative that this was the administration in waiting,” a Project 2025 participant said. “A lot of the work driving the second Trump administration was done in institutions that were not the Heritage Foundation.”
The Heritage spokesman said: “The work to save America is not a competition. We’re thankful for our partners in the movement and will continue our important work to bring them together and fight for conservative policies.”
‘Frightened for my physical safety’
“Kevin was the one pushing the narrative that this was the administration in waiting,” a Project 2025 participant said. “A lot of the work driving the second Trump administration was done in institutions that were not the Heritage Foundation.”
The Heritage spokesman said: “The work to save America is not a competition. We’re thankful for our partners in the movement and will continue our important work to bring them together and fight for conservative policies.”
‘Frightened for my physical safety’
Roberts’s handling of Project 2025 was one subject of an anonymous complaint sent to Heritage board members in February. The letter, drafted by three Heritage employees but written from a singular perspective and obtained by The Post, called the foundation’s sidelining by the Trump administration a “historic failure” by Roberts.
The letter also accused Roberts of angry and profane behavior in meetings that the employee said made him or her “frightened for my physical safety.” The letter alleged that Roberts favored Catholic employees and humiliated female employees by saying single women without children had “no skin in the game.”
A Heritage spokesperson said the letter, which had not been previously reported, was “neither new nor noteworthy” and “no real reporter would take it seriously.” The spokesperson alleged there was a “malign and coordinated effort to silence Heritage and defame Dr. Roberts for fighting against the Swamp.”
One of Roberts’s executive vice presidents and new chief of staff, Derrick Morgan, said in an all-staff meeting that he encouraged summer interns to “make yourselves marriageable and go out and seek marriage,” according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Post.
Weeks later, an attorney advising executives on labor law specifically warned that those kinds of remarks created significant legal liability for Heritage, according to two people present at the meeting.
In response to questions from The Post, Morgan pointed to a quotation from slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk encouraging people to get married and have children that Heritage displayed on its building.
Such views also surfaced in the think tank’s research. A draft policy paper called for robust incentives to induce heterosexual married couples to have more children. Subsequent drafts suggested awarding straight married couples an additional “half vote” in federal elections for each of their children, according to people involved.
A Heritage spokesman said the group has not announced such a policy.
“Ideas and proposals are debated at Heritage every day,” the spokesman said.
During a meeting with one Heritage employee who has since left, Roger Severino, the group’s vice president of domestic policy, allegedly suggested that she and her husband have six children, according to people familiar with the meeting.
Severino and his wife have six children, and the people said he is enthusiastic in meetings about sharing what he feels are the virtues of a large family.
After a different meeting, a former intern raised Severino’s behavior with the Heritage human resources department, saying that he allegedly suggested during a mentorship session that she consider skipping law school in favor of motherhood, the people said. Heritage declined to comment on Morgan and Severino.
‘It will literally destroy us’
Then, last week, came Carlson’s interview with Fuentes. Fuentes used the episode to criticize “organized Jewry in America” and described himself as “a fan” of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader who killed millions of his own people, including many Jews.
As pressure built online from conservatives to denounce Carlson, Roberts posted an online video on Oct. 30 in which he refused to “cancel” Carlson or Fuentes. The backlash was swift and widespread, including from Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), who criticized associating with antisemites.
In a speech Monday at Hillsdale College in Michigan, Roberts acknowledged making the mistake of letting his desire to defeat cancel culture “override” his intention of appealing to “disaffected young men who are looking for belonging and identity by following the wrong people.”
But because Roberts also reiterated his friendship with Carlson and interest in reaching out to Fuentes’s audience, the apology fell flat for at least one member of Heritage’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, lawyer Ian Speir, who resigned.
“When Kevin Roberts repeatedly defended Tucker Carlson after his kid-glove treatment of Nick Fuentes, I lost faith that Heritage is the right institution to lead this important fight,” Speir said in an email to The Post. “We cannot let this malevolent evil make further inroads into our politics and civil discourse. It will literally destroy us.”
Other task force members who resigned include Mark Goldfeder, Yaakov Menken and Malcolm Hoenlein.
Tucker Carlson speaks at a memorial for Charlie Kirk on Sept. 21. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
Roberts apologized in private to the task force leaders and asked them for advice on how to handle the crisis. The group proposed deleting the original video, apologizing publicly, condemning Carlson’s antisemitic content, hosting a conference on the debate within the conservative movement, and hiring a visiting fellow dedicated to Gen Z outreach, according to an email obtained by The Post.
“If we are not able to come to an agreement soon, the relationship between the Heritage Foundation and the Task Force will be irrevocably harmed,” the group’s leaders said. One of the co-chairs said the group would look for a different host organization.
On Monday, Roberts reassigned his chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, to a lower-ranking role. By Tuesday, Neuhaus was no longer employed by Heritage. On Wednesday, Roberts called him a “good man” who “made a mistake,” and said he was largely responsible for drafting Roberts’s controversial remarks.
Two people close to Neuhaus said he views his departure as an attempt to appease Jewish Republicans. Neuhaus did not respond to a request for comment.
People in touch with Roberts said the notoriety around Project 2025 and the frequent protests it drew outside the foundation’s headquarters have hardened his resolve to stand up to pressure.
“It’s important to understand the mindset of Heritage, which has been under sustained attack since Project 2025,” a Heritage employee said. “The place is not really shakable.”
Nov 5, 2025
Red Wine & Blue
IDK if the tag on this is true or not - whether the NC Republicans deleted this file. But would it surprise anyone if they did?
Silly MAGA Self-Own
MAGA:
I taught my kids all they need to know about socialism on Halloween.When they got back to the house with their bags filled with candy, I took it all away from them.Socialism 101, kids.
Normie:
The socialism part was when the community welcomed your kids and gave them something to eat.You had them do all the work, and then you stole from them what they'd earned.
Capitalism 101, dumbass.
Overheard
If a genie appeared and told Democrats they'd been granted three wishes, they'd negotiate it down to one wish, and then ask for something they think Republicans might like.
About Last Night
Somebody said: "Americans will always do the right thing - once they've tried everything else."
First, all politics is local.
And when it works locally, you can apply it generally, tailoring it to suit the needs of a given area, or city, or constituency. But the message for 'small d' democrats is that we are not all that divided. We've allowed some very bad-faith assholes to convince us we need to split ourselves off from everybody else, and fear each other - to the point where we're in real danger of believing we have nothing in common with anyone but the few people who think and believe and behave exactly the way we do.
"For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures."
-- JFK
Like the lady said: "When we fight, we win."
The only way we can't win is if we don't show up to fight.
Across the country Tuesday, state and local elections served as the first major test of how the public feels about President Donald Trump’s second term ahead of major national elections next year for control of Congress.
It didn’t go well for him.
Here are winners and losers from these elections.
Winners
It didn’t go well for him.
Here are winners and losers from these elections.
Winners
Democrats: They took back a governor’s mansion in a critical swing state, Virginia, and kept control of another in New Jersey, while winning a mayoral race in New York City and holding onto three critical state Supreme Court seats in Pennsylvania. Voters in California agreed to allow Democrats to redraw their congressional districts to match Republicans doing the same in other states. Democrats also won in state and local elections in Georgia and Mississippi and expanded their majorities in the Virginia state legislature.
These were exactly the results Democrats wanted a year before the next big referendum on Trump, which will be nationwide elections where control of Congress is up for grabs. On Democrats’ big night, turnout in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City was up.
“Tonight we sent a message, ” Abigail Spanberger, the next governor of Virginia — and the state’s first woman to win the office — said in her victory speech. She won almost every coveted voter group: women, independents, younger voters and voters who said the economy was their main concern, according to network exit polls reported by CNN.
Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill (D) speaks alongside her family at her election night watch party in East Brunswick, New Jersey, on Tuesday. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images)
In New Jersey, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill’s win suggests real momentum for Democrats. She won in a state where Black and Hispanic voters have become more open to Trumpism — and overcame history as well: For the first time in 50 years, New Jersey Democrats have won the governor’s mansion for three straight terms.
There are caveats to Democratic wins. Virginia, with its large federal employee workforce, has been uniquely hurt by the government shutdown and Trump’s mass firings of federal workers.
“I tend to think we overrate the impact of these off-year elections,” said Doug Heye, a veteran Republican strategist. “New Jersey and Virginia are more blue than purple.” Democrats I talked to agreed with him.
The poles of the Democratic Party: Virginia and New Jersey elected moderate Democrats with national security backgrounds — Spanberger served in the CIA and Sherrill was a Navy pilot.
After losing to Trump twice, many Democrats approve of this direction as the 2028 presidential election comes into view. “At the end of the day, Democratic voters get really pragmatic about who can win,” one veteran Democratic strategist told me.
But the liberal wing of the party had a great night, too. America’s largest city elected a democratic socialist, Zohran Mamdani, who supports redistributing wealth to provide free bus fare and child care in the city, among many other services.
Republican attack ads for the next year: In Mamdani, Trump and Republicans feel they’ve found the perfect foil for next year’s midterm elections. He’s so far to the left that the top two Democrats in Congress, also from New York, hesitated to endorse him or just didn’t.
“Many people are petrified by the Radical Left,” Trump said on social media, “but I’m not, they keep getting me, and other Republicans, elected!”
Some Democrats say they’re worried about the socialist label sticking, especially in the wake of successful “woke” attacks the past few elections that framed their party as too concerned about special classes of Americans over others.
Stop being afraid of their words, Democrats. You won by (finally) smackin' the other guy right in his fat smug face.
"Oh - you say I'm a socialist? So what? You don't like it? Fuck you - make me stop."
You lose because you're timid. You've developed a bad habit of buckling under the slightest pressure. Knock that shit off. Be bold. Be assertive.
And point out the truth:"We've put together several 'socialist' things in this country that we all know and love."
- The US military's a good socialist thing
- Every local cop shop is a good socialist thing
- Streets and highways and dams and sewer systems are good socialist things
- Public schools are good socialist things
- and and and
Free and fair elections: In the days before the election, Trump floated an allegation without evidence that Democrats were somehow “shipping” votes, and his Justice Department sent monitors to polling locations, in a move that some Democrats viewed as menacing. Despite that tension, millions of voters from New York to California had their say in elections run by states and municipalities. Tuesday night underscored what election experts have been saying for years amid Trump’s fraud claims: It’s very hard to rig an election, especially because they are so decentralized.
Losers
Losers
Trump: This election was about Trump. He endorsed major Republican candidates and tied all of these elections to his efforts to lower the cost of living: “If affordability is your issue, VOTE REPUBLICAN!” he posted on social media. But prices are up, Trump is broadly unpopular, and Democratic candidates welcomed making their elections about Trump. Network exit polls showed that most voters in Virginia and New Jersey voters disapproved of Trump.
Republican hopes of keeping control of Congress next year: House Republicans have one of the smallest House majorities ever, and history suggests that whatever party controls the White House tends to lose the midterms. Tuesday did little to dispel that trend: Since the 1970s, when one party has swept these off-year elections — as Democrats did Tuesday — that party has done well in the next year’s congressional elections.
The Senate, which Republicans also control, is a higher reach for Democrats, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Senate Democrats are holding the line against reopening the government without assurances that programs such as food assistance will be restored. As the shutdown becomes the longest ever on Wednesday, Trump is expressing concerns his party will get blamed for it if they don’t make drastic moves to end it. “The Democrats are far more likely to win the Midterms, and the next Presidential Election,” he warned his party Tuesday.
Nothing’s a done deal. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that while voters broadly disapprove of Trump, they’re more open to voting for Republicans in Congress. But to the extent you can read into these elections, analysts say you’d rather be a Democrat than a Republican going into next year.
“There’s a lot of anger on the left,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) warned his party recently. “And elections can be dangerous when one side is mobilized, is angry.”
Nov 4, 2025
Holy Crap
Democratic candidates won all 30 of Northern Virginia's seats in the Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday as the party was set to significantly expand its 51-49 majority in the state's lower chamber.
As of 11 p.m., Democrats had picked up 13 seats statewide, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. With only one race undecided, the Democrats will hold at least 64 of the 100 seats, the most they have held in nearly 40 years.
Two of the pickups were in Northern Virginia, including in western Prince William's 21st District, where former Del. Elizabeth Guzman ousted first-term incumbent Ian Lovejoy.
And in the 30th District -- western Loudoun County and northern Fauquier County -- Democrat John McAuliff defeated Republican incumbent Geary Higgins by about 600 votes, or 1.5 percentage points.
After years of Republican control, Democrats took the majority in the House of Delegates in 2019 only to lose it in 2021, when Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor. However, the party won control back in 2023, following redistricting in late 2021.
“Tonight, Virginians sent a clear message across the nation: Donald Trump and Virginia Republicans’ politics of chaos and cruelty have no home in the Commonwealth,” House Speaker Don Scott of Portsmouth said in a statement. “House Democrats expanded our majority because we stood up for Virginians and built a vision that puts people first — lowering costs, growing our economy and protecting our rights."
In districts that include parts of Prince William County, results Tuesday were as follows.
19th District (northeastern Prince William and southeastern Fairfax County)
Democrat Rozia Henson, a Woodbridge native, was reelected to a second term without opposition. Henson is the first openly gay Black man to serve in the House.
20th District (Manassas area)
Democrat Michelle Maldonado was elected to a third term in the House with 67.8% of the vote. The name of Republican Christopher Stone appeared on the ballot, but Stone withdrew last month.
21st District (western Prince William, including Haymarket)
In a race that was considered to be tight, Democrat Josh Thomas easily won a second term over Republican challenger Gregory Lee Gorham by more than 5,000 votes, or nearly 17 percentage points.
22nd District (western Prince William, including Bristow and Brentsville)
In one of the most closely watched and most expensive races in the state, Lovejoy didn't survive a challenge from Guzman. The Democrat, returning to the House of Delegates after previously serving two terms, won 54.6% of the vote to Lovejoy's 45.3%, a margin of 3,400 votes.
23rd District (southeastern Prince William and northern Stafford County)
Democrat Candi King was elected to her third full term in the House. She was first elected in a special election in January 2021 to fill the seat vacated by Jennifer Carroll Foy, who resigned to run for governor that year, and then was elected to her first full term that fall.
King defeated Republican James Tully with 76.5% of the vote.
24th District (southern Prince William, including Montclair and portions of Dale City)
Powerful Democratic Del. Luke Torian, who has served in the House since 2010, did not have a challenger. Torian chairs the House Appropriations Committee, which determines how the state spends its tax dollars.
25th District (north central Prince William, including Lake Ridge and the County Center area)
Democrat Briana Sewell was unopposed for a third term.
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