Dear Friends,

After more than 12 years at The Heartland Institute, I want to share an important personal update: I am no longer with Heartland, and I am now devoting my full time and energy to Our Republic, a national pro-liberty think tank entering an exciting new phase.

My years at Heartland were among the most consequential of my professional life. I am grateful for the opportunities I received, the remarkable people I worked with, and everything we accomplished together. As that chapter comes to an end, I am incredibly excited about what lies ahead.

I founded Our Republic in 2018, when it was called the Henry Dearborn Institute, to identify emerging threats to freedom long before they received widespread attention and to develop policy solutions to address them. Today, Our Republic is a national nonprofit research organization dedicated to advancing individual liberty, human rights, free markets, fiscal responsibility, religious freedom, equal treatment under the law, and the enduring principles of the American constitutional system.

Our Republic devotes substantial time to well-established public policy issues, including government spending, taxation, energy, education, and constitutional freedoms. However, our greatest value comes from looking beyond the debates everyone already knows about.

Our primary mission is to identify and tackle new and emerging issues before they command national attention—including developments so new that most Americans have never heard of them. We study these issues at their earliest stages, explain why they matter, and develop solutions before dangerous ideas and systems become firmly entrenched. Some of our projects address familiar political battles. Others investigate new technologies, institutions, financial systems, and governing schemes that remain almost completely unknown to the public.

That is what it means to serve as the “tip of the spear” of the pro-liberty movement. We aim to see threats coming before others do and equip lawmakers, thought leaders, activists, researchers, and the American people with the information they need to respond.

We accomplish this by conducting research, publishing articles and policy materials, educating influential leaders, and producing videos and other media that reach millions of Americans.

In the months ahead, Our Republic will dramatically expand its work in several critical areas.

One of our largest priorities will be fighting the alarming rise of socialism among young Americans. We will develop new research, educational materials, media projects, and policy campaigns that expose socialism’s moral and economic failures while making a compelling case for freedom, opportunity, and free enterprise.

We will also fight for responsible artificial intelligence. AI offers extraordinary possibilities, but it could also give governments, powerful corporations, and financial institutions unprecedented control over people’s lives. Our Republic will advocate for policies that encourage innovation while protecting privacy, individual liberty, equal treatment, and human dignity.

Finally, we will closely study the new strategies ruling-class elites are developing to usher in another “Great Reset” once they return to power. Their terminology and tactics will evolve, but their desire to centralize economic, political, financial, and technological power will remain. We intend to identify these plans early, explain them clearly, and develop effective strategies to stop them.

This is only the beginning. We will have much more to announce soon about each of these projects, along with other major initiatives now under development—some involving issues that few people have even begun discussing.

Please visit Our-Republic.org to learn more about our mission, explore our research, and follow our work.

Thank you for joining us in the fight for freedom.

Justin Haskins
President, Senior Fellow
Our Republic