Heritage Foundation’s Jewish coalition — the authors of the organization’s plan to combat antisemitism adopted by the Trump administration — has almost completely collapsed after its defense of Tucker Carlson.
The National Taskforce to Combat Antisemitism, a nationwide coalition of Jewish organizations that combats antisemitism under the umbrella of the Heritage Foundation, gave its host organization an ultimatum that it must pursue the antisemites disguised as conservatives if it wishes to have the coalition’s support.
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Ian Speir, a First Amendment attorney for the Religious Freedom Institute and member of the taskforce, resigned from his role this morning citing that Heritage “now admits the motivation [for the video defending Carlson] was to try to attract groypers and the groyper-adjacent into the conservative movement.”
Following Speir’s resignation, Newsmax contributor and Senior Fellow to an adjacent premier conservative think tank Bryan Leib also submitted his resignation from the task force.
Prior to Speir’s resignation, Mark Goldfeder, CEO and Director of the National Jewish Advocacy Organization and a member of the task force, resigned as well.
“Free speech includes the right to associate—and not to.” Goldfeder wrote on X. “I cannot serve under someone who thinks Nazis are worth debating.”
Two other member organizations, The Young Jewish Coalition and National Zionist Organization of America, completely withdrew from the task force following Goldfeder’s resignation.
Now, the task force cochairs are currently indecisive about their future with the organization.
In an email to the task force’s members, the cochairs reiterated that the “conservative movement” is at an “inflection point.”
The four cochairs — Florida pastor and president of the Latino Coalition for Israel Mario Bramnick, vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation Victoria Coates, former deputy antisemitism special envoy in the first Trump administration Ellie Cohanim, and pastor and executive director of the Philos Project Luke Moon — have asked Heritage to give them additional time to rethink their ties to the foundation.
“Because of this we are asking the members of the taskforce to give us additional time to work out the practical steps moving forward,” the cochairs wrote in the email obtained by Jewish Insider.
“We can allow the movement to elevate the most base identitarian elements within the movement or we can choose to build on the wins of the last year under President Donald Trump’s leadership,” they added.
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In their email, the cochairs expressed the need to apprehend antisemitic voices disguised as conservatives, which Heritage Foundation has refused to do.
“When we started the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism the challenges before us were from the pro-Hamas radical Left. More recently, forces have begun to come together to aggressively push antisemitism on the Right. Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes are the most notable, but not the only voices we need to contend.”
