Project Esther is a project of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., that aims to suppress pro-Palestinian protests and what it classifies as anti-Semitism
By Tom Arms
The Heritage Foundation is best known as the people who brought us Project 2025. Remember, that was the blueprint for a second Trump Administration which Trump denied he ever heard of and then implemented.
About the same time as Project 2025 was published, The Heritage Foundation produced another blueprint—Project Esther.
The paper is named after the biblical heroine who saved her people in ancient Persia. Its avowed purpose is “A National Strategy to Combat Anti-Semitism.” Its real purpose is to use the veneer of Jewish protection to introduce extraordinary governmental and legal maneuvers to stifle left-wing dissent.
Like most Trumpian projects, fear is a central element. In the case of Project Esther it is fear of all things Palestinian and anything opposed to the government of Israel. The authors of Project Esther call the object of fear the “Hamas Support Network” (HSN).
In Project Esther’s playbook, HSN encompasses a broad swathe of organizations, student groups, and individual activists. Any far‑left, anticolonial and anti‑Zionist movements is dubbed the moral equivalent of terrorism. It then goes on to say that because these organizations—that as anyone critical of Israel—are terrorists that they are an organized danger to American society as well as Jewish society.
The next step, according to Project Esther, is to use governmental instruments originally used to combat organized crime to go pursue the alleged anti-Semites. The Heritage Foundation proposed using anti-racketeer statues (RICO) and the Foreign Agents Registration Act alongside counter-terrorism laws to prosecute individuals and groups aligned with or sympathetic to Palestinian rights. .
Universities are key battlegrounds. Project Esther calls for the identification and purging of pro‑Palestinian faculty, pressure on administrations through funding threats, and the surveillance of student protestors. It encourages public firings and invites cutting off visa status or revoking student visas for non‑citizens participating in such activism.
Surveillance and data gathering is a big part of the envisioned infrastructure. Heritage proposes a vertically integrated apparatus linking private security firms, campus police, federal agencies and universities—with techniques including facial recognition, data mining and social media scraping to monitor affinity networks and anticipate dissent before it flourish
Importantly, the project is rooted in Christian nationalist and evangelical Zionist networks. There is minimal participation from Jewish organizations. In fact, major Jewish groups declined involvement in discussions surrounding Project Esther. They are reportedly uncomfortable with Esther’s selective focus on left-wing anti-Semitism while neglecting the far-right, which they view as the true anti-Semitic threat.
The Heritage Foundation even identifies prominent Jewish figures—such as George Soros and J.B. Pritzker—as anti-Semitic political masterminds behind the pro-Palestinian movement.
Project Esther envisions rapid implementation under a “willing” administration, promising rapid implementation within 12–24 months of electoral success. More than half of Project Esther’s recommendations have already been applied by the second Trump administration. The White House has threatened to revoke university funding, deport student protesters and demanded enhanced campus surveillance and insisted on changes to curriculum and staffing—all in the name of the battle against anti-Semitism.
Many Jewish groups warn Project Esther battle against anti-Semitism will—through its association with the heavy-handed actions of the Trump Administration—only increase anti-Semitism.
But then, Project Esther’s real purpose is not to combat anti-Semitism. It is to use prejudice against Jews and Israel to undermine liberalism attack anyone opposed to the Trump Administration’s basic policies.
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Tom Arms is the foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He is also the author of “The Encyclopedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain.”
