WASHINGTON (AP) — As the 2025 Project runs into turmoil, the head of the influential, far-right Heritage Foundation is postponing the release of his potentially explosive new book until after the November presidential election.
Kevin Roberts, who took over as head of Project 2025 as part of a leadership shakeup after its recommendations for a possible Trump White House drew fierce opposition, said Wednesday he is focused on defeating presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Trump’s running mate JD Vance wrote the foreword to Roberts’ book.
“There is a time for writing, reading and book tours – and a time to put down the books and fight with all your might to take back our country,” Roberts said in a statement. He is president of Heritage Action and has been mentioned as a possible White House chief of staff under Trump.
“That’s why I decided to postpone the publication and promotion of my book until after the elections,” he said. The news site Real Clear Politics was the first to report on the decision.
Orchestrated by Heritage, Project 2025 is an ultra-conservative blueprint for the next Republican White House with surprising proposals that include laying off immense swathes of federal employees and dismantling long-standing agencies, including the Department of Justice.
Trump has said the outside group does not speak for his campaign, but many of his most trusted former White House officials are architects of the plan and are preparing a second Trump administration. Even before Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the party’s frontrunner, Democrats campaigned vigorously against Project 2025, portraying it as a buzzword for Republican extremism.
Roberts’ book, Dawn’s Early Light, is due out in September. It lays out a vision for what the publisher calls a “peaceful ‘Second American Revolution.'”
The publisher’s description says the book identifies institutions that conservatives must build up or roll back, saying some are “too corrupt to save.” Institutions listed include elite universities, the FBI, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Department of Education, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
In the foreword, Vance quotes Roberts as saying: “When dusk falls and you hear wolves, you must line up your wagons and load your muskets.”
“We all now realize that it is time to surround the wagons and load the muskets,” Vance adds. “In the battles ahead, these ideas are an indispensable weapon.”
A spokesman for Vance said the striker had nothing to do with Project 2025, nor was the senator involved in it, and there were “many disagreements with the demands.”
The postponement of the book’s release date came a day after Harris nominated Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, reinvigorating a campaign that has energized Democrats in the few weeks since Biden’s resignation.
Walz changed the political conversation by simply calling Republicans “weird.”
Sarafina Chitika, spokeswoman for Harris for President, said: “Trump, Vance and their Project 2025 allies can try to hide the ball from the American people, but voters know where they stand – and that they are desperately trying to set us back.”
At the same time, Democrats in the House of Representatives have created a working group on Project 2025 and asked Roberts to meet with members of Congress to examine the proposal in more detail.
Representatives Jared Huffman of California and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts wrote in a letter this week that it is “time to stop turning a blind eye to what we believe could be the most radical, extreme and dangerous parts of Project 2025.”
Although Democrats, as a minority in the House, have no authority to compel Roberts to speak, they are using their position to raise awareness about the project, particularly its so-called fourth pillar: a 180-day action plan for the next administration, which the project has drafted in 2025 but has not yet released.
“Allow the American people to see and examine it,” the lawmakers wrote.
Heritage has not said whether Roberts will respond to the House Democrats’ request.
Roberts said in his statement Wednesday that Democrats are “more radical than ever” with Harris’ agenda. He said conservatives are “fully committed to focusing their efforts on defeating the left at the ballot box.”
Project 2025 also recently underwent a restructuring when its leader, Paul Dans, abruptly resigned last week as the Trump campaign team sought to distance itself from the group and its proposals.
Roberts said he would take over the project in 2025 and assured that work on it would continue.
