Tornado Alley (PROG)

[newmedman]

Time to capitalize on rare earth abundance in the United States
BY STEPHEN MOORE AND NICOLAS LORIS, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS - 06/04/19 7:00 PM ET

Why don't you be a sport and tell us who was in control of the Congress and the White House during that time period?

Then, why don't you look and see what has transpired in the energy and mining sectors over the course of the last 5 years and report back to us, we'll wait.

Oh, and why doesn't it surprise me where the authors of this 5 year old article get their best work done?

Stephen Moore
https://www.heritage.org/staff/stephen-moore

Nicolas Loris
https://www.heritage.org/staff/nicolas-loris

Heritage Foundation, once respected... I wonder what happened to them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation


Trump administration[edit]
In the first year of Donald Trump's candidacy for the presidency, the Heritage Foundation did not embrace his candidacy, and even mocked it. "Donald Trump's a clown," then Heritage Action leader Michael Needham said on a Fox News panel in July 2015.[50]

Once Trump won, however, the Heritage Foundation's position shifted, and they sought and obtained a major influence in his presidential transition and administration.[51][41][52] The foundation had a powerful say in the staffing of the administration, with CNN noting during the transition that "no other Washington institution has that kind of footprint in the transition."[51] One reason for the Heritage Foundation's disproportionate influence relative to other conservative think tanks is that other conservative think tanks had members who identified as "never-Trumpers" during the 2016 election whereas the Heritage Foundation ultimately signaled that it would be supportive of him.[51][41] At least 66 foundation employees and alumni were given positions in the administration.[41]

The Heritage Foundation drew from a database it began building in 2014 of approximately 3,000 conservatives who they trusted to serve in a hypothetical Republican administration for the upcoming 2016 election.[41] According to individuals involved in crafting the database, several hundred people from the Heritage database ultimately received jobs in government agencies, including Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry, Jeff Sessions, and others who became members of Trump's cabinet.[41] Jim DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation from 2013 to 2017, personally intervened on behalf of Mulvaney who headed the Office of Management and Budget, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and later become acting White House Chief of Staff.[41]

In 2017, the foundation's board of trustees voted unanimously to terminate DeMint as its president. A public statement by the board said a thorough investigation of the foundation's operations under DeMint found "significant and worsening management issues that led to a breakdown of internal communications and cooperation." "While the organization has seen many successes," the board statement said, "Jim DeMint and a handful of his closest advisers failed to resolve these problems."[53] DeMint's firing was praised by some, including former U.S. congressman Mickey Edwards (R-OK), who saw it as a step by the foundation to pare back its partisan edge and restore its reputation as a pioneering think tank.[54] In January 2018, DeMint, in turn, was succeeded by Kay Coles James, who was appointed president of the foundation.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, former Heritage Foundation adjunct scholar Dov Zakheim was one of over 130 former Republican national security officials to sign a statement that asserted that Trump was unfit to serve another term. "To that end," the statement said, "we are firmly convinced that it is in the best interest of our nation that Vice President Joe Biden be elected as the next President of the United States, and we will vote for him."[55]

In 2021, after Trump lost re-election, the Heritage Foundation hired three former Trump administration officials, Chad Wolf, Ken Cuccinelli, and Mark Morgan, who played a role in the Trump administration's immigration policies.[56] Heritage also hired former U.S. vice president Mike Pence as a distinguished visiting fellow from 2021 to 2022.[57][58]

Biden administration[edit]
The Heritage Foundation's positions and management under Kay Coles James drew criticism from conservatives and Trump allies, which intensified in 2020 and 2021. "In the early days of the pandemic in spring 2020, Heritage leadership under James rejected an article from one of its scholars denouncing government restrictions, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The foundation's offices stayed closed for about three months, and signs urging masking became something of a joke for many conservatives who mocked the concept", The Washington Post reported in February 2022. Conservatives also began commenting publicly that the Heritage Foundation had lost the significant intellectual and political clout that led to the foundation's ascent in the 1980s and 1990s. "People do not walk around in fear of the Heritage Foundation the way they did 10 years ago," one conservative told The Washington Post. In December 2021, in response to mounting criticism of her leadership of the foundation, James resigned from the foundation.[59]

In October 2021, the Heritage Foundation announced James would be replaced by Kevin Roberts, who previously led a state-based think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and participated as a member of Texas Governor Greg Abbott's COVID-19 task force.[59][60]

In 2021, Pence, then a Heritage Foundation distinguished fellow, published an op-ed on a Heritage Foundation website that made false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, including numerous false claims about For the People Act, a Democratic bill to expand voting rights. Pence's false claims drew criticism and corrections from multiple media outlets and fact-checking organizations.[61][62][63]

The Heritage Foundation also completely reversed its position supporting military aid to Ukraine in its attempt to repel the Russian invasion of the nation, which it had supported up to at least October 2022.[64] By May 2023, however, the foundation reversed its position entirely on Ukraine, claiming, "Ukraine Aid Package Puts America Last".[65] In August 2023, Thomas Spoehr, the foundation's Center for National Defense director, resigned his position over the dramatic policy change.[66] Earlier, in September 2022, the foundation's foreign policy director said the foundation ordered him to retract his earlier statements supporting aid to Ukraine; he subsequently left the organization.[67]

In 2023, the Heritage Foundation also established a cooperative relationship with Hungary's state-funded Danube Institute.



Project 2025[edit]
Main article: Project 2025
The foundation also leads a constellation of groups named Project 2025, preparing for the possible election of Donald Trump in 2024. The project seeks to recruit thousands to come to Washington and prepare to dismantle and reshape the federal government closer to Trump's vision. Former Trump administration official Russell Vought, who is involved in the project, said, "The president Day One will be a wrecking ball for the administrative state."[88][89][90] It includes changes "for nearly every agency across the government", specifically undoing the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, shutting down the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, boosting the extraction and use of fossil fuels, and other measures that could have significant effect on how the administration approaches global warming and climate change.[89]

Positions[edit]
Anti-critical race theory legislation[edit]
In 2021, the Heritage Foundation said that one of its two priorities, along with tightening voting laws, was to push Republican-controlled states to ban or restrict critical race theory instruction.[91] The Heritage Foundation sought to get Republicans in Congress to put anti-critical race theory provisions into must-pass legislation such as the annual defense spending bill.[91]

Black Lives Matter[edit]
In September 2021, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow, Mike Gonzalez, released a book, BLM: The New Making of a Marxist Revolution. Gonzalez's book characterizes the Black Lives Matter protest movement as "a nationwide insurgency" and argues that its leaders are "avowed Marxists who say they want to dismantle our way of life".[92]

Climate change denial[edit]
The Heritage Foundation rejects the scientific consensus on climate change.[93][94] The foundation is one of many climate change denial organizations that have been funded by ExxonMobil; an oil and petroleum company with over $413 billion in revenue as of 2022 that is currently the eighth-largest corporation in the world.[93][95]

The Heritage Foundation strongly criticized the Kyoto Agreement to curb climate change, saying American participation in the treaty would "result in lower economic growth in every state and nearly every sector of the economy."[96] They projected that the 2009 cap-and-trade bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, would result in a cost of $1,870 per family in 2025 and $6,800 by 2035, which clashed with the conclusions of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which projected that legislation would only cost the average family $175 in 2020.[97]

Transgender rights opposition[edit]
The Heritage Foundation has engaged in several activities in opposition to transgender rights, including hosting several anti-transgender rights events,[98][99] developing and supporting legislation templates against transgender rights,[100][101][102] and making claims about transgender youth healthcare and suicide rates based on internal research, which are contradicted by numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies.[103]

Ukraine[edit]
In May 2022, Heritage Action, the Heritage Foundation's political activism organization, announced its opposition to the $40 billion military aid package for Ukraine passed that month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, completely reversing the organization's previous position of support for such aid.[104][105] The Heritage Foundation's foreign policy director at the time, Luke Coffey, said he was ordered to retract his earlier statements supporting aid to Ukraine, and Coffey then subsequently left the Heritage Foundation.[106]

In August 2023, newly installed Heritage president Kevin Roberts stated in an op-ed that Congress was holding victims of the 2023 Hawaii wildfires hostage "in order to spend more money in Ukraine". The op-ed was followed by a public-messaging campaign with the same message and with a tweet by Heritage vice president Victoria Coates, in which she stated, "It's time to end the blank, undated checks for Ukraine." This, in turn, led the foundation's second senior official, director for Center for National Defense Lt. Gen. (Ret) Thomas Spoehr, to submit his resignation.[66][107]

Voter fraud claims[edit]
The Heritage Foundation has promoted false claims of electoral fraud. Hans von Spakovsky, who heads the Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative, has played an influential role in elevating alarmism about voter fraud in the Republican Party, despite offering no evidence of widespread voter fraud.[108][109] His work, which claims voting fraud is rampant, has been discredited.[110]

Following the 2020 presidential election, in which President Donald Trump made baseless claims of fraud after he was defeated for reelection, the Heritage Foundation launched a campaign in support of Republican efforts to make state voting laws more restrictive.[111][112]

In March 2021, The New York Times reported that the Heritage Foundation's political arm, Heritage Action, planned to spend $24 million over two years across eight key states to support efforts to restrict voting, in coordination with the Republican Party and allied conservative outside groups, including the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, American Legislative Exchange Council, and State Policy Network. Almost two dozen election bills introduced by Republican state legislators in early 2021 were based on a Heritage letter and report.[113] Heritage also mobilized in opposition to H.R. 1./S. 1, a Democratic bill to establish uniform nationwide voting standards, including expanded early and postal voting, as well as automatic and same-day voter registration, reform campaign finance law, and prohibit partisan redistricting.[111][112]

In 2021, Heritage Action spent $750,000 on television ads in Arizona to promote the false claim that "Democrats...want to register illegal aliens" to vote, even though the Democrats' legislation creates safeguards to ensure that ineligible people cannot register.[112] In April 2021, Heritage Action boasted to its private donors that it had successfully crafted the election reform bills that Republican state legislators introduced in Georgia and other states.[114]