Trump, tariffs and IQ: the feud inside the Heritage Foundation

The transfer from wonk-world to the White House is usually cause for celebration – a bragging opportunity for the think tank that just got their guy or gal into the administration. Yet the nomination of E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been met with a rather quiet response from lots of his colleagues on Massachusetts Avenue.

Cockburn noticed the crickets. Why isn’t Heritage pushing the appointment more, and leaving Team Trump to do most of the work (there is, indeed, some convincing to do)?

Cockburn understands one event last year has made some staff hesitant to publicly endorse Antoni: a presentation delivered by Antoni to Heritage interns last summer was sidetracked when he was asked a question about IQ. Antoni argued that women were clustered around average intelligence, while more men were likely to be hyper-intelligent or below-average intelligence. After some complaints about the presentation, Heritage VP of domestic policy Roger Severino told the interns that this was not Heritage’s formal policy position.

Commenting on Antoni’s presentation last year, Mary Vought, vice president of strategic communications at the Heritage Foundation, said: “The women at Heritage – including several members of senior management – are some of the best and brightest in the country. It may be hard for leftist outlets to understand, but we respect the women at Heritage enough to know that they can have candid conversations about statistics.”

Heritage also provided comment from Mary Heipel, who took part in the Heritage Summer 2024 Young Leaders Program: “The efforts by the left and legacy media to smear an economist for presenting a statistic are, ultimately, a barely disguised attempt to attack the President, alongside an internship program at Heritage that has helped foster the careers of thousands of women.”

Antoni’s presentation is just one example of the current tensions within the 52-year-old institution. Cockburn understands there is a growing divide between the classical liberals, who have traditionally defined the think tank’s direction, and what is seen by some staff to be a move towards a Trumpian worldview under Heritage president Dr. Kevin D. Roberts.

It has not gone unnoticed in wonk-land just how many senior economists and policy experts have left Heritage since Roberts took up leadership in 2021. The list includes David Ditch (now senior analyst at the Economic Policy Innovation Center); Joel Griffith (now senior fellow at Advancing American Freedom); Parker Sheppard (now senior fellow at the Fiscal Lab on Capitol Hill); and Tori Smith (now senior vice president at Forbes Tate Partners).

Griffith, who left Heritage last December, told The Spectator: “There was an environmental shift. It wasn’t just a change in the ability to speak your mind. The ability to do so from a conservative and constitutional standpoint disappeared. And that sapped employee morale.”

Cockburn can only imagine what the water-cooler chats are like for those still working in the building. While we wait to see what happens next, we can look out for a new Heritage report which is set to be published next week around the National Conservatism Conference happening in DC. Cockburn got a sneak peek at the draft executive summary. “Free love, pornography, careerism, the Pill, abortion, same-sex relations, and no-fault divorce all became normalized,” it reads, “while marriage and the natural family became stigmatized.” Heritage’s proposed solution? Lots more government spending and tax credits for parents – but only if you’re married.

On our radar

HONEY DON’T Alexis Wilkins, the 26-year-old country singer dating FBI Director Kash Patel, is suing podcaster Kyle Seraphin for defamation after he alleged she was an Israeli spy.

COP OUT Former vice president Kamala Harris had her Secret Service protection revoked Thursday, reversing a Biden-era directive that had extended protections beyond the standard six months.

PLAY THE HITS President Trump once again spent the morning testing out the White House sound system by the newly paved-over Rose Garden. He played David Bowie, the Beatles, Andrea Bocelli and, of course, “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables.

Cover me

Following on from Tuesday’s edition…

High-profile pundits who fell for a conspicuously AI-generated fake “special collector’s edition” of Vanity Fair featuring First Lady Melania Trump on the cover: Laura Ingraham, Charlie Kirk, Laura Loomer and “Catturd.”

“Real or not real…hilarious to read the Left’s reaction,” Ingraham tweeted later. Masterful clear-up.

It’s life, Jim…

Who is the new acting Centers for Disease Control head, Jim O’Neill? Well, he’s friends with “longevity” enthusiast Bryan Johnson and Gawker destroyer Peter Thiel. He’s also in favor of seasteading and paid organ donation: “There are plenty of healthy spare kidneys walking around, unused,” he told a conference once. Cockburn will take six, please. And though reports say he “supports existing vaccine schedules,” he was also critical of the CDC’s pandemic response.

While there’s much panic about the ongoing CDC purge, much of it comes from the showily resigning Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, “Dr. Disco Lights,” who infamously issued Covid-era orgy guidelines for New York, Cockburn thinks that what’s going on is a delayed reckoning for disastrous Covid health policies.

After all, the CDC pushed social distancing, school closures, lockdowns and vaccine mandates, and masking of toddlers against all previous sane public-health advice and public desires. It imposed a dubious health regimen on an exhausted and terrified public. And it also insisted that men can get pregnant. No public agency has ever needed a purge more. As one Cockburn acquaintance put it, “the only thing they’ve done that I agree with is speak out against pooping in the pool.”

So now RFK Jr. associate O’Neill is in charge, and we have our MAHA CDC head in place at last. Do vaccines cause autism? Cockburn thinks not. Does American public health need a house cleaning? Definitely. Let it ride, Ivermectin for all!

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