Can You Believe They Put This in Writing? The Wildest Quotes From Heritage’s ‘Project 2026’

The Heritage Foundation has once again taken it upon itself to craft a plan for how to supposedly save America. The report—”Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years“—focuses on marriage, family and the American Dream, and has become widely known as “Project 2026,” a follow-up to Heritage’s infamous Project 2025 blueprint.

Project 2025 clocked in at 900 pages; the sequel is around 150. We read the whole thing and pulled out the passages that gave us chills, made us laugh out loud, compelled us to suddenly need to take a long walk and hug our dogs, or inspired another donation to our local abortion fund.

This isn’t intended to be a fact-check or a line-by-line rebuttal. It’s intended to show you how some of the country’s most influential conservative thinkers are talking about feminism, contraception, abortion, LGBTQ+ people, higher education, marriage, motherhood and the role government should play in all of it—because you’re probably too busy to read hundreds of pages of anti-feminist slop.

And because, as former Vice President Kamala Harris famously said about Project 2025: “Can you believe they put that thing in writing?” They did—twice now!

This is the roadmap they’re offering. These documents tell us how their authors understand the country, the family and women’s place in both. We should know what it says.

1. Feminism Broke America (According to Heritage)

Feminism—not economics, not policy—is the root cause of today’s problems.

“Second-wave feminism and the sexual revolution promoted an individualistic, child-free, marriage-free, sexual ‘liberation’ that promised to lead to an unparalleled era of consent-based human happiness and fulfillment. Over the course of 60 years, casual sex, abortion, childlessness by choice, and no-fault divorce became normalized, while marriage and the natural family became stigmatized.”

(page 4)

“Instead of celebrating the nuanced expressions of femininity, the feminists of the 1960s and 1970s commanded a crusade that promoted sexual, financial, and familial ‘freedom’ for women. Women were encouraged to ‘liberate’ themselves from a patriarchal culture that insisted they stay at home and raise a family. In their worldview, a husband and children were limitations on a woman’s freedom to truly express her authentic self. Women who participated in traditional gender roles within families were shunned and seen as traitors to the movement. According to contemporary feminists, marriage and motherhood are traps created by men, not gifts granted by God. Familial duties are restrictive and demeaning.”

(page 55)

“… Non-marital birth and abortion became ever more jointly common, especially following Roe v. Wade in 1973. … The ‘shock of abortion and female contraception’ may have played a major role in the rise of out-of-wedlock childbearing.”

(page 13)

“… State and federal governments should recognize the natural differences between men and women. They should also preserve this distinction between the sexes in law against attempts to replace it with tendentious and subjective concepts, such as ‘gender identity.”

(page 131)

2. One Family Model—and Only One

Here’s who belongs and counts as a family. Everyone else is a social problem.

“In a rational world, one would not need to define terms such as man, woman, mother, and father. In the current world, we must do so. Mothers are female parents and fathers are male parents.”

(page 16)

“Sixty years ago, there was no public debate about the definition of marriage or whether it involved a man and a woman. Almost all American adults married, and few divorced. Very few couples lived together outside of marriage. Nearly all children were born and raised in homes with a married mother and father, and more Americans were parents. …

“The LGBTQ agenda, through the Supreme Court of the United States, redefined marriage and severed it in law from its natural biological function and purpose of reproduction.”

(pages 14 and 17)

“… Many children today will have no concept of the traditional family name, family home, or family vacation, because their definition of family doesn’t include marriage and, often, either fathers or siblings.”

(page 4)

“All children conceived deserve to be born to their mothers and fathers in a committed marriage who will love, guide, and protect them throughout the parents’ lives.”

(page 113)

“… Good fathers give sons a role model to emulate and provide daughters with a template for the type of man they should desire.”

(page 34)

“Third, policies should favor natural marriage over same-sex and polyamorous relationships, cohabitation, or intentional single parenthood.”

(page 131)

3. Marriage Isn’t a Choice—It’s Public Policy

Government should actively push people into heterosexual marriage, as soon as possible.

“The prevailing cultural narrative says that experimenting with multiple sexual partners helps youth and adults to understand their sexual preferences and avoid sexual incompatibility if they ever seek marriage. Research, however, shows that the move toward casual sexual relationships has profoundly harmed the quality of marriage.”

(page 44-45)

“Congress should expand the Trump Accounts by creating separate Newlywed Early Starters Trust (NEST) accounts that support men and women who marry by or before the current average age of first marriage (about age 30) and that provide future retirement support for those who do not.”

(page 9)

“… Marriage ‘bootcamp’ for cohabiting couples with children … Successful completion of the program would mean that couples are ready to walk down the aisle at a communal wedding by the end of the bootcamp. The bride and groom would also be matched with a mentor couple to help them to navigate the highs and lows of early married life. The most innovative aspect of such a program, however, would be to add a monetary incentive for couples to get—and stay—married. For example, each couple that completes the program could receive a ‘wedding bonus’ of up to $5,000 on their wedding day to be paid through foundations or private donors, not government funds. Grant recipients could be financially encouraged based on their rate of marriage success. This is a simple way to create an incentive structure geared toward the outcomes many people desire.” 

(page 102)

“Researchers find that those who wait until after marrying to have sex with their partner have much greater marital quality (relationship satisfaction, sexual quality, communication, and stability) than do persons who have sex with their partner prior to marriage.”

(page 45)

4. After Marriage Comes Motherhood

Reproduction is the name of the game.

“Children are a proper end of marriage, in principle if not always in fact. …”

“Far more Americans must come to view the bearing and raising of children within marriage as vital aspects of the human journey—not as mere consumer choices.”

(page 16 and 133)

“America’s birth rate will never return to replacement levels if parents only have one or two children.”

(page 121)

“Yes, the country needs more children. But it matters how and to whom children are born.”

(page 132)

“Couples who marry earlier—in their early twenties—are more fertile and tend to have more children than those who marry later, say in their mid- to late-thirties. As a consequence, if more people marry earlier, that will likely boost the married fertility rate and alleviate a multitude of social problems described in this report.”

(page 12)

5. Government Should Reward the ‘Right’ Families—and Punish the Rest

“In late January 2025, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy issued a groundbreaking policy memo directing the Department of Transportation (DOT) to prioritize communities with ‘marriage and birth rates higher than the national average’ when distributing federal transportation grants, loans, and contracts.”

(Page 100)

“Congress should redesign welfare benefits to promote work and marriage, and structure them so that the public can grasp their cost and resist leftwing efforts to expand them. This, in turn, will encourage more marriage and self-support.”

(page 63)

“When it comes to welfare, the growth of the federal government displaced men from their traditional role as providers. … “The expansion of welfare programs, particularly AFDC, made the federal government the de facto husband for millions of poor women across the country.”

(page 53-54)

“The welfare system has made marriage economically irrational for many low-income couples. Nearly all the cash, food, and housing programs focus on subsidizing non-married single parents with the greatest benefits aimed at those who do not work. Moreover, all the programs impose severe financial penalties on parents who choose to marry.”

(page 60)

“… Credits designed specifically to benefit poor single mothers may be well intended, but they have proven to incentivize single motherhood in poor communities and trap women there through marriage penalties.”

(page 112)

“… The first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging, Congress and the Administration should eliminate all marriage penalties in welfare programs and impose meaningful work requirements.”

(page 7)

“Policymakers and civic leaders should treat restoring the family home as a matter of justice. … Make family policy goals and considerations explicit conditions of grant recipients and enforceable by Justice Department enforcement actions, so that if a grant recipient discriminates against marriage and families, the recipient would risk losing government grants and contracts, up to and including debarment for fraud or repeat violations.” 

(Page 99 and 130

“… Influence the public to marry and build families … Either through HHS-administered grants or through its own initiative, it could do the same today and direct funding toward pro-marriage public awareness campaigns with simple messages, such as ‘Give her a ring before she gives you a baby.’ HHS and other government leaders can also use their platforms to speak the hard truth that a child’s life outcomes depend far more on his or her home environment than on a policy agenda. These statements do not require any new laws. All they require is an acknowledgement of the family’s importance, and a willingness to communicate that truth compared to existing alternatives.”

(page 102-103)

6. College, Climate Change and Careers Are the Problem

“President Trump has rightly begun the process to eliminate the Department of Education. … Large student loan debts … are too often a bad financial deal that leads to delays in marriage and family formation. …

“It is simple enough: Teach young people that graduating from high school, getting married, and having children—in that order—is a near-guarantee of life success.”

(page 103)

“Policies designed to boost college enrollment … have perhaps unwittingly helped to suppress family growth.”

(page 81)

“This increase in loans has likely played a key role in boosting enrollment in graduate school. Spending two years to obtain a master’s degree and four or more years pursuing a PhD or professional degree means, on the low end, that people are spending six to 10 years in higher education. Many of them put off marriage and childbearing during that time.”

(page 82)

“The most anxious, lonely, and depressed generation in American history became that way through an increase in divorce and decline in religious attendance; careerism; a broken education system; out-of-reach housing costs; and the proliferation of addictive technology, drug abuse, and pornography.”

(page 8-9)

“Climate change alarmism demoralizes young people who believe it. … Many influential Americans see the birth of each new child as a net loss for the Earth’s environment, and many younger people believe them. In 2023, President Biden said that young voters believe that their ‘whole generation is damned’ because of climate change, which climate activists deem an ‘existential threat’ to life on Earth.”

(page 47-48)

7. Religion Should Shape Government and Culture

“In places where larger families are the norm, such as enclaves of Latter-day Saints, devout Catholics, or Orthodox Jews, cultural norms and civic infrastructure tend to support families. …These include playgrounds, organized family activities, and extended families nearby. All of this makes it easier to raise children and reinforces the norm of larger families. (These enclaves are explicitly religious. Policymakers should not ignore this fact.)”

(page 27)

“One of the most important things that religious institutions can do today to rebuild the family home is to use their religious freedom to preach and affirm God’s design for the human body, sex, marriage, and the family. This includes pastors publicly reinforcing the truth that there are only two sexes—male and female—and that reason and revelation agree that marriage, as a unique institution, consists of the exclusive union of one man and one woman and is ordered toward the spouses and the children that can and, if so blessed, should come from that union.”

(page 38)

“One of the starkest recent examples of government preferring the secular to the sacred occurred when state governments across the country shut down Easter worship services during the COVID-19 pandemic but left casinos and liquor stores open. This differential treatment highlighted a broader pattern where religious activities are viewed as optional luxuries rather than as essential human needs.”

(page 37)

8. Divorce Is Too Easy

“In the famed book-turned-movie Eat Pray Love, the main character walks away from her marriage—not because of any infidelity or hardship, but because married life no longer satisfies her sense of adventure and self-fulfillment. With no-fault divorce now the norm, a person who is no longer ‘feeling it’ can unilaterally end a marriage.”

(page 50)

“Originally billed as a way to ease the evidentiary burden required of wronged spouses seeking to exit a broken marriage, the no-fault system has is in effect turned into a ‘no reason needed’ system.”

(page 50)

“Children of divorce may come to believe that they need financial independence as an insurance policy if they, too, get divorced.”

(page 43)

“Family policies … adopted now should not focus merely on the here and now. They should encourage and reward those who work, stay married, and choose to invest in their families, with preferences for larger-than-average ones.”

(page 129)

“Researchers find that having multiple premarital sexual partners is associated with lower marital stability. For example, those with one to eight premarital sexual partners have about a 150 percent greater likelihood of divorce than those with no premarital sexual experience have. People with nine or more sexual partners have about triple the likelihood of divorce than those with no premarital sexual partners have.”

(page 42)

“If rates of cohabitation continue to rise and those unions retain their characteristic instability, then the future of American family life will be marked by increasingly complicated webs of co-parenting relationships, absent fathers, different custodial and biological mothers and fathers, often competitive relationships with half-siblings, and increased family instability.”

(page 33)

“Children are too often called to sacrifice what is due to them—namely, the presence of their mom and dad under the same roof for the entirety of their childhood.”

(page 130)

And a final kicker:

“This report casts no moral judgments on individuals.”

(page 11)

*

A note from Ms. editors: We want to hear from you for The Majority, a new campaign collecting stories about how reproductive freedom has enabled readers to build the lives they want and need. Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans support reproductive healthcare access. Yet public debate overlooks the lives shaped by abortion access, contraception, IVF, miscarriage care, maternal healthcare or comprehensive sex education—countless women who chose to pursue an education, have children, not have children, protect their health and chart their own future. Add your voice and complete the sentence: “Access to reproductive choices gave me the freedom to….” Together, these stories will help show not only why reproductive freedom remains a majority value, but also what it makes possible. 

Look to these trusted groups if you or a loved one needs to know more about reliable abortion care:

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• If you need to know the abortion law in your state, look to the Center for Reproductive Rights.