PROJECT ESTHER & the folks at Heritage Foundation.
The Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement
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
By Katie J.M. Baker
May 18, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET
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, 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.
Image
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.
“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.
The Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement
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
By Katie J.M. Baker
May 18, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET
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, 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.
Image
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.
“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.
