Heritage Foundation Proposes Government “Manhattan Project” to Boost US Birth Rates

The Her­itage Foun­da­tion is propos­ing sweep­ing gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion to encour­age mar­ried het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples to have more chil­dren through what it calls a “Man­hat­tan Project to restore the nuclear fam­i­ly.” On 3 Sep­tem­ber 2025, The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that the con­ser­v­a­tive think tank behind Project 2025 wants to cre­ate new gov­ern­ment-seed­ed sav­ings accounts exclu­sive­ly for mar­ried peo­ple and require all poli­cies to mea­sure their impact on mar­riage and fam­i­ly for­ma­tion. The arti­cle begins:

The con­ser­v­a­tive group behind the Project 2025 gov­ern­ing play­book for Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s sec­ond term is set to pro­pose sweep­ing revi­sions to U.S. eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy meant to encour­age mar­ried het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples to have more chil­dren. The Her­itage Foun­da­tion, a right-wing think tank head­quar­tered a stone’s throw from the U.S. Capi­tol, wants law­mak­ers to cre­ate new gov­ern­ment-seed­ed sav­ings accounts — for mar­ried peo­ple only. It hopes to steer fund­ing for child care away from pro­grams like Head Start and toward indi­vid­ual fam­i­lies — specif­i­cal­ly to encour­age par­ents to stay home and rear chil­dren. And the group wants Trump to issue exec­u­tive orders requir­ing all pro­posed poli­cies and reg­u­la­tions to “mea­sure their pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive impacts on mar­riage and fam­i­ly” — then over­haul or end pro­grams that score poor­ly. Those ideas are part of a five-page exec­u­tive sum­ma­ry of a forth­com­ing Her­itage posi­tion paper titled “We Must Save the Amer­i­can Family.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/09/03/heritage-foundation-parents-children-birth/

Key Points

• The Her­itage Foun­da­tion pro­pos­es gov­ern­ment-seed­ed sav­ings accounts exclu­sive­ly for mar­ried cou­ples to encour­age fam­i­ly formation.
• The plan would redi­rect child­care fund­ing from Head Start pro­grams toward indi­vid­ual fam­i­lies, pro­mot­ing stay-at-home parenting.
• Paper blames “free love, pornog­ra­phy, careerism, the Pill, abor­tion, same-sex rela­tions, and no-fault divorce” for mar­riage decline.
• Some Her­itage staff mem­bers crit­i­cized the pro­pos­als as “eugen­ics” and “social engi­neer­ing” that reverse gen­der equal­i­ty progress.

Global National Conservative Alliance Promotes Pronatalist Family Policies

The Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) oper­ates as an ide­o­log­i­cal coali­tion unit­ing right-wing move­ments world­wide under shared prin­ci­ples of tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly pro­mo­tion and demo­graph­ic nation­al­ism. CPAC Hun­gary show­cased this transna­tion­al net­work by bring­ing togeth­er Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives, Euro­pean far-right lead­ers, and glob­al fig­ures to advance coor­di­nat­ed mes­sag­ing on fam­i­ly val­ues, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and oppo­si­tion to lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. The move­men­t’s prona­tal­ist agen­da inter­sects direct­ly with estab­lished net­works like the World Con­gress of Fam­i­lies, which has forged close ties with Russ­ian Ortho­dox oli­garchs and politi­cians while pro­mot­ing tra­di­tion­al het­ero­sex­u­al fam­i­ly mod­els and oppos­ing repro­duc­tive rights.

Hun­gary serves as the oper­a­tional head­quar­ters for the GNCA, with Vik­tor Orbán’s gov­ern­ment host­ing con­fer­ences orga­nized by pro­pa­gan­da out­lets affil­i­at­ed with his rul­ing Fidesz par­ty. These gath­er­ings sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly inte­grate anti-LGBTQ mobi­liza­tion with prona­tal­ist mes­sag­ing through edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions like the Math­ias Corv­i­nus Col­legium, cre­at­ing plat­forms for Amer­i­can fig­ures like Tuck­er Carl­son to pro­mote Hun­gary as a mod­el for imple­ment­ing tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly poli­cies. The net­work lever­ages close ties with Russ­ian polit­i­cal inter­ests to advance shared con­ser­v­a­tive agen­das across nation­al bor­ders, with orga­ni­za­tions like the World Con­gress of Fam­i­lies serv­ing as bridges between Russ­ian Ortho­dox polit­i­cal objec­tives and Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal networks.

This transna­tion­al move­ment rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant shift away from Rea­gan-era con­ser­vatism toward nation­al­ist and pro­tec­tion­ist gov­er­nance mod­els, with many Trump appointees hav­ing attend­ed Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Con­fer­ences that strength­en these ide­o­log­i­cal ties. The alliance pur­sues demo­graph­ic objec­tives through coor­di­nat­ed pol­i­cy frame­works that com­bine prona­tal­ist incen­tives with restric­tions on repro­duc­tive rights, cre­at­ing what crit­ics describe as coer­cive approach­es to fam­i­ly for­ma­tion that pri­or­i­tize pop­u­la­tion growth over indi­vid­ual choice while advanc­ing broad­er author­i­tar­i­an polit­i­cal objectives.

Exter­nal References:

• More Babies, More Pow­er? The Log­ic Behind the Rise of Glob­al Pronatalism
• Tran­scalar Activism Con­test­ing the Lib­er­al Inter­na­tion­al Order: The Case of the World Con­gress of Families
• How the spread of con­ser­v­a­tive prona­tal­ism threat­ens wom­en’s hard-won rights

Dis­claimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.