Jeff Emanuel is The Heartland Institute’s research fellow for health care policy. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1999-2004 as a tactical air controller. He participated in the 2003 “major combat operations” phase of the Iraq war as a member of a Joint Special Operations unit. He later returned to Iraq as an embedded reporter, working on the front lines in Baghdad, Salman Pak, Samarra, and elsewhere. His reporting from the front earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination as well as a comparison to legendary World War II reporter Ernie Pyle by talk radio icon Paul Harvey.

Emanuel studied classics at the University of Georgia, where he also served as a leadership fellow with the university’s Center for International Trade and Security, researching nuclear proliferation and radiological terrorism and editing texts, including the 2007 book Radiological Terrorism and the Search for Resiliency, published by NATO Press.

His articles and op-eds have appeared in The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, Human Events, The Washington Times, American Thinker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal, The Jerusalem Post, and National Review Online, as well as several other publications.

Emanuel is a frequent guest on several national and major-market television and radio programs, including The O’Reilly Factor, the Laura Ingraham Show, and others.