"How One Conservative Think Tank Is Stocking Trump’s Government ... By placing its people throughout the administration, the Heritage Foundation has succeeded in furthering its right-wing agenda," Jonathan Mahler writes for the N.Y. Times Magazine cover story.

The bottom line: “The Trump team may not have been prepared to staff the government, but the Heritage Foundation was ... Today it is clear that for all the chaos and churn of the current administration, Heritage has achieved a huge strategic victory.”

• "Trump had no personal connection to the think tank and had fared poorly on a 'Presidential Platform Review' from its sister lobbying shop, Heritage Action for America, which essentially concluded that he wasn’t even a conservative."
• "Much like Trump’s, Heritage’s constituency is equal parts donor class and populist base. Its $80 million annual budget depends on six-figure donations from rich Republicans."
• “The Heritage Foundation is a marketing company, a branding agency — it sells its own Heritage neckties, embroidered with miniature versions of its Liberty Bell logo — and a policy shop rolled into one. But above all, Heritage is a networking group.”

Worthy of your time.