Edwin J. Feulner, a prominent figure in the American conservative movement and co-founder and former president of the Heritage Foundation, died on Friday at the age of 83.
Edwin J. Feulner, a prominent figure in the American conservative movement and co-founder and former president of the Heritage Foundation, died on Friday at the age of 83.
Feulner served as the organization’s president from 1977 to 2013 and again from 2017 to 2018.
He was well known for transforming the once-obscure think tank into one of the most influential policy powerhouses in Washington, DC.
He was its longest-serving president after helping to create the Washington, DC-based think tank in 1973.
“Ed Feulner was more than a leader—he was a visionary, a builder, and a patriot of the highest order,” Heritage President Kevin Roberts and Board of Trustees Chairman Barb Van Andel-Gaby said in a joint statement. “His unwavering love of country and his determination to safeguard the principles that made America the freest, most prosperous nation in human history shaped every fiber of the conservative movement—and still do.”
The group had organized Project 2025, a controversial initiative that offered right-wing policy recommendations for the second Trump administration.
