MAY 2025 – No journalism outfit – or free lancer, for that matter – has yet tackled a piece screaming to be written: What in the world happened to The Heritage Foundation? How did it go off the rails so thoroughly? Once a mainstream conservative think tank founded with a pro-business, limited-government message is today the force behind Project 2025. Project 2025 is of course the playbook for Trump’s wrecking-ball approach to re-shaping government and social engineering. Yes, the story almost tells itself – the people who came in over the years to run the think tank grew more socially conservative, and the money from red-state conservatives, who grew more radicalized over the years, accelerated the change. Much of that push rightward was a response to the American left’s many less-than-coherent social mandates. Today people like Christian Nationalist Russell Vought – he now is in his second-go-round as head of Trump’s OMB – are roaming the halls of The Heritage Foundation. It’s a huge change from the think tank’s original purpose – and in many respects it’s a reflection of the adversarial trenches dug in Washington over the last 15 years.