WASHINGTON — The Heritage Foundation appears to be at it again. Long one of the most influential conservative think tanks in the United States, Heritage was founded in 1973 and is based in Washington, D.C. The nonprofit organization conducts research and advocates for public policy grounded in five stated principles: free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.
Heritage is also the primary institutional force behind Project 2025, serving as the project’s parent organization and publishing its central blueprint, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. That initiative laid out an explicit, documented agenda to “deconstruct the administrative state” and ensure that a conservative administration would be prepared to govern from “Day One.” Many of the Project 2025 strategic outcomes are now visible, and Heritage’s latest report offers little reassurance to those concerned with pluralism and inclusion.
The Heritage Foundation logo
In a new publication, Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years (Heritage Foundation Special Report No. 323, January 2026), the authors argue that the long-term stability of the United States depends on restoring what they define as strong family structures. Drawing on demographic, economic, and sociological data, the report links declining marriage rates, lower fertility, and reduced religious participation as interconnected social challenges threatening national cohesion.
In this new report, the authors define the “ideal family” as one centered on marriage between a man and a woman, oriented toward raising children within a stable household. They contend that public policy should actively encourage marriage, childbirth, and parental responsibility through tax credits, welfare reform, and economic incentives structured primarily around married households. Religious institutions are presented as central to this vision, with the report asserting that protecting religious liberty and accommodating religious practice in public life strengthens civic engagement and social well-being.
Among its policy recommendations, the report supports restoring so-called “uniform day of rest” laws, commonly known as blue laws, arguing that limiting commercial activity on Sundays fosters family time, community connection, and religious observance. Supreme Court precedent is cited to assert that such laws can be constitutional when framed as serving secular public interests, despite their clear alignment with Christian norms of worship and rest.
Notably absent and equally not unexpected, from Saving America by Saving the Family is any acknowledgment of Pagan, polytheistic, or nature-based religious communities. As a reminder, our community has a long-standing and legally recognized presence in the United States.
While the report speaks broadly of “religious liberty” and “faith,” its examples, assumptions, and policy prescriptions consistently reflect Christian frameworks—particularly church-centered worship, Sunday observance, and Christian models of family life—without addressing how these proposals might affect religious minorities whose traditions do not align with those norms.
This omission is not merely an oversight but a revealing limitation in how religious freedom is being defined. Pagan traditions are pluralistic, decentralized, and often organized around seasonal, lunar, or land-based cycles rather than a fixed weekly Sabbath. Many Pagan communities also honor diverse family and community structures that do not conform to rigid biological or marital models.
Inside the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C.. Photo Credit: MJTM
By advancing public policies that normalize Christian practice as culturally neutral while rendering other religious expressions invisible, the report risks redefining religious liberty as the protection of a dominant tradition rather than the equitable safeguarding of all faiths.
To be clear, the report does not state that it was sent to, addressed to, or formally transmitted to any specific audience. In fact, the front matter includes a disclaimer noting that “nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of The Heritage Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before Congress.” Heritage instead frames the document as a long-range policy analysis examining what it characterizes as a crisis in American family formation, intended to guide policymakers and civic leaders rather than advance specific legislation.
Yet the report is steeped in normative assumptions about marriage, gender, religion, and family structure that it treats as culturally universal rather than as one perspective among many. In its conclusion, the authors explicitly call for a coordinated, multi-sector effort—enlisting religion, media, culture, and civic institutions—to advance this vision, asserting that “pro-family policy can help fertilize the soil in which family, faith, and freedom can flourish.”
The report also proposes the creation of a formal “working group” housed within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, focused on emerging technologies—particularly artificial intelligence. The group’s responsibilities would include embedding family-policy representation in federal technology governance, facilitating collaboration between technology companies and family-policy advocates, advising Congress and the President on technology’s effects on marriage, parental authority, and family formation, and coordinating with the National Institute of Standards and Technology on the development and evaluation of so-called “AI family alignment” standards.
Furthermore, while the report does not include a dedicated section on women, it advances a consistent and normative vision of women’s roles through its treatment of marriage, reproduction, and family life. Women are primarily framed as biological mothers, with pregnancy, childbirth, and maternal bonding presented as irreplaceable social goods central to national renewal. Women’s well-being and social function are discussed largely within the context of heterosexual marriage, positioning women chiefly as wives whose stability and fulfillment are linked to marital permanence. Across discussions of child development, education, and technological harm, women appear implicitly as primary caregivers and moral anchors within the household, while the report’s insistence on fixed, binary sex difference reinforces traditional expectations about women’s roles as natural, essential, and culturally universal rather than as one set of possibilities among many.
The authors further conclude that “even if convinced of the value of family, young people will still need to overcome the many obstacles to forming families,” expressing confidence that “with the policy changes, supports, and incentives presented here, today’s young people will be able to pursue the American Dream, and, in so doing, save America itself.” Framed this way, family formation is cast not merely as a personal choice but as a civic obligation tied to national survival.
The report closes by expressing confidence that, with the policy changes and incentives it proposes, young people can overcome obstacles to forming families and, in doing so, “save America itself.”
Read in context, this vision points less toward a pluralistic future than toward a revival of a narrowly defined mid-20th-century ideal: a nuclear family model that is obedient, conforming, and above all reproductive. For communities whose spiritual lives, family forms, and identities fall outside that template, the implications are not reassuring. Given the Heritage Foundation’s central role in shaping Project 2025, this framework bears close attention. Be on the lookout for this as it gains traction in some political circles.
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