Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, praised the vision of Heritage Foundation Chairman Kevin Roberts in a foreword to an upcoming book that could conflict with the Trump campaign’s efforts to distance itself from Heritage’s Project 2025 transition agenda.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the foreword to Roberts’ upcoming book, “Dawn’s Early Light,” on Tuesday, the same day as a shakeup of Project 2025 that has become a major election-year topic of debate as Democrats and others argue the nearly 1,000-page vision it lays out is extreme.
“Never before has a figure of Roberts’ presence and stature within the American right attempted to articulate a genuinely new future for conservatism,” Vance writes in his foreword. “The Heritage Foundation is not just any outpost on Capitol Hill; it is and has been the most influential driving force of ideas for Republicans, from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.”
Vance’s words, which echo Roberts’ frequent calls to completely tear down American institutions and start anew, show the overlap between Trump’s closest allies and the people behind Project 2025.
Still, Vance spokesman William Martin distanced Vance and the Trump campaign from Project 2025 in a statement Tuesday.
“The foreword has nothing to do with Project 2025. Senator Vance has previously said it has nothing to do with it and that he disagrees with many of the things they are asking for,” Martin wrote in an email. “President Trump alone will set the policy agenda for the next administration.”
Trump’s top advisers have repeatedly criticized Project 2025 organizers for what they say is a false impression that the transition program is associated with the campaign. Following Tuesday’s shakeup at Heritage, Roberts now directly runs Project 2025 operations.
The book, scheduled for publication on Sept. 24, outlines a vision of what its publisher calls “a peaceful ‘second American Revolution.’” Its subtitle is “Reclaim Washington to Save America,” though earlier descriptions of the book have listed it as “Burn Washington to Save America.”
The publisher’s description notes that it identifies institutions that conservatives need to build or restore, adding that some are “too corrupt to save.” Among those it lists are prestigious Ivy League universities, the FBI, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Department of Education and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Also on Tuesday, Paul Dans, who had led Project 2025, left the Heritage Foundation amid continued criticism of the plan. Roberts said his departure came after the project had completed what it had set out to do.
In his foreword, Vance calls for doing more than just eliminating bad policies of the past: “rebuilding.”
“We need an offensive conservatism, not one that simply tries to stop the left from doing things we don’t like,” Vance wrote.
As he concludes the text, Vance mentions Roberts’s statement that when the last rays of the sun fade and one hears the wolves, “one must circle the wagons and load the muskets.”
“We are all now realizing that it is time to circle the wagons and load the muskets,” Vance added. “In the struggles that lie ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”
Democratic National Committee spokesman Alex Floyd said in a statement that Vance’s language “repeats the same dangerous rhetoric we’ve heard from him and Donald Trump for years.”
