The Heritage Foundation
The Architect
Embedded Files
"We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be." — Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, July 2024. This is not rhetoric. Heritage wrote the blueprint, trained the people executing it, and describes its current mission as "institutionalizing Trumpism." It has been building toward this moment since 1973.
What Heritage Is
The Heritage Foundation is a Washington D.C.-based conservative think tank founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, Edwin Feulner, and Joseph Coors — the same year Weyrich co-founded ALEC. Both organizations share founding ideology, overlapping funders, and interlocking infrastructure. They were designed to work together.
Heritage is not simply a research organization. It operates a complete policy-to-power pipeline: it writes the policy, trains the people who execute it, coordinates with ALEC and the Federalist Society to align state and federal agendas, maintains a database of vetted candidates for government positions, and publishes The Daily Signal — a media arm that presents Heritage's advocacy as independent journalism.
Its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status means it pays no federal income tax, donations to it are tax-deductible, and its donor list is not publicly disclosed. It exercises outsized influence on legislation and executive policy while remaining entirely insulated from voter oversight, public transparency requirements, and the ethical review standards applied to government actors.
Mandate for Leadership — Fifty Years in the Making
Heritage has published its Mandate for Leadership governing blueprint before every Republican administration since Reagan. President Reagan distributed it at his first cabinet meeting and implemented 64 percent of its recommendations in his first year. The Conversation
The 2025 edition — 900 pages written by more than 350 conservative policy specialists, most of them veterans of Trump's first administration — was sent to Trump transition team members as an operational manual before inauguration day.
As of February 2026, the Trump administration has initiated or completed 53 percent of Project 2025's domestic policy agenda — 283 of 532 recommended actions across 20 federal agencies. Center for Progressive Reform
This is not coincidence. It is fifty years of preparation meeting its moment.
Project 2025 — Heritage's Implementation Machine
Project 2025 is Heritage's coordinated effort to rapidly restructure the federal government. Organized by Heritage and signed by more than 100 allied organizations, it was built on four integrated pillars:
The Blueprint — Mandate for Leadership: 900 pages of policy proposals agency by agency
The Personnel Database — a vetted roster of conservative candidates for government positions, described internally as a "Conservative LinkedIn"
The Training Academy — preparing those candidates to seize control of their agencies immediately
The Agency Playbook — converting policy proposals into day-one implementation instructions
The proposals include replacing tens of thousands of career civil servants with political loyalists under Schedule F, placing the DOJ, FBI, FTC, FCC, and Federal Reserve under direct presidential control, eliminating the Department of Education, pursuing mass deportation, restricting reproductive healthcare at the federal level, and eliminating all DEI programs across government. Center for Progressive Reform
Heritage 2.0 — The 2026 Agenda
With Project 2025 approximately half enacted, Heritage released its 2026 priorities — branded as "Heritage 2.0" and "Restoring America's Promise." Its stated goals include continuing to dismantle the civil service, eliminating the Department of Education, intensifying immigration enforcement, restricting abortion access at all stages, eliminating DEI across all institutions, and rooting out what Heritage calls "woke ideas" from schools and universities.
Heritage describes this explicitly as a "two-year project to dismantle the deep state." The revolution, in their own words, is not finished.
Project Sovereignty 2025
Heritage awarded a $100,000 grant to the American Accountability Foundation to fund Project Sovereignty 2025 — an effort to identify and publish online the names of federal employees deemed likely to resist the administration's agenda. The effort stunned democracy experts and the civil service community, who compared it directly to McCarthyism. The Partnership for Public Service described it as an attempt to intimidate career civil servants into compliance or resignation. PBS NewsHour
This is Heritage's method in miniature: identify the obstacle, name it publicly, and apply pressure until it moves.
Kevin Roberts — The Man Running It
Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts told the New York Times that he views Heritage's role today as "institutionalizing Trumpism," adding: "The Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start. And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated." The Conversation
Roberts spoke on Real America's Voice in July 2024 and said: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be." He later predicted the revolution would be complete by 2050, and that it would coincide with a new "great awakening" bringing America to God — underscoring the extent to which Heritage and Project 2025 are entwined with Christian nationalism.
JD Vance wrote the foreword to Roberts's book Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, writing: "We are now all realizing that it's time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon." The Nation
The Funding Wall
Heritage's 501(c)(3) status shields its donors from public disclosure. Known funders include the Koch network, the Bradley Foundation, major corporate foundations, and anonymous donors routed through donor-advised funds. The organization that is reshaping the federal government cannot be held accountable through the ballot box, has no public disclosure requirements, and answers to no one outside its own leadership and its undisclosed donor base.
What Can Be Done ✅
Track the agenda using watchdog resources:
Right Wing Watch — monitors Heritage's policy agenda and personnel
Documented — investigative reporting on Heritage and dark money networks
SourceWatch — Heritage funding and personnel database
The Daily Signal — read it critically; it is Heritage's media arm, not an independent news source
Apply congressional pressure:
Contact your Representatives and Senators demanding hearings on Schedule F implementation and the politicization of the civil service
Demand appropriations riders preventing federal funds from implementing Project 2025 proposals
Oppose confirmation of Heritage-affiliated nominees to federal agencies and the judiciary
Support counter-organizations:
ACLU — litigation against Project 2025 policy implementation
Brennan Center for Justice — democracy and voting rights research and advocacy
People for the American Way — monitoring and opposing Heritage's policy agenda
Documents in this library: 📄 The Heritage Foundation — Organizational Profile & Threat Assessment 📄 Project 2025 — Summary 📄 Project 2025 — Mandate for Leadership (Full Original Document)
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