Top Welfare Reform Scholar Ousted From Heritage

The Heritage Foundation last week ousted one of their top longtime scholars, Robert Rector, the intellectual architect of welfare reform who had challenged Heritage President Kevin Roberts last year for his defense of Tucker Carlson, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Rector had been with Heritage since 1984. He is most famous in conservative intellectual circles for playing a major role in crafting the 1996 welfare reform law signed by former President Bill Clinton.

The two people, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue, confirmed that the think tank ousted Rector on Thursday, and one of them said he has a transition period before leaving.

Rector declined to comment.

Heritage spokesperson Brian Phillips said the organization wishes Rector well.

“We approached him with a change of status conversation, and I guess this is his answer,” Phillips said. “We put a high premium on productivity as good stewards of our donors’ support.”

During a Heritage town hall last November, Rector invoked his long tenure in conservative circles as he reminded Roberts of how William F. Buckley Jr. had moved aggressively decades ago to expel anti-Semites and “lunatics” from the conservative movement. The meeting was in response to a clash at Heritage after Roberts forcefully defended Carlson after the conservative provocateur interviewed Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes.

“We have to go back and set the general parameters. You say, ‘Oh, we don’t cancel.’ We do cancel,” Rector said during the town hall, according to video published by the Washington Free Beacon. “Because if they’re in your movement you look like clowns. The issue here is Tucker Carlson. … Tucker’s show is like stepping into a lunatic asylum.”

Roberts, the architect behind the “Project 2025” blueprint for President Donald Trump’s second administration, drew sharp rebukes from conservative voices last year, including commentator Ben Shapiro, for standing by Carlson. Roberts later apologized for some of what he had said in the initial video defending Carlson.

Rector was told that his dismissal was due to a change in priorities at the organization, according to the two people familiar with the matter. He plans to continue his work at another organization, one of those people said.

Rector reported to Roger Severino, Heritage’s vice president of economic and domestic policy but was let go by Derrick Morgan, executive vice president of Heritage, according to those familiar with the development.

Heritage has long been one of the most important institutions of the conservative movement but in recent years made a hard turn to Trumpism under the leadership of Roberts.

During the internal turmoil late last year, more than a dozen staffers at Heritage left the conservative think tank to join a nonprofit led by former Vice President Mike Pence. Longtime Heritage board member Robert George also left the group at the time after complaining that Roberts did not make a “full retraction” of the video.