The Republican senator and vice-presidential nominee JD Vance has written the foreword to a forthcoming book by the head of Project 2025, the vast rightwing plan for a second Trump administration Democrats say shows the authoritarian threat posed by the GOP – and which Donald Trump has tried to disavow.
In publicity material for the book, Vance says of Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation: “Never before has a figure with [his] depth and stature within the American Right tried to articulate a genuinely new future for conservatism.”
The same publicity material describes Roberts as “head” of Project 2025.
Roberts’ book, Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, will be published in September.
Orchestrated by the Heritage Foundation but featuring contributors from across the US right, Project 2025 is more than 900 pages long and includes proposals for radical reform to all corners of government and public life.
Democrats have highlighted its threats to key freedoms including reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights. On Wednesday, Kamala Harris, the vice-president and presumptive presidential nominee, discussed Project 2025 in Indianapolis.
“We must … recognise there are those who are trying to take us backward,” Harris said.
“Can you believe they put that in writing? This represents an outright attack on our children, our families and our future. These extremists want to take us back, but we are not going back.”
Such attacks have proved effective. Concurrently, Trump and top aides have sought to distance themselves from Project 2025.
Vance recently told NBC: “What the media and the Democrats are trying to do is attach its most unpopular elements to the Trump administration. It’s a 900-page document. I guarantee there are things that Trump likes and dislikes … but he is the person who will determine the agenda of the next administration.”
Such protestations have been greeted with skepticism, particularly given extensive links between Trumpworld and Project 2025 authors.
According to publicity material, Roberts’ book will cover similar ground to Project 2025, “outlin[ing] a peaceful ‘Second American Revolution’ for voters looking to shift the power back into the hands of the people”.
But that only echoed controversial comments in which Roberts recently told the former Trump aide Steve Bannon: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Furthermore, as reported by the New Republic, Roberts’ book was previously advertised under a more dramatic subtitle: “Burning Down Washington to Save America”.
Such rhetoric is spreading. At a recent Trump-Vance rally in Ohio, a speaker warned of civil war if the Republican ticket is beaten. In promoting Roberts’ book, Vance uses violent imagery of his own.
“We are now all realising that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets,” the senator says. “In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”
Reed Galen, a Republican operative turned director of JoinTheUnion.us, a “coalition of pro-democracy organisations”, told the Guardian: “Project 2025 is Maga’s endorsed blueprint for turning America into an authoritarian state.
“That Trump’s running mate is introducing [Roberts’] book personally only proves that his protestations [of no links to Project 2025] are an indication of how unpopular they know the plan is.”
