The think tank behind Project 2025, the conservative blueprint linked to President-elect Donald Trump, is launching an effort to back Trump's imperiled selection for secretary of defense in its latest attempt to wield influence in the incoming Republican administration.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said Thursday that his group will spend $1 million to pressure senators unwilling to back Pete Hegseth, whose nomination to lead the Pentagon has come into question due to his views on women serving in combat and reports about his personal behavior. A number of Republican senators have declined to commit to backing Hegseth or have asked for more information about his drinking and treatment of women.
"It'll be messaging right now with their constituents about how out of step they are with the Trump agenda," Roberts said in an interview, who argued that criticism of Hegseth was being driven by "the establishment."
Roberts' announcement that he will support Hegseth is the latest sign that Project 2025, which Trump disavowed amid Democratic criticism during his campaign, is newly ascendant as Trump returns to the White House. The president-elect has picked several of its authors and contributors to key positions.
Roberts spoke to The Associated Press during an event at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida estate, after he said he saw Trump at another event Wednesday also attended by other incoming members of the president-elect's Cabinet. Roberts did not say whether he met privately or would meet privately with Trump.
Project 2025 includes proposals to reclassify thousands of federal workers so they could be fired and eliminate or curtail several government agencies. Facing Democratic criticism over the blueprint, Trump sought to distance himself from it and denied knowing who was behind it, even as the proposal was drafted by longtime allies and former officials in his administration.
The event at Mar-a-Lago was to launch an exchange-traded fund, or ETF, called Azoria U.S. Meritocracy that is looking to target companies with diversity, equity and inclusion practices by excluding them from the fund. Its CEO, James Fishback, is close to Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate in charge of the new Department of Government Efficiency with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Roberts introduced himself on Thursday as someone from Project 2025, and the small crowd laughed.
He noted he is good friends with Brooke Rollins, president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, another group that laid the groundwork beforehand for a second Trump administration. Rollins has been nominated to serve as Trump's agriculture secretary.
Roberts said groups like the Heritage Foundation and America First Policy Institute were "close collaborators on the Trump agenda." He called the second Trump term the "beginning of the golden era of America's next chapter."
"I think we're in the middle of a re-founding of this country," he said.
