Founded in 1973, it took a leading role in the conservative movement in the 1980s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose policies were taken from Heritage Foundation studies, including its Mandate for Leadership.

Later, under Weyrich's successor, Frank J. Walton, the Heritage Foundation began using direct mail fundraising, which contributed to the growth of its annual income, which reached $1 million a year in 1976.

According to Baltimore Sun Washington bureau chief Frank Starr, the Heritage Foundation's studies "laid much of the groundwork for Bush administration thinking" about post-Soviet foreign policy.

[citation needed] In 1996, Clinton aligned some of his welfare reforms with the Heritage Foundation's recommendations, incorporating them into the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act.

[34][35] The Heritage Foundation denied a conflict of interest, saying that its views on Malaysia changed following the country's cooperation with the U.S. after the September 11 attacks,[36] and the Malaysian government "moving in the right economic and political direction.

[51] In May 2013, Jason Richwine, who co-authored a controversial Heritage Foundation report on the costs of amnesty for migrants, resigned his position following intensive media scrutiny to his Harvard University Ph.D. thesis, authored four years earlier, in 2009, and comments he made at an American Enterprise Institute forum in 2008.

[54] Reason magazine and the Cato Institute criticized the report for failing to employ dynamic scoring, which Heritage previously incorporated in analyzing other policy proposals.

[51] Jim DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation from 2013 to 2017, personally intervened on behalf of Mulvaney, who was appointed to head the Office of Management and Budget and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and later served as Trump's acting White House chief of staff.

In a public statement, the board said that a thorough investigation of the foundation's operations under DeMint found "significant and worsening management issues that led to a breakdown of internal communications and cooperation."

"[67] DeMint's firing was praised by some, including former U.S. congressman Mickey Edwards (R-OK), who said he saw it as a step by the foundation to pare back its partisan edge and restore its reputation as a pioneering think tank.

"In the early days of the pandemic in spring 2020, Heritage leadership under James rejected an article from one of its scholars denouncing government restrictions, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The foundation's offices stayed closed for about three months, and signs urging masking became something of a joke for many conservatives who mocked the concept", The Washington Post reported in February 2022.

[91] The Heritage Foundation has historically ranked among the world's most influential think tanks, influencing concrete policies, media, and political discourse in general.

In 2014, Charles W. L. Hill, a professor at the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington, criticized the Index of Economic Freedom, writing that, "given that the Heritage Foundation has a political agenda, its work should be viewed with caution.

The plan was published in April 2023 by the American conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation in anticipation of Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election.

[135] In February 2012, the foundation's conclusions were challenged by Rex Nutting of MarketWatch, who wrote that the report was "misleading" and "alarmist", that the percentage of Americans "dependent" upon government had remained essentially the same as it was in the 1980s, and that a small increase was attributable to the Great Recession and an aging population with proportionally more retirees.

[148] In 2021, the Heritage Foundation said that one of its two priorities, along with tightening voting laws, was to push Republican-controlled states to ban or restrict critical race theory instruction.

[149] The Heritage Foundation sought to get Republicans in Congress to put anti-critical race theory provisions into must-pass legislation such as the annual defense spending bill.

[151][152] The foundation is one of many climate change denial organizations that have been funded by ExxonMobil, an oil and petroleum company that is the eighth-largest corporation in the world with over $413 billion in revenue as of 2022.

[151][153] The Heritage Foundation strongly criticized the December 1997 Kyoto Agreement to curb climate change, arguing that American participation in the treaty would "result in lower economic growth in every state and nearly every sector of the economy".

[163][158] Ahead of the Obergefell ruling, Heritage's Ryan T. Anderson argued that gay acceptance is linked to single motherhood, sexual permissiveness, and reformed divorce laws.

"[164] In 2010, the Heritage Foundation also conducted meetings, which included social researchers opposed to gay marriage, which reportedly helped lead to the publication of the controversial New Family Structures Study.

[171] The Heritage Foundation-led initiative Project 2025 proposed LGBT-related policies, including the limiting of LGBT anti-discrimination protections, and a ban on transgender people from the military.

[85] In August 2023, newly installed Heritage president Kevin Roberts stated in an op-ed column that Congress was holding victims of the 2023 Hawaii wildfires hostage "in order to spend more money in Ukraine".

This, in turn, led the foundation's second senior official, Lt. Gen. (Ret) Thomas Spoehr, director of Heritage's Center for National Defense, to submit his resignation.

[178] Following the 2020 presidential election, in which President Donald Trump made baseless claims of fraud after he was defeated for reelection, the Heritage Foundation launched a campaign in support of Republican efforts to make state voting laws more restrictive.

[179][180] In March 2021, The New York Times reported that the Heritage Foundation's political arm, Heritage Action, planned to spend $24 million over two years across eight key states to support efforts to restrict voting, in coordination with the Republican Party and allied conservative outside groups, including the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, American Legislative Exchange Council, and State Policy Network.

In one video that was sent viral by an Elon Musk repost, Heritage falsely claimed that 14% of noncitizens in Georgia were registered, concluding, "the integrity of the 2024 election is in great jeopardy."

[189][190] The foundation's trustees have historically included individuals affiliated with Chase Manhattan Bank, Dow Chemical, General Motors, Mobil, Pfizer, Sears, and other corporations.

[191] Heritage is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization and BBB Wise Giving Alliance-accredited charity funded by donations from private individuals, corporations, and charitable foundations.