Heritage Foundation Scholars Jump to Mike Pence’s Group in ‘Reorganization of the Conservative Movement’

Leaders of Advancing American Freedom (AAF), the nonprofit led by former vice president Mike Pence, said that their move to hire more than a dozen former Heritage Foundation employees represents a significant shift within the American right.

AAF president Tim Chapman described the organization’s addition of Heritage Foundation’s legal, data, and economics centers, a move that doubles its size, as a "reorganization of the conservative movement."

"People are voting with their feet as to where they feel they are best suited to be," Chapman said.

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We turned tragedy into sport



Several forces are converging right now, and the result is a perfect storm of confusion, misinformation, apathy, and — most dangerously — runaway conspiracy thinking.

For a long time, I was consumed by true crime: real-life stories filled with mystery, fear, and emotional whiplash. I wasn’t alone. The genre became a full-blown cottage industry, complete with massive conferences, prestige documentaries, podcasts, and feature films.

The problem isn’t asking questions. It is speculation and insinuation masquerading as insight.

At first, I saw little harm in it — especially when victims or family members were included in the storytelling. But once Hollywood began churning out sensationalized, “based on a true story” dramatizations of real-life horrors, something felt wrong.

Then I heard the victims’ loved ones speak out.

They described the pain these projects inflicted — how strangers dissected their trauma, speculated about their grief, and turned the worst moments of their lives into consumable entertainment. In some cases, families practically begged studios to stop profiting from their suffering. The pleas went unanswered.

There is little sign that Tinseltown plans to slow down. Personal tragedy is no longer treated as personal. We’ve crossed a line into a world where strangers don’t just demand access to these stories — they claim ownership of them.

That entitlement hardens quickly. It manifests as amateur investigations, armchair sleuthing, and the conviction that someone online can solve what professionals could not. Too often, that obsession mutates into wild conspiracy theories — narratives untethered from evidence that deepen the damage inflicted on real people already living with loss.

Fueling all of this is another force: social media addiction.

Millions of Americans live on their phones. Filters are gone. Boundaries between public and private have crumbled. Every tragedy becomes content. Every rumor becomes a reel. Every high-profile event risks turning into a true-crime nightmare, complete with TikTok theories and Instagram speculation.

Not all of it is malicious. But much of it is steeped in a moral carelessness that should unsettle us. And while content creators deserve scrutiny, they aren’t the only culprits. Plenty of us are liking, sharing, and amplifying the madness.

That dynamic reached a horrifying peak on September 10, when conservative and Christian commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

Almost immediately, conspiracy theories spread — many debunked within hours. In one case, a popular Christian apologist, a friend of Kirk who had been filming him speaking at Utah Valley University that day, was falsely accused of signaling the shooter through hand gestures. The claim was nonsense. It collapsed under minimal scrutiny.

No matter. The damage was done.

Other theories followed. Some insinuated betrayal by those closest to Kirk. Others implied inside involvement without evidence. Each claim compounded the grief of a family and community already reeling from an unspeakable loss.

The problem isn’t asking questions. It’s speculation and insinuation masquerading as insight.

If someone is going to promote conspiracy theories, basic decency demands evidence. To date, none has been produced. And yet the claims persist — entertained, shared, and believed.

RELATED: ‘Conspiracy theory’ is just media code for ‘we hope this never comes out’

Photo by Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images

I can’t entirely blame people for their skepticism. In 2016, I wrote a book called “Fault Line” warning that media bias carries real-world consequences. When trust erodes, people stop listening to official narratives altogether. Combine that with the government’s incoherent and often dishonest messaging during COVID, and the ground was primed for disbelief.

For years, progressives dismissed concerns about institutional credibility. Now we’re living with the consequences. A toxic cocktail of distrust, trauma, and algorithmic amplification has left many people — especially the young — drunk with suspicion and untethered from reality.

Add in social media saturation, obsession with true crime, collapsing trust in institutions, and the undeniable presence of evil in the world, and you have a generation raised inside a pressure cooker of dysfunction.

We need to cling to truth. We need to model discernment. We need to help people learn how to question responsibly — without tumbling into conspiracism — and how to rebuild boundaries that preserve perspective and humanity.

Truth-seeking should guide us, not digital frenzy or the dark impulses of the human soul. If we fail to make that distinction, the damage will only deepen.

We must be better.

Legendary Conservative Intellectual Norman Podhoretz Dead At 95

'It was a really passionate intellectual life'

Conservatives face a choice in ’26: realignment or extinction



The elections of 2026 and 2028 will be “Flight 93 elections,” but not in the way Michael Anton envisioned in 2016. Anton famously compared supporting Donald Trump to charging the cockpit of a hijacked plane: reckless, dangerous, but preferable to certain death.

Nine years later, the metaphor has inverted. The forces that once stormed the cockpit now control it. They have locked the door, fortified the controls, and flown the Republican Party in widening circles toward disaster. No one inside can change course. The GOP plane is rapidly losing altitude, and everyone aboard can see it coming.

Continuing down this path does not preserve conservatism. It buries it inside an irredeemable party.

At this stage, the only rational move involves grabbing a parachute and jumping. Staying seated guarantees political death.

The gamble failed

Anton wrote his essay when the Republican Party had already revealed itself as corrupt, inert, and incapable of reform. That decay produced Trump. He appeared as something new: a transactional, deeply flawed outsider promising to smash the uniparty and deliver for workers and small businesses long ignored by corporate Republicanism.

Many voters tolerated Trump’s personal failings and erratic behavior because he represented a rupture. At least it was different.

Nine years on, Republicans carry all the liabilities of Trump’s image and record without securing the benefits that justified the gamble. His better policies stall in court. His worst instincts endure. Meanwhile, Republicans lose elections in territory that once leaned safely red.

Trump obsesses over his ballroom project, courts tech and crypto bros, cuts deals with China and Qatar, and waves away economic pain that millions feel daily. Consumers face rising prices. College graduates struggle to find work. Small businesses buckle under costs. The White House insists the economy is strong.

It is not.

History repeats

This failure did not begin with Trump. The Tea Party quickly collapsed because it tried to reform a party that could not be reformed. The GOP long ago ceased functioning as a conservative party. It exists to serve corporate donors while marketing fear of the left to a skeptical electorate.

History offers a warning. The Whig Party collapsed once it became obvious that it stood for nothing relevant to its era. The Republican Party replaced it. Today’s GOP has perfected the art of symbolic resistance paired with practical surrender. It’s fake opposition.

Trump’s rise looked like a break from that pattern. Sadly, it was not. He has spent five election cycles endorsing establishment Republicans, preserving the very faction that produced the crisis. His rhetoric attacks “RINOs,” but his endorsements entrench them.

His current agenda reflects the same contradiction: Big Tech, techno-feudal economics, Qatari pandering, Chinese student visas, and government-backed industrial schemes sold as innovation, paired with denial of inflation and hardship.

All the liabilities, none of the benefits

The result proves electorally poisonous. Republicans repel suburban voters and working-class voters simultaneously. They project the aloof corporatism of the pre-Trump era mixed with cultural coarseness and denial of obvious hardship.

Since 2017, Republicans have compiled a grim down-ballot record, interrupted only by Trump’s 2024 victory against a weak opponent in a terrible economy. Rather than consolidate that win, Trump chose to own the economy outright and burn political capital.

Conservatives now die on hills that are not their own. They inherit Trump’s liabilities without achieving the promised purge of the party’s corporate class. The GOP and Trump’s coalition increasingly merge into a single structure that offers spectacle instead of reform.

RELATED: Democrats are running as Bush-era Republicans — and winning

Seahorse Vector via iStock/Getty Images

The case for a clean break

As Republican candidates face double-digit swings toward Democrats even in light-red districts, the choice sharpens. Conservatives can continue propping up a failed party and risk discrediting their ideas permanently. We could embrace the “aristopopulism” of JD Vance and his circle. Or we could force a realignment.

A new party could channel distrust of techno-feudalism, mass surveillance, foreign labor exploitation, and a K-shaped economy engineered through government favoritism. It could ground itself in tangible productivity, property rights, sound money, privacy, small business, and national sovereignty.

Every decade or so, Republican dysfunction becomes obvious enough to provoke rebellion: Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, MAGA. Each time, the insurgency gets absorbed and neutralized by the same structure.

We have reached that moment again.

Continuing down this path does not preserve conservatism. It buries it inside an irredeemable party. The Republican Party has reached the end of its rope. The only question is whether conservatives recognize it before the fall becomes irreversible.

Can conservatives reclaim pop culture?



Remember when the Duke ruled movie Westerns … studio moguls Walt Disney, Sam Goldwyn and Cecil B. DeMille called the GOP home … and the Hays Code kept movies squeaky-clean?

Well, Hollywood took a left turn about 50 years ago and hasn't looked back.

Both Mark Wahlberg, a star of deep Christian faith, and actor Zachary Levi are mulling production studios far from the Golden State.

Are we finally ready for a course correction?

Coming attractions

We’ve already seen rebel outfits like the Daily Wire, Breitbart News, and this site's parent company produce feature films and TV shows from a non-progressive lens. Dude-bro podcasters Joe Rogan and Andrew Schulz ignored the DNC talking points during the 2024 presidential election, with some suggesting their political chats played a role in President Donald Trump’s re-election.

Liberal late-night TV may be going the way of the eight-track tape, given current trends, while the right-leaning “Gutfeld!” outperforms Colbert and company.

That all may be dwarfed by what’s coming next.

David Ellison, son of billionaire Trump supporter Larry, now calls the shots at Paramount after a high-profile deal secured the purchase earlier this year. David Ellison isn’t MAGA, but he’s also not woke or eager to mock half the country.

One of his first deals with Paramount was to secure the rights to UFC events, hardly a coastal elite move. Next June, expect an MMA battle royale on the White House lawn to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday.

He also purchased the Free Press and named founder Bari Weiss the head of CBS News. Weiss’ company gave conservatives a fair shake and treated the news like … news, not progressive propaganda, under her management.

That suggests Ellison understands the culture wars and thinks appealing to the middle is a wise path forward. It explains why Paramount denounced a far-left celebrity push to boycott Israeli-themed films due to the nation’s so-called genocidal actions against Palestinians.

That’s more MAGA than Hollywood business as usual.

The right stuff

Plus, a November report from Variety shared several Paramount projects with a definitive Heartland appeal, from a “Top Gun” sequel to a “Taken” variation with a cowboy spin. And then there’s the much-publicized “Rush Hour 4” sequel, spurred on reportedly by none other than President Trump himself.

The one early flaw in Ellison’s plans? He allowed TV superstar Taylor Sheridan to flee Paramount for NBCUniversal. Sheridan’s red-state-friendly shows, from “Yellowstone” to “Landman,” have upended the TV landscape, and he’ll only grow stronger under his new deal.

Sheridan’s emergence is another reason for right-leaning optimism. Once again, the prolific creator isn’t conservative, per se, but he’s willing to tell stories today’s Hollywood wouldn’t touch. His male characters exude a rugged, old-school masculinity that is often missing in other parts of the TV landscape.

A Sheridan show sounds and looks different from most modern programs. A perfect case in point? Billy Bob Thornton’s character, a world-weary oil guru, eviscerates the green movement in “Landman” season one. Would a similar rant be heard on any broadcast show? HBO Max? Netflix?

Unlikely.

Zach attack

More intriguing signs abound. Both Mark Wahlberg, a star of deep Christian faith, and actor Zachary Levi are mulling production studios far from the Golden State. That’s more potential disruptions to the status quo, fed by storytellers who don’t pledge allegiance to the progressive flag.

Angel Studios, the successful TV company now making feature films, offers a fresh take on the standard Hollywood slate.

And then there’s the current first lady. Melania Trump is the focus of a new documentary film bowing next month. She’s using her Hollywood close-up to announce a new production company called Muse Films.

That’s following in the Obamas’ footsteps. The former first couple created Higher Ground Productions and partnered up with Netflix after leaving the White House. No matter where one stands on the Obama record, the couple knows cultural soft power matters.

So do the Trumps.

RELATED: Netflix buys Warner Bros. and HBO — here's what it'll control

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

Retaking Hollywood

The real X factor may be AI run wild. Conservative artists don’t have the same access to cash that liberals possess. What if a savvy libertarian could create a film via AI, post it on YouTube or Rumble, and rock the culture without breaking the bank? How might that even the culture wars in ways the modern left can’t stop?

Conservatives still have a long, long way to go. Far-left auteur Aaron Sorkin revisits Jan. 6 in the upcoming “The Social Reckoning,” a movie sure to gin up Oscar buzz and endless fawning press coverage following its Oct. 2026 release. It is one of many projects that subscribe to a hard-left perspective.

Take this year’s “One Battle After Another,” a morally warped love letter to anti-government violence. It’s the odds-on favorite to win the Best Picture Oscar come March. Another Oscar darling is “No Other Choice,” director Park Chan-wook's anti-capitalist screed.

Plus, the Hollywood press will cover most right-leaning entertainment projects in a negative light, hoping to keep pop culture firmly in the hands of progressives. Remember how reporters raged against “Sound of Freedom,” a film cheering efforts to stop child sex traffickers? That movie wasn’t conservative or faith-based, but some assumed it was one or both, and that was enough for media outlets to both pounce and seize on it.

And for every rebel documentary like “The Fall of Minneapolis,” “Am I Racist?” or “October 8,” there are dozens promoting hard-left agendas. The existing Tinseltown infrastructure nurtures and promotes left-leaning stories and storytellers.

That won’t be easy to duplicate, let alone compete against.

Team Ellison will face overwhelming pressure to reject right-leaning impulses from Democrat politicians, media platforms, and garden-variety progressives. It could end up easier for Ellison and company to go along with Hollywood’s liberal orthodoxy than to effect real change.

Or Ellison could see this moment as the perfect time to perform an ideological pivot. The days of ignoring, if not insulting, half the country no longer makes business sense. It’s show business, after all.

And at last that half of the country finally has some storytellers to call its own.

The right must choose: Fight the real war, or cosplay revolution online



Is principled conservatism dead? And would that even be good?

Robert P. George’s resignation from the board of the Heritage Foundation last week suggests a deeper shift inside the conservative world. George is one of the most respected conservative intellectuals alive — a Princeton professor who built the James Madison Program and shaped a generation of natural-law scholarship. His departure, prompted by how Heritage President Kevin Roberts handled Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes, exposes a widening fracture on the right about what conservatism is and what it should defend.

The first lesson conservatives should recover: Reason and faith are not optional in the public square.

I have watched this tension escalate since what some have called Charlie Kirk’s “martyrdom.” Voices from what garden-variety conservatives call “the far right,” what liberals lump together as “the right,” and what Antifa brands “fascist” are pushing for influence inside the movement. Some insist these agitators are leftist plants sent to fracture the right. Others believe God allows the intentions of every heart to be revealed.

Whatever the explanation, the attacks now directed at George follow a predictable pattern: an “OK, Boomer” dismissal of a man who has spent his life defending the unborn, natural marriage, and the created order.

Full disclosure: When I was a graduate student studying natural law at Arizona State University, George took time to meet with me and guide my work. Later as a tenured professor, I became a fellow in the very program he founded. One of my own undergraduate professors — the great ethicist Jeffrie Murphy — said George’s work compelled him to rethink everything.

So-called far-right critics now claim George will debate and even co-author books with Cornel West, with his ties to Louis Farrakhan, but refuses to work with people “to his right.” The charge — absurd on its face — is that he is some kind of “controlled dissenter,” a token conservative tolerated by the Ivy League so long as he stays within its boundaries. From there, the speculation drifts into unfounded theories about motives and self-preservation.

George does not need me to defend him. His life’s work refutes these claims. He has never backed away from his convictions. He has never trimmed the truth to curry favor with elite institutions. He debates West because he believes reason still matters, because he believes truth can be argued in public, and because he believes even fierce disagreement does not require abandoning basic human dignity. He refuses to compromise an inch while treating his interlocutors as human beings.

That shouldn’t be so difficult to understand.

In fact, that’s the first lesson conservatives should recover: Reason and faith are not optional in the public square. They are the foundation for honest argument, and honest argument is the only way a free people can persuade and be persuaded. If we descend into conspiracy theorizing, rage, or tribal loyalty as our primary modes of engagement, we abandon the very tools that made conservatism coherent.

Here is George’s warning: Don’t become postmodernists. Don’t imitate the left’s racial essentialism or identity politics. Don’t throw out reason because some Enlightenment thinkers misused it. If you want to rethink every narrative you’ve heard, fine — do it with reason, not with the power-dialectic that dominates progressive thought.

But principles alone are not enough. Being principled does not mean being naïve. Conservatives once understood strategy and tactics — long-term goals paired with immediate steps that move us toward them. I believe the United States should acknowledge the kingship of Jesus Christ. Presidents from both parties once referred to America as a Christian nation. If that is true, then we must engage publicly, argue publicly, and fight publicly for that idea of ordered liberty.

That means getting into the trenches. It means refuting Marxism and atheism clearly and without apology. It means being innocent as doves and wise as serpents, fighting to win without surrendering either virtue.

RELATED: Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and the war for the conservative soul

Photo by Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images

What we cannot become is principled losers. The enemy welcomes our gentlemanly retreats. The progressive movement wants more than policy wins; it wants to redefine the human person, the family, and the moral order itself. A party that endorses abortion at any point, supports the mutilation of healthy children, and treats scripture as hate speech leaves no moral ambiguity about which side a Christian or natural-law conservative should support.

Read George’s arguments against liberalism. Read his defense of natural law. If you disagree with him, he will debate you — he always has. But you can learn from him that a revival of natural law and natural theology is essential right now. That requires teaching the truths in Romans 1 and learning from Acts how to speak across cultures and ideologies.

We are in a spiritual war. The weapons are spiritual, but the fight is real. The stakes are real. The consequences are real.

It is far better to be fighting through the mud of Mordor than fat, complacent, and conquered in the Shire.

The Left Thinks Western Civilization Itself Is ‘White Nationalist’

Leftists smear conservatives appreciations for the classical world as a cover for white nationalist narratives.

Far-left wins could backfire for Democrats in 2026



Despite Democrats celebrating victories in states like Virginia, New Jersey, and New York, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey’s father, Ron Simmons, believes it's a blessing in disguise that will force more “woke” and identity-based policies.

“I think there’s a silver lining in all of this,” Simmons says.

“Virginia, New Jersey, some other places — New York City and some others elected probably the furthest-left candidates they could have elected. And that means that in their mind, they’re thinking they have a mandate to govern as far left as possible,” he continues.



“So you’re going to see even more woke policies being put into place or trying to be put into place. You’re going to see an upping of the rhetoric on the trans, on all of those types of things. And in my opinion, that is going to help us in 2026, because it’s just going to more and more expose the radicalness that’s taken over the Democrat Party,” he adds.

While he doesn’t believe that conservatives should be worried, he does believe that the few moderate Democrats left are.

“And so I believe that, assuming that the economy does well, we get past all this tariff stuff, that what these elections will do for us is it will help people realize just how crazy some of these policies are that these new elected officials are going to put in,” Simmons explains.

And as soon as the clock strikes midnight on January 1, Simmons believes “we have got to get really engaged in the political process of getting the people that we believe have the right policies elected.”

“We’ve got to make sure next November that we get them through the elections, because we need to keep the House and the Senate. There’s no question about that,” he adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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Every Member Of Civilization Is Either Building Something Or Destroying It

In Lions and Scavengers, Ben Shapiro articulates some defining truths that helpfully explain our current political divisions.

Glenn Beck's blueprint for true conservatism in 2026 and beyond



Too many right-wingers today equate conservatism with opposing the left, voting for Republicans, or trying to get back to the “good ol’ days.”

But being a true conservative is none of those things, says Glenn Beck. Conservatism isn’t about reacting to the left, obsessing over policies, or worshipping the past. “It's really about principles,” he says. “And that’s why we've lost our way because we've lost our principles.”

So what are the principles that undergird conservatism?

In this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn delivers an unflinching monologue that reminds us not only what being a conservative is really about, but why recovering true conservatism is critical for the nation’s survival.

1. Stewardship

“Being a conservative has to mean stewardship — the stewardship of a nation, of a civilization, of a moral inheritance that is too precious to abandon,” says Glenn.

This begins with understanding that the word “conserve” means to “stand guard” — in this case to “defend what the founders designed: the separation of powers, the rule of law, [and] the belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress but from the creator Himself.”

Right now, our founders’ brilliant blueprint for our government is treated like “a museum piece” instead of “a living covenant between the dead, the living, and the unborn,” says Glenn.

2. Confronting reality

“This chapter of conservatism must confront reality: economic reality, global reality, and moral reality,” says Glenn.

Just being against things, like high taxes and runaway inflation, isn’t going to cut it, he warns. We have to be for something — things like “economic sovereignty,” the “right to produce and to innovate,” “fiscal prudence,” and national independence.

“Being a conservative today means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that survives by debt,” says Glenn.

3. Recovering America’s soul

In our current “age of dislocation,” family, faith, and objective truth have all taken a massive hit. The results have been catastrophic. Depression and suicide are rampant. People feel like their lives are meaningless. Millions fill the emptiness with technology and other mind-numbing activities.

“If you want to be a conservative, then you have to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people that liberty cannot survive without virtue, that freedom untethered from moral order is nothing but chaos, and that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void where meaning used to live,” says Glenn.

In order to do this, we have to “rebuild competence,” “champion innovation,” “reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul,” “harness technology in defense of human dignity,” and above all “restore local strength” through families, schools, churches, and charities.

Drawing these threads together, Glenn paints a vivid portrait of the conservative's role in the years ahead: “A conservative in 2025-26 is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government while actively stewarding the institutions, the culture, the economy of this nation for those who are alive and yet to be born.”

“We have to be a group of people that are not anchored in the past or in rage, but in reason and morality, realism, and hope for the future. We're the stewards. We're the ones that have to relight the torch,” he pleads.

To hear more, watch the video above.

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