Project 2025 author delays book publication until after election

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, whose organization created Project 2025, is delaying the release of his forthcoming book setting down how conservatives can “take back their country” because, he says, he does not want it to be a distraction to the campaign to reelect former President Donald Trump in November.

“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,” Roberts told the news organization RealClearPolitics about “Dawn’s Early Light,” which was initially slated to be published in September. “That’s why I’ve chosen to move my book’s publication and promotion to after the election.”

Democrats have been calling attention to Project 2025 on the campaign trail, highlighting the far-right policies in the nearly 1,000-page document that’s been billed as a transition plan for a second Trump term in the White House. Project 2025, which was created by the Heritage Foundation, calls for revoking the approval for the abortion drug mifepristone, purging the federal government of people who are not loyal to Trump, getting rid of regulations that bar anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, and abolishing the U.S. Department of Education.

Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, wrote the foreword to Roberts’ book, in which he heaps praise on Roberts and calls the Heritage Foundation “the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.”

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz mentioned Project 2025 during an Aug. 6 campaign rally in Philadelphia, at which Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris introduced him as her running mate. 

Walz said Trump’s efforts to distance himself from Project 2025 were not believable.

“Donald Trump would damn sure take us backwards, let’s be clear about that. And don’t believe him when he plays dumb. He knows exactly what Project 2025 will do to restrict our freedoms,” Walz said.

Walz also brought up Vance’s ties to Roberts.

“I got to tell you, his running mate shares his dangerous and backward agenda for this country,” Walz said of Trump and Vance. “J.D. Vance literally — literally — wrote the foreword for the architect of the Project 2025 agenda.”

While publication of Roberts’ book has been delayed, Media Matters for America obtained a galley copy. In it, the organization says, Roberts says that having children should not be an “optional individual choice” but “a social expectation or a transcendent gift,” a view echoed in comments Vance has made about women who do not have children.

Roberts rails against contraception, abortion, and in vitro fertilization, all of which polling shows are overwhelmingly popular with voters.

Roberts writes: “Once you understand this pattern (individual choice masking cultural upheaval), you will see it everywhere. 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.”

Walz spoke of his own experience with assisted reproductive technology during his vice presidential acceptance address on Aug. 6.

“Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there’s a golden rule: Mind your own damn business,” Walz said. “That includes IVF. And this gets personal for me and my family. When my wife and I decided to have children, we spent years going through infertility treatments. And I remember praying every night for a call for good news. The pit in my stomach when the phone rang, and the agony when we heard that the treatments hadn’t worked. So it wasn’t by chance that when we welcomed our daughter into the world, we named her Hope.”