“It is not the critic who counts,” President Theodore Roosevelt once said. “The credit belongs to the man who is in the arena.” The Heritage Foundation has been in the arena for many years, fighting many battles, so it’s no surprise that it has attracted many critics as well. And while Heritage cannot claim perfection, this much is certain: We have stayed true to our mission despite the critics; we have turned out to be right on some big questions in recent years, and the country is better for it.
Think tanks, conservative publications and pundits, and of course the Republican political establishment often oppose positions taken by Heritage. This is all well and good when done in good faith, as iron sharpens iron, but we must acknowledge that some criticisms are meant to tear down, not build up. Still, over just the last decade, Heritage has charted new policy directions that, despite receiving early slings and arrows from critics, later became conservative common sense. We have led the way on such controversial issues as immigration, Ukraine, trade, Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), and gender ideology. Each of these was controversial when we took them up.
Heritage has long been willing to stand alone on immigration and border security. Going back to 2013, Heritage opposed the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill, which would have granted temporary legal status to nearly 11 million illegal aliens. It’s hard to imagine now, but our stance was deeply unpopular inside the beltway on both left and right. No matter. The Gang of Eight bill was amnesty now, citizenship later, and border security never. It was much like the failed 1986 law signed by President Ronald Reagan that granted mass amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal aliens but never delivered the promised border security or immigration enforcement.
Despite its significant momentum in Congress, among nearly all conservative groups inside the beltway, and much of the political class, Heritage said no. For that, we were attacked vociferously by forces on what many consider the right, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Tax Reform, and the Wall Street Journal. Daily calls to boycott Heritage were launched. Critics argued the total, fiscal cost to American taxpayers was not the correct way to look at amnesty. Heritage’s message was simple: Amnesty is unfair, costly, and it won’t work. Fortunately, leaders in the House of Representatives refused to bring the Gang of Eight bill up for a vote, even though it passed the Senate handily.
Our arguments are mainstream conservative now. Protecting American taxpayers and prioritizing limited resources for Americans over illegal aliens has since become an “America First” policy, helping propel Donald J. Trump to the presidency in 2016 and again in 2024, after President Joe Biden’s reckless and costly open-border agenda.
Or take Ukraine. After Russian tanks rolled into that country in February 2022, there was broad support for Ukraine at Heritage. The Ukrainian flag flew over Heritage’s headquarters. Like most Americans, Heritage admired the Ukrainians’ courage in fighting for their homeland. (We still do.) We continue to detest Vladimir Putin’s savage military aggression. After a year of war, however, serious questions emerged regarding the Biden administration’s strategy. Biden seemed confused, increasing a funding request from $1.3 billion to $33 billion in the space of a single week without a clear strategy for how it would be spent.
Heritage started asking tough questions about what “as much as it takes for as long as it takes” entailed for the American taxpayer, even as Congress approved and even increased Biden’s funding requests.
Rather than endorsing more aid, Heritage kept asking simple questions. For instance: “How much more funding does Biden estimate will be required to enable Ukraine to win the war?” The condemnation we received for asking this question was swift, personal, and, at times, bipartisan across Washington, DC. Some, such as The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum, even said, absurdly, that we supported Putin.
Undeterred, Heritage continued to probe Biden’s approach to Ukraine. We shined a skeptical light on bloated omnibus spending that included still more funding for Ukraine and a bipartisan chorus of senators who demanded immediate NATO membership for Ukraine regardless of the obligations and risks to America’s security.
As the 2024 general election began, public sentiment shifted noticeably. Heritage’s call for a clear endgame—one that deterred Putin while requiring greater European contributions—moved into the mainstream. This shift was mirrored on the campaign trail, where Trump campaigned on a platform of ending the war and halting related American expenditures.
Trump refocused the U.S. approach to Ukraine onto much more realistic ground. America’s interests are the focus in getting to a deal that will, in the president’s words, “end the killing.” Ukraine continues to heroically resist Vladimir Putin, but now with much greater contributions from Europe and less from American taxpayers.
Or take free trade. Heritage has long championed free trade as a driver of growth, innovation, and lower consumer prices, a commitment reflected in our forthcoming 32nd annual Index of Economic Freedom. However, no principle exists in a vacuum. Recognizing that trade must serve national security, Heritage moved beyond an “anti-tariff-at-all-costs” stance to meet the demands of a changing world. While acknowledging the tradeoffs of tariffs, we supported President Trump’s efforts to leverage them as a tool for better, fairer trade deals, all the while defying the warnings of some economists who falsely predicted his rebalancing would trigger a depression.
Heritage didn’t buy the alarmism. Combined with regulatory and tax relief, the Trump economic policies are working. The U.S. stock market is near its all-time high, gross domestic product grew 4.3 percent last quarter, all while inflation, interest rates, and unemployment remain stable.
Moreover, the U.S. Treasury has collected more than $240 billion in new tariff revenue. We have long held, along with most economists, that consumption-based taxes (including some tariffs) are less damaging to the economy per dollar raised than taxes on income or investment. Along the way (and to this day) we have encouraged the administration to avoid tariffs on intermediate goods, and we’ve been critical of how they have set their formulas. In some cases, we’ve endorsed targeted tariffs or other trade restrictions against foreign adversaries, such as China.
Clearly, though, it’s convenient fiction for our critics to claim that Heritage has abandoned free trade or sided with Putin. Such caricatures drive engagement, but they also forestall honest debate.
Let’s be honest: By practicing unilateral free trade, the U.S. surrendered the leverage needed to help our firms and workers compete abroad. This was both politically and morally unsustainable. Today, most conservatives back a more assertive trade policy. Indeed, many now support even more assertiveness than we do.
Next, what about MAHA? When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. endorsed and allied himself with then-candidate Trump in August 2024, many right-of-center commentators and institutions questioned Kennedy’s fit with conservative governance. Fair enough. Heritage, though, saw an opportunity in the burgeoning alliance to address chronic childhood disease, rebuild trust in health institutions after widespread Covid abuses, and broaden the conservative base to include a large, passionate, and politically disaffected group of Americans who are tired of being treated as lifetime profit centers for Big Pharma.
We quickly launched a new initiative called Restoring American Wellness. We convened a MAHA-focused public program and strategic policy discussion in December 2024, well before MAHA became a policy framework for other conservatives. The day before the inauguration, Heritage hosted a private reception for Kennedy and dozens of nationally recognized health leaders and influencers, many of whom had never visited Heritage before. We saw how Kennedy’s team was taking shape and were encouraged it included many conservatives. And we applauded Kennedy’s confirmation as the secretary of Health and Human Services a month later.
All the while, prominent conservative voices and outlets criticized Kennedy as a hostile enemy, going so far as to launch a lavish campaign to actively oppose his nomination.
MAHA has now emerged as a serious policy force, with early executive action on children’s health and swift implementation at HHS under Kennedy, who has defied critics by advancing reforms on gender medicine, vaccines, and nutrition. Despite skepticism from some conservative quarters, Heritage has played a leading role in shaping historic changes, from overhauling vaccine advisory structures and advancing state efforts to end coercive and unnecessary vaccine mandates, to elevating concerns about ultra-processed diets and SNAP subsidies that fuel chronic disease, to advancing policies that address root causes of infertility through restorative reproductive medicine. The movement has also pushed forward-leaning, free-market approaches to regenerative agriculture and pesticide policy, often years ahead of broader conservative consensus.
This is not “nanny state” governance. This is responsible fiscal and social stewardship that leads to improved health and economic outcomes for all Americans.
Heritage sees the MAHA movement as an opportunity for serious reform and political realignment. We launched and worked to build a new coalition before there was consensus on the right. We are confident these efforts will help transform the health of the country and create an environment where every American can build a legacy, contribute to the economy with meaningful work, and ensure our national security.
Or take gender ideology. A mere decade ago, taking a stand for the reality of sex differences and the need for institutions to respect those differences was a lonely and politically perilous proposition, even among conservatives. Many who made the attempt paid a price. Heritage was among the brave few pioneers defending the reality of men and women when gender ideology first burst on the scene. Now, 10 years later, Heritage-built coalitions and policies have led to extraordinary victories in the battle for reality, science, and the protection of children, women, and girls.
In 2015, the cultural landscape was bleak. Following their Supreme Court victory, LGBTQ advocacy groups pivoted immediately to what they dubbed “the next civil rights front”: gender ideology. This wasn’t just rhetoric; it was a coordinated campaign. That same year, activists released a “Schools in Transition” guide designed to help schools secretly “transition” students behind their parents’ backs. By 2018, the medical establishment surrendered as well, with the American Academy of Pediatrics (led by a young activist doctor) endorsing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children.
The political class offered little resistance. Even Republicans were retreating: Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana was practically guaranteed to lose reelection because he backed “non-discrimination” legislation in his state, while North Carolina’s Pat McCrory was abandoned by the establishment and lost his reelection campaign after standing against federal mandates that opened female bathrooms to biological males.
Republicans were in disarray over how to address gender ideology in the lead-up to the 2016 Republican primary. A 2016 piece in POLITICO titled “GOP culture war breaks out over transgender bathrooms” portrayed the debate within the party as pitting social conservatives against Trump and his more pragmatic allies who didn’t consider it to be a winning issue in the general election.
Libertarians also opposed engaging on the transgender issue, prioritizing individual freedom over government intervention (particularly in the case of the bathroom bills). For example, a 2019 piece in Reason magazine on the Equality Act referred to conservative opposition to the act as “culture war pageantry” and portrayed opposition to gender ideology as a distraction from libertarian concerns about government overreach.
The situation worsened under Biden, who released a “National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality” in 2021, directing agencies to implement policies that would treat people based on their subjective “gender identity.”
Those who stood against gender ideology lost jobs, livelihoods, and even their children. Politically, it was toxic, but that didn’t stop Heritage from doing what was right. From the beginning, and through the turmoil, we took a stand. In 2015, Heritage scholar Ryan Anderson wrote boldly against new laws on sexual orientation and gender identity. While other conservatives caved on pronouns to be “polite,” Roger Severino was possibly the first guest to be scolded on air by MSNBC for refusing to call a boy a girl; Scott Yenor wrote an intellectual history on the culture wars; and Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally was banned on Amazon when cancel culture was at its height.
Undeterred by the fact that there were few allies on the right, Heritage was willing to collaborate with left-leaning and feminist organizations to oppose legislation that included gender identity provisions (such as the Equality Act, endorsed by some on the right) and defend distinctions and protections based on biological sex. We hosted an event with the Women’s Liberation Front and formed the Hands Across the Aisle coalition, arguing that gender ideology “erases women” with its erosion of sex-based rights and safety in single-sex spaces. This paved the way for women of the left, such as J.K. Rowling, to defend women as women.
While others looked away, Heritage stood with the early victims of gender ideology, centering on the harrowing stories of detransitioners like Chloe Cole and bereaved parents like Abigail Martinez. Over the past several years, Heritage has built and nurtured a vast coalition of parents, doctors, lawyers, and activists from across the political spectrum to work together to defeat gender ideology and protect women’s single-sex spaces in law, culture, schools and medicine.
Heritage experts have developed model legislation in this area: the Given Name Act, the Defining SEX Act, the Defining Abuse Child Protection Act, and the Vital and State Records Integrity Act. Our experts have testified in state houses nationwide on legislative efforts to protect female sports, prohibit “gender-affirming care” for minors, and protect families from child protective systems intent on transitioning their children.
Thankfully, the tide has turned against radical gender ideology, especially on the right, but it was not always that way. While the right is now largely united in this fight, we must remember that such clarity was once a lonely position.
While public policy battles can leave one feeling solitary, we know from history that one unwavering individual or institution can become the decisive force. And we know from our half-century of work, and from our 500,000 members, that Heritage is never lonely for too long.
In his “Citizenship in a Republic” speech, Theodore Roosevelt honored those who actually “strive to do the deeds.” Heritage has spent a half-century doing exactly that. We haven’t always won, and we haven’t always been perfect. But we have striven to never be the “cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat,” in Roosevelt’s words. Whether in triumph or setback, Heritage has remained in the arena, daring greatly for the sake of the nation. And our work is far from finished.
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In the first quarter of 2026, Heritage is unveiling a new wave of bold research and policy proposals designed to do what we have always done: seize the initiative and reshape the national conversation once again. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, Heritage will arm the movement with a new arsenal of insight: groundbreaking family policy research, a high-stakes war simulation on China called “Tidalwave,” and our flagship longitudinal studies—the Index of Economic Freedom, the Index of Military Strength, and a revitalized Index of Cultural Indicators. These are not just reports; they are the benchmarks that will enable Heritage to look beyond the horizon and once again help lead the charge for the American people.
We are so daring, because we believe in common sense.
