Merry, merry: ’Tis the season of winning, winning, winning for Americans across the country. From a big beautiful bill and lower taxes to energy independence and national security, Heritage is counting down 12 of this year’s biggest and most consequential victories with daily posts on X. So far, we’ve celebrated that:

• Gas prices are at their lowest since 2021.
• Parents have more resources to protect their children online.
• NPR and PBS are now defunded.
• Florida adopted Heritage’s Phoenix Declaration to further academic excellence, student flourishing, and parental choice.
• Heritage launched the Restoring American Wellness (RAW) initiative to pursue policies that will improve health.

Check Heritage’s X page here for daily updates and find out what the #1 win is.

Liberty: “The light of the Hanukkah menorah reminds us of a timeless truth: A people who maintain their connection to their roots will endure and flourish,” write Jason Bedrick and Daniel Flesch.

• “The Jewish people survived two millennia of statelessness, persecution, pogroms, expulsions, and a holocaust by maintaining a deep connection to these biblical roots,” they write. 

Read more here.

Checkmate: After Heritage filed a shareholder proposal with Salesforce, Inc., the company agreed to stop using the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) “Hate Map” to discriminate against conservatives.

• “Corporate leaders are beginning to recognize the risks of partnering with organizations that unfairly target mainstream conservative and faith-based groups,” said Heritage Chief Advancement Officer Andy Olivastro.

Read more about the win here.

Heritage’s Young Leaders Program is hiring for the next class of talented young conservatives.

• Interns learn from the Boyce-Haller First Principles Lecture Series and some of the conservative movement’s brightest policy minds; they contribute to Heritage’s work on policy, communications, government relations, outreach, and operations. And more! 
• Internships are based in Washington, D.C., and pay is $18/hour.
• The semester starts May 11 and ends Aug. 7.
• Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis and are due on Feb. 1.

Learn more and apply here!

High risk: President Trump issued an executive order reclassifying cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III. Certain facts should have given him pause.

• “Growing evidence links cannabis use to adverse physical problems such as ... cancers; cardiovascular disorders; pulmonary disease; acute, short-term hallucinations,” writes Senior Legal Research Fellow Paul Larkin.

Learn more in The Daily Signal.

Unvetted: Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan proved disastrous in more ways than one—including thousands of unvetted Afghan nationals flown into the U.S.

• “I don’t know who made the decision and how, but when we were flying people out of Afghanistan … we were flying everybody who showed up to the airport,” said Simon Hankinson in recent congressional testimony.

Read more here.

Join Heritage’s Online Public Policy Fellowship This Spring!

• The Heritage Academy is an eight-week, online fellowship focused on America’s founding principles and the most pressing policy issues of our time.

Why join the Heritage Academy?

• Gain access to compelling policy lectures.
• Have conversations with leaders and experts in the conservative movement.
• Connect with conservatives from across America. 

Apply to this program by February 1!

Tip of the iceberg: The media’s coverage of U.S. bombings of narco-terrorist drug boats fails to tell the whole story. 

• “If you pull the information together, a picture emerges of a Cuban-led plan to create disarray inside the U.S….by flooding U.S. streets with drugs that would undermine the fiber of this country,” writes Senior Fellow Mike Gonzalez.  

Read Gonzalez’s op-ed here.

Lions, scavengers, and the West—oh my! Bestselling author Ben Shapiro spoke with Heritage President Dr. Kevin Roberts about his book “Lions and Scavengers,” and how Americans need to resist radicals who seek to destroy Western civilization.

• “ When you separate between [those] who want to build and people who want to destroy, then that seems to be a pretty good description of politics in the West at this moment,” he said.

Watch the event here.

Predictable: After the Bondi Beach targeted attack, Australian policymakers believe that the answer is more gun control.

• The Australian government “apparently believes the real problem here isn’t that evil exists," writes Senior Legal Fellow Any Swearer, "or that unarmed victims pay the largest price when criminals decline to play by society’s rules.”

Read more here.

Deterrence: Chinese threats against Taiwan are a warning to the United States to increase deterrence measures quickly. Heritage’s Robert Peters and Wilson Beaver outline the next steps:

• “The United States should prioritize [foreign military sales], foreign military financing, co-production, and joint training for Taiwan, pushing Taiwan to the front of the line,” they write.

Read more here.

No surprise: It should come as a shock to no one that, with $1 trillion in annual spending, the U.S. welfare system is a prime target for fraudsters.

• The recently unearthed fraud—including donations to terror group al-Shabaab by Somali welfare recipients—in Minnesota proves the need for major reforms, writes Heritage Research Fellow Rachel Sheffield

Read Sheffield’s piece on Fox News.

America’s Founding Fathers are endlessly fascinating figures, and we all have a duty to learn about them.

• That’s why we published American Founders: Leaders at the Creation of the Republic.
• In this free eBook, you’ll learn how the Founders created the greatest nation in the world, and delve deep into the lives of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others.

Click here to get your free copy today!

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, new analyses and insider accounts revealed major vulnerabilities in how the U.S. oversees high-risk biological research. Leading experts will explore the scientific and national security implications of gain-of-function research, highlight weaknesses in current oversight, and discuss realistic reforms to how the United States oversees such research.

 

Jan. 20, 10:30 a.m. Register here.

• Happy Holidays: Married Women Reap More from the Festive Season Than Singles—Scott Yenor and Jennifer Galardi
• The Orwellian Excuse the Congressional Black Caucus Gave for Trying to Block My Congressional Testimony—Tyler O’Neil
• Minnesota Fraud Proves Welfare Is Broken—Rachel Sheffield
• Trump’s Revolutionary Proposal to Clean Up Obamacare Mess—Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D.
• Why the Labor Market Is Stronger than Experts Think—EJ Antoni, Ph.D.
• Report: Ideological Biases in the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Program—Adam Kissel
• A Freer, Stronger, Sovereign Europe Is Good for the West—Paul McCarthy
• A New Wave of American Offshore Energy—Austin Gae and Krishna Mehta
• Illinois, When It Comes to Euthanasia, Don’t Be Like Canada—Liana Graham
• Report: Strengthening the Military Justice System by Modifying the Victim Legal Counsel Program—Charles Stimson
• The Day America Finally Closed the Book on the Iraq Wars—Charles Stimson

Thanks to the pro-growth policies of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, there’s good reason to be optimistic about the economy in 2026, Heritage Chief Economist EJ Antoni said on Newsmax. Watch the clip here.