Project 2025–The Heritage Foundation

The Heritage Foundation

Washington, DC

Revenue: $100,963,350

For the full experience, read the following research at Truth Wins Out’s “Behind the Mask: The Project 2025 Organizations Reshaping America”.   (Pg. 20)

The Heritage Foundation is the architect of Project 2025, the extreme right’s plot to remake America in its illiberal image. The plan is to deconstruct the government, replace democracy with autocracy and use a right-wing staffing database to replace nonpartisan workers with loyal quislings who are fully obedient to the whims of President Donald Trump. Heritage publicly called Project 2025 a scheme for “institutionalizing Trumpism”.

We consider this organization a direct threat to national security with dangerous implications for civil liberties, human rights, foreign policy, the social safety net and democracy. Heritage is playing a vital role in helping President Donald Trump dismantle key institutions, obliterate norms, undermine ethics and is providing the worker bees to turn the United States into an authoritarian country.

A line-by-line review by CBS News identified at least 270 proposals in Project 2025’s published blueprint that match Trump’s past policies and campaign promises. CBS News also reported on the Orwellian questions job applicants are asked:

Candidates interested in applying for the Heritage Foundation’s “Presidential Personnel Database” are vetted on a number of political stances, such as whether they agree or disagree with statements like “life has a right to legal protection from conception to natural death,” and “the President should be able to advance his/her agenda through the bureaucracy without hindrance from unelected federal officials.”

The Heritage Foundation’s plan is puritanical. It seeks to criminalize pornography, eliminate all access to abortion nationally, and oppose virtually all LGBTQ rights. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) warned, “Heritage’s stated support for freedom and limited government does not extend to LGBTQ Americans… Project 2025 aims to gut protections for the LGBTQ community, which its organizers believe exists in opposition to the ‘traditional American family’ and its Christian nationalist underpinnings.”

Heritage is also known for supporting the discredited practice of “conversion therapy”, which seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through psychoanalysis and prayer.

Additionally, Project 2025 wants to bring back so-called Blue Laws. Rachel Leingang wrote in The Guardian:

In the chapter about the Department of Labor, the manifesto suggests a communal day of rest for society because “God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest”. One way to enforce this idea would be for Congress to require paid time-and-a-half for anyone who works on Sundays, which the project calls the default day of Sabbath “except for employers with a sincere religious observance of a Sabbath at a different time”

Cornell University political scientist Rachel Beatty Riedl summed up what life would be like under the rapidly encroaching Project 2025 regime.

“If Project 2025 is implemented, what it means is a dramatic decrease in American citizens’ ability to engage in public life based on the kind of principles of liberty, freedom and representation that are accorded in a democracy.”

The Heritage Foundation also promotes activist right-wing judges. A prominent example is James Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In 2023, Ho gave a lecture at The Heritage Foundation where he “spoke about the need for like-minded judges to show ‘courage,’ to be willing to buck popular consensus.”  

Far from showing courage, Ho is a MAGA toady and human weathervane whose only deeply held belief appears to be shameless self-promotion.  According to the New York Times:

A week after Mr. Trump was re-elected, Judge Ho gave an interview to a conservative legal blog in which he arguably appeared to back Mr. Trump’s view that the Fourteenth Amendment does not guarantee citizenship for all children born on U.S. soil. Birthright citizenship, Judge Ho argued, “obviously doesn’t apply in case of war or invasion.”

Judge Ho’s detractors accused him of revising his views, pointing to his full-throated endorsement of universal birthright citizenship in a legal journal in 2006. The paper remains an influential piece of legal scholarship almost 20 years later. Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited it this year in a dissent, arguing that the Supreme Court should have struck down Mr. Trump’s order to restrict birthright citizenship as unconstitutional, instead of leaving open the question of its legality. 

Justice Sotomayor quoted Judge Ho’s assertion from 2006 that citizenship “is protected no less for children of undocumented persons than for descendants of Mayflower passengers.”

Judge Ho’s more recent comments seemed to be “backtracking,” altering his earlier position “purely because of the circumstances,” said John P. Collins Jr., a law professor at George Washington University. “He’s now got a president who wants to end birthright citizenship, and what the boss says is what goes.”

Judge Ho’s restatement of his views on citizenship could be construed as “as an audition for a promotion” to the Supreme Court, wrote Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown. Mr. Vladeck has called Judge Ho’s rulings in support of Mr. Trump’s deportation efforts “nihilistic.”

The Heritage Foundation also threatens to unravel the U.S. economy. In August 2025, President Trump nominated Heritage economist E.J. Antoni to be commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

He was tapped to replace Erika McEntarfer, who was fired by Trump after her office produced a high quality report showing that job growth in July was just half as much as last year’s average, and for revising downward the estimated job creation of the two previous months.

Antoni is a MAGA loyalist who provided key research for Project 2025. There is widespread fear that he was selected as a replacement for McEntarfer because he is an obsequious partisan who Trump expects to cook the books to make the economy appear stronger than it is. 

If the Bureau of Labor Statistics morphs into the “Bureau of Good News”, the United States will relinquish its global economic role. It will only take one or two reports with bogus statistics to immeasurably harm America’s reputation as a haven for safe investment. The economic consequences could be devastating.

Criticism of Antoni’s qualifications, competence and independence has come from across the political spectrum:

• Stan Veuger, economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said Antoni’s work “frequently included elementary errors or nonsensical choices that all bias his findings in the same partisan direction.”

• Michael Strain, also of the American Enterprise Institute, warned that Antoni’s nomination “raises questions about the politicization of official data” and that BLS leadership requires “deep expertise and a commitment to nonpartisanship — neither of which Antoni has demonstrated.”

• Jessica Riedl, a scholar at the free-market Manhattan Institute, said Antoni’s articles and tweets are “the most error-filled of any think tank economist right now,” adding that she hoped for better standards at BLS.

• Justin Wolfers, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, said in a post on X. “Trump’s nominee for BLS commissioner, EJ Antoni, is disastrously terrible. He has demonstrated no commitment to truth.”

Furthermore, Antoni has repeatedly attacked popular programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In a December 2024 radio interview, he called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” and urged that it be “sunset” — phased out — even if it means an entire generation pays into the system without receiving benefits. He has lumped Medicare and Medicaid into what he calls “different Ponzi schemes” that must be “dealt with,” signaling support for dismantling all three programs.

A third-rate economist like E.J. Antoni was always supposed to be relegated to the fringe of his profession. Thanks to Trump and Heritage, this unbridled extremist lurks very close to the center of our financial universe. As a result, the flawed economic theories, bizarre concepts and backward financial worldview of Heritage could end up negatively impacting the U.S. economy.

***

Kevin Roberts was named the group’s president in 2021. Under his leadership, The Heritage Foundation has taken a radical turn, fervently embracing violent rhetoric, Christian Nationalism and political authoritarianism. The New Republic wrote that, “Heritage has become little more than an intellectual breeding ground for Trumpist ideas.”

On July 2, 2024, the brash militancy of Heritage came to light after Roberts pronounced on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast that the nation is “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

The role model for The Heritage Foundation is Hungary’s corrupt, autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a man Trump once called his “twin”.  In March 2024, Trump declared, “There’s nobody that’s better, smarter, or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic…He’s a great leader.”

That same month, Orbán spoke at a Heritage Foundation event in Washington and told Hungarian media that “Hungary has an honored place” with The Heritage Foundation. Following Orbán’s trip, Heritage agreed to a “landmark” collaboration agreement with the Danube Institute, a bogus Hungarian “think tank” that exists primarily as an obsequious sock puppet to praise Orbán’s government.

The New Republic detailed the incestuous ties between Heritage, the conservative movement and the Danube Institute:

The Danube Institute began doling out significant grants to a range of other American conservatives, such as provocateur Christopher Rufo, who received tens of thousands of dollars, as well as a number of writers published in The American Conservative. 

Most important, however, is the man currently running the Danube Institute: John O’Sullivan, a British conservative who once served as the director of studies at—you guessed it—the Heritage Foundation.

The two [groups] have already begun operating closely, co-hosting the Danube Geopolitical Summit last September. Featuring both Heritage and Danube Institute leadership, as well as a number of Hungarian officials, the conference centered on many of the aforementioned themes Orbán routinely highlights, railing against so-called “wokeness” in Western democracies. At the conference, James Carafano, Roberts’s key adviser at Heritage, “stressed the importance of building transatlantic connectivity,” saying he was “so proud to be associated with the Danube Institute.”

Unfortunately, Trump’s first year in office has looked very much like an impersonation of Orbán. Both men focus on attacking immigrants, denigrating LGBTQ people, wrecking institutions, replacing government experts with loyal apparatchiks, hijacking higher education, bashing the media, targeting political enemies and working to permanently stay in power.

It is beyond alarming that Heritage would model America’s future on an unfree, economically stilted kleptocracy. As The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum points out in her article, “America’s Future is Hungary”, “MAGA conservatives love Viktor Orbán. But he’s left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished”:

Once widely perceived to be the wealthiest country in Central Europe (“the happiest barrack in the socialist camp,” as it was known during the Cold War), and later the Central European country that foreign investors liked most, Hungary is now one of the poorest countries, and possibly the poorest, in the European Union. 

The Heritage Foundation’s embrace of a tyrant like Orban is unsurprising. The odious history of the organization is one of supporting brutal right-wing dictators and championing oppression in every corner of the globe:

• Support for Apartheid South Africa: Heritage staunchly opposed U.S. sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid regime. In the 1980s, Heritage analysts argued against punitive measures, ludicrously claiming sanctions would harm Black South Africans and weaken an anti-communist ally. The think tank effectively defended the white-minority government. Indeed, one Heritage board member’s organization even accepted money from Pretoria to lobby on its behalf.  After years of defending apartheid, Heritage reacted coolly to Nelson Mandela’s rise and warned against the African National Congress rather than celebrate the incipient democratic government.

• Supported Brutal Militants in Mozambique: Heritage championed Mozambique’s RENAMO rebel army – a force created and backed by Rhodesia’s and South Africa’s intelligence services to destabilize Mozambique’s leftist government. RENAMO was infamous for mass atrocities against civilians (earning it the label “African Khmer Rouge” even within the Reagan State Department). Yet Heritage became an active lobbyist for RENAMO’s cause in Washington, served as the chief defender of RENAMO, despite the group’s record of mass civilian murder

• Alliance with Angolan Warlord: In Angola’s civil war, Heritage threw its weight behind Jonas Savimbi, leader of the UNITA rebels. Savimbi’s UNITA, backed by South Africa and the CIA, fought Angola’s socialist government and was accused of egregious human rights abuses (torturing and killing civilians, and profiting from blood diamonds). Heritage nevertheless embraced Savimbi as a Cold War hero. In October 1989, Savimbi was even hosted at Heritage’s headquarters, where he received a hero’s welcome. “When we come to The Heritage Foundation, it is like coming home,” Savimbi told the gathered conservatives, thanking Heritage for its “great support” in helping repeal U.S. congressional bans on aid to UNITA.

• Central America – Embrace of the Contras: In Latin America, Heritage was an outspoken advocate of right-wing regimes and insurgents during the 1980s, aligning closely with Reagan administration’s interventions. Heritage vehemently supported the Nicaraguan Contras, a guerrilla force that sought to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government. The Contras, funded covertly by the U.S. (and infamously via the Iran-Contra affair), were implicated in torture and terrorism against Nicaraguan civilians. None of this deterred Heritage. The think tank’s experts and patrons were deeply involved in pro-Contra lobbying – for instance, Heritage’s longtime benefactor Joseph Coors helped finance the Contras.

• Afghanistan and Islamist Militancy: The Heritage Foundation was a strong proponent of arming the Afghan Mujahideen in the 1980s war against the Soviet Union. This patronage was indiscriminate – it treated all anti-Soviet factions as “freedom fighters,” even radicalized religious extremists who would later morph into the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. In hindsight, it’s noted that Heritage-backed Afghan militias included figures like Osama bin Laden among their ranks.

• Praise for Chile’s Pinochet: Heritage maintained an unapologetic admiration for Chile’s General Pinochet. Even after Pinochet stepped down, Heritage touted Chile’s economic success under his rule as a model, largely glossing over the “dirty war” waged against Chilean dissidents. 

• Defense of Waterboarding: As reports emerged of torture (so-called “enhanced interrogation”) and mass surveillance under the Bush administration, Heritage analysts often echoed administration talking points. Rather than condemn waterboarding or indefinite detention, Heritage publications framed these issues in terms of necessity and executive power. Heritage issued analyses criticizing efforts to close Guantánamo Bay and opposing stronger congressional oversight of interrogation policy.

• Pro-Putin and Anti-Ukraine: The Heritage-Viktor Orbán partnership has had concrete policy implications, most notably regarding the war in Ukraine. Orbán is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest EU ally and an outspoken critic of Western support for Ukraine. Under Roberts’ leadership, Heritage hosted a 2023 international conference in Washington D.C. where Orbán’s emissaries lobbied U.S. lawmakers to cut off aid to Ukraine.At that Heritage-sponsored event, Hungarian government officials (including embassy personnel) urged Republican members of Congress to vote against the Biden administration’s Ukraine military assistance package.

From its Cold War birth to the present, The Heritage Foundation’s foreign policy has consistently sided with ideological allegiance over democracy and human rights. Whether it was defending apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia, glorifying armed rebels with records of massacres (RENAMO, UNITA, the Contras), or forging friendships with today’s authoritarian strongmen, Heritage has often found itself on the opposite side of the human rights community and pro-democracy advocates.

***

The Heritage Foundation’s reactionary lurch under Roberts was not entirely unexpected. Prior to his tenure, the organization was led by Kay Cole James, who had previously served as Senior Vice President of the Family Research Council (FRC), which was designated a Southern Poverty Law Center hate group since 2010.

In a 2019 statement about the proposed federal Equality Act, James declared, “The #EqualityAct is anything but equality. This bill would shut down businesses and charities, politicize medicine, endanger parental rights, and open every female bathroom and sports team to biological males.”

Prior to James’ stint with Heritage, the organization was led by Tea Party firebrand, former Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC). DeMint largely rejects separation of church and state and declared in 2021, “The bigger government gets, the smaller God gets.” Upon his appointment to Heritage, The New Yorker wrote:

Up until now, the Heritage Foundation has done a fairly competent job of disguising itself as a “think tank” where sobersided “scholars” write unreadable “policy papers” with “executive summaries.” But by appointing Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, as its new president, Heritage risks “rebranding” itself as a full-bore, revival-tent, Jesus-saves belief tank of the Christianist right.

DeMint previously stirred major backlash in 2004 when he stated that “openly homosexual people should not be allowed to teach in public schools.” He later added that single mothers living with their boyfriends should be similarly excluded. In his book Why We Whisper, DeMint and co-author J. David Woodard described the “homosexual lifestyle” as “notoriously unhealthy and destructive, with huge financial costs to society.” They contextualized it alongside smoking and gambling as public health concerns, drawing sharp critique for the sweeping generalization.

DeMint promoted extreme toxic partisanship, divided American and often placed his movement before the good of the country. Speaking of Obamacare in 2009, DeMint warned, “If we are able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him…”

Founded in 1973, the Heritage Foundation was always an extremist group posing as a mainstream think tank. The organization got its start when Paul Weyrich, a religious right strategist joined forces with political scholar Edwin Feulner. They persuaded brewery heir Joseph Coors to invest $250,000 to create a conservative institution meant to rival the liberal Brookings institution.

As the Nixon era crumbled, Weyrich played a key role in filling the void and refashioning the right. He saw an opportunity to energize right wing Christians who he viewed as an untapped voting bloc.  As Political Research Associates noted, Paul Weyrich was one of the architects of Rev. Jerry Falwell’s fundamentalist Christian Moral Majority movement. Weyrich also sought to fuse traditionalist Catholics with Evangelicals into a political force.

Writing in the mid-1970s, Weyrich spoke of his incipient strategy, “The new political philosophy must be defined by us [conservatives] in moral terms, packaged in non-religious language, and propagated throughout the country by our new coalition… When political power is achieved, the moral majority will have the opportunity to re-create this great nation.”

The term moral majority, of course, was always euphemistic language for a more ominous motive. In the landmark 1954 case, Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ended racial segregation in public schools. In a 1958 sermon at his Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, titled “Segregation or Integration: Which?”, Falwell angrily denounced the decision:

“If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God’s word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision [Brown v. Board of Education] would never have been made. The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.”

Apoplectic over this decision, private, nonprofit “segregation academies” were created across the south to exclude black students. In June 1971 the Supreme Court, in Green v. Connally, summarily affirmed a lower court decision holding that any school maintaining racially discriminatory admissions policies was not entitled to tax-exempt status and that contributions to such schools could not be tax-deductible.

This controversial ruling directly impacted Bob Jones University, as well as Weyrich’s Moral Majority partner Rev. Falwell. At the time, Falwell referred to the Civil Rights movement as “Civil Wrongs” and operated the Lynchburg Christian Academy, founded in 1967 as a segregation academy.

Green v. Connally didn’t just close a tax loophole—it sparked the political awakening of white evangelical leaders who would become the backbone of the Religious Right. Paul Weyrich, of course, understood the mobilizing potential of that outrage and built it into a lasting political machine, reframing a fight over segregation academies into a broader cultural battle over “religious liberty” and “government overreach.”

Historian Randall Balmer has documented that the real catalyst for the Religious Right’s rise was not Roe v. Wade (1973)—as the later myth claimed—but anger over government interference with racially segregated private schools. According to Balmer:

Evangelicals considered abortion a “Catholic issue” through most of the 1970s, and there is little in the history of evangelicalism to suggest that abortion would become a point of interest. Even James Dobson, who later became an implacable foe of abortion, acknowledged after the Roe decision that the Bible was silent on the matter and that it was plausible for an evangelical to hold that “a developing embryo or fetus was not regarded as a full human being”.

Indeed, in 1971 the Southern Baptist Convention had passed a resolution calling to legalize abortion. When the Roe decision was handed down, some evangelicals applauded the ruling as marking an appropriate distinction between personal morality and public policy.

Although he later – 14 years later – claimed that opposition to abortion was the catalyst for his political activism, Jerry Falwell did not preach his first anti-abortion sermon until February 1978, more than five years after Roe.

Weyrich himself admitted in later interviews:“What got us going as a political movement was the attempt by the IRS to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University and other schools.”

The seething anger over rapidly changing times bubbled over and led directly to the inglorious founding of The Heritage Foundation. However, as minorities were empowered to vote against Weyrich’s preferred candidates and archaic policies, it presented a problem for the advancement of his agenda. 

The answer to this dilemma was voter suppression, which is still a huge—and growing— problem today. In an infamous 1980 speech to evangelicals in Dallas, Weyrich said, “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people… As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting population goes down.”  

Discrimination, intolerance and bigotry were never far from The Heritage Foundation’s Weyrich. In 1977, he also founded the Free Congress Foundation, (FCF), a think tank and political training organization that sponsored books such as, The Homosexual Agenda and Gays, AIDS and You.

Weyrich also brought Laszlo Pasztor into the FCF to help organize outreach to Eastern European immigrant communities in the U.S., particularly for Republican electoral purposes. In his youth, Laszlo had been involved with the Arrow Cross Party in Hungary—a pro-Nazi, fascist group responsible for atrocities against Jews and others during the war.

Pasztor helped run the Coalitions for America network, which connected conservative ethnic organizations—some of which included far-right and ultranationalist émigré leaders with controversial wartime histories—to the broader New Right movement.

Journalists and researchers (including the Washington Jewish Week and the Political Research Associates) documented Pasztor’s wartime past with the Arrow Cross, raising concerns that Weyrich and the Free Congress Foundation were giving legitimacy and influence to a figure tied to fascist collaboration. The National Women’s Law Center reported on another disreputable figure involved with FCF. In an online article, “Project 2025: A Villain Origin Story”, NWLA revealed: 

His [Weyrich’s] Free Congress Foundation published a manifesto in 2001, authored by his mentee, Eric Heubeck, which practically serves as a preamble for Project 2025. 

“Our movement will be entirely destructive, and entirely constructive. We will not try to reform the existing institutions. We only intend to weaken them, and eventually destroy them…All of our constructive energies will be dedicated to the creation of our own institutions.”  

Despite the ignominious beginning of Heritage and its sketchy ties to extremists, the organization found early political success by latching onto Ronald Reagan. Reagan was a fellow traveler who launched the post–Republican National Convention phase of his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. While at the Neshoba County Fair, Reagan dog whistled, “I believe in states’ rights.” He made no mention of the town’s notorious civil rights history.

Tragically, Philadelphia, Mississippi was the site of the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights workers who were registering Black voters during Freedom Summer. They were abducted and murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan, with the complicity of local law enforcement. The killings became a national scandal and a symbol of the violent resistance to civil rights in the Deep South. For many Americans—particularly African Americans and civil rights advocates—Philadelphia, MS, was synonymous with racist violence and systemic injustice.

Reagan was clearly sending an unmistakable message to the emerging Moral Majority, who had ironically turned against President Jimmy Carter because he wasn’t deemed Christian enough. Coretta Scott King later said. “That speech was a kind of code. It told people, ‘We understand what you’re feeling.’ It was a message to the white supremacists.”

A Devil’s Bargain marriage between the GOP and the Religious Right was consecrated on August 22, 1980. Speaking in Dallas to right wing leaders and activists, Reagan made his fateful remark “You can’t endorse me, but I can endorse you”. The rise of the Tea Party and MAGA, as well as the downward spiral of American politics can directly be traced to this ill-fated, tragic remark.  

Prior to the 1980 election, Heritage published its first Mandate for Leadership, a policy blueprint for President Reagan. The document was widely shared throughout his cabinet. By the end of Reagan’s first year in office, 60% of its proposals were implemented. This set the stage for Project 2025 eventually becoming the guiding light for the second Trump Administration.   

In March 2025, Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, expressed to Politico his extreme satisfaction with how much of the radical initiative has been implemented by Trump.

“It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams…the way that they’ve been able to move and upset the orthodoxy, and at the same time really capture the imagination of the people, I think portends a great four years.”

While The Heritage Foundation never found genuine respectability given its sordid history and present threat to democracy, it certainly did find political success with its distorted studies, well-funded lies and ruthless voter suppression campaigns.

Heritage’s dystopian legacy is a wounded America that has been deeply destabilized, institutions are on the brink of destruction, our government has been rendered nearly dysfunctional, the American people are bitterly polarized, and democracy is under siege, teetering on the precipice of total collapse. That is what The Heritage Foundation always promised us, and they are certainly delivering!

To think that all this divisiveness, trauma and national grief could have been avoided if only a few stubborn bigots could have accepted court ordered desegregation of public schools. What a sad, miserable legacy The Heritage Foundation will one day leave behind. The question is, how much damage will it do before its eventual demise?

Controversies:

1. Promotion of Climate Change Denial

• The Heritage Foundation has long been criticized for promoting climate change skepticism and opposing environmental regulations. It has published reports and hosted events questioning the scientific consensus on climate change. It also opposed the Paris Climate Agreement and the Clean Power Plan.

2. Opposition to the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

• Heritage was a major opponent of President Obama’s ACA, also known as “Obamacare.” While it originally promoted the idea of an individual mandate in the 1990s, it later denounced the ACA’s use of that mechanism. The foundation played a role in shaping Republican strategies to repeal the ACA. Critics highlighted Heritage’s reversal on the individual mandate as politically motivated rather than policy-driven.

3. Involvement in the Trump Administration and Election-Related Claims

• Heritage played a significant role in staffing the Trump administration and has been criticized for supporting or enabling efforts to undermine the 2020 election results. The foundation helped vet and supply personnel for the Trump administration. After the 2020 election, some affiliated individuals questioned election integrity, although Heritage itself did not explicitly endorse conspiracy theories.

4. Rejection of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Initiatives

• Heritage has been a vocal critic of DEI efforts in government, education, and corporate policy. It has published articles and policy proposals labeling DEI as divisive and counterproductive, framing it as leftist ideology.

5. Funding and Transparency Issues

• Questions have been raised about Heritage’s funding sources and transparency. Critics allege that significant funding comes from corporate donors, including those in the fossil fuel and pharmaceutical industries, which may influence its policy positions. The foundation does not disclose all of its donors.

6. Project 2025

• Heritage is leading “Project 2025,” a sweeping plan to reshape the federal government if a Republican wins the presidency in 2024. The project includes controversial proposals like dismantling the administrative state, purging the federal workforce of perceived “liberal” influences, and centralizing executive power. Legal scholars and democracy advocates argue this would weaken checks and balances and politicize the civil service.

• Ruth Ben-Ghiat, NYU scholar of authoritarianism, called Project 2025, “a plan for an authoritarian takeover of the United States that goes by a deceptively neutral name… [aiming] to destroy the legal and governance cultures of liberal democracy.”

7. LGBTQ Rights and Anti-Trans Legislation

• Heritage has taken strong stances against same-sex marriage and transgender rights. It has advocated for restrictions on gender-affirming care, trans participation in sports, and changes to Title IX to exclude gender identity protections.

8. Scientific Quackery and I.V.F.

• In February 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children and those who destroy them can be held liable for wrongful death. Recognizing that the procedure was supported by 70 percent of Americans, Trump promised to protect In Vitro Fertilization, even referring to himself as the “father of I.V.F.”

Now that Trump is president, he is allowing the Heritage Foundation to introduce a quack-alternative to I.V.F called “restorative reproductive medicine”. The group deployed Emma Waters, a senior research associate, to push a controversial Christian theory that one needs to search for “the roots” of infertility to battle the problem.

The New York Times reported:

The fringe theory, “has featured prominently in an intense series of conversations inside the White House, as top Trump aides have wrestled with what to recommend in a highly anticipated I.V.F. report.”   

Leading medical organizations have weighed in over the last few months. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called restorative reproductive medicine “unproven” and “not a medical term,” stressing that many patients have already tried to chart their cycles, treat underlying conditions and make lifestyle changes by the time they arrive at an infertility clinic.

While those methods may work for some, several leading I.V.F. doctors said people experiencing infertility often required more help — and months or years spent on restorative reproductive medicine could delay the I.V.F. they would ultimately need in order to conceive. Because female fertility declines with age, doctors said those delays could jeopardize a woman’s ability to get pregnant.

9. Project Esther: False Accusations of ‘Terrorism’     

• Under the guise of “combatting antisemitism the Heritage Foundation published an abhorrent scheme called “Project Esther”. Their cynical strategy recommends crushing the pro-Palestinian movement by branding a broad range of critics of Israel as “effectively a terrorist support network,” so that they could be deported, defunded, sued, fired, expelled, ostracized and otherwise excluded from what it considered “open society.”

There is no more ardent foe against antisemitism than Truth Wins Out. We have repeatedly spoken out against the scourge of Jew-hated, whether it comes from the left or the right. However, this is still America, and we believe in freedom of speech and assembly. People and organizations have a fundamental right to debate and believe a wide range of constitutionally protected views. That is what truly makes our country great—and Heritage is trying to stifle liberty by demagoguing this issue. 

No matter one’s views on this emotionally charged issue, civilized people should agree that the Heritage Foundation is morally corrupt in plotting to smear Americans by falsely accusing them of terrorism or aiding and abetting terrorists.

Quotes

2010

LGBTQ Rights

• “Recognizing same-sex unions as marriages would necessarily change the definition of marriage from a gendered to a genderless institution.” — Heritage Foundation Report, “The Dangers of Same-Sex Marriage”

Context: This report argued that legalizing same-sex marriage would undermine traditional family structures and harm children. It was widely criticized as pseudoscientific and discriminatory.

2013

Race / Immigration

• “Low IQs explain much of the differences in economic outcomes between immigrants and native-born Americans.” — Jason Richwine, Heritage Foundation Fellow (co-author of 2013 immigration report)

Context: Richwine resigned following backlash over this statement, which was based on his Harvard dissertation and included in a Heritage report opposing immigration reform. The comment was condemned as racist and scientifically unfounded.

2015

LGBTQ Rights

• “The transgender movement has no basis in science or medicine. It’s a political agenda that seeks to destroy the natural order.” — Ryan T. Anderson, then-Senior Research Fellow at Heritage

Context: This was part of Anderson’s broader advocacy against transgender rights, which included his book “When Harry Became Sally.” Critics accused him and Heritage of promoting bigotry under the guise of scholarship.

2016

Religious Freedom / LGBTQ

• “The government is compelling Christian business owners to affirm sexual relationships that violate their faith. That’s not tolerance; it’s tyranny.” — Heritage Foundation blog post defending religious exemptions

Context: This rhetoric was part of Heritage’s campaign supporting businesses that refused service to same-sex couples under “religious liberty.”

2019

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

• “Diversity for its own sake is a shallow concept and a Trojan horse for leftist ideology in America’s institutions.” — Heritage commentary titled “The Myth of Diversity as a Virtue”

Context: Heritage argued that DEI initiatives are ideologically driven and lower standards in education and hiring. Critics said the position dismisses systemic inequality and inclusion efforts.

2020

Election Legitimacy / Democracy

• “We cannot allow the left to weaponize our election system. Mass mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, and voter roll manipulation threaten the integrity of the republic.” — Hans von Spakovsky, Heritage legal fellow

Context: Spakovsky, a key figure behind Heritage’s Election Integrity Project, spread exaggerated claims about voter fraud. His work was cited by Republicans to justify restrictive voting laws.

2021

Critical Race Theory / DEI

• “Critical Race Theory is a cancer on our culture, teaching children to hate their country and each other.” — Heritage Foundation tweet and publication

2022

Transgender Rights / Education

• “Giving children puberty blockers or teaching them they can change their sex is institutionalized child abuse.” — Kara Dansky, Heritage-affiliated speaker and anti-trans activist, speaking at a Heritage panel

2023

Abortion

• “Abortion is not health care. It’s the taking of innocent human life, and we must end it in all 50 states.” — Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, post-Dobbs v. Jackson decision

Context: Heritage has supported full abortion bans with no exceptions for rape or incest in some cases. This stance was labeled “extremist” by reproductive rights groups.

2024

Project 2025 / Authoritarianism Allegations

• “We need a wartime conservative movement to gut the administrative state. The next president must be willing to fire 50,000 bureaucrats on day one.” — Kevin Roberts, President of The Heritage Foundation

• In a Kevin Roberts Show interview with Telegraph journalist Steven Edginton, Roberts explicitly urged a warlike posture toward the federal bureaucracy. He said the next conservative president must “wake up every day and say, what part of the American administrative state am I going to destroy today? Not reform…destroy; fire the bureaucrats, close agencies…”Roberts also warned that unless Republicans show “backbone like [Margaret] Thatcher [and] Reagan” and “stand up to the Blob and…destroy it, we will lose America. Every tactic has to be oriented around that goal.” – January 24, 2024

• Roberts portrayed the left as “totalitarian in its mission…practically jihadist in its…fanaticism,” warning that if they prevail “we will cease to be a nation at all” and become  “subservient to a religion without God, in a land without hope.” — NatCon Conference, July 8, 2024,

2025

Project 2025 / Authoritarianism Allegations

• “We are in the second American Revolution,” he told conservative state lawmakers, urging “wartime” measures against “illegitimate” liberal governing enclaves. He even advised GOP legislatures to “de-charter”progressive-run cities like Austin and Nashville – effectively stripping local governments – in order to enforce the Heritage–Project 2025 agenda. Roberts promised to give state officials “air cover” in this aggressive offensive. — ALEC Speech, July 2025

Immigration

• “Illegal aliens, temporary visa holders, and green card holders should not be counted in the Census.”– Heritage post on X, August 8

• “The Census including illegal aliens & other noncitizens as residents skews Congressional & Electoral College apportionment, devaluing the voting rights & corrupting the representation of citizens. That must end! — Heritage post on X, August
• 7 

• “America is letting in too many international students.” — Heritage post on X, August 5   

Medicaid Cuts:

• “Medicaid became BETTER under the One Big Beautiful Bill.” — Heritage post on X, August 7

Context: The bill reduces approximately $930 billion to $1 trillion in federal Medicaid spending over the next decade. Combined with adjustments to SNAP and ACA subsidies, some reports put total cuts to Medicaid and food assistance at over $1 trillion. Up to 12 million Americans are projected to lose health insurance coverage as a direct result of Medicaid reductions. Rural hospitals, already financially fragile, face closure risks. Analysts estimate $87 billion in rural hospital losses over the next decade, with hundreds of facilities threatened. Poorer individuals may lose on average $1,600 per year in benefits, while wealthier households gain on average $12,000 per year via tax cuts—highlighting a stark regressive effect.

Crime in DC and Home Rule

• “It doesn’t have to be this way. These homicide rates are a policy choice of the leftists who run Washington, D.C.” — Heritage post on X, August 7

Pro-Natalists

• “Mere pro-natalists can serve as excellent allies against our anti-child culture, but the lack of concern for family formation risks perpetuating the very social pathologies that gave rise to the birth dearth in the first place.” — Heritage post on X, August 5

Transgender Rights

• “The YMCA won’t keep men out of women’s locker rooms, but still receives about $600 million in funding from the federal government every year. That has to change.” — Heritage post on X, August 4 

The Firing of Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics  

• The Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics oversaw significant errors in jobs data for over three years. It was time to give someone else the opportunity to correct the inaccuracies.– Heritage post on X, August 4  

Context: The New York Times reported that the one example Trump provided to back his assertion of errors was a brazen fabrication: “Days before the election, she [McEntarfer] came out with these beautiful numbers for Kamala,” Trump said, referring to his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. “Then right after the election — I think on the 15th, Nov. 15 — she had an eight or nine hundred-thousand-dollar massive reduction.”

What he meant was that the bureau revised downward its estimate of how many jobs had been created by 800,000 or 900,000 only after the election so as not to hurt Ms. Harris’s chances of victory.

Except that it actually happened the exact opposite way. Dr. McEntarfer’s bureau revised the number of jobs created downward by 818,000 in August 2024 — before the election, not after it. And the monthly report her bureau released just days before the election was not helpful to Harris but instead showed that job creation had stalled. The White House offered no comment when asked about the president’s false account.

The Heritage Foundation, once a Cold War policy shop, has evolved into a driving force behind an increasingly authoritarian and illiberal agenda that threatens both American democracy and global stability. For decades, it has aligned itself with repressive regimes and violent insurgencies. These alliances consistently placed Heritage on the side of human rights abusers while undermining democratic movements.

Today, its foreign partnerships include Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, where it collaborates with government-funded think tanks to promote an “illiberal democracy” model hostile to LGBTQ rights, press freedom, and independent courts. This global networking mirrors Heritage’s domestic blueprint, Project 2025, which calls for dismantling federal safeguards, concentrating executive power, and rolling back civil rights protections for women, minorities, and LGBTQ Americans.

By exporting authoritarian tactics abroad and importing them into U.S. politics, Heritage has become a destabilizing force against the post–World War II liberal order that underpins peace and democratic governance. Its track record shows a consistent willingness to sacrifice civil liberties, human rights, and rule of law in favor of ideological conformity and entrenched power.

Whether lobbying to strip voters of their rights, defending the torture of detainees, or legitimizing foreign leaders who dismantle democracy from within, the Foundation operates as a political battering ram against both domestic constitutional norms and international human rights standards. Far from being a neutral think tank, Heritage functions as an activist hub dedicated to reshaping governance in the image of authoritarian strongmen—posing a clear and present danger to American democracy, stable government, and the global order.