Heritage Explains

On Monday, the 20 living hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were returned to their families. What brought this deal about and what might we expect to see happen in the future?  To answer some of those questions, I sat down with Daniel Flesch, Senior Policy Analyst for Middle East and North Africa , here at the Heritage Foundation.

There are certain things we take for granted in life. When we flick the switch, the light comes on. When we turn the tap, water comes out. When we take the garbage bin down to the curb on Thursdays, it is empty by Friday afternoon.  But then a storm blows through. A pipe bursts. Heavy snowfall closes the roads. And suddenly those amenities which we took for granted are no longer there. It’s a disc...

The Chinese-owned social media app TikTok collects your most sensitive information. And worse, it uses it in pretty sinister ways. It encourages self-harm and depression among youth. It interferes in elections. It compromises national security.  This week, President Trump signed an executive order authorizing an agreement to separate TikTok from Chinese control. At the Heritage Foundation, we have...

While government has the power to protect our rights, it can use that power to abuse those rights. Especially in those areas of the government which resist accountability to elected officials. The administrative state (or deep state) is a strong focus of the Trump Administration, which has taken action to reinstate accountability in the federal bureaucracy. Ryan Williams, president of the Claremon...

Last week, the country was shaken to its core by the assassination of Christian husband, father, and patriot Charlie Kirk, one of the most prominent voices in the conservative movement, particularly among young Americans. His death has left countless Americans experiencing combinations of sorrow, fear, and anger. How should we as conservatives respond to this tragic and politically motivated attac...

President Trump’s utilization of ICE and the National Guard in Washington, D.C. has significantly lowered crime in the city, modeling success of the agency’s presence in blue cities. Since Trump federalized Washington, D.C. there has been a 45% drop in violent crime, an 87% drop in carjackings, a 38% drop in homicides, and a 62% drop in robberies. There has also been a 20% increase in arrests and...

The August Recess has been a staple of the congressional calendar for decades. In the 1960s the demands placed on the US Congress were changing. Lawmaking had moved from a part-time to a full-time gig. And as the pace of life intensified, so too did the workload on legislators. Looking for a way to balance their busy schedules with those of families, some members of Congress pushed for a defined s...

Hello Heritage Explains Listeners! Mark Guiney here. It’s the first week of August and this month we are taking a short vacation. Until we return with our regular show in September, we are looking back at some of the greatest hits of the year so far.   This past April, Heritage Foundation Digital Content Producer Samantha Hince spoke with Dr. David Gortler about the concerns that many Americans ha...

Hello everybody, we at the Heritage Foundation hope you are enjoying these last weeks of summer. We here at Heritage Explains are taking the opportunity for a brief rest during the month of August. Our regularly scheduled episodes will return in September, but until then, we are revisiting some of our favorite episodes from the year so far.  Back in March, I sat down with Jeff Smith to discuss why...

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 t...

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 t...

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 atten...

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 an...

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. Her...

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 retur...

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...

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...

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 strik...

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 Herit...

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?...

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 institu...

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 lethalit...

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 chatbo...

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, wh...

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 concernin...