Before President Donald Trump’s second election, the Heritage Foundation created a blueprint for dismantling support for Palestinians in the U.S. Trump already has implemented three key parts of the plan: attacking nonprofits, cutting funding for universities and revoking visas of foreign students set for deportation.
“Project Esther outlined an ambitious plan to fight antisemitism by branding a broad range of critics of Israel as ‘effectively a terrorist support network,’ so that they could be deported, defunded, sued, fired, expelled, ostracized and otherwise excluded from what it considered “open society,” says a New York Times report.
Heritage Foundation is the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, its blueprint for amassing presidential power during the second Trump administration. Heritage’s Project Esther takes a partisan approach to antisemitism: targeting those on the left who criticize Israel while overlooking antisemitism on the right.
Project Esther said that once a sympathetic president was elected, it would “organize rapidly, take immediate action to ‘stop the bleeding,’ and achieve all objectives within two years.” The push to move quickly is designed for maximum impact while Trump enjoys a GOP-led House and Senate, which could change in the 2026 midterm elections.
Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., takes questions from the media, prior to laying a brick at a new housing complex in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, Aug. 1, 2018. .(AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
In April, Heritage leaders went to Israel to meet with Mike Huckabee, the new U.S. ambassador to Israel. In 2022, Huckabee won Heritage’s Friend of Israel Award.
A key part of the plan to dismantle support for the Palestinian cause is a simple definition that has profound legal consequences. As the Times reported, Project Esther equates “actions such as participating in pro-Palestinian campus protests with providing ‘material support’ for terrorism, a broad legal construct that can lead to prison time, deportations, civil penalties and other serious consequences.”
Thus, people who engage in protests and speeches — activities previously understood to be constitutionally guaranteed freedoms — may now be subject to criminal prosecution for criticizing Israel, which has earned widespread condemnation for its conduct of the war in Gaza, including a death toll of 50,000 Gazans and a months-long ban on food and aid.
Heritage has received pushback for its new pro-Zionist definition of antisemitism: “We recognize any attempt to delegitimize, boycott, divest or sanction the modern (state) of Israel or bar Jews from participating in academic or communal associations must be condemned.”
One of the targeted nonprofits is Jewish Voice for Peace, which calls itself “a political home for Jews on the left” and is “fighting to end Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.” Heritage paints the group as a “Hamas support organization.”
“Any attempt to delegitimize, boycott, divest or sanction the modern (state) of Israel … must be condemned.”
Trump seemed to echo this thinking in his Jan. 29 executive order on combatting antisemitism: “Immediate action will be taken by the Department of Justice to protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”
Trump’s tactics have raised concerns among constitutional lawyers, worried many nonprofit leaders and led many Jews to conclude he isn’t helping them, but rather making things tougher.
An opinion poll of American Jews released last week found 74% disapprove of his performance in office, and 61% say arresting and deporting pro-Palestinian protesters who are legal residents of the United States increases antisemitism.
Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” currently under debate in Congress includes a provision that would give Trump the authority to strip tax exemptions from nonprofits he deems “terrorist-supporting organizations.”
In an interview with the Times, a Heritage executive said the think tank wasn’t sure whether or not Trump was following its plan. But other Heritage executives have claimed it’s “no coincidence” that Trump is going after nonprofits, universities and students.
The brain behind Project 2025 is Russell Vought, now Trump’s head of the Office of Management and Budget.
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Heritage Foundation antisemitism effort recycles conspiracy theories | Analysis by Steve Rabey
Trump’s antisemitism campaign worries American Jews
Heritage Foundation’s antisemitism effort ignores Jewish groups