Overlord Profile: Kevin Roberts
The Author of Project 2025
Welcome to the Overlord Profiles
This is where we name names. We follow the money. We expose the billionaires, policy architects, and corporate overlords shaping the U.S. from the shadows… one profile at a time.
A History of Kevin Roberts
If you know his name, it’s probably because he’s synonymous with Project 2025 and the right wing’s rush on democracy. Kevin Roberts is the 51-year-old Louisianan and President of the Heritage Foundation, the most influential conservative policy shop in America. He’s the author and mastermind of Project 2025’s 900-page Mandate for Leadership, a blueprint to radically transform the federal government into a permanent authoritarian stronghold.
He calls it “the second American Revolution,” bloodless, he says, only “if the Left allows it.”
Roberts isn’t a blustery provocateur rallying Twitter trolls to “own the libs.” This is a man who knows the weight of his words because he knows the weight of history. He’s a historian, a political strategist, and a master at crafting a narrative so compelling, it almost begins to feel real. He knows how to make extremism sound like tradition, how to brand white supremacy as personal freedom, and how to sugar coat oppression so that it’s welcomed with open arms. And not just to the public, but to himself… about his own life.
Do a search of his personal background, and you’ll find a carefully curated persona: a pious Catholic, disciplined academic, loyal patriot. But the truth is messier and more dangerous. This profile is special. It doesn’t just fact-check the stories Roberts tells. It seeks to expose a man who once wrote with compassion about enslaved Black people, who is now leading a campaign to dismantle the rights of women, queer people, Black and Brown Americans, and anyone who doesn’t fit his vision of a righteous America.
His Story
In Roberts’ own telling, his story begins in Lafayette, Louisiana, during the oil bust. A childhood marked by poverty, a fractured home, and trauma, his older brother died by suicide when Kevin was just nine years old. His family is of Acadian ancestry. His father, whom he calls a “native Cajun French speaker,” struggled with addiction and was largely absent. His mother raised him and his sister, Lori, on her own. Roberts frames this time in his life as a crucible, one that illuminates his personal resilience and anchors him to his Catholic faith.
He graduated from high school in 1992, earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Louisiana, married his high school sweetheart, Michelle, and then moved east. There he got his masters from Virginia Tech, then moved to UT Austin for his PhD in African American history. In his version of the story, he was an ideological misfit in academia and was eventually pushed out due to being a white man with conservative beliefs.
From there, the story shifts from one of adversity and resilience to one of heroism. He founded a private school, John Paul the Great Academy. He then left, and served as president of Wyoming Catholic College, eventually leaving to lead the Texas Public Policy Foundation. In 2021, he left again, ascending to the presidency of the Heritage Foundation, where he would author Project 2025 and shape the future of American governance. He frames this as a natural evolution: a fulfillment of a lifelong mission to restore constitutional order, religious values, and a rejection of what he calls “the Great Awokening.” He now lives in Virginia with Michelle and their four children. They are devout Catholics who dedicate time to their parish and the broader faith.
Separating Fact from Fiction
Back here on earth, much of that story has been strategically rewritten.
The Acadian heritage Roberts claims traces to French colonizers, not the multicultural Cajun mythos he implies. That tale of being “pushed out” of academia was him leaving on his own accord for opportunities with more money, more power, and less accountability. And that “natural evolution” of his career took him from making a modest 5-figures, and ended with a $1.1 million salary at the Heritage Foundation and a personal brand built on martyrdom.
This is also a man who spent years studying the horrors of slavery with nuance and empathy; his dissertation was once lauded for its humanity. So when he now dismisses systemic racism, calls DEI “insulting to Black Americans,” wants to abolish Critical Race Theory in schools, and props up a legal agenda to erase civil rights protections, it isn’t ignorance. It’s betrayal.
And that raises the real question: Is the empathy gone? Or was it always an act?
Because if we believe his words, either Kevin Roberts has experienced a full moral inversion… or he’s exploiting the very credentials he spent years to earn and is weaponizing his understanding of oppression to consolidate power for the oppressor.
Opus Dei And A Divine Mission
We can’t talk about Kevin Roberts without talking about his tie to Opus Dei. Founded in 1928 by St. Josemaría Escrivá, Opus Dei is a Catholic personal prelature that “sanctifies everyday work through spiritual devotion.” On paper, it’s about holiness and discipline. But in real life, it has been widely criticized for its secrecy, hierarchies, and cult-like rituals, including corporal mortification, where members self-flagellate as a form of penance.
And Kevin Roberts is deep in the Opus Dei machine. He gets weekly spiritual guidance at the Catholic Information Center (CIC) in D.C., attends retreats, gives talks, and founded John Paul the Great Academy with Escrivá as its patron. He’s also participated in leadership trainings designed to quietly cultivate political ambition masked in divine mission.
And he’s not alone. Leonard Leo, architect of the Supreme Court’s far-right takeover, as well as other key players in the Project 2025 orbit, including legal strategists, media figures, and billionaires funding the culture war are all tied to the Opus Dei ecosystem. It is part of the conservative infrastructure, almost acting as some kind of spiritual-intellectual pipeline. Its members show up in law schools, think tanks, judicial clerkships, and the boardrooms of groups pushing policies that strip away civil rights under the guise of morality. All while the organization has been tied to international banking scandals, allegations of trafficking, coercion, and global political manipulation.
So why are we naming it here? Because Kevin Roberts doesn’t separate church and state. His entire political worldview is shaped by a theology that says suffering is holy, hierarchy is sacred, and obedience is virtue. And when that ideology is backed by billions in dark money and legitimized through elite spiritual formation, it begins to materialize as Project 2025, for the fascist plan that it is.
I’m not saying everyone tied to Opus Dei is part of some grand conspiracy. But ignoring its influence, especially when it shows up in the hands of people writing 900-page manifestos to dismantle democracy, would be a mistake. The political, spiritual, and financial threads are all there. All you have to do is follow them.
The Disturbing Erasure
And then, you hit a dead end.
This “family man,” devoted to Catholic life, is almost literally a ghost online. There is little to no trace of Michelle or her voice. No school pictures or Instagram photos of his kids going to school. No remnants of holiday celebrations or friendly get-togethers. And if he grew up in chaos, then maybe the tight control of his family’s image is his way of reclaiming order. But the absence feels wildly unsettling. Like the last shred of authenticity has been surgically removed.
Was the warmth, the kindness, the affability, that even his liberal academic peers spoke of, was it authentic? Or was it all an act?
The more you search, the more you suspect that what you’re looking at is a veneer, a fortress too controlled to let anything human sneak through.
Project 2025
When Roberts moved to the Heritage Foundation in 2021 as President, he began working on Project 2025 immediately and unveiled it a year later. It’s a sweeping political blueprint designed to overhaul the federal government in line with hard-right priorities built on four pillars: a 900-page policy manual (Robert’s Mandate for Leadership), a personnel database to replace career civil servants with loyalists, a training academy to prepare future recruits, and a 180-day action plan for rapid execution once a conservative administration takes power.
The goals are ambitious and unapologetically ideological: shrink what Roberts calls the “administrative state,” root governance in “biblical values,” and create a self-reinforcing pipeline of trained loyalists who can outlast any single presidential term. The initiatives outlined in Project 2025 are already finding traction. As of August 2025, nearly two-thirds of Donald Trump’s second-term executive actions echo provisions from the plan, banning DEI programs; dismantling departments; politicizing what should be neutral, data-driven agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics; and fast-tracking immigration crackdowns. In states like Oklahoma, elements of the playbook are being tested at the state level, including overt integration of religion into public education policy.
The through-line connecting every pillar and priority is Christian nationalism, not just as a moral inspiration but as the operating system of the plan. Roberts frames America’s founding as a divine mission that was “lost” through diversity, inclusion, and secular governance. His solution is to legally enforce hierarchy, patriarchy, and theocratic order using state power to advance a narrow religious vision of freedom.
Project 2025 is an unapologetic attempt to reengineer the federal government into an instrument for that vision, embedding it so deeply in personnel, policy, and process that it becomes the new normal.
Kevin Roberts is synonymous with Project 2025, and Project 2025 is synonymous with Christian nationalism. It’s not the policy wing adjacent to the movement. It is the movement.
Project Esther
And if all that isn’t terrifying enough, Heritage Foundation doesn’t just work on Project 2025. They launched Project Esther in October 2024 to suppress dissent under the guise of countering antisemitism. It’s an authoritarian framework that:
Labels pro-Palestinian advocacy and campus protest as part of a fabricated “Hamas Support Network.”
Frames dissent as a national security threat, and uses it to push surveillance, deportation, defunding academics, and legal attacks under anti-terror and anti-racketeering laws.
Has reportedly informed a series of Trump administration actions, including threats to withdraw university funding, arrest protesters, and deport targeted individuals.
Conveniently omits right-wing antisemitism and ignores major Jewish organizations that are unwilling to align with its conspiratorial rhetoric.
Project Esther is an assault on free speech, dissent, and the Palestinian solidarity movement under the authoritarian playbook of suppression. These projects show Roberts isn’t just designing an ideological future, he’s strategically orchestrating the suppression of it’s opposition through law, policy, and public institutions.
The Long Game
What kind of person writes a dissertation on racism and then spends the next 20 years trying to erase anti-racist education?
The thing about pattern recognition is you stop caring about what’s supposed to be there, the institutional hierarchies, the academic ladders, the political ecosystems. You stop judging people by the structures they operate in and start asking the only question that matters: How is this person actually moving?
That’s why this profile took me weeks longer than usual to write. I kept wishing for something else to be true. But the truth is, when you strip away the childhood backstory, the education credentials, the soundbites, and the carefully crafted public image, and you just watch what Kevin Roberts does… it’s obvious.
He’s not moving through existing systems; he’s building his own. A closed-loop power structure where the only rules are the ones that serve his ideology and his legacy. He uses institutions, but he is never of them. And that makes him way more dangerous than anyone simply climbing the ranks.
The man who once wrote about systemic racism had a strategy. He embedded himself inside the very fields designed to liberate so he could learn the tools and speak the language; all so that later on, he could burn the whole thing down.
It wasn’t a moral inversion. It was the long con.
This is a man driven by ideology and personal legacy, by a vision of himself as a neo–Founding Father “saving” America from what he views as the moral failings of democracy. His mission is to restore the hierarchy of Christian nationalism to what he believes it was always meant to be.
He answers to no one. He aspires to be no one but himself — the author of his own history. I can’t name another figure in modern politics who operates with such deliberate, calculated absence of humanity.
And that’s the part that’s hard to say out loud. Because Kevin Roberts isn’t just another political operative with bad ideas; he’s a man who has built his entire life around engineering a country that will never allow certain people to exist freely.
He’s executing a plan decades in the making, smiling while studying his opposition the whole time. And he’s never missed a step. It’s not just the cruelty of his vision that chills me; it’s the precision of his execution. The glaring disconnect between his outward kindness and the coldness of his actions isn’t a contradiction. It’s his strategy.
If you’ve ever wondered whether this was all intentional, the answer is yes. It always was.
What We Can Do
Roberts and the Heritage Foundation are betting on silence and exhaustion. Let’s prove them wrong.
Stay informed. Follow investigative journalists and watchdog groups tracking Project 2025 and Project Esther.
Support legal defense. Donate to organizations like ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, or Palestine Legal that fight civil liberties violations.
Push back locally. Contact your state and local representatives to oppose DEI bans, book bans, and “Schedule F” copycats in your state.
Protect your community. Get connected to rapid-response networks that resist mass deportations and targeted raids (United We Dream, Immigrant Defense Project).
Follow the money. Refuse to support corporations and donors funding the right-wing agenda, and share those names widely.
Talk about it. Authoritarianism thrives in silence. Share this profile, discuss it with friends, and don’t let them hide behind PR spin.
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SOURCE MATERIAL & FURTHER READING:
Heritage Foundation – Project 2025 Official Site:
Wyofile – Wyoming’s Catholic Cowboy Could Remake Government if Trump Wins
https://wyofile.com/wyomings-catholic-cowboy-could-remake-government-if-trump-wins/
LA Review of Books – The Inconvenient Scholarship of Kevin Roberts
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-inconvenient-scholarship-of-kevin-roberts/
Texas Monthly – Kevin Roberts Is Building a New American Order
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/kevin-roberts-is-building-a-new-american-order/
The Heritage Foundation – Kevin Roberts Bio
https://www.heritage.org/staff/kevin-roberts
University of Texas – Kevin Roberts Dissertation
https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/items/c838a59b-813b-4534-a20f-ac4f7b2e6a0d
Project Esther Overview – Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/31/what-is-project-esther-the-playbook-against-pro-palestine-movement-in-us
Project Esther and Trump’s Actions – The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/02/trump-palestine-gaza-protest-project-esther
New York Times – Inside Project 2025: The Right’s Plan to Seize Control
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/us/politics/project-2025-heritage-trump.html
Heritage Foundation Profile – InfluenceWatch: https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/heritage-foundation/
Opus Dei Overview – Southern Poverty Law Center: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/opus-dei
Heritage Foundation Funding – OpenSecrets:
Project 2025 Analysis – Vox: https://www.vox.com/2024/8/9/24192768/project-2025-trump-second-term-heritage-foundation
Project 2025 in Action – Politico: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/01/project-2025-trump-second-term-00109134
CAIR Report on Project Esther: https://www.cair.com/press_releases/cair-analysis-says-heritage-foundations-project-esther-targets-anti-genocide-pro-palestine-activism-by-weaponizing-anti-palestinian-racism/
Heritage Foundation Dark Money Links – The Lever:
The Washington Post – The Catholic Information Center and the Right’s D.C. Power Cell
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/01/28/catholic-information-center-opus-dei/
The New Yorker – The Rise of Leonard Leo (Opus Dei ties & Catholic strategy)
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/the-rights-supreme-court-whisperer
OpenSecrets – Leonard Leo and Catholic Dark Money
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/09/leonard-leo-conservative-network-catholic-money/
Reuters – Vatican Bank, Opus Dei & Financial Scandals
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vatican-opusdei-idUSTRE64P0MG20100526
The Atlantic – A Catholic Plan to Remake America
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/conservative-catholic-project-2025/673826/
Thank you for your work! It’s pure evil, and it needs to be called out for the hate it is.
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽