Media Matters has obtained a galley copy of Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts’ delayed book Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America. A review of the book’s contents revealed Roberts’ revolutionary rhetoric and attacks on public education, abortion, unions, IVF, dog parks, childlessness, and much more.
Roberts is president of The Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank leading Project 2025. According to him, Project 2025 — the conservative movement’s extremist platform for a potential second Trump White House — will last beyond the next Republican administration, possibly for decades or “the next century.”
Project 2025 is backed by an approximately 900-page policy book called Mandate for Leadership: A Conservative Promise, which extensively outlines potential approaches to governance for the next Republican president, including replacing federal employees with extremists and Trump loyalists and attacking LGBTQ rights, abortion, contraception, and labor unions.
The initiative is built around four key pillars: Mandate's policy suggestions, a secretive 180-day playbook for transforming federal agencies, personnel, and training. For the personnel pillar, the Heritage Foundation has developed a database to assist in recruiting right-wing loyalists for the next administration, which former Project 2025 director Paul Dans described as a “conservative LinkedIn.” Additionally, under the training pillar, Heritage has established a “Presidential Administration Academy” to prepare potential presidential appointees to be ready from day one of the next Republican administration. ProPublica has also reported more details from the trainings. The secretive 180-day playbook is reportedly being drafted by key MAGA ally Russ Vought.
Former President Donald Trump has deep ties to Roberts and Project 2025, despite his attempts to distance himself from the initiative following revolutionary and unfavorable comments made by Roberts on right-wing media — like when Roberts told former Trump strategist and podcaster Steve Bannon, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."
Dawn’s Early Light will reportedly be released after the November elections.