On page 69, Roberts targets the Swampoodle dog park in Washington, D.C., for having too much room for dogs to play and not enough for children, blaming this on “the antifamily culture shaping legislation, regulation, and enforcement throughout our sprawling government.”
The publication delay reflects a political crisis in the MAGA movement, as the worldview outlined by Roberts and Vance in Dawn’s Early Light has proven to be deeply unpopular with the public. Trump has attempted to distance himself from Heritage and Project 2025, especially after Kevin Roberts appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast and declared that “we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
But as the Trump campaign has deliberately refused to provide a detailed policy platform, instead putting forth only a barebones platform both on his campaign site and through the Republican National Committee, Project 2025 has effectively filled in the blanks of what a second Trump term might look like. The initiative includes a more than 900-page policy book titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, which outlines extreme positions on virtually every major political issue and includes plans to restrict abortion access, eviscerate tools to fight climate change, and turn the Department of Justice into an unaccountable weapon for Trump to enact his retribution agenda against political enemies, among others. An analysis by CNN found “nearly 240 people with ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump,” and many of its authors and contributors worked directly in his administration.
Project 2025 has also recently attempted to downplay its own significance after years of aggrandizement. Trump administration alum Paul Dans recently resigned from his position as president of Project 2025, and now Roberts’ book is delayed. But it’s proving impossible to wash Project 2025’s stench off the campaign.
Roberts himself has admitted that the artificial attempt to shield Trump from Project 2025 backlash is disingenuous. “No hard feelings from any of us at Project 2025,” he told conservative radio host Vince Coglianese in July, “We understand Trump is the standard bearer and he’s making a political tactical decision there.”
