Project 2025 author Kevin Roberts visits Baltimore, igniting protests outside law school
About 250 people came together Monday to protest a speech given by one of the authors of Project 2025 at the University of Maryland Francis Carey School of Law in Baltimore, according to The Baltimore Banner.
Protesters with signs shouted and shared their views of Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
What is Project 2025?
Roberts is considered to be the intellect of Project 2025. The initiative includes four pillars: a policy guide for the Trump administration, a database of personnel who could serve in the administration, training for candidates called the "Presidential Administration Academy, and a guide of actions to be taken within the first 180 days of the new administration.
The first pillar is a 900-page blueprint to overhaul and reduce the size and scope of government. The plan calls for firing federal employees, placing limits on the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and taking measures against immigration.
Project 2025 was created by the Heritage Foundation, but an advisory board of more than 100 conservative groups was also involved in its creation, CBS News reported.
President Donald Trump disavowed the plans during the 2024 presidential race, especially after Roberts said during an interview that the U.S. is "in the process of a second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."
However, since taking office, Mr. Trump has quickly moved to implement some aspects of Project 2025, like reinstating a ban that prohibits transgender people from serving in the military and cutting the workforce at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other federal agencies.
The Heritage Foundation created a similar plan before Mr. Trump's first term, and two years later highlighted that Mr. Trump had used 64% of its policy recommendations.
You can learn more about Project 2025 here.
According to the Banner, Roberts has compared abortion to slavery and the Holocaust, and is against marriage equality.
Student group invites Project 2025 author
Roberts was invited to speak at the University of Maryland Francis Carey School of Law by the Republican Law Society, a student group.
He was initially scheduled to speak on March 3, but had to cancel at the last moment due to an illness.
According to the Banner, protesters stood outside, even through the rain, chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho, Kevin Roberts has got to go."
"Kevin Roberts is not who this law school is, and it's not who this city is," a protester told the Banner. "It's about community coming out and showing support and solidarity."
Ronald Maylor, a Baltimore resident who protested, told the Banner, "We have to fight the bully."
"Kevin Roberts and Project 2025 have every right to be here," protester Tom Cavallaro told the Banner.
Law school dean responds
The law school's dean, Renée Hutchins Laurent, told The Banner in a statement before the initial event that she was "proud that our student groups are planning programs that promote diversity of thought and interrogate current legal and policy issues" and that it was "crucial that we uphold the right to free speech, even when faced with speech we find deeply offensive."
