The New Right Is More Right than Wrong on Family Policy
January 13, 2026
It should have been the perfect day to release a report diagnosing the most serious maladies facing the American family and prescribing remedies to restore it to health. After all, the very day the Heritage Foundation released its whitepaper last week spotlighting the nation’s “precipitous drop in fertility” came news of projections from the Congressional Budget Office that deaths will exceed births in America in four years, and the population as a whole will start shrinking in thirty years. Demographic winter is here.
But because the nation’s largest conservative think tank has been mired in controversy since its president, Kevin Roberts, inexplicably made a video defending Tucker Carlson in the wake of Carlson’s interview with antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes, the report landed with a thud. Potentially sympathetic voices have been muted, while critics from the left have denounced it as racist and critics on the classically liberal right have attacked Heritage for embracing “Orbán-style government giveaways.”
