Tucker Carlson speaks at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, Oct. 21, 2025. Photo: Gage Skidmore/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

The Heritage Foundation, a prominent think tank that has been at the center of US conservative politics for decades, is continuing to receive intense backlash over President Kevin Roberts’ refusal to condemn his friend and right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson’s platforming of neo-Nazi commentator Nick Fuentes in a recent two-hour long interview.

Two members of the Heritage Foundation’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism resigned this week while one suspended its participation.

Ian Speir, an attorney at Covenant Law and fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute, announced Tuesday on X that he had resigned from the group.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, the executive vice President of the Coalition for Jewish Values, made the same decision, sharing a letter announcing the choice with the Washington Free Beacon.

Arie Lipnick, a member of the Board of Governors for the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), sent a letter to Roberts suspending further participation with Heritage pending a meeting with him.

“I cannot in good conscience stand with Heritage or continue on the task force under its current auspices,” Speir said in his resignation letter, which he shared on social media. “I have great respect for all of you, and I consider many of you personal friends. And at the urging of the co-chairs, I was prepared to defer this decision at least until we could get important questions answered about the future of Heritage and the conservative movement. But then Roberts made his statement at Hillsdale last night.”

On Monday, Roberts stated in a speech at Hillsdale College that he had made a “mistake.”

“Sometimes you can make a mistake with the best of intentions,” Roberts said, adding that “my mistake was not saying that we’re not going to participate in cancel culture — we’re not. My mistake was letting that, which we will never backtrack from, override the central motivation that I had in doing that.”

In his resignation letter, Speir described Roberts’ remarks as “strategic non-apology that doubles down on ‘loyalty’ to Tucker Carlson, muses about welcoming groypers and the groyper-curious into the movement, and continues to gaslight everyone about ‘cancelation’ when that clearly isn’t the issue.”

Groypers are part of a loose network of white nationalists and internet trolls who adhere to the racist and antisemitic views of Fuentes, who claims he seeks to preserve the white, European identity and culture of the US.

“It is the elevation of blind loyalty and a thirst for power above principle — the very opposite of historical American conservatism,” Speir wrote. “I cannot tread this path with you. The stakes for our country and for our Jewish friends are simply too high, too existential. I welcome efforts, already underway, to reconstitute some part of this auspicious group and continue the important work of stewarding our American freedoms, combating antisemitism, and renewing the great Judeo-Christian spirit of our civilization.”

Menken’s letter began in anguish: “It is with pain and regret that I tender the resignation of the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) from the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism (NTFCA). We cannot grant legitimacy to an effort to combat antisemitism operated by the Heritage Foundation while Heritage is validating antisemitism and giving it a platform.”

CJV explained the incompatibility of Carlson’s anti-Israel rhetoric and promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories with the goals of the task force.

“When Carlson welcomes guests and reposts content calling Israel’s effort to subdue Hamas and rescue hostages a ‘genocide,’ he makes himself an integral part of the Hamas Support Network that Project Esther aims to fight,” Menken said. “So, it is not that we are leaving the NTFCA as much as that Mr. Roberts has declared that Heritage itself threatens to scuttle the NTFCA’s efforts.”

In CAM’s letter to Roberts, Lipnick wrote that the group “requests an immediate meeting with you to discuss our ongoing relationship with the Heritage Foundation. Until such time, CAM is suspending our participation as a member of the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, a project of the Heritage Foundation.”

Lipnick noted that CAM defended Carlson’s constitutionally protected right to feature Fuentes on his X podcast, and that “indeed, Mr. Carlson has the right to practice antisemitism himself — a right he appears to have greedily exercised in recent years.”

Lipnick described how CAM likewise possesses “the right to criticize Mr. Carlson for eagerly nodding along with comments that channel the literature of the Third Reich, for challenging the First Amendment rights of Christian Americans to practice their faith and for labeling them ‘heretics,’ and not least for allowing his show to become a welcome home for America’s adversaries.”

CAM saw Roberts’ Hillsdale speech as failing to correct the damage done from his previous advocacy of Carlson.

“Given the opportunity to apologize and retract your comments criticizing ‘a venomous coalition of globalists,’ ‘the globalist class,’ and ‘their mouthpieces in Washington,’ comments that feed into the very antisemitic tropes you claim to ‘abhor,’ your speech at Hillsdale College yesterday fell well short of the mark,” Lipnick wrote. “Taken together with your defense of Mr. Carlson’s decision to treat Holocaust denial as legitimate political discourse begs the question of whether Holocaust survivors, their families, and the American Jewish community at large have a home at Heritage.”

The letter from CAM to Roberts concluded, “Frankly, your comments leave us skeptical of whether the Heritage Foundation has the necessary moral leadership to house the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.”

CJV ended its correspondence with the terms for its continued collaboration with Heritage.

“CJV cannot, in good conscience, remain affiliated with an institution that normalizes or excuses antisemitism under the guise of political commentary or free speech. The moral clarity required to fight Jew-hatred cannot coexist with public expressions of support for those who amplify it,” Menken wrote. “Until such time as there is a complete reversal of Mr. Roberts’ position, or, alternatively, his resignation is accepted by the Heritage Board of Directors, CJV cannot be part of a program, event, or effort claiming to combat antisemitism in which the Heritage Foundation is a sponsoring partner.”

The resignations began last week. On Sunday, Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center and an Orthodox rabbi, posted his own letter of resignation on X.

In an unprecedented rebuke, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid announced Wednesday that his centrist Yesh Atid party is withdrawing from the World Zionist Organization, accusing the 127-year-old quasi-governmental institution of being mired in corruption and political patronage.

Saying that corruption was pushing Diaspora Jews away from Israel, he also said he would push to nationalize Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael–Jewish National Fund, which controls over 13% of Israel’s land.

The move derailed weeks of delicate coalition talks at the World Zionist Congress, a global gathering in Jerusalem that happens once every five years, where delegates from around the world had been negotiating a power-sharing deal between Israel’s political parties and major Diaspora Jewish groups. 

Under a draft agreement, Yesh Atid lawmaker Meir Cohen was expected to chair the KKL-JNF, but those plans collapsed after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair, was reportedly offered a senior position at the WZO — a step that Lapid blasted as emblematic of nepotism and “a system to arrange jobs for the Netanyahu family.”

Lapid said his party would refuse all positions and funding tied to the Zionist institutions. 

“We wanted to clean the National Institutions of the culture of corruption and political appointments — but it’s not possible. There’s no way to do it, and no one to do it with,” he said in a video statement. 

Instead, Yesh Atid will introduce legislation to bring the KKL-JNF under state control, subjecting it to public audit and transparency laws.

A Yesh Atid spokesperson told eJewishPhilanthropy that the decision followed growing frustration over patronage and waste. “Every stone you pick up and look under, there’s more budgets, more jobs, more things you can’t explain,” the spokesperson said. “It’s all ridiculous.”

The World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency, KKL-JNF, and Keren Hayesod together oversee billions in assets and programs in Israel and abroad. Though nominally nonpartisan, they have long operated through political coalitions reflecting the Knesset. Lapid’s withdrawal throws the current round of appointments into turmoil, with no clear path to new leadership.

Lapid insisted his criticism was directed at institutional corruption, not the Diaspora Jews represented within them. 

“They understand exactly what’s going on in these institutions. It pushes them even further away from the State of Israel and from Zionism,” he said. “We will fight it, not join it.”

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Jacob Frey, the Jewish incumbent mayor of Minneapolis, has won a third term against a Democratic Socialist opponent who had pledged not to affiliate with “Zionist lobby groups” and whose supporters compared him to New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

Frey prevailed in the second round of ranked-choice voting Wednesday in unofficial tallies, a day after polls closed. His most prominent opponent, state Sen. Omar Fateh, finished more than five points behind him.

The results could offer hope for a national Jewish electorate worried that Mamdani’s victory portends broader Democratic willingness to back candidates who are openly critical of Israel. A mayoral election in Seattle on Tuesday played to similar dynamics, as an upstart challenger who had signaled support for divesting from Israel mounted a spirited bid against an incumbent; that race remains too close to call.

Like Mamdani, who first shocked the political establishment by winning New York’s Democratic primary, Fateh had successfully wrangled the official backing of his state’s Democratic Party analogue, the Democratic Farm and Labor Party, over the summer. But in his case, allegations of impropriety in the voting process led to the party rescinding its endorsement. 

Fateh did earn another endorsement: that of the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter. In order to earn it, the Somali-American candidate had pledged to “refrain from any and all affiliation” with Israel and to avoid work with “Zionist lobby groups” — a list that included J Street and the local Jewish Community Relations Council, whose director publicly condemned Fateh. Members of the candidate’s staff had also defended the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, according to reports.

The Minneapolis election was different in other important respects. For one, Frey — though a target of criticism for his handling of some issues  — was hardly tarnished with the same level of scandal that trailed Mamdani’s opponents Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams. For another, the race barely mentioned Israel, instead pivoting on issues closer to home such as policing in the shadow of George Floyd’s 2020 killing. In addition, the race featured a bevy of candidates, hobbling Fateh’s ability to coalesce the anti-Frey vote around him.

Yet Israel dynamics and antisemitism were not entirely absent from the race. Frey entered his reelection campaign after having vetoed a February 2024 resolution, brought by his city council, calling for a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza; he also criticized an “Educators for Palestine” event held in the city last year. 

While Frey had been endorsed by most of Minnesota’s Democratic heavy hitters, including Gov. Tim Walz, Fateh secured the endorsement of Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of Israel’s fiercest critics in the U.S. House.

Both Frey and Fateh also condemned antisemitism after a prominent Minneapolis synagogue was tagged with antisemitic and pro-Hamas graffiti last month. Frey has attended services there.

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