Hello to all of our loyal listeners at Heritage Explains. We are on break for the month of August and will be coming back with new episodes in September. But in the meantime, we’re rounding up some of our favorite shows from earlier this year. One of the key moments in the early Trump Administration were the cuts to USAID. For the first time, many Americans got an up-close-and-personal look at the way that the sausage gets made in Washington. What most people assumed was an innocuous aid organiz...
Aug 13, 2025•21 min
Hi everybody, and welcome back to Heritage Explains. We, like many of you, are enjoying a little bit of vacation this summer. We are taking a break from our regularly scheduled episodes for the month of August. In the meantime, we are bringing you some of our favorite shows from this past year. We have seen a lot of important moments come and go in that time. And one was the verdict delivered in the case of Daniel Penny, this past December. It felt like an inflection point in our national conver...
Aug 06, 2025•15 min
We find ourselves in the midst of a new revolution: The AI Revolution. Complex computer models are now able to replicate human thought, making them capable of an entirely new realm of tasks. AI is going to affect the way we work, where we live, how we learn and process information, how we bank, how we write, even how we interact with people around us. Governments around the world are paying attention to the possibilities that AI offers, and ours is no exception. I sat down with Daniel Cochrane, ...
Jul 30, 2025•18 min
In 1965, the Johnson Administration signed into law the programs we now know as Medicare and Medicaid. They were designed to provide healthcare to Americans who were particularly in need. But over the years, the programs have expanded hugely, and focus has shifted away from people who really need assistance to much larger groups of people. This can be a real problem for the people that Medicare and Medicaid were originally designed to be a safety net for. Here to explain why and to talk about th...
Jul 23, 2025•18 min
Attacks on ICE agents are escalating nationwide, now up nearly 700% over the same time last year. Organized riots followed recent ICE enforcement actions. Investigations reveal coordination by known radical groups that also organized the 2020 BLM/Antifa riots and 2023 pro-terrorism demonstrations. These are not spontaneous uprisings—they are well-funded, highly-organized anti-American efforts. Here to explain why these attacks on are on the rise is Simon Hankinson, Senior Research Fellow in the ...
Jul 16, 2025•20 min
Rescissions It’s a word that we’re hearing a lot in the news today. A member of a family of words and phrases that come trotting out whenever folks in Washington start talking about money. Appropriations. Sequestration. Omnibus. Continuing Resolutions. Budget caps. Debt Ceiling. Earmarks. Baseline Budgeting. But it isn’t that complicated. Basically, the President can request that Congress return money that has been appropriated, but not yet spent. A rescissions package is making its way through ...
Jul 09, 2025•13 min
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal... How many times have we heard these words? Back in 2007, the Washington Post ran an article by Gene Weingarten called “Pearls Before Breakfast”. In it, he chronicles an experiment by the newspaper, in which world-renowned violinist Joshua Bell put on a baseball cap and a t-shirt, and entered the L’Enfant Plaza metro station in Washington DC. Once there, he removed his Stradivarius violin from its case, and began to play. T...
Jul 02, 2025•17 min
While there are still several high-profile cases awaiting rulings, the Supreme Court has delivered several wins for the Trump administration, common sense, and all Americans. So far this term, the Supreme Court issued stays of lower court orders attempting to block the Trump administration from pursuing its agenda, upheld religious freedom and parental rights, and upheld laws protecting kids from dangerous gender treatments. Justices also have stopped lower court judges from rewriting discrimina...
Jun 25, 2025•15 min
On Friday, Israel initiated "Operation Rising Lion," conducting airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and military command centers. The strikes led to at least 75 Iranian deaths and significant infrastructure damage, including oil refineries and missile launchers. Iran responded with a large-scale missile and drone assault on Israel, targeting over 150 military and intelligence sites. The strikes resulted in at least 14 Israeli fatalities and over 400 injuries. Israel claimed to have damaged ...
Jun 18, 2025•13 min
In Los Angeles, protests against immigration enforcement have turned into assaults on federal officers and buildings, fires, and similar mayhem to the Summer of 2020. And it turns out, that’s not all that is similar. The same people, using the same methods, are behind both this year’s LA riots and the BLM protests of five years ago. I sat down with Mike Gonzalez, a Senior Fellow here at the Heritage Foundation, to talk about just that. — BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution: https://www.a...
Jun 11, 2025•12 min
Nuclear energy is a clean, safe method of energy production, in which America leads the world. But making sure that Nuclear power has a bright future in America is a full-time job. And that full-time job belongs to Jack Spencer, Senior Research Fellow in Energy and Environment, here at the Heritage Foundation. — Find Jack’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/088890357X/ref=cm_cr_unknown?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=three_star&reviewerType=all_reviews&pageNumber=1#reviews-filter-bar...
Jun 04, 2025•30 min
Many Americans sense that the social cohesion of our nation is weakening. The data seems to back this up. A poll conducted by the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that Seventy-one percent say the United States is “losing its national identity—that is the beliefs and values the country represents.” American trust in its traditional institutions, the media, universities, non-profits, and churches, is historically low. The question for con...
May 28, 2025•45 min
The Center for Disease Control reports that over 48,000 Americans died from synthetic opioid (or fentanyl) overdoses in 2024. That number dwarfed the number of people who died from psychostimulants like methamphetamine at 29,000. As well as cocaine at 22,000, and other naturally occuring drugs at 8,000. Fentanyl and similar substances have changed the game in drug policy, driving greater lethality and creating geopolitical rifts, as China exports precursors to the drug and Mexican cartels smuggl...
May 21, 2025•17 min
Over the last few months, users of Facebook and Instagram may have noticed a new avenue to interact with the platform: Meta AI. The AI tool, similar to language learning models like ChatGPT, X’s Grok, and Microsoft’s Co-Pilot, is able to carry forward advanced conversations with users and synthesize complex answers based on prompts. Meta has leveraged its AI model to create a wide array of chatbots. Some are officially sanctioned by Meta and feature the voices of celebrities like Kristin Bell an...
May 14, 2025•26 min
In honor of Small Business Week, we are pleased to bring you a conversation with Sue Malone a true titan in the world of small business. As the founder of Strategies for Small Business , Sue has been instrumental in helping over 30,000 entrepreneurs secure capital to start or expand their businesses. Paul Mullen guest hosts Heritage Explains this week in this conversation on entrepreneurship, what it means, and why it matters, as well as Sue’s advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. Get in touch with...
May 07, 2025•31 min
Since RFK Jr., now the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, showed the nation the color difference between Canadian Froot Loops and U.S. Froot Loops, Americans are becoming more aware of what’s in the food we eat. And one of the major offenders? Food dyes. Some of the food dyes in everyday products like breakfast cereals and candy actually come from coal tar, petroleum, and other concerning origins. Even worse, these dyes add nothing to the flavor—their only purpose is better marketing f...
Apr 30, 2025•17 min
With the push for green energy, governments around the world have pushed for (and passed) subsidies for so-called “renewable” energy like wind and solar. The US passed large subsidies of this kind under the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022. But these policies do not have the effect of creating long-term stability in the American energy grid. Here to explain why is Mario Loyola, Senior Fellow in Law, Economics, and Technology, here at the Heritage Foundation. — Follo...
Apr 23, 2025•17 min
In addition to Russia and North Korea, nuclear bad actors can also be found in Iran, where the regime has been plotting a nuclear buildup for decades. Now, the Trump Administration has initiated talks with the Iranians. Here to explain what we may expect from these negotiations is Rob Greenway, Director of the Allison Center for National Security, here at the Heritage Foundation. — Follow Rob Greenway on X: https://x.com/RC_Greenway More by Rob at Heritage.org: http://heritage.org/staff/robert-g...
Apr 16, 2025•14 min
The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. This is the beginning of Article III, section 1 of the US constitution, establishing the federal judiciary. Nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and usually serving for life, federal judges serve a key role in the highest levels of the American justice system. The federal judiciary is designed to exert a check on...
Apr 09, 2025•11 min
It’s clear that the Trump administration’s commitment to securing the southern border is working. But the question now is, how do we keep it working? What changes need to be made to the immigration system to keep us from heading back to the uncontrolled illegal migration of the Biden years? One critical component, argues Heritage Immigration expert Lora Ries, is the reform of the asylum system, ensuring that people who are genuinely in danger have access, while discouraging fraudulent claims. — ...
Apr 02, 2025•14 min
In the summer of 2020, with the George Floyd Riots in full swing, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser decided that 16th Avenue would gain a new status in American history. She designated the two block section of the Avenue closest to the white house as Black Lives Matter Plaza. The slogan was painted in 35-foot yellow letters on the street. Whether they wanted to or not, DC residents and visitors were forced to see them day in and day out. No doubt, the mayor and her allies believed they were symbolically st...
Mar 26, 2025•18 min
From the earliest times of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins, and apparently the entire scientific community insisted that the virus emerged from nature, jumping from an animal species to humans. Many pointed out the flaws in this reasoning, finding the possibility of COVID leaking from a laboratory much more likely. Scientific organizations, leftist politicians, and corporate media insisted that such an opinion was dangerous and should be suppressed. Here’s the problem: many ...
Mar 19, 2025•20 min
At the direction of President Trump, Education Secretary Linda McMahon is now preparing the Department of Education for what she refers to as its “final mission”: winding down the department itself. This will be a complicated process, but here to explain what it may look like is Lindsey Burke, Director of the Center for Education Policy here at the Heritage Foundation. — Follow Lindsey Burke on X: https://x.com/lindseymburke More by Lindsey at Heritage.org: https://www.heritage.org/staff/lindsey...
Mar 12, 2025•15 min
This week, President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress. Clocking in at over an hour and forty minutes, the speech was the longest address a president has delivered to America’s legislature in recent history. It covered the president’s accomplishments so far in his administration, from DOGE to border enforcement to economic policy, as well as shedding some light on the president’s plans for the future. To understand some of the key takeaways from Trump’s speech, I sat down with Ryan Wal...
Mar 05, 2025•16 min
President Trump’s posture toward the war in Ukraine is very different from his predecessor. To understand what we might expect to see in Ukraine over the next few weeks, months, and years, I sat down with Rob Greenway, Director of the Allison Center for National Security, here at the Heritage Foundation — Follow Rob Greenway on X: https://x.com/rc_greenway?lang=en Learn more about The Heritage Foundation: www.heritage.org — Have thoughts? Let us know at heritageexplains@heritage.org...
Feb 26, 2025•14 min
American taxpayer money can be used to great effect, and we like to think that our civil institutions would always be dedicated to delivering such good return on investment. But that is not always so. The Trump Administration’s DOGE effort has shed much light in recent weeks on waste, fraud, and abuse throughout the federal government. Now the spotlight has been turned on NIH. Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Jay Greene has been studying the federal grant process through NIH for many y...
Feb 19, 2025•24 min
On January 28th, President Trump signed an executive order on banning the use of federal funds for so-called “gender transitions”. But some states Attorneys general have taken exception to this, and filed suit. Here to explain their position, and its likelihood for success, is Heritage Senior Legal Fellow, Sarah Parshall Perry. — Follow Sarah Perry on X: https://x.com/SarahPPerry Follow Chloe Cole on X: https://x.com/ChoooCole Learn more about The Heritage Foundation: www.heritage.org — Have tho...
Feb 12, 2025•15 min
$32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru. $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala. Hundreds of millions of dollars to fund “irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan,” benefiting the Taliban This sounds like the wishlist of a crazy progressive NGO. But it’s not. These are all grants of US Taxpayer money, made by USAID. The United States Agency for International Devel...
Feb 05, 2025•22 min
Over just the last week, the number of daily border crossings has crashed compared to the Biden administration. Border enforcement in the interior has been seriously undertaken. The US military has been deployed to assist Customs and Border Protection. Here to walk us through the details of this Sea Change is Lora Ries, Director of the Border Security and Immigration Center, here at the Heritage Foundation. — Follow Lora Ries on X: https://x.com/lora_ries Learn more about The Heritage Foundation...
Jan 29, 2025•10 min
The executive order is a tool the Constitution places at the president’s disposal, allowing him to effect changes within the executive branch of government. As President Donald Trump steps into office this week, he has signed many such orders, which have already had a broad impact on the way the federal government works. I sat down with Heritage Fellow Steve Groves to better understand these changes. — Follow Steve Groves on X: https://x.com/stevegroves Learn more about The Heritage Foundation: ...
Jan 23, 2025•16 min
