SOURCE: Wikipedia, 2020-05-21
See also:
Heritage Action for America ("Heritage Action"), a conservative policy advocacy organization founded in 2010. Heritage Action, which has affiliates throughout the United States, is a sister organization of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation and "perhaps now the most influential lobby group among Congressional Republicans."
[HeritageAction.com, 2018-04-17] Mike Needham to be Marco Rubio's Chief of Staff. Washington - This afternoon, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) announced Michael A. Needham would serve as his next chief of staff. ... Needham is the co-founder of Heritage Action for America, where he has been responsible for setting the strategy and vision of Heritage Action while ensuring it advances the mission of The Heritage Foundation. ...
[NYTimes.com, 2018-04-17] Marco Rubio, Darling of G.O.P. Establishment, Hires a Thorn in Its Side. As chief executive of the influential conservative think tank Heritage Action for America, Michael Needham waged years of unforgiving political warfare against the Republican Party establishment, deepening the divide between party leaders and grass-roots activists that helped elevate Donald J. Trump to the presidency. Now Mr. Needham is leaving his job there to become chief of staff for one of the Republican establishment's favorite sons, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. ...
Ideologically opposing group. The Center for American Progress is a public policy research and advocacy organization which presents a liberal viewpoint on economic and social issues. The Center for American Progress was created in 2003 as a left-leaning alternative to conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute.
The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., primarily geared towards public policy. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose policies were taken from Heritage's policy study Mandate for Leadership. Since then, The Heritage Foundation has continued to have a significant influence in U.S. public policy making, and is considered to be one of the most influential conservative public policy organizations in the United States.
The Heritage Foundation was founded on February 16, 1973 by Paul Michael Weyrich, Edwin Feulner, and Joseph Coors. Growing out of the new business activist movement inspired by the Powell Memorandum, discontent with Richard Nixon's embrace of the "liberal consensus" and the nonpolemical, cautious nature of existing think tanks, Weyrich and Feulner sought to create a version of the Brookings Institution that advanced conservative activism. Coors was the primary funder of The Heritage Foundation in its early years. Weyrich was its first president. Later, under president Frank J. Walton, The Heritage Foundation began using direct mail fundraising and Heritage's annual income grew to $1 million per year in 1976. By 1981, the annual budget grew to $5.3 million.
Heritage advocated for pro-business policies>, anti-communism and neoconservatism in its early years, but distinguished itself from the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) by also advocating for the Christian right. Through the 1970s, Heritage would remain small relative to Brookings and the AEI.
Shelby Cullom Davis (April 1, 1909 -- May 26, 1994) was an American businessman and philanthropist from the state of New York. In 1947 he created Shelby Cullom Davis & Company, which became a leading investment firm. Shelby Cullom Davis later served as the American Ambassador to Switzerland under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Shelby Cullom Davis was Chairman and Treasurer of an eponymous, conservative think tank, the Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation [now: Diana Davis Spencer Foundation], at the time of his death [1994-05-26]. Shelby Cullom Davis was also affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, ...
Kathryn Wasserman Davis (February 25, 1907 -- April 23, 2013) was an American philanthropist, scholar of world affairs, and longtime promoter of women's rights and planning parenthood. Kathryn Wasserman Davis' husband of 62 years, Shelby Cullom Davis, predeceased her in 1994. Kathryn Wasserman Davis' children include one son, Shelby Davis (Shelby Moore Cullom), and two daughters, Diana Cullom Davis Spencer and Priscilla Alden Davis (deceased). ...
... Kathryn Wasserman Davis was notable, by herself, for early philanthropic activity in support of parenthood planning and disease prevention. In partnership with her husband, they made a mark with gifts to Princeton University and the Hoover Institution, and as founders of New York City's Lincoln Center, where they established the library, as well as the Heritage Foundation. ...
In January 1981, Heritage published the Mandate for Leadership, a comprehensive report aimed at reducing the size of the federal government, providing public policy guidance to the incoming Ronald Reagan administration, including more than 2,000 specific suggestions to move the federal government in a conservative direction. The report was well received by the White House, and several of its authors went on to take positions in the Reagan administration. Reagan liked the ideas so much that he gave a copy to each member of his cabinet to review. Approximately 60% of the 2,000 proposals were implemented or initiated by the end of Reagan's first year in office. Ronald Reagan later said that The Heritage Foundation played a "vital force" in the successes during his presidency.
Heritage was influential in developing and advancing of the so-called "Reagan Doctrine," a Reagan administration foreign policy initiative in which the U.S. provided military and other support to anti-communist resistance movements fighting Soviet-aligned governments in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua and other nations during the final years of the Cold War.
Heritage also advocated the development of new ballistic missile defense systems for the United States. Reagan adopted this as his top defense priority in 1983, calling it the Strategic Defense Initiative. By mid-decade, The Heritage Foundation had emerged as a key organization in the national conservative movement, publishing influential reports on domestic and defense issues, as well as pieces by prominent conservative figures, such as Bob Dole and Pat Robertson. In 1986, Time Magazine called Heritage "the foremost of the new breed of advocacy tanks." During the Reagan and Bush administrations, The Heritage Foundation served as the President's brain trust on foreign policy.
The Heritage Foundation remained an influential voice on domestic and foreign policy issues during President George H.W. Bush's administration. It was a leading proponent of Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, and -- according to Frank Starr, head of the Baltimore Sun's Washington bureau -- the foundation's studies "laid much of the groundwork for Bush administration thinking" about post-Soviet foreign policy. In domestic policy, the Bush administration agreed with six of the ten budget reforms contained in Mandate for Leadership III", and included them in their 1990 budget proposal. Heritage also became involved in the culture wars of the 1990s with the publication of "The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators" by William Bennett. The Index documented how crime, illegitimacy, divorce, teenage suicide, drug use and fourteen other social indicators had become measurably worse since the 1960s.
Heritage continued to grow throughout the 1990s and its journal, "Policy Review," hit an all-time-high circulation of 23,000. Heritage was an opponent of the Clinton health care plan of 1993. President Clinton's welfare reforms were analogous with Heritage's recommendations and were adopted in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. In 1995, Heritage published the first "Index of Economic Freedom," co-authored by policy analyst Bryan T. Johnson and Thomas P. Sheehy. In 1997, the Index became a joint project between The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal.
In 1994, Heritage advised Newt Gingrich and other conservatives on the development of the "Contract with America", which was credited with helping to produce a Republican majority in Congress. The "Contract" was a pact of principles that directly challenged both the political status-quo in Washington and many of the ideas at the heart of the Clinton administration.
The Heritage Foundation supported the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq. According to a 2004 study in the journal International Security, The Heritage Foundation confused public debate by challenging widespread opposition to the Iraq War by international relations scholars and experts by contradicting them "with experts of apparently equal authority ... this undermined the possibility that any criticisms of the war might be seen as authoritative or have much persuasive effect." The organization defended the Bush administration's Guantanamo Bay practices [torture].
In 2005, The Washington Post criticized The Heritage Foundation for softening its criticism of Malaysia following a business relationship between Heritage's president and Malaysia's prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. The Heritage Foundation denied any conflict of interest, stating its views on Malaysia changed following the country's cooperation with the U.S. after the September 11 attacks in 2001, and changes by Malaysia "moving in the right economic and political direction."
The health insurance mandate in the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is an idea hatched in 1989 by Stuart Butler at Heritage in a publication titled "Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans." This was also the model for Mitt Romney's health care plan in Massachusetts.
In December 2012, an announcement was made that Senator Jim DeMint would resign from the Senate to head The Heritage Foundation. Pundits predicted his tenure would bring a sharper, more politicized edge to the Foundation. DeMint's eventual ouster in 2017 led some, such as Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), to believe Heritage sought to pare back its partisan edge and restore its reputation as a pioneering think tank.
On May 10, 2013, Jason Richwine, who co-authored the think tank's controversial report on the costs of amnesty, resigned his position following intensive media attention on his Harvard PhD thesis from 2009 and comments he made at a 2008 American Enterprise Institute forum. Richwine argued that Hispanics and blacks are intellectually inferior to whites and have trouble assimilating because of a supposed genetic predisposition to lower IQ.
A 2011 study on poverty in America was criticized for what critics called an overly narrow definition of poverty. Criticism was published in opinion editorials in The New Republic, The Nation, the Center for American Progress, and The Washington Post.
A 2013 study by Heritage senior fellow Robert Rector on the 2013 Senate Immigration Bill (Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013) was criticized for its methodology by critics from across the political spectrum. Notably, outlets like Reason magazine and the Cato Institute criticized the report for failing to employ dynamic scoring despite Heritage's support for such methodology in analyzing other policy proposals. The study was also criticized because its co-author, Jason Richwine, said in his 2009 doctoral dissertation that immigrants' IQs should be considered when crafting public policy.
In July 2013, following disputes over the farm bill, the Republican Study Committee of 172 conservative U.S. House members reversed a decades-old tradition of access by barring Heritage Foundation employees from attending its weekly meeting in the Capitol, but continues cooperation through "regular joint events and briefings."
In September 2015, the Foundation stated publicly that it had been targeted by hackers and had experienced a breach in which donors' information was taken. The Hill publication compared the attack to another notable data breach at the Office of Personnel Management a few months before. The identity of those that attacked the Foundation and their motivations are unknown.
The Heritage Foundation has been described as a major influence on the presidential transition of Donald Trump and the Trump administration. The foundation had a powerful say in the staffing of the administration, with CNN noting during the transition that "no other Washington institution has that kind of footprint in the transition." One reason for The Heritage Foundation's disproportionate influence relative to other conservative think tanks is that other conservative think tanks had members who identified as "never-Trumpers" during the 2016 election whereas The Heritage Foundation signaled early on to Trump that it would be supportive of him. At least 66 foundation employees and alumni were given positions in the administration.
In 2014, The Heritage Foundation began building a database of approximately 3,000 conservatives who they trusted to serve in a hypothetical Republican administration for the upcoming 2016 election. According to individuals involved in crafting the database, several hundred people from the Heritage database ultimately received jobs in government agencies, including Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry, Jeff Sessions and others who became members of Trump's cabinet. Jim DeMint, President of The Heritage Foundation from 2013 to 2017 [ousted, 2017-05, after internal disputes over The Heritage Foundation's mission], personally intervened on behalf of Mulvaney who would go on to head the Office of Management and Budget, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and later become acting White House Chief of Staff.
In 1973, businessman Joseph Coors contributed $250,000 to establish The Heritage Foundation and continued to fund it through the Adolph Coors Foundation. In 1973, it had trustees from Chase Manhattan Bank, Dow Chemical, General Motors, Pfizer>, Sears, and Mobil [ExxonMobil].
Heritage is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization as well as a BBB Wise Giving Alliance accredited charity funded by donations from private individuals, corporations and charitable foundations. As a 501(c)(3), Heritage is not required to disclose its donors and donations to the foundation are tax-deductible. According to a MediaTransparency report in 2006, donors have included John M. Olin Foundation, the Castle Rock Foundation, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, and the Bradley Foundation. Other financing as of 2016 includes $28,129,000 from the combined Scaife Foundations of the late billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.
Heritage is a grantee of the Donors Trust, a nonprofit donor-advised fund. As of 2010, Heritage reported 710,000 supporters.
For the fiscal year ending December 31, 2011, Charity Watch reported that Edwin Feulner, past president of The Heritage Foundation, received the highest compensation in its top 25 list of compensation received by charity members. According to Charity Watch, Feulner received $2,702,687 in 2013. This sum includes investment earnings of $1,656,230 accrued over a period of 33 years.
Heritage's total revenue for 2011 was $72,170,983 and its expenses were $80,033,828.
The Heritage Foundation is funded (in part) by the Bradley Foundation, and the Koch family. Source:
[2020-06-09] Bradley [Foundation] Spent Millions on Voter Suppression, Union Busters, Climate Deniers, and Right-Wing Media in 2019. As part of Bradley's strategic vision, it invests in groups to defund and dismantle unions, to fuel a web of climate change deniers, and to prop up right-wing media.
According DeSmogBlog.com [local copy (html, captured 2020-09-14)], the Scaife Family Foundation is the largest funder of The Heritage Foundation.
This Freedom Foundation file also includes the following statement.
The Freedom Foundation's funders have included: ... The Roe Foundation ... a prominent Heritage Foundation supporter.
Thomas Roe, a co-founder of the State Policy Network, was also a Member of the Board of Trustees of The Heritage Foundation.
Robert H. Krieble (August 22, 1916 -- May 8, 1997) was a chemist who co-founded the Loctite Corporation in 1953 ... Krieble served on the Board of The Heritage Foundation from 1978 (becoming Vice Chairman in 1985) and on the Board of the Free Congress Foundation [now: American Opportunity]. ...
Krieble donated about $100,000 a year to The Heritage Foundation for almost a decade. The Heritage Foundation runs a "Robert H. Krieble Lecture" series in his honor, and since 1998 provides a "Robert H. Krieble Fellow in Coalition Relations" based on an endowment by Krieble's family.
The Heritage Foundation has regularly ranked as one of the world's most influential think tanks. The 2016 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report published by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania ranks Heritage 12th among "Top Think Tanks Worldwide" and seventh among "Top Think Tanks in the United States".
Heritage published a 1981 book of policy analysis, Mandate for Leadership, which offered specific recommendations on policy, budget and administrative action for all Cabinet departments. The Heritage Foundation also publishes "The Insider," a quarterly magazine about public policy. Until 2001, The Heritage Foundation published "Policy Review," a public policy journal, which was then acquired by the Hoover Institution. From 1995 to 2005, The Heritage Foundation ran Townhall.com, a conservative website that was subsequently acquired by Camarillo, California-based Salem Communications. In 2005, the Foundation published "The Heritage Guide to the Constitution," a clause-by-clause analysis of the United States Constitution. Once per year Heritage publishes its "Budget Chart Book" using visual graphs and charts to demonstrate the growth of federal spending, revenue, debt and deficits, and entitlement programs.
Under Jim DeMint's leadership, the process involved in publishing policy papers changed at The Heritage Foundation. Whereas previous senior staff reviewed policy papers by staff, DeMint and his team heavily edited policy papers or shelved them. In response to this, several scholars at the foundation quit.
Internationally, Heritage publishes the annual "Index of Economic Freedom," which measures a country's freedom in terms of property rights and freedom from government regulation. The factors used to calculate the Index score are corruption in government, barriers to international trade, income tax and corporate tax rates, government expenditures, rule of law and the ability to enforce contracts, regulatory burdens, banking restrictions, labor regulations, and black market activities. A British-born academic, Charles W.L. Hill, after discussing the international shift toward a market-based economic system and The Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom," said "given that The Heritage Foundation has a political agenda, its work should be viewed with caution."
In 2002, Heritage began publishing its annual "Index of Dependence" report on the growth of federal government programs that constrain private sector or local government alternatives and impact the dependence of individuals on the federal government. It examines programs in five broad categories: housing; health care and welfare; retirement; higher education; and rural and agricultural services. The report has found that each year the number of Americans who pay nothing in federal personal income taxes continues to increase, while there is a simultaneous increase in the number who rely on government services. The 2010 report found that Americans' dependence on government grew by 13.6% in 2009 during the worst U.S. economic crisis since the Great Depression. According to Heritage, this is the biggest increase since 1976 and the fifth largest going back to 1962, when the foundation began tracking dependence. The report stated that in the previous eight years, the index of government dependence has grown by almost 33 percent.
Until 2014, The Heritage Foundation published a blog, "The Foundry." In 2014, The Foundry was phased out and eplaced with "The Daily Signal." Since 2006, the Foundation has hosted "The Bloggers Briefing", a meeting of conservative and independent bloggers organized by Robert Bluey.
In 2009, The Heritage Foundation produced "33 Minutes," a one-hour documentary film about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States.
In 2005, Heritage established the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom in honor of the former British Prime Minister. Thatcher herself maintained a long relationship with The Heritage Foundation. Shortly after leaving office, Thatcher was honored by Heritage at a September 1991 dinner. Seven years later, Thatcher delivered the keynote address during Heritage's 25th anniversary celebration. In 2002, Thatcher was again honored by Heritage as the recipient of its annual Clare Boothe Luce Award. Thatcher was later named Patron of The Heritage Foundation, her only official association with any U.S.-based group.
The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) co-hosted one of the 2012 Republican Party presidential debates on foreign policy and national defense.on November 22, 2011. It was the first presidential debate to be sponsored by either Heritage or AEI. During the debate, Heritage Fellows Edwin Meese and David Addington were among those who questioned candidates on policy. The debate was praised by The New York Times for putting "pressure on candidates to show their policy expertise." According to conservative commentator Michael Barone, the debate was "probably the most substantive and serious presidential debate of this election cycle."
The Heritage Foundation is an associate member of the State Policy Network.
The Heritage Foundation rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. The Heritage Foundation is one of many climate change denial organizations that have been funded by ExxonMobil. The Heritage Foundation strongly criticized the Kyoto Agreement, which was intended to curb climate change, saying American participation in the treaty would "result in lower economic growth in every state and nearly every sector of the economy." The Heritage Foundation projected that the 2009 cap-and-trade bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, would result in a cost of $1,870 per family in 2025 and $6,800 by 2035; on the other hand, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projected that it would only cost the average family $175 in 2020.
The Heartland Institute was founded in 1984 by Chicago investor David H. Padden, who served as the organization's chairman until 1995. Padden had been a Director of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., since its founding as the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974. ... In addition to lobbying activities, Heartland hosts an internet application called "Policybot" which serves as a clearinghouse for research from other conservative organizations such as The Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Cato Institute.
[2020-05-23]: Secretive Right-Wing Nonprofit Plays Role in COVID-19 Organizing.
[2020-04-22]: The anti-quarantine protests seem spontaneous. But behind the scenes, a powerful network is helping
... Further afield, the protests have been encouraged by some of the president's allies outside the White House, including Stephen Moore, once considered for a top post at the Federal Reserve.
...
... In recent days, conservatives have set their sights on Wisconsin, where a few dozen protesters turned out at the Capitol to air their frustrations with Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, after he extended his state's stay-at-home order until late May 2020. Ahead of the demonstration, Stephen Moore, the Trump ally, revealed on a live stream that he was "working with a group" in the state with the goal of trying "to shut down the capital."
Stephen Moore, who served as a Trump campaign adviser in 2016, said he had located a big donor to aid in the effort, though he never elaborated. "I told him about this, and he said, 'Steve, I promise to pay the bail and legal fees for anyone who gets arrested,'" Moore said in the video. He likened his quest to the civil rights movement, adding, "We need to be the Rosa Parks here and protest against these government injustices."
Stephen Moore, who has also worked at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, did not respond to a request for comment. ...
[2020-09-14]: At Homeland Security, Anti-Muslim Activist Katharine Gorka Maintained Ties With Islamophobes. Gorka worked on CVE programs, which have faced increased allegations of anti-Muslim bias under Trump, FOIA documents show. Discusses Clare Lopez, a far-right activist and longtime top figure at the anti-Muslim group Center for Security Policy.
Sebastian Gorka is a British-born Hungarian-American military and intelligence analyst who served (January 2017 -- August 25, 2017) as a Deputy Assistant to the President in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Sebastian Gorka, a FOX News contributor from 2017 to 2019, has ties to the alt-right. During his time in the Trump administration, Gorka gave a series of combative interviews with the press in which he defended the administration's positions on national security and foreign policy. Various national security scholars in academic and policymaking circles have characterized Gorka as fringe. Some critics have challenged his academic credentials, his views on Islam and radicalization ...
Sebastian Gorka married Pennsylvania native Katharine Fairfax Cornell [Katharine Gorka] in 1996 at St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church, Sopron, Hungary. The couple founded the Institute for Transitional Democracy and International Security in Budapest, Hungary in 2003.
Katharine Gorka has also been involved with the administration of Donald Trump, first serving on his transition team for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Katharine Gorka then became a policy advisor at DHS on 2017-04-07. At DHS, Katharine Gorka has received attention for her part in defunding Life After Hate -- a group which facilitates deradicalization, particularly of white supremacists.
After more than two years as a Senior Policy Adviser at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Katherine Gorka became Press Secretary for the DHS' Customs and Border Protection last June [2019]. Two months later, she left the Trump administration and now works at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. ...
... While at DHS, Katherine Gorka also frequently corresponded with various people at her soon to be employer, The Heritage Foundation, where she is listed as having a number of meetings during her tenure in public office. One frequent confidant was Robin Simcox, then a terrorism researcher at The Heritage Foundation who authored a report called "The Asylum-Terror Nexus: How Europe Should Respond," which it pushes a similar line to the justifications given by Trump and other anti-immigration activists to the United States' asylum program.
Katherine Gorka also used her work email to confide in Heritage Foundation scholars, including about her plans after leaving DHS. In June 2018, more than a year before she left the DHS, Gorka emailed James Carafano, a national security expert at The Heritage Foundation, asking to talk about "terrorism prevention and life after DHS."
Eighteen months later, she would become Carafano's colleague, when, according to a LinkedIn page, she formally joined The Heritage Foundation.
[2020-06-12]: Transphobic Trump Administration Erases Transgender Civil Rights Protections in Health Care. A rule finalized on Friday [2020-06-12] by the Department of Health and Human Services means that the federal government no longer recognizes gender identity as an avenue for sex discrimination in health care.
Roger Severino, the Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services Department within the Trump administration, once oversaw the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation<
[Aside: the Trump administration's Secretary of Education is the hyper-religious, billionaire transphobe Betsy Devos.]
The Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law often known as Obamacare, established broad civil rights protections in health care, barring discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability in "any health program or activity" that receives federal financial assistance.
Rolling back the health care rule has been a cause for social conservatives since its implementation, including Roger Severino, who criticized it while at The Heritage Foundation. They have accused the Obama administration of coercing doctors into sexual reassignment operations, procedures that are typically handled by specialists. Another rule issued by Mr. Severino's office last year would provide additional "conscience" protections for health care workers with religious or moral objections to certain types of care.
The rule, which does not differ much from a proposed version released last year, is part of a broad Trump administration effort across multiple areas of policy -- including education, housing, and employment, as well as health care -- to narrow the legal definition of sex discrimination so that it does not include protections for transgender people.
Additional detail here [2020-06-12]: Transgender Health Protections Reversed By Trump Administration. Mentions: "Ryan Anderson, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation and former colleague of Roger Severino, submitted a comment in support of the rule."
In 2015, Roger Severino joined The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank geared towards public policy. There, Severino served as the Director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.
In 2017, Severino was appointed as Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by President Donald Trump.
A social conservative and devout Catholic, Severino has often been criticized for being anti-LGBT. The Human Rights Campaign has described Severino as a "radical anti-LGBTQ activist." In 2018, Severino called the Obama Administration's expansion of sex to include gender identity "radical gender ideology." In an op-ed co-written by former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, Severino said that "transgender rights supporters see sex as 'merely a placeholder' assigned at birth."
As Director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, Roger Severino was instrumental in the removal of nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people established in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The provision healthcare providers to deny care based on a patient's sexuality or gender identity.
[Source: Wikipedia]
Relevant [TexasTribune.org, 2020-10-14]: New Texas rule lets social workers turn away clients who are LGBTQ or have a disability. A professional organization of social workers called the change "incredibly disheartening," while Gov. Greg Abbott's office said it was necessary to conform with existing state law.
The Heritage Foundation's 2018 Annual Report (pdf): Hitting Back On "Gender Identity" (pdf). Note also included images to transphobic "news" / disinformation network FOX News.
[2019-01-29]: Heritage Foundation: Conservative group hosts anti-transgender panel of feminists 'from the left'. Divide and conquer? The conservative Heritage Foundation hosted a panel of "radical feminists" fighting trans rights.
Relevant [2017-10-23]: Christian Right tips to fight transgender rights: Separate the T from the LGB. | see also: Wedge Strategy
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) issued a report regarding the Christian right's attempt to "separate the T from the LGB." The SPLC noted a trend emerging of transgender rights being "depicted as anti-feminist, hostile to minorities and even disrespectful to LGB individuals." The SPLC's and several other reports quoted Meg Kilgannon, Executive Director of Concerned Parents and Educators of Fairfax County, a group that opposes transgender rights, as saying during the summit,
"Trans and gender identity are a tough sell, so focus on gender identity to divide and conquer" ["wedge Strategy"].
[captured 2020-07-03]: Convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution: Convention of States:
... In June 2017, former U.S. Senator and former Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint announced his role as a Senior Adviser for the Convention of States project. ...
[45 Alliance, 2019-12-02] Trump Appointees Wined and Dined by Pro-Trump Non-Profit Group at Trump Hotel
Jamie Burke is a fixture of the D.C. establishment and conservative movement who most recently worked on Mitt Romney's unnecessary presidential transition team -- after a stint as White House liaison to Health and Human Services under George W. Bush. She [Jamie Burke] also served as a high-up functionary within the Republican National Committee for six years.
Prior to that, Burke worked for the conservative Heritage Foundation, where she developed a leadership training project created by former congressman and vice-presidential nominee Jack Kemp. Additionally, Jamie Burke is currently a Board member of the American Conservative Union -- the oldest right-wing lobbying organization in America.
[2018-02-04] Follow the money (1/2): Disruption at home and abroad
Two anti-George Soros, anti-Open Society Foundations attack articles by prolific Heritage Foundation senior member / disinformation troll Rebecca Hagelin, who has variously been a "Senior Communications Fellow for Strategic Initiatives" and "Vice President for Communications and Marketing" at The Heritage Foundation.
In these fluff pieces, Rebecca Hagelin espouses and reinforces Heritage Foundation core values, including: pro-Christian; pro-family; anti-LGBTQ+ (homophobia; transphobia); misogyny (e.g., anti-abortion rights, access); racism; xenophobia; ...
Source: Wikipedia.
Hans Anatol von Spakovsky (born March 11, 1959) is an American attorney and a former member of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). He is the manager of the Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation's Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Hans von Spakovsky is an advocate for voting laws that help ensure the accuracy of elections. Hans von Spakovsky has been described as playing an influential role in making unfounded concern about voter fraud mainstream in the Republican Party. His work, which claims voting fraud is rampant, is controversial as it has been found to be fraught with misleading statistics.
Hans von Spakovsky was nominated to the FEC by President George W. Bush on December 15, 2005, and was appointed by recess appointment on January 4, 2006. However, von Spakovsky's nomination was opposed by Senate Democrats, who argued that his oversight of voter laws was unacceptably partisan. Opposition to the nomination was bolstered by objections from career Justice Department staff, who accused von Spakovsky of politicizing his nominally non-partisan office to an unprecedented degree. While von Spakovsky and the Bush Administration denied the accusations of partisanship, the nomination was withdrawn on May 15, 2008. Von Spakovsky subsequently joined the staff of the Heritage Foundation, a politically conservative think tank. On June 29, 2017, President Donald J. Trump named him to be a member of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
[📌 pinned article] DeSmogBlog.com has a very comprehensive summary of The Heritage Foundation | local copy (html, captured 2020-07-02)]. [Not mentioned: Heritage Foundation member Rebecca Hagelin.]
"Must-read:"
[RightWingWatch.org, 2021-09-29] Heritage Foundation: Systemic Racism Can't Exist Because Racial Discrimination Is Illegal.
Right-wing groups continue to resist honest teaching about racism in American history and the country's institutions while inflaming and mobilizing right-wing voters with wild claims and dire warnings about the march of "critical race theory." The Heritage Foundation, a mammoth right-wing think tank and marketing operation, has packaged its anti-critical race theory material into an eBook entitled "Knowing Critical Race Theory When You See It and Fighting It When You Can" [local copy]. The 18-page "eBook" is little more than a glorified pamphlet that builds on Heritage Action's "toolkit" for opposing critical race theory. ...
[RightWingWatch.org, 2021-08-25] Heritage Foundation Slams John Lewis Voting Rights Act as 'Invasion of State Sovereignty'.
Hans von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow and advocate of restrictive voting laws, denounced the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act as "an unbelievable invasion of state sovereignty" in a podcast interview promoted Tuesday morning by the right-wing think tank's "news" service, The Daily Signal. Von Spakovsky claimed that the bill, also known as H.R. 4, would give "federal bureaucrats" the "ability to veto any state election laws and rules they don't like." In truth, if you peel away Spakovsky's rhetoric, what the voting rights bill would actually do is give lawyers at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division the authority to review potentially discriminatory changes in state voting rules, an authority used by the division for years to protect voters in areas with a track record of discriminating against minorities until the Supreme Court in 2013 gutted key portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act with its decision in Shelby County v. Holder. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, like some provisions of the For the People Act, is a legislative response to that decision by the court's right-wing majority. And the court's decision this year in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee further eroded protections for voters from ethnic or racial minority groups. Without those provisions in place, Republican state legislators have been free to push wave after wave of restrictive and discriminatory voting rules into law. The podcast promoted a Washington Times commentary by von Spakovsky published earlier this month, in which he warned that "the left" is "using election reform as a Trojan Horse" to eliminate the legislative filibuster and open the floodgates "for all their extremist policies." A longtime promoter of debunked claims about supposedly widespread voter fraud and a member of Trump's short-lived sham "election integrity" commission, Von Spakovsky baselessly charged that the left, in cahoots with civil rights division attorney, are out to "arrange things so it's easy to cheat and easy to manipulate election results." The Heritage Foundation is part of a massive right-wing coalition effort that has gathered force since former President Trump's reelection defeat to pass more restrictive voting laws in the name of "election integrity." Many new state voter suppression bills and laws appear to draw from the Heritage Foundation's extensive prescriptions. Heritage encourages states to, among other things, require that only forms of voter ID that "prominently display" whether an individual is a citizen or noncitizen would be acceptable for voting. Heritage says states should ban automatic voter registration and same-day registration. Heritage also encourages states to ban election officials from automatically mailing absentee ballot request forms or ballots to all voters or to those who have voted absentee in the past, and to limit absentee ballots to "those individuals who are too disabled to vote in person or who will be out of town on Election Day and all Early Voting Days." ...[Heritage.org, 2019-10-24] The Heritage Foundation Launches Feulner Institute to 'Win Back the Heart and Soul of This Country'.
[2019-01-29] Heritage Foundation: Conservative group hosts anti-transgender panel of feminists "from the left". Divide and conquer? The conservative Heritage Foundation hosted a panel of "radical feminists" fighting trans rights
[2018-06-20] "must-read:" How One Conservative Think Tank Is Stocking Trump's Government. By placing its people throughout the administration, The Heritage Foundation has succeeded in furthering its right-wing agenda.
[Politico.com, 2017-05-02] The real reason Jim DeMint got the boot. Even as his alliance with Donald Trump boosted Heritage's influence, old-timers saw a more fundamental problem taking shape.
Return to Persagen.com