Amid Donald Trump and Republicans scramble to downplay their connections to Project 2025, an upcoming book authored by its leader has been postponed until after the election — but not before advanced copies were sent out to reviewers.
Kevin Roberts is president of the Heritage Foundation, which has housed the controversial conservative policy and personnel project. He’s now officially leading Project 2025, after its director — a former Trump administration official — resigned.
Earlier this week, Roberts announced he would be pushing back the book’s launch, telling Real Clear Politics that “there’s a time for writing, reading, and book tours — and a time to put down the books and go fight like hell to take back our country … That’s why I’ve chosen to move my book’s publication and promotion to after the election.”
But the delay came too late to cover up another blow to the Trump campaign’s ridiculous claims that they have absolutely nothing to do with Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation’s plans — the forward to Roberts’ book was written by none other than Trump’s running mate: J.D. Vance.
Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America is a manifesto for Roberts — the man whose organization is heading Project 2025. According to a review of a galley copy obtained bymultiple outlets, the book lays out a vision for the nation deeply entangled with the mission codified by the Heritage Foundation in preparation for a second Trump term.
It’s a dirty little red book Republicans won’t be able to make go away, so here are some of the most insane details we know from the contents of the book so far.
1. The title changed.
Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, was not Roberts’ original title. Intrepid social media users noticed that the book was originally marketed as Dawn’s Early Light: Burning Down Washington to Save America, with early mockups of the cover featuring a matchstick over the word “Washington.”
According to an archived version of the book’s Amazon listing, the description of Dawn’s Early Light was also softened to remove language referencing a “warpath” for conservatives, and the need to “burn down” institutions in order to “preserve the American Way of life.”
While the title and cover of the book may have been toned down, its contents remain as inflammatory as ever.
2. J.D. Vance’s insane intro.
Despite many a protest from the former president that he has nothing to do with Project 2025, the evidence of how involved he and his allies have been with the project continues to mount. Vance, the Ohio senator, having written the forward to the Heritage Foundation president’s new book doesn’t help their case.
According to a copy of the forward obtained by The New Republic, Vance reiterates many of the now common cultural conservative platitudes espoused by Republicans — have more babies, get married, and stay married. He commends Roberts for proposing to “create the material circumstances” needed for families to prosper by, among other things, “protecting American industries — even if it leads to higher consumer prices in the short term.”
Vance also echoed Roberts’ now-infamous call for a “second American Revolution” — that will only “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
“As Kevin Roberts writes, ‘It’s fine to take a laissez-faire approach when you are in the safety of the sunshine. But when the twilight descends and you hear the wolves, you’ve got to circle the wagons and load the muskets,’” Vance writes. “We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”
3. Attacks on contraception, abortion, and IVF
Roberts himself rages at length at the — already limited — reproductive freedoms available to American women. According to Media Matters for America, he also attacks fertility treatments like IVF. “In vitro fertilization (IVF) seems to assist fertility but has the added effect of incentivizing women to delay trying to start a family, often leading to added problems when the time comes,” he writes.
He describes birth control as a technological change that made childbearing “an optional and not natural result of having sex and destroyed a whole series of institutions and cultural norms that had protected women and forced men to take responsibility for their actions.”
Much like Vance, who has complained about America being run by “childless cat ladies” like Kamala Harris (who has two stepchildren), Roberts expresses similar disdain for childless Americans. “A childless society becomes decadent and nostalgic. Aging, barren societies literally become consumptive, taking on higher levels of debt and depleting savings as they pay foreign workers to keep things going,” he writes. “Getting married and having kids, on the other hand, gives you skin in the game for the future of your country. It forces you to grow up, give up childish things, and live in the real world.”
4. Calling America’s teachers “insane”
It’s no secret that conservatives have made teachers — particularly public school educators — targets of their regressive culture war crusade against anything that does not uphold their vision of white, Christian heteronormativity.
According to Media Matters, Roberts writes that schools “have been transformed from institutions designed to cultivate children’s souls into godless assembly lines meant to shape obedient little comrades who think morality is a construct and nature is an illusion.”
“Right now, parents’ rights must be jealously guarded because America’s teachers have gone insane,” he adds.
Unsurprisingly, Roberts prescribes the implementation of “universal school choice,” the GOP’s way of indicating their support for stripping public schools of funding and redirecting that money to charter, private, and other alternative education models.
5. Claiming dog parks are anti-child
Nearly half of American households have a dog. Yet, at one point Roberts complains that a D.C. dog park catering to dogs, rather than children, is evidence of “the antifamily culture shaping legislation, regulation, and enforcement throughout our sprawling government.”
Normal stuff.
6. What are you dying for?
Roberts is dead set on the notion that America is due for a second revolution, and according to Media Matters’ review of the book writes that “in some ways, our situation is even more dire than during the First American Revolution.”
“What’s your Alamo? What are you dying for? Pick a place, pick a people, pick a project, and give it all you’ve got […] There’s a time for writing and reading — and a time to put down the books and go fight like hell to take back our country and build our future,” he adds.
“It’s time for a conservatism of fire,” Robert’s writes. “To burn it down and steward once again the natural order of the world, the Western order of civilization, and the American order of government.”
