Heritage Foundation
In October 2021, it was announced that Roberts had been selected to replace Kay Coles James as president of the Heritage Foundation. [17] [18]
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. [19] [20] Roberts "serves both organizations in a joint role". [19] In 2023, according to the foundation's filing with the Internal Revenue Service, Roberts was compensated $953,920 annually. [21]
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." [22]
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." [23] [24] He also said that liberals "are supporting legislation that abortion can happen until three days after the person's born". [25] [26]
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." [27] [28] 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. [28] [29] Roberts continued: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be". [29] Shortly afterward, the foundation released a statement that added, "Unfortunately, they have a well established record of instigating the opposite". [30] [31]
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 . [32] [33] [34] 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." [35] The volume has a foreword by Vice President JD Vance. [36] [37] In August 2024, amid the controversy surrounding Project 2025, Roberts postponed the book release until after the November election. [38] 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. [35]
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. [39] 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. [39]
In July 2024, Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters appointed Roberts and conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager to a review committee tasked with revising social studies standards for K-12 public school students. The committee's revisions included the incorporation of conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential election, as well as references to the Bible and themes of national pride. [40] [41]
In February 2025, Heritage Foundation board members received an anonymous complaint alleging that Roberts engaged in angry and profane behavior that made some people feel physically unsafe. The complaint also asserted that Roberts favored Catholic employees and that single women without children had "no skin in the game". [42]
In August 2025, David W. Blight, a professor of history at Yale University and author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, challenged Roberts to a series of public debates with a small group of historians. [43]
In October 2025, Roberts released a video statement defending Tucker Carlson after Carlson interviewed far-right political commentator Nick Fuentes on The Tucker Carlson Show. Roberts argued that "Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic" and that Carlson's detractors constituted a "venomous coalition", which many Jews and Republicans, such as Texas Senator Ted Cruz, saw as an antisemitic trope. [44] [45] After immense pressure, including a series of resignations from the Heritage Foundation, condemnations mainly from Jewish Republican figures, and a letter of demands from the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, [46] Roberts issued an apology, later clarifying that the script he read in the video was composed by an aide who has resigned. [47] [42] [48] After the controversy, The Washington Free Beacon released a video of a staff meeting in which Roberts said he was not very familiar with Fuentes and was called a "master class in cowardice" by a Heritage senior legal fellow. [48]
In November 2025, American legal scholar and longtime Heritage Foundation board member Robert P. George resigned from the organization, citing Roberts's refusal to fully recant remarks he had made in a video response to commentator Tucker Carlson. [49]
Project 2025
Roberts has been called the "Project 2025 chief", [35] an "architect of Project 2025", [50] the Project 2025 "mastermind", [5] and "the force behind Project 2025". [51] 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. [52] 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. [53]
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump released a statement distancing himself from Project 2025. Media Matters for America 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." [54]
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. [55] [56]
Roberts was invited to speak at a meeting of the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's cabinet ministers in September 2025, but abruptly declined. [57]
