https://www.them.us/story/heritage-foundation-project-2025-2026-plan-trump-administration
The plan appears to oppose trans people and same-sex marriage.Tom Williams/Getty Images
After spending this year working to implement as much of its gargantuan right-wing policy agenda, Project 2025, as possible, the Heritage Foundation has unveiled its anti-LGBTQ+ goals for 2026.Over the past month, the far-right think tank has been preparing for next year, releasing an ad campaign and doing multiple interviews about its plans. The activity has brought renewed attention on Heritage Foundation’s 2025-2026 policy priorities, which were titled “Restoring America’s Promise” when they were released in March. At the time, the group named nine key priorities, including “root[ing] out the deep state” and “counter[ing] the CCP [Chinese Communist Party].”The bulk of its anti-LGBTQ+ goals lie in the priority titled “Put Family First,” in which the Heritage Foundation declares that “every child conceived deserves to be born to a married mother and father who will love, guide, and protect them throughout their lives.”
The organization goes on to claim that “family breakdown and rampant abortion tears at the soul of our country and saps it of strength and moral authority,” while “radical ideologies that deny social and biological truths about sexual embodiment, marriage, and unborn life poison our courts, our culture, and our laws.”
“The Heritage enterprise will advance policies at the state and federal level to restore the nuclear family to the center of American life and to reduce both the demand and supply for abortion at all stages of human development,” it concludes. This language appears to oppose same-sex marriage given its emphasis on children being born to a married father and mother. It also appears to oppose transgender identity given its condemnation of ideologies that “deny social and biological truths about sexual embodiment” — this falls inline with a longstanding Heritage Foundation fight against trans people.
Elsewhere, the Heritage Foundation indicates its anti-trans views in a priority titled “Expand Education Freedom,” in which the group declares that the education system is “failing our children” through “the scourge of woke ideas like critical theory and radical gender ideology.” The terminology “radical gender ideology” is often used by conservatives to refer to trans and nonbinary identities.
The Heritage Foundation has been around since 1973, when it was founded by conservatives who found President Richard Nixon too liberal and feared both fiscal liberalism and federal government expansion. It has been consistent in its campaigns against LGBTQ+ rights, from consulting with then-governor Mitt Romney to figure out ways around preventing the legalization of gay marriage from being implemented in Massachusetts to lobbying against Title IX protections for trans students implemented during the Obama administration.
More recently, the organization has made headlines for its 920-page policy blueprint Project 2025, which presents a far-right Christian vision for the second Trump administration that includes several anti-trans measures, as well as the dismantling of the Department of Education and undoing other federal checks and balances. Although the Heritage Foundation has been releasing regular “Mandate for Leadership” blueprints ahead of incoming presidential administrations since the 1980s, Project 2025 has received considerable attention given that the group staffed and advised the first Trump administration (in July 2024, a CNN review found that at least 140 people working for Trump were involved with the Heritage Foundation). One of Project 2025’s architects, Russell Vought, currently runs the Office of Management and Budget.
Following late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s temporary removal in September, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr seemingly confirmed speculation that the Trump administration’s actions are a part of Project 2025. At the time, Glee star Kevin McHale shared an X post stating that “This was all in Project 2025,” after reposting another X post that framed right-wing attacks on media — which also include the Trump administration’s lawsuit against 60 Minutes, The New York Times, and Wall Street Journal — as First Amendment assaults. In response, Carr — who wrote Project 2025’s chapter on the FCC — shared a GIF of Jack Nicholson nodding in apparent confirmation.
As a recent The 19th report pointed out, the second Trump administration has fulfilled a number of Project 2025’s anti-LGBTQ+ directives, including purging the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) data on gender identity and cutting federal funds for gender-affirming care.
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Abby Monteil is a New York-based writer. Her work has also appeared in The Daily Beast, Insider, Elite Daily, Thrillist, and others. … Read More
Scottie's Playtime 
Wouldn’t it be nice if — well I guess we all have to add our own thoughts there, but for me –if people would just love one another they way we each are without judging lifestyles. We were ALL created in God’s image and while some are straight others are gay, and being gay is not something anyone wakes up some morning and decided they want to do. Some people are born with genetic profiles that make them what they are, and why do others think they are wrong? Fear that they will try to turn them gay? That’s so stupid. And I’m not speaking about only Gay people, but everyone who for one reason or another does not fit somebody’s idea of what is okay and what is not. We were all born with different genetics, my own being Caucasian female. I’m comfortable this way, but one of my brothers always felt different, like something was missing in his life. He tried dating friends who were female but it never felt right to him. One day he felt an attraction to a wonderful person who happened to be male. He fought against it but it never felt right, so he finally admitted his orientation was not the same as others, began dating that guy and ultimately marrying him. When my brother died from a disease he developed while in the Air Force and stationed in Turkey we continue to regard Jay as our brother.
This is probably totally off the subject, but I wish someone could give me a good reason why it is okay for some people to dress in clothes that show more than they hide, engage in public acts of sexual encounters, and flit from one partner to another, while not okay for others to be in long term relations with one person who happens to be of the same sex. Okay, so I’m old and believe children should be the result of marriage, but who says I’m right? I’m just another human trying to get along with every other human, and live peacefully with my neighbors. I would like to think that if the government in the form of a sexual predator who has been tried and convicted of 24 felonies is not in prison for his real crimes he has no right to tell anyone at all how to think, act, or speak. The problem is not diversity — it’s apathy on the part of voters too lazy to go to the polls every 4 years and vote for the person qualified to govern, not the one that tells the best lies.
Sorry if this is so far from the subject. I’m just venting over how low this country has fallen and how much farther it has to hit rock bottom. Glad to be so old I won’t have to live for it all before the people wake up and admit their mistake in believing a con artists lies.
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