What is the Heritage Foundation? 

The Heritage Foundation is a powerful conservative think tank founded in 1973 that writes ready-made policy blueprints for Republican lawmakers and presidents. It promotes Christian conservative social values and aggressive executive power. Though it is a private organization, it has outsized influence in shaping federal policy—most recently as the architect of Project 2025. Its influence during the second Trump presidency has been especially direct; an analysis by DeSmog found that more than 50 high-level Trump administration officials had links to the organization. 

What is Project 2025? 

Project 2025 is a sweeping conservative policy blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation to prepare for a Republican presidency after the 2024 presidential election. The project calls for limiting abortion access, rolling back LGBTQ+ protections, eliminating diversity and equity programs, weakening the Department of Education, and redefining federal policy around a traditional, heterosexual model of family and marriage.

Since Trump took office, significant portions of this agenda have been implemented; in fact, most estimates say more than 50% of the project has been completed. Initiatives proposed by Project 2025 include:

• Issuing a series of executive orders dismantling Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives across federal agencies
• Instructing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to scale back investigations into race- and sex-based discrimination, weakening federal enforcement of civil rights protections
• Terminating tens of thousands of federal employees, significantly reducing the size and capacity of the federal workforce
• Using law enforcement agencies to aggressively target immigrant communities, expanding surveillance, detention, and deportation efforts
• Barring Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds, restricting access to reproductive healthcare for low-income individuals
• Eliminating more than $800 million in federal funding dedicated to research on LGBTQ+ health, undermining efforts to understand and address disparities within the community

What Comes Next?

While much attention has focused on how the Trump administration implemented substantial portions of Project 2025, those actions now function primarily as context. The more pressing issue is what comes next.

In Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years, published by The Heritage Foundation argues that the restoration of the traditional heterosexual family is essential to national renewal. Framed as a pro-family policy blueprint, the report proposes sweeping reforms to welfare, tax policy, family law, and cultural institutions. The most distressing element of the report is its willingness to restructure social welfare around a single normative vision of marriage.

A New (Old) Understanding of Family

The report situates family support as central to national survival, claiming, “The family is the foundation of civilization, and marriage — the committed union of one man and one woman — is its cornerstone.” By positioning one family model as morally and politically superior, these proposals expand government influence into private life and legitimize intrusive interventions into intimate decisions.

The Heritage Foundation advances a deeply regressive vision of American life by arguing that marriage (not personal growth, education, or professional achievement) should be the primary marker of adult success. The report laments that modern culture encourages young people to delay marriage in favor of career development, complaining that

“For most previous generations, marriage was the foundation of adulthood. In contrast, today’s cultural narrative teaches young people to delay marriage and focus on career and personal achievements first. Many now consider marriage a capstone to adult life, something only to be accomplished once career and other personal goals have been achieved.”

What the report frames as cultural decline is, in reality, the expansion of opportunity, particularly for women, who now have the ability to pursue education and financial independence before entering marriage. By portraying career ambition and self-development as threats to social order, the report romanticizes a past in which economic dependence and rigid gender roles were the norm.

The document goes further, openly villainizing online dating, pornography, sexual freedom, abortion, and no-fault divorce as drivers of family breakdown. It blames the social transformations of the 1960s, arguing that 

“The disruptions to American family life caused by bad public policy in the 1960s were exacerbated by cultural upheavals that radically changed social norms around sex, sexuality, marriage, children, and gender roles. Second-wave feminism and the sexual revolution promoted an individualistic, child-free, marriage-free, sexual ‘liberation’…”

In this telling, feminism and expanded sexual autonomy are not historic advancements in civil rights but catastrophic mistakes. The report treats women’s independence, reproductive choice, and the ability to leave unhappy marriages as social decline rather than progress. By condemning no-fault divorce and abortion alongside “casual sex,” it reveals a broader desire to reinstate moral and legal pressures that would make exiting marriage or avoiding it altogether more difficult.

Perhaps most telling is the report’s hostility toward higher education. It claims that college represents “extended adolescence” and argues that “[m]ore education correlates with later marriage, fewer children.” Rather than acknowledging that economic instability, student debt, and labor market changes shape young adults’ timelines, the report implies that education itself is the problem. In effect, it frames intellectual development and economic mobility as obstacles to the “natural” order of early marriage and childbearing. The logic is clear: independence delays marriage, and delayed marriage is treated as a national crisis.

Welfare and Economic Reform

The report also calls for eliminating marriage penalties in state welfare, arguing that current programs discourage marriage by financially disadvantaging married couples compared with single parents. As the report states:

“All children conceived deserve to be born to their mothers and fathers in a committed marriage who will love, guide, and protect them throughout their lives. Therefore, at a minimum, policies should not discourage or penalize marriage. Policy should instead affirmatively support and privilege marriage as directly and explicitly as possible.”

While framed as a means to promote social and economic stability, this approach distorts the reality of poverty: it reduces support for single parents (disproportionately low-income women) and assumes that marital status is the primary driver of economic insecurity, oversimplifying the systemic issues that contribute to financial hardship. 

Similarly, the report advocates reforming alimony and spousal support by capping payments to the length of the marriage and favoring lump-sum settlements. Though presented as fairness reform, this policy would disproportionately harm stay-at-home spouses, often women, who sacrificed careers to provide caregiving and often face difficulty in re-entering the workforce.

The report also promotes support for stay-at-home parenting through Home Childcare Equalization (HCE) credits, intended to encourage one parent to remain at home. This policy reinforces traditional gender roles and limits flexibility for modern work-family arrangements, potentially pressuring parents into unpaid caregiving to qualify for benefits. Beyond economic incentives, the report seeks to influence reproductive behavior, emphasizing policies that encourage childbearing within marriage and framing declining birth rates as a national problem. As the report asks, “What happens to a nation when its citizens largely stop having children?… These questions are not theoretical,” illustrating its view of fertility as a matter of national urgency.

Taken together, the report constructs a narrative in which sexual freedom, feminism, reproductive rights, educational attainment, and personal autonomy are to blame for social decline. It does not merely advocate for supporting families—it seeks to discipline modern life back into a narrow, heteronormative and marriage-centered model. What it labels “saving America” is, in practice, an attempt to roll back decades of expanded freedom, particularly for women and LGBTQ+ individuals. Rather than addressing structural economic inequality, stagnant wages, childcare costs, or healthcare access, the report chooses to scapegoat cultural progress and personal autonomy. Its vision of restoration depends not on expanding opportunity, but on constraining it.

Why the New Phase Feels Different

The earlier implementation of Project 2025 policies demonstrated the feasibility of large-scale administrative shifts via executive action. That track record amplifies concern about the Heritage Foundation’s new proposals. The central shift is not merely about abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, or DEI programs individually. It is about whether the federal government adopts a singular, officially endorsed definition of family and social order and structures funding, civil rights enforcement and educational policy around that definition.

Facebook and YouTube are full of people and pages promoting conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, bad history and fake news. Thankfully there are a few youtubers out there who specialize in debunking pseudoscience, refuting bad arguments and disproving conspiracy theories. Here are my top ten YouTube debunking channels.

1. Myles Power

Myles Power – aka powerm1985 – is one of the most popular skeptical YouTube channels in the world – and for good reason. Power, who is an organic chemist by profession, has made videos debunking pseudoscience and quacks from anti-GMO hysteria to anti-vaxxers to a myriad of different alternative medicines including chiropractic, MMS, homeopathy and ozone therapy.

He has tackled numerous conspiracy theories: HIV/AIDS denialism, chemtrails, Holocaust denial, and the conspiracies around the Sandy Hook school shooting, but he’s probably best known for his series of videos debunking 9/11 truth conspiracies. Power’s videos are well researched, engaging and even have a sense of humor.

In addition to his debunking videos, he also makes other science related content, including experiments and videos of his travels to places like the Bolivian Salt Flats and the Chernobyl exclusion zone. His production value is impressive, and he makes use of music, b-roll, still images and text effects to make the videos highly engaging. Power’s videos are an absolute must-see.

2. Contrapoints

Contrapoints is a YouTube channel run by Natalie Wynn, a transgender YouTuber and former academic. Explicitly left-wing in her outlook and identifying as a pessimistic socialist, Wynn has made videos countering arguments against feminism and LGBTQ rights, debunking alt-right conspiracy theories and racist pseudoscience and climate change denial.

She has made videos on such a diverse set of ideas it’s hard to keep track. Her arguments are always presented in a nuanced way, freely acknowledging valid points made by those she argues against, while debunking the overall argument and explaining the underlying ideology behind it.

The thing that really makes her work stand out is not her arguments, but her production value. Wynn’s channel is probably best known for her use of sets, costumes and characters in her videos. They also include ironic humor and even the occasional musical number. Wynn has effectively created her own cinematic universe at this point, and it is no surprise she is one of the top 20 creators on Patreon.

3. Debunked

While a lot of the channels on this list focus on combating pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, Debunked focuses on some of the more everyday misconceptions that many of us still believe. While not as glamorous as debunking claims from conspiracy theorists, woo peddlers and neo-Nazis, Debunked still addresses many everyday or pop cultural misconceptions about things like space and physics and does so in a way that is accessible, informative and entertaining.

Debunked is also unique for its extensive use of animation to illustrate the ideas being discussed, making their videos feel more professional and endearing. This channel is also much more family friendly than many of the other channels on this list.

4. Shaun

Shaun – formerly Shaun and Jen – is a Youtuber who specializes in refuting arguments and conspiracy theories from the alt-right and anti-feminists, especially those relating to sociology. Shaun has made videos dissecting how a conspiracy comes to be, examining outrage news and refuting conspiracies about white genocide and the misuse of Ancient Roman history for modern political agendas. Like Contrapoints, he too explicitly leans left, describing himself as a socialist and a feminist. His videos are incredibly well researched and Shaun manages to refute some pretty absurd claims calmly, clearly and with an incredibly dry sense of humor.

5. Three Arrows

Very similar to Shaun in terms of style and sense of humor, Three Arrows focuses on debunking bad history and conspiracy theories from the alt-right, particularly arguments about Nazi Germany and World War II. His name and symbol are a reference to a symbol commonly used by left-wing and anti-fascist groups, symbolizing his left-wing leanings and his commitment to anti-fascism.

His videos address topics like gun control in Nazi Germany, confederate monuments, Holocaust denial, the Dresden bombing and the Crusades. His videos are incredibly well researched and informative and are generally enjoyable to watch, although they tend to be on the longer side. Three Arrows’ videos are absolute must-see for anyone who loves history.

6. Knowing Better

Knowing Better usually doesn’t frame his videos as rebuttals, counter arguments or even debunking, but his stated goal is to educate people about history, psychology and other social science topics so that “next time you’re in a conversation or you see a stupid meme on Facebook, you’ll know better.” Politically, he is a self-described moderate and has made videos have covered topics including Scientology, the sinking of the Titanic, privatization, sovereign citizens and mental health.

7. TREY the Explainer

This channel specializes in areas like anthropology, zoology, evolutionary biology, ancient history and especially paleontology. TREY has made videos debunking creationism and the claims of religious fundamentalists, but he’s best known for his videos on cryptozoology, debunking Cryptids like the Loch Ness Monster, Flatwoods Monster and Mothman. While his video quality often lags in comparison to some of the others on this list, there is an endearing quality to his videos that makes them stand out. He also does videos on other scientific and historical topics, including a series on different prehistoric creatures called “Paleo Profile.”

8. Potholer54

Peter Hadfield, aka Potholer54, is a British Journalist and geologist, and his channel specializes in debunking and refuting creationists and – perhaps more notably – climate change deniers. He seeks to educate people about the science of climate change and why it is a dire issue but does so without resorting to what he considers to be the exaggerated claims made by many environmentalists. He explains the science clearly without talking down to his audience. His production values are significantly lower than many of the other YouTubers on this list, but what he lacks in production values he more than makes up for in information.

9. Rebecca Watson

A controversial skeptic to say the least, Rebecca Watson is a well-known skeptic, atheist and feminist YouTuber. She has no qualms about going after controversial subjects or arguing against other people in her own camp, including other skeptics and feminists. Watson has done videos on a myriad of subjects including conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, political disinformation, bad history and clickbait.

10. C0nc0rdance

C0nc0rdance hasn’t made as many videos in recent years, but his videos still hold up and are great resources for debunking a variety of pseudoscientific claims and views. Initially his work focused primarily on rebutting religious fundamentalism and creationism, but it later branched out to address other issues. C0nc0rdance made videos debunking a variety of different alternative medicines, HIV/AIDS denialism, scientific racism and anti-vaxxers.

Unlike some of the other YouTubers on this list, C0nc0rdance is politically more moderate and identifies as a political independent. He made a video criticizing Trump and has also criticized drug use. He is also a self-described free speech absolutist. C0nc0rdance is an atheist and has expressed support for people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. His videos tend to be lower quality in terms of production value, typically formatted as a sort of slide show, and his audio quality lags behind many of the others on this list, though it is roughly similar to potholer54. His videos are very information dense but understandable and incredibly educational.