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HERITAGE FOUNDATION PLAN TO CRUSH THE PRO-PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT  
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Katie J.M. Baker
May 18, 2025
The New York Times
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_ Even before President Trump was re-elected, the Heritage
Foundation, best known for Project 2025, set out to destroy
pro-Palestinian activism in the United States. _

The Heritage Foundation headquarters in Washington, D.C.Credit...,
Jared Soares for The New York Times

 

In late April, the Heritage Foundation dispatched a team to Israel to
meet with power players in Israeli politics, including the country’s
foreign and defense secretaries and the U.S. ambassador, Mike
Huckabee.

The conservative Washington-based think tank is best known for
spearheading Project 2025, a proposed blueprint for President
Trump’s second term that called for reshaping the federal government
and an extreme expansion of presidential power.

Now the Heritage contingent was in Israel, in part, to discuss another
contentious policy paper: Project Esther
[[link removed]],
the foundation’s proposal to rapidly dismantle the pro-Palestinian
movement in the United States, along with its support at schools and
universities, at progressive organizations and in Congress.

Drafted in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023 and the
mounting protests against the war in Gaza, 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.”

Project Esther’s architects envisioned outcomes that at the time
might have seemed far-fetched. Curriculum it believed to be
sympathetic to a “Hamas support” narrative would be taken out of
schools and universities, and “supporting faculty” would be
removed. Social media would be purged of content deemed to be
antisemitic. Institutions would lose public funding. Foreign students
who pushed for Palestinian rights would have their visas revoked, or
be deported.

 

[A woman stands posing for a portrait in front of a bookshelf in an
office]

Victoria Coates, a former deputy national security adviser and the
vice president at the Heritage Foundation who oversees Project
Esther.Credit...Jared Soares for The New York Times

Once a sympathetic presidential administration was in place, the plan
said, “We will organize rapidly, take immediate action to ‘stop
the bleeding,’ and achieve all objectives within two years.”

Now, four months after Mr. Trump took office, Heritage Foundation
leaders are taking an early victory lap.

Since the inauguration, the White House and other Republicans have
called for actions that appear to mirror more than half of Project
Esther’s proposals, a New York Times analysis shows, including
threats to withhold billions in federal funding at universities and
attempts to deport legal residents.

In interviews with The Times — the Heritage Foundation’s first
public comments since Mr. Trump took office about its blueprint for
shaping U.S. public opinion on Israel — Project Esther’s
architects said there were clear parallels between their plan and
recent actions against universities and pro-Palestinian demonstrators
on both a state and a federal level.

“The phase we’re in now is starting to execute some of the lines
of effort in terms of legislative, legal and financial penalties for
what we consider to be material support for terrorism,” said
Victoria Coates, a former deputy national security adviser to Mr.
Trump and the vice president at Heritage who oversees Project Esther.

Heritage officials said they did not know whether the White House,
which has its own antisemitism task force, had used Project Esther as
a guide. Administration officials declined to discuss it. But Robert
Greenway, a Heritage national security director who coauthored Project
Esther, said it was “no coincidence that we called for a series of
actions to take place privately and publicly, and they are now
happening.”

Until now, key details about Project Esther, including the identities
of its authors, had not been widely disclosed. The Times reviewed
confidential records preceding Project Esther’s release and
interviewed Heritage employees, members of the task force that
inspired the blueprint and others associated with the initiative to
present a clearer understanding of Project Esther’s genesis, aims
and impact.

 

[A portrait of a man wearing glasses and a white shirt sitting on a
sofa.]

“Project Esther changed the paradigm by associating anyone who
opposes Israeli policies with the ‘Hamas Support Network,’” said
Jonathan Jacoby, the national director of the Nexus
Project. Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York Times

Republican and Democratic administrations alike have long supported
and funded Israel as a crucial ally. And there have been bipartisan
efforts to counter criticism of Israel by labeling a range of speech
and organizing in support of Palestinian rights as support for
terrorism. But Project Esther aims to go further, equating 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.

“Project Esther changed the paradigm by associating anyone who
opposes Israeli policies with the ‘Hamas Support Network,’” said
Jonathan Jacoby, the national director of the Nexus Project, a
watchdog group that works to combat antisemitism and protect open
debate. “It’s no longer about ideology or politics; it’s about
terrorism and threats to American national security.”

Heritage describes Project Esther as a “groundbreaking” national
strategy to fight antisemitism that aims not to censor opinions but to
hold people it deems to be supporters of Hamas, a designated terrorist
group, responsible for their actions. But critics such as Mr. Jacoby
say the think tank is exploiting real concerns about antisemitism to
advance its broader agenda of radically reshaping higher education and
crushing progressive movements more generally.

Project Esther exclusively focuses on antisemitism on the left,
ignoring antisemitic harassment and violence from the right. It has
drawn criticism from many Jewish organizations amid increasing calls
for them to push back against the Trump administration.

“Trump is pulling straight from the authoritarian playbook, using
tools of repression first against those organizing for Palestinian
rights,” said Stefanie Fox, the executive director of Jewish Voice
for Peace. “And in so doing, sharpening those tools for use against
anyone and everyone who challenges his fascist agenda.”

Her group is one of those described by Project Esther as a “Hamas
Support Organization,” or an H.S.O. — a label Ms. Fox strongly
rejected.

An open letter [[link removed]] from three
dozen former leaders of major Jewish establishment groups, including a
former national chair of the Anti-Defamation League, recently warned
that “a range of actors are using a purported concern about Jewish
safety as a cudgel to weaken higher education, due process, checks and
balances, freedom of speech and the press.” It called on Jewish
leaders and institutions “to resist the exploitation of Jewish fears
and publicly join with other organizations that are battling to
preserve the guardrails of democracy.”

‘The Gloves Will Come Off Very Quickly’

The months following the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and
the subsequent war in Gaza, saw college campuses descend into a state
of chaotic division and turmoil, with endless protests and
counterprotests. Pro-Palestinian advocates called for an end to the
Israeli occupation and its retaliatory war campaign, while supporters
of Israel defended the country’s right to self-defense and said they
were harassed by their classmates and didn’t feel safe on campuses.

Soon after, four well-connected, conservative supporters of Israel met
virtually to address these events.

Only one was Jewish: Ellie Cohanim, Mr. Trump’s former antisemitism
envoy. She said she was grateful when the three men reached out to her
and affectionately called them her “Christian friends.” Two were
leaders of Christian Zionist groups: Luke Moon, executive director of
the Philos Project, and Mario Bramnick, the president of the Latino
Coalition for Israel and an evangelical adviser to Mr. Trump. The
fourth was James Carafano, senior counselor to the president at the
Heritage Foundation.

Some evangelical Christians have increasingly aligned themselves with
conservative political forces in Israel, supporting their claims of
biblical dominion over contested Palestinian territories. Many feel a
kinship with Israel because of shared religious heritage. But some
also believe that supporting Israel will hasten biblical end
times, or advance Christianity’s global influence.

 

[People hold signs and Palestinian flags in a crowd.]

A pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University in November 2023. 
Credit...Bing Guan for The New York Times

The think tank, which has influenced Republican presidential
administrations since the Reagan era, has long supported Israel.

In recent years, this support took on a new dimension, as the
foundation blamed the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that
gained prominence after George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, along
with other progressive movements, for rising reports of antisemitism
on campuses.

The Biden administration had already released what it called the first
national strategy to combat antisemitism, vowing to address the issue.
(The A.D.L. counted over 9,000 antisemitic incidents across the United
States in 2024, the highest number on record since it began tracking
them 46 years ago.)

But the group decided to begin their own national task force and
released a statement of purpose
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affirmed a definition of antisemitism
[[link removed]] that
is hotly debated because it considers some broad criticisms of Israel
to be antisemitic.

Statement of Purpose

ANTISEMITISM: We recognize any attempt to delegitimize, boycott,
divest, or sanction the modern of Israel or bar Jews from
participating in academic or communal associations must be
condemned. 

We recognize that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are the different
manifestations of the same hatred against Jewish people.

Dozens of groups joined the task force, but an “overwhelming
number” had something in common, Mr. Carafano said during a January
2024 meeting
[[link removed]]:
They weren’t Jewish. A short list of initial members that Heritage
posted online
[[link removed]] consisted
mainly of conservative and Christian organizations.

Heritage built on the task force’s recommendations to write Project
Esther, which is named in honor of the biblical queen who is
celebrated for saving the Jewish people.

By summer 2024, Heritage had finalized a national strategy that aimed
to convince the public to perceive the pro-Palestinian movement in the
United States as part of a global “Hamas Support Network” that
“poses a threat not simply to American Jewry, but to America
itself.”

It singled out anti-Zionist groups that had organized pro-Palestinian
protests, such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in
Palestine, but the intended targets stretched much further. In pitch
materials for potential donors, Heritage presented an illustration of
a pyramid topped by “progressive ‘elites’ leading the way,”
which included Jewish billionaires such as the philanthropist George
Soros and Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois.

It asserted that philanthropic organizations such as the Tides
Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund were backing the
antisemitism “ecosystem.” Later, the Heritage Foundation added the
names of what it called “aligned” politicians such as Senators
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

The pitch materials, which were first reported on
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The Forward, included goals such as reforming academia (defunding
institutions, denying certain pro-Palestinian groups access to
campuses and removing faculty) and lawfare (filing civil lawsuits,
identifying foreigners vulnerable to deportation). Other initiatives
included plans to enlist support from state and local law enforcement
and to “generate uncomfortable conditions” so that groups could
not conduct protests.

Esther’s Architects

Ms. Coates said that her colleagues Mr. Greenway and Daniel Flesch
were the co-authors of Project Esther.

Mr. Greenway, a former senior National Security Council official,
previously ran the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, a nonprofit
founded by Jared Kushner that sought to normalize relations between
Israel and other Middle Eastern countries.

Mr. Flesch is a policy analyst at the foundation who has written
[[link removed]] about
his experience as an American Jew who served in the Israeli Defense
Forces.

Project Esther also benefited from a private advisory committee that
included unnamed former National Security Council members from the
first Trump administration, Ms. Coates said. Their expertise
“created a more compelling product” and gave the plan “a lot
more grip and substance than we would have had otherwise,” she said.

Ms. Coates holds three degrees in Italian Renaissance art history, and
planned on being a professional academic until she grew uncomfortable
with what she has described as a “very noxious anti-Western
worldview” at her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.

 

[A sign featuring President Trump hangs on the exterior of a building.
Trees line the sidewalk outside the building.]

The Heritage Foundation’s office in Washington, D.C.Credit...Jared
Soares for The New York Times

Blogging about missile defense led to a job for former Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and then roles with other Republican
politicians before she joined Mr. Trump’s transition team and held
various national security roles in his first administration.

Two months before Oct. 7, Ms. Coates became the vice president of a
division of Heritage that focuses on foreign policy and national
security. But her interest in Israel, and in fighting antisemitism,
long predated that role, she said. She traces it back to her
grandfather, who fought in the D-Day invasion during World War II.
“I come from a line of Nazi hunters,” she said.

In her recently published book, “The Battle for the Jewish State,”
Ms. Coates, who described herself as “a Christian and a religious
person,” wrote that “the biblical values on which our civilization
rests have always promoted an alliance between Christians and Jews.”
But she said her views on Israel were based on an “America-first”
approach that recognizes Israel’s role in bolstering America’s
security interests in the Middle East. She has visited Israel so often
that she has “no idea” how many times she’s been there, she
has said
[[link removed]].
Her office features a collection of Israeli prime minister figurines.

In December, a little-known nonprofit that promotes foreign policy
discourse on college campuses hosted Ms. Coates to speak about her new
book. She revealed her own perspective on how the tactic of slashing
federal funding to universities could be used to help bring them to
heel.

“As a former academic, I can tell you the one thing they care more
about than parking spaces is federal funding,” she said. “The
viciousness with which the other elements of the faculty will turn on
the law schools and the Middle East Studies folk,” she added. “The
gloves will come off very quickly.”

The next month, Mr. Trump was inaugurated. His administration unfurled
a series of directives, some of which closely resembled some of the
actionable steps outlined in Project Esther.

Administration officials moved to revoke student visas and deport
activists who had criticized Israel.

NECESSARY CONDITIONS
HSO members in violation of student visa requirements.

They began monitoring immigrants’ and visa applicants’ social
media.

DESIRED EFFECTS
Social media no longer allow the spread of antisemitic content.

They sought to withhold billions of dollars in grants to some of the
country’s most prestigious research universities.

NECESSARY CONDITIONS
HSOs not eligible for public funds.

They ordered an investigation of student protesters at Columbia
University and reportedly
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to share that information with immigration agents.

NECESSARY CONDITIONS
Evidence of HSOs’ criminal activity gathered.

Despite acknowledging Heritage’s regular meetings with the
administration and members of Congress, employees at the foundation
said they didn’t know if White House officials had acted on their
recommendations or had just come to the same conclusions about what
needed to be done.

“I don’t think it’s a great leap to look at the changing
landscape since Esther came out, and to look at the actions that
Esther calls for and to look at them taking place,” Mr. Greenway
said. “But it’s not our place, and not really our purpose, to take
credit for the actions that others are taking.”

In line with Project Esther’s calls for state-level actions and
“public-private” partnerships, a wider campaign is also underway.
Heritage Action, the think tank’s grass roots advocacy arm, is
helping states pass legislation that penalizes those who support
boycotts against Israel. It has encouraged civil litigation as law
firms have filed suits accusing various people and organizations of
collaborating with Hamas.

And Ms. Coates pointed to Heritage’s increased presence in Israel, a
country which, Ms. Coates said when she was there recently,
“deserves a peace prize for what they’ve done over the course of
the last year.”

Foundation employees were in Israel primarily to discuss Heritage’s
new U.S.-Israel strategy, a copy of which, she said, they personally
handed to Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs.

But they also discussed Project Esther and concern over a decline in
Israel’s public image among younger Americans, a trend that has
accelerated since Oct. 7. It is reassuring for Israelis to hear that
the largest conservative think tank in the United States is on the
case, Ms. Coates said.

Leading by Example

Project Esther accuses “America’s Jewish community” of
“complacency.” “There are multiple Jewish nonprofits that are
dedicated to fighting antisemitism, and yet here we are today,” said
Ms. Cohanim, the task force’s sole Jewish co-chair.

Not everyone who Heritage hoped would join the cause felt comfortable
doing so, including prominent Jewish and Christian Zionist
organizations that members at the foundation assumed would be allies.
Three people from such groups told The Times they did not want to
associate with the plan because they found its failure to consider
right-wing acts of antisemitism too partisan.

 

[A woman in a red blazer speaks on a stage into a microphone.]

Stefanie Fox, the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, spoke
during one of the group’s member meetings in May.Credit...Jared
Soares for The New York Times

Ms. Coates acknowledged that antisemitism was also a problem on the
right and said that was why it was important for the Heritage
Foundation to “lead by example” with Project Esther.

“Our goal is to eradicate — or not eradicate, but to confront —
what we consider a very noxious bigotry,” she said.

But she and others at the Heritage Foundation also contend that the
progressive groups that Project Esther charges with supporting Hamas
pose a threat not just to Jewish people or Israel but, as the plan
warns, to “the foundations of the United States and the fabric of
our society.”

“This isn’t just a battle for the Jewish state,” Ms. Coates told
her audience in December. “It is also a battle for the United
States.”

_Katie J.M. Baker [[link removed]] is a
national investigative correspondent for The New York Times._

_Halina Bennet contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed
research._

* Anti-Semitism; Anti-Palestinian Rights
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* Heritage Foundation
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