# Project Esther The Heritage Foundation's companion blueprint to [[Project 2025]] — a strategy document framed as a national plan to combat antisemitism but functioning as a roadmap for suppressing pro-Palestinian activism, cracking down on campus protest, and weaponizing civil rights enforcement against progressive movements. Launched on October 7, 2024 — the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel — Project Esther has proven to be one of the most rapidly implemented Heritage proposals of the second Trump administration. ## Origins and Authors Project Esther was drafted by three Heritage Foundation staffers: **Victoria Coates** (former Trump NSC senior director), **Robert Greenway**, and **Daniel Flesch** (former Israeli diplomat). The initial brainstorming group included Heritage's **James Carafano**, along with Christian Zionist movement leaders **Luke Moon** and **Mario Bramnick**, and former Trump State Department official **Ellie Cohanim**. The document's production is notable for who was *not* involved: it was written without consulting any mainstream Jewish organizations and has not been endorsed by the ADL, the American Jewish Committee, or any of the major organizations that typically lead antisemitism policy. Jewish Insider reported that Heritage struggled to recruit Jewish institutional partners, with several organizations declining involvement or denying they had been consulted. ## The Strategy ### The "Hamas Support Network" Framework Project Esther's central innovation is reframing a broad range of pro-Palestinian activism, progressive organizations, and academic institutions as components of an interconnected "Hamas Support Network" (HSN) — effectively branding Israel critics as terrorist-adjacent. The document provides a taxonomy of groups allegedly comprising this network and recommends that the federal government treat them accordingly. This framing converts a foreign policy disagreement into a national security threat — the same rhetorical move the War on Terror used to expand surveillance and enforcement powers domestically. ### Key Proposals The document lays out an action plan spanning executive orders, agency directives, and legislative pressure: **Immigration enforcement as speech suppression:** - Deportation of foreign students and faculty associated with pro-Palestinian activism - Revocation of visas and green cards based on protest participation or social media content - Social media monitoring of foreign students, green card applicants, and visa applicants for "antisemitic" content **Higher education coercion:** - Federal funding cuts to universities accused of tolerating antisemitism - Mandatory adoption of the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism, which critics argue conflates criticism of Israeli government policy with anti-Jewish bigotry - Removal of curricula and faculty deemed sympathetic to Palestinians **Civil society targeting:** - Designation of domestic advocacy organizations as terrorist-linked - Defunding of NGOs and nonprofits associated with Palestinian solidarity - Legal actions against organizations and individuals classified as HSN components **The Soros Pyramid:** The document's pitch materials include an illustration of a pyramid of "progressive elites" with **[[George Soros]]** and **[[J.B. Pritzker]]** at the apex — invoking longstanding antisemitic conspiracy theories about Soros while ostensibly combating antisemitism. This contradiction is not incidental; it reveals Project Esther's actual target: progressive institutional power, not anti-Jewish hatred. ## Implementation Under Trump A New York Times investigation published in May 2025 found that the second Trump administration had acted upon **more than half** of Project Esther's proposals — a faster implementation rate than even Project 2025. Key actions: | Date | Action | Project Esther Connection | |------|--------|--------------------------| | **Jan 2025** | Executive order threatening non-citizen students with deportation for criticizing Israel | Direct implementation of visa/deportation proposals | | **Spring 2025** | $400M federal funding cut to Columbia University | Higher education coercion model | | **April 2025** | Social media monitoring program for foreign students and visa applicants | Immigration surveillance proposal | | **July 2025** | Columbia settles: $200M payment, adopts IHRA definition, accepts oversight | Forced IHRA adoption model | | **Ongoing** | Student deportation proceedings against pro-Palestinian activists | HSN enforcement framework | The Columbia University case became the template: threaten existential funding cuts, force adoption of the IHRA definition, extract financial concessions, and make an example that disciplines every other institution. Multiple universities have since adopted IHRA or modified campus speech policies preemptively. ## The Christian Zionist Architecture Project Esther's most revealing feature is *who built it*. The document was not produced by Jewish organizations but by the Heritage Foundation's Christian nationalist network: - **Luke Moon** — Co-chair of the task force, executive director of the Philos Project, a Christian Zionist advocacy organization - **Mario Bramnick** — Co-chair, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and Christian Zionist leader - **Ellie Cohanim** — Former Trump State Department envoy, focused on antisemitism from a pro-Israel policy perspective - **[[Family Research Council]]** — Task force participant, Tony Perkins's Christian right organization - **[[Faith and Freedom Coalition]]** — Task force participant, Ralph Reed's evangelical voter mobilization arm - **Christians United for Israel** (CUFI) — Claimed as task force participant (largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S., evangelical) This is [[Christian Zionism]] operationalized as federal policy — the theological belief that supporting Israel is a biblical imperative, translated into a government enforcement framework that criminalizes dissent. The irony is structural: a document purporting to protect Jews was authored by the Christian nationalist movement, targets progressive Jews who criticize Israeli policy, and deploys antisemitic imagery (the Soros pyramid) in its own materials. ## The Blind Spot Multiple investigations — by the New York Times, Slate, Haaretz, The Forward, and Jewish Insider — have noted that Project Esther **says nothing about right-wing antisemitism**. It does not address: - [[The Great Replacement]] theory (which posits Jews are orchestrating demographic change) - QAnon's antisemitic conspiracy theories - White nationalist movements that explicitly target Jews - The Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting and similar right-wing violence - [[Tucker Carlson]]'s platforming of Holocaust revisionism (Jewish groups withdrew from the Heritage antisemitism task force specifically over Heritage's embrace of Carlson) This omission is not an oversight — it's the architecture. Project Esther defines antisemitism exclusively as a left-wing phenomenon (campus protests, BDS, progressive criticism of Israel) because its function is not to protect Jews but to weaponize antisemitism as a tool for suppressing progressive movements and consolidating executive power over higher education and immigration. ## Analytical Framework Project Esther operates at the intersection of three agendas that are each documented elsewhere in this KB: 1. **The Heritage Foundation's institutional capture project** ([[Project 2025 Public Rollout]]): Project Esther extends the same logic — federal power wielded to reshape institutions — from government agencies to universities and civil society. 2. **The Christian nationalist legislative pipeline** ([[Project Blitz]], [[Seven Mountain Mandate]]): Project Esther is Project Blitz for higher education — the same model of template-driven institutional capture, this time targeting academia rather than state legislatures. 3. **The immigration enforcement expansion** ([[Stephen Miller]]'s America First Legal framework): Using antisemitism allegations as the legal basis for deportation creates a new category of speech-based immigration enforcement that can be expanded to other contexts. The deeper pattern: Project Esther demonstrates how the right-wing ecosystem recycles the same institutional playbook across domains. Heritage produces the blueprint. Christian Zionist organizations provide the moral cover. The executive branch provides the enforcement. Universities and civil society organizations are the targets. And the actual constituency the document claims to protect — American Jews — were neither consulted nor served. ## See Also - [[Project 2025 Public Rollout]] — Heritage's parallel governing blueprint - [[Heritage Foundation]] — Institutional author - [[Project Blitz]] — Template model for institutional capture via legislation - [[Seven Mountain Mandate]] — Theological framework behind Christian Zionist politics - [[Stephen Miller]] — Immigration enforcement architect - [[Russell Vought]] — [[Center for Renewing America]], executive power theorist - [[Family Research Council]] — Task force participant - [[Faith and Freedom Coalition]] — Task force participant - [[Dark Money Ecosystem]] — Funding architecture behind Heritage