Kevin Roberts (political strategist)

Kevin David Roberts (born June 24, 1974) is an American historian and political strategist who is the president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative political think tank, and its lobbying arm, Heritage Action. Roberts was previously the CEO of another conservative think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation.^[1] He served as the president of Wyoming Catholic College from 2013 to 2016.^[2][3]

Kevin Roberts
Roberts in 2023
President of The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action
Incumbent
Assumed office December 1, 2021
Preceded by	Kay Coles James
President of the Texas Public Policy Foundation
In office February 16, 2018 – October 19, 2021
Preceded by	Brooke Rollins
Succeeded by	Greg Sindelar
2nd President of Wyoming Catholic College
In office August 25, 2013 – August 28, 2016
Preceded by	Robert Cook
Succeeded by	Glenn Arbery
Personal details
Born	(1974-06-24) June 24, 1974 (age 50) Lafayette, Louisiana, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Education	University of Louisiana at Lafayette (BA) Virginia Tech (MA) University of Texas at Austin (PhD)

Soon after Roberts joined Heritage in December 2021, the organization established the highly controversial Project 2025, an expansive plan to overhaul the government under a new Republican administration and implement conservative policies.^[4] Roberts has been called the "mastermind of Project 2025".^[5]

Early life and education

Roberts was born on June 24, 1974, in Lafayette, Louisiana, to James A. Roberts Sr. and Susan P. Rabalais (née Pitre).^[6][7] He has a sister, Lori Roberts Romero.^[6] Roberts's parents divorced in 1979. His father struggled with alcoholism, and his brother died by suicide at 15.^[8] Roberts graduated from Lafayette High School in 1992 and earned a bachelor's degree in history magna cum laude from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 1996, a Master of Arts in history from Virginia Tech in 1999, and a Ph.D. in American history from University of Texas at Austin in 2003.^[1][6] His dissertation examined the cultural construction of the Louisiana slave community from the 1790s to the 1830s, including the influence of the transatlantic, trans-Caribbean, and interstate slave trades, the role of Catholic Church as an agent of colonial Spain, and the contrasting demographic structures of New Orleans, the coastal sugar parishes, and the Mississippi River-adjacent cotton lands.^[9]

Career

Academia

Roberts worked as an assistant professor of history at New Mexico State University from 2003 to 2005.^[10] In 2006, he founded John Paul the Great Academy, a private, independent Roman Catholic K-12 school in his hometown of Lafayette.^[11]

Roberts served as president of Wyoming Catholic College from 2013 to 2016, when he accepted a position as executive vice president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. As president of Wyoming Catholic College, Roberts led the institution to reject Title IV federal student loans and grants, citing religious liberty concerns.^[12] The decision made the college one of just a few in the nation to reject such funding. In an article on the decision, The New York Times called Roberts and his students "cowboy Catholics" for their independence.^[13]

Heritage Foundation

In October 2021, it was announced that Roberts had been selected to replace Kay Coles James as president of the Heritage Foundation.^[14][15]

In September 2023, Roberts was selected as president of Heritage Action, the Heritage Foundation's lobbying arm, after executive director Jessica Anderson took a leave of absence in July 2023.^[16][17] Roberts "serves both organizations in a joint role".^[18] In 2023, according to the foundation's filing with the Internal Revenue Service, Roberts was compensated $953,920 annually.^[19]

In January 2024, Roberts said that he did not believe that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. He also said that he saw Heritage's role as "institutionalizing Trumpism", adding, "the Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start. And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated."^[20]

When asked during a June 2024 interview whether Heritage would accept the results of the 2024 presidential election regardless of its outcome, Roberts replied, "Yes, if there isn't massive fraud like there was in 2020." Despite the persistence of an election denial movement, no evidence of material election fraud in 2020 was found. When presented with data from the Heritage election fraud database indicating there were just 1,513 proven instances of voter fraud in the United States since 1982, Roberts responded that fraud is "very hard to document, and the Democrat party is very good at fraud."^[21][22] He also said that liberals "are supporting legislation that abortion can happen until three days after the person's born".^[23][24]

Appearing on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast in July 2024 to be interviewed by former Congressman Dave Brat, Roberts said: "Let me speak about the radical left. You and I have both been parts of faculties and faculty senates, and understand that the left has taken over our institutions [...] In spite of all this nonsense from the left, we are going to win. We're in the process of taking this country back [...] our side is winning."^[25][26] He added, "We ought to be really encouraged by what happened yesterday", in reference to the Supreme Court decision Trump v. United States, which held that presidents have significant immunity against being prosecuted for actions in office.^[26][27] Roberts continued: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be".^[27] Shortly afterward, the foundation released a statement that added, "Unfortunately, they have a well established record of instigating the opposite", though right-wing groups are responsible for most political violence in recent history.^[28][29][30]

Roberts wrote a book originally scheduled for release on September 24, 2024. It was originally titled Dawn's Early Light: Burning Down Washington to Save America and then retitled Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America.^[31][32] In the book, Roberts writes that "'many of America's institutions...need to be burned'...Included among those to be incinerated...are the FBI and the New York Times, along with 'every Ivy League college', '80% of "Catholic" higher education', and the Boy Scouts of America."^[33] The volume has a foreword by Vice President JD Vance.^[32][34][35] In August 2024, amid the controversy surrounding Project 2025, Roberts postponed the book release until after the November election.^[36] He launched book promotion events in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., shortly after the election. On November 13, The Guardian published an account of the strange reception of one of its reporters at one of those events. Although the newspaper had received an invitation to attend the event, the reporter was expelled.^[37]

Colin Dickey of The New Republic wrote that the book reveals paranoid, Stalinist tactics like using conspiracy theories to violently enforce the right's vision for the world.^[38] In the book, Roberts criticizes birth control and law enforcement (preferring a heavily armed frontier-like society), while promoting public prayer as a key tool in the competition with China.^[38]

Project 2025

Main article: Project 2025

Roberts has been called the "Project 2025 chief",^[33] an "architect of Project 2025",^[39] the Project 2025 "mastermind",^[5] and "the force behind Project 2025".^[40] The project focuses on restructuring the federal government, advancing conservative priorities, and ensuring swift implementation of policy changes through personnel and administrative reforms.

The American Civil Liberties Union warned that Project 2025 threatens to erode democracy and civil liberties, proposing radical restructuring of the executive branch to serve a conservative agenda.^[41] The liberal Center for American Progress argues that Project 2025 would destroy the U.S. system of checks and balances, creating an imperial presidency with almost unlimited power to implement far-right policies.^[42]

During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump released a statement distancing himself from Project 2025. Media Matters reported that Roberts later said, "No hard feelings from any of us at Project 2025 about the statement because we understand Trump is the standard bearer and he's making a political tactical decision there."^[43]

While speaking at the Reboot Conference in September 2024, Roberts said that if Kamala Harris won the 2024 election, he would start working on a theoretical second attempt at the Project 2025 agenda, dubbing it Project 2028.^[44][45]

Personal life

Roberts has close ties to and receives regular spiritual guidance from the Catholic Information Center, led by an Opus Dei priest and incorporated by the archdiocese of Washington, D.C.^[46]

Roberts and his wife, Michelle LaFleur Roberts, who is Catholic, have four children and are members of a Springfield, Virginia parish.^[6][47] His eldest child was born while he was writing his doctoral dissertation.^[6]

Several of Roberts's former colleagues from New Mexico State University have alleged that Roberts told them he had killed his neighbor's pit bull with a shovel because the dog's barking disturbed his family. Roberts has denied this, saying, "This is a patently untrue and baseless story backed by zero evidence."^[48]

Publications

• Roberts, Kevin. (1999). African-Virginian Extended Kin: The Prevalence of West African Family Forms among Slaves in Virginia, 1740–1870 (M.A. thesis). Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. OCLC 41664676. Retrieved March 20, 2025.
• Roberts, Kevin D. (2003). Slaves and slavery in Louisiana: the evolution of Atlantic world identities, 1791–1831 (PhD thesis). University of Texas at Austin. hdl:2152/885. OCLC 847273464. Retrieved August 8, 2024.
• Roberts, Kevin D. (July 2005). "The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South (review)". Journal of Social History. 38 (4): 1116–1118. doi:10.1353/jsh.2005.0074. Retrieved August 8, 2024.
• Roberts, Kevin D. (2006). African American Issues. Contemporary American Ethnic Issues. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313332401. OCLC 61520286.
• Roberts, Kevin D. (2006). "Demographics". In Finkelman, Paul (ed.). Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195167771. OCLC 62430770.
• Roberts, Kevin D. (2007). "Race and Colonialism in the Americas". In Benjamin, Thomas (ed.). Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. ISBN 9780028658438. OCLC 67239488.
• Roberts, Kevin D.; Falola, Toyin (2008). The Atlantic world, 1450–2000. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253349705. OCLC 177068609.
• Roberts, Kevin D. (October 2015). "Mother church or Uncle Sam". First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life (256): 19–218. Retrieved August 8, 2024.
• Roberts, Kevin (2024). Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America. Foreword by JD Vance. Broadside Books. ISBN 978-0063353503.^[49][50]