Cross-Reference

Heritage Foundation Connections to ASAA Ecosystem

**Research Date:** 2026-03-13 **Data Sources:** Heritage Foundation press releases, Heritage Action scorecards, DCA Wayback snapshots, Senate staff records, Axios, New Republic, INTO, IRS records

Heritage Foundation Connections to ASAA Ecosystem

Research Date: 2026-03-13 Data Sources: Heritage Foundation press releases, Heritage Action scorecards, DCA Wayback snapshots, Senate staff records, Axios, New Republic, INTO, IRS records

Executive Summary

The Heritage Foundation is not a passive coalition member of the Digital Childhood Alliance. It is an active policy infrastructure provider that funds three of the six named DCA coalition organizations, staffs DCA’s advocacy with a former Senate aide who shaped the federal ASAA in Sen. Mike Lee’s office, and has merged leadership with Moms for Liberty (another DCA member) at the Heritage Action level. A separate Heritage fellow was hired by Meta in 2024. These connections create a policy loop in which Heritage funds the research, endorses the legislation, and provides conservative institutional credibility for a coalition ultimately funded by Meta.

1. Heritage Funds Three DCA Coalition Core Organizations

Heritage Foundation awarded Innovation Prizes (2025) to three of the six named DCA coalition members:

RecipientAmountProjectDCA Role
NCOSE (National Center on Sexual Exploitation)Part of $1M+ program“Reclaiming Our Children’s Innocence from Big Tech”Institutional backbone; NCOSEAction (c4) may serve as DCA fiscal sponsor
Institute for Family Studies (IFS)$50,000“Protect Kids Online”Policy research underlying ASAA framework
Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC)$50,000“Protect Kids Online”Policy research underlying ASAA framework

Marcel van der Watt (NCOSE President, also principal officer of NCOSEAction): “Children face many threats to their safety online, and we seek to hold Big Tech accountable for their products that enable these harms.”

The IFS/EPPC “Protect Kids Online” initiative produced the research that directly underlies the ASAA legislative framework. Heritage funded the research that supports the bill that Meta lobbied into existence.

Sources:

2. Annie Chestnut Tutor: The Senate-to-Heritage-to-DCA Pipeline

Annie Chestnut Tutor is a Policy Analyst in Heritage Foundation’s Center for Technology and the Human Person. Her career path creates a direct through-line from the Senate office where the federal ASAA originated to the advocacy organization pushing it nationwide.

Career path:

  1. Legislative assistant to Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) - portfolio included tech and telecom policy
  2. Policy Analyst at Heritage Foundation, Center for Technology and the Human Person
  3. Featured testimonial on DCA website from its first day of existence (December 19, 2024)

Significance: Lee introduced the federal ASAA (S. 1586 / H.R. 3149). Tutor shaped Lee’s tech policy portfolio in the Senate, then moved to Heritage where she now publishes reports advocating for the legislation Lee introduced, and was a launch-day endorser of the DCA coalition that pushes ASAA bills nationally.

Heritage publications by Tutor advocating ASAA:

  • “How Congress Can Protect Children from Predatory Social Media and Pornography Platforms” (November 2025) - explicitly recommends passing the ASAA alongside KOSA and COPPA 2.0
  • “Age Verification: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, and How to Achieve It” (March 2025) - advocates federal age verification legislation

DCA involvement: Tutor’s testimonial appeared on the DCA website in its earliest Wayback Machine snapshot (December 19, 2024, one day after domain registration). This means Heritage’s endorsement was pre-loaded before DCA was publicly announced, indicating pre-launch coordination.

Tutor stated: “App stores treat children like virtual adults - promoting adult platforms and allowing minors to accept terms and download any app without parental oversight.”

Sources:

3. Heritage and Moms for Liberty: Institutional Merger

Heritage Foundation and Moms for Liberty (both DCA coalition members) have undergone a leadership merger:

  • Heritage granted $25,000 to Moms for Liberty (2022)
  • Moms for Liberty’s “resources for parents” page is composed almost exclusively of links to Heritage Foundation materials
  • Tiffany Justice (Moms for Liberty co-founder) became a Visiting Fellow at Heritage Foundation, launching the Parental Rights Initiative
  • Justice was then hired as Executive Vice President of Heritage Action for America (July 2025)

This represents full organizational integration at the leadership level between Heritage Action (the c4 lobbying arm) and Moms for Liberty. Both organizations are DCA coalition members, meaning two of DCA’s six named members are now functionally the same entity at the executive level.

Sources:

4. Heritage to Meta Personnel Pipeline: Dustin Carmack

Dustin Carmack, a former Heritage Foundation fellow and author of Project 2025’s Intelligence Community chapter, was hired by Meta in May 2024 to assist with content moderation strategy. This represents a direct Heritage-to-Meta personnel transfer during the same period Meta was building the DCA coalition and ASAA lobbying infrastructure.

Carmack’s hiring aligns with Meta’s broader pivot toward conservative political alignment under Zuckerberg (dropping fact-checkers, hiring Joel Kaplan as global policy chief). Heritage provides the conservative policy framework; Meta provides the funding and political spending apparatus.

Sources:

5. Heritage Action Legislative Scorecard

Heritage Action for America (the 501(c)(4) lobbying arm) designated KOSA as a key vote on its legislative scorecard (July 2024). Heritage Action President Kevin Roberts stated KOSA “represents our best opportunity to implement meaningful protections for children online this Congress.”

Heritage Action was among 400+ organizations that signed a letter urging Congress to pass KOSA (October 2025).

No Heritage Action key vote designation for ASAA specifically was found, but the ASAA is endorsed by Heritage Foundation’s policy arm through the DCA coalition letter (101 organizations, May 2025).

Source: Heritage Action Key Vote on KOSA: https://heritageaction.com/key-vote/key-vote-yes-on-the-motion-to-concur-with-the-kids-online-safety-act-s-1409-and-the-children-teens-online-privacy-protection-act-s-1418

6. The Policy Loop

The connections form a closed loop:

  1. Meta funds DCA (confirmed by Bloomberg, July 2025)
  2. DCA’s coalition core consists of NCOSE, IFS, EPPC, Moms for Liberty (all Heritage-funded or Heritage-integrated)
  3. Heritage funds the research (IFS/EPPC “Protect Kids Online” prizes) that supports the ASAA framework
  4. Heritage staffs the advocacy (Tutor shaped the bill in Lee’s Senate office, now advocates for it at Heritage, was featured on DCA’s website from launch day)
  5. Heritage merges leadership with DCA coalition members (Justice: M4L co-founder to Heritage Action EVP)
  6. Heritage fellow goes to Meta (Carmack, May 2024)

The result: Heritage provides conservative institutional credibility and policy infrastructure for a coalition whose funding traces back to Meta. Meta gets bipartisan cover for legislation that serves its commercial interests (shifting age verification to app stores, away from social media platforms). Heritage gets funding for its coalition partners and a legislative vehicle for its child safety agenda. The interests converge without requiring direct Meta-to-Heritage payments.

7. What Is Not Confirmed

  • No evidence of Meta funding Heritage Foundation directly
  • No Heritage connection to ICMEC (International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children)
  • No Heritage connection to Hilltop Public Solutions or ATEP/Forge the Future
  • No Heritage connection to state ASAA sponsors (Kim Carver, Angela Paxton, Caroline Fairly, Matt Ball)
  • No Heritage Action key vote specifically on ASAA (only on KOSA)
  • Heritage Foundation’s role appears to be policy infrastructure, not financial conduit

Sources