JD Vance calls on conservatives to 'circle the wagons and load the muskets'

While Donald Trump attempts to distance his presidential campaign from Project 2025, his vice president pick is praising the man who helped spearhead it.

Just days after Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, stepped down from his position due to pressure from the Trump team, Republican VP nominee JD Vance was revealed to have written the forward for Roberts' upcoming book, Dawn’s Early Light. While Roberts' book is not directly related to Project 2025, Vance's forward includes some telling tidbits about conservatives' plans for the country, and how they view their fellow Americans.

Vance begins the forward, released in full by the New Republic, by praising Roberts' analysis as "focused on the family." He then claims "cultural norms and attitudes matter" before detailing the exact values he asserts conservatives should uphold.

"We should encourage our kids to get married and have kids. We should teach them that marriage isn’t just a contract, but a sacred — and to the extent possible, lifelong — union," Vance writes. "We should discourage them from behaviors that threaten the stability of their families."

Vance did not elaborate on which "behaviors" he believes "threaten the stability" of families, but his history of anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs coupled with conservatives' use of "family values" as an anti-LGBTQ+ dog-whistle offer some insight.

Heritage Foundation and its former leader have drawn universal scrutiny since the contents of their policy plan for a second Trump presidency, Project 2025, went viral. The over 1000-page document includes plans to fire as many as 50,000 career federal employees and replace them with people who have unquestionable loyalty to the president; restrict access to contraception; possibly implement a national abortion ban; cut federal health care programs; and much more.

The plan has received intense scrutiny, prompting Trump to distance his campaign from it by claiming he was not aware of nor involved in its content — claims which have since been proven false. Roberts stepped down from the organization on Tuesday, with reports claiming he did so after pressure from Trump's team.

Vance, on the other hand, has made no effort to hide his connections to Project 2025, whether through his open praise of its policies or his ties to Roberts. Vance even took his forward's conclusion a step further by invoking a quote from Roberts to seemingly call for violence against those who oppose conservatives — including government itself.

"The old conservative movement argued if you just got government out of the way, natural forces would resolve problems — we are no longer in this situation and must take a different approach," Vance says. "As Kevin Roberts writes, 'It’s fine to take a laissez-faire approach when you are in the safety of the sunshine. But when the twilight descends and you hear the wolves, you’ve got to circle the wagons and load the muskets.'"

He concludes: "We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon."