JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
A few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, there is now a banner about seven stories tall, draped on the side of an office building. It reads, America's Back, the first 100 days, and below it, the face of President Trump and a short list of ongoing agenda items. The building is the headquarters of The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, which last year unveiled Project 2025. It's a detailed plan for a future Republican administration to roll out in the event of an election victory. Though candidate Trump distanced himself from this plan, so far, President Trump is claiming power to remake the federal government, increase immigration enforcement, assert a new trade policy based on tariffs, and pursuing many other policies in ways that were laid out in Project 2025. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts joins us now. Thank you for making the time.
KEVIN ROBERTS: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
SUMMERS: I just want to start by asking you, many of the Trump administration's actions so far are quite similar to what we saw laid out in Project 2025. Has that been validating for your organization?
ROBERTS: We're honestly not worried about being validated. We've been around 53 years, and by that, I don't imply any hubris. Certainly don't intend it, Juana - what I mean, instead, is that the American people are the ones who should be taking a victory lap because what President Trump and Vice President Vance and what I think is the best cabinet in modern American political history have done is begin the dismantling of the administrative state that gives self-governance and power back to the American people. If The Heritage Foundation and the large coalition - 110 organizations we assembled last year - have a tiny role in providing some ideas and some of the people to help that happen - it's something we do every four years - then we're very happy about that but not for us - instead, for the American people.
SUMMERS: All right, let's start there with what you mentioned, dismantling the administrative state. That language is one of the top agenda items that appears on the banner that hangs on that building. Is it fair to say that part of this project requires dramatically reducing the federal workforce through layoffs, reductions in force or RIFs, reclassification of jobs?
ROBERTS: It's fair to say that over the next 5 or 10 years, and certainly starting in the first few months of the administration, that there need to be, through a variety of channels - and several in addition to those that you mentioned - a reduction in federal workforce. We're hopeful for our fellow Americans who are employees of the federal government that they're able to find employment elsewhere. And there's nothing against them as people. The problem is that the federal government has become far too bloated.
And a good way to think about this is for every one of these federal jobs, just on average - there are exceptions to this, to be sure - for every one of those federal jobs, there is a small example - a small accrual, if you will - of expense and federal power that comes at the expense of other Americans who have lost their jobs because of that centralized power. That's really the way we ought to be thinking about this. And that's why this effort in dismantling the administrative state is so important for the everyday, hardworking American.
SUMMERS: To your mind, what would be the right amount of additional cuts? Where would you like to see them and how many?
ROBERTS: Well, we're huge supporters of the total elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, not because we want to issue any harm to education - quite the opposite. We believe, looking at our data since the creation of the department since 1979, that after spending $1.6 trillion on that department and, of course, having a nationwide bipartisan effort to have excellent education, all we've seen, unfortunately - we lament this - is mediocrity. So the elimination of that department is a good start.
Obviously, some of the very appropriate civil rights roles that one of the subagencies at that department performs ought to be moved to the Department of Justice. In addition to that, though, just a couple of quick examples, if I may - the law enforcement mechanism of the Environmental Protection Agency, the redundant agencies we see or subagencies across the departments are great places to start. Interestingly, it's been the usage of AI technology that has revealed a lot of these redundancies. And in the same way that maybe at NPR or at Heritage or in some private corporations, we'd have to go through the same exercise, the federal government is long overdue for such an effort.
SUMMERS: I'm going to jump in here for a second. You've talked about redundancies. You've alluded to government waste. Project 2025 did not necessarily spell out the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, but it is carrying out several recommendations of the plan. How do you evaluate the success of DOGE? Are you happy with the work that it's doing?
ROBERTS: You know, DOGE is a wonderful creation of President Trump and Elon Musk. It is an excellent example of how President Trump's instincts match the - something the conservative movement has long wanted, as you know, which is a reduction in the expense of the federal government but obviously doing so in a way that's very accelerated. We think that DOGE is ahead of schedule. We believe - or at least we're very hopeful - that DOGE will continue to add to the savings that they've discovered thus far - as we have this conversation, that's $160 billion. We're hopeful...
SUMMERS: Let me...
ROBERTS: ...They'll get to their goal of a trillion...
SUMMERS: Let me just...
ROBERTS: ...Dollars by end of the calender year.
SUMMERS: ...Jump in there. I believe that DOGE actually, once promised 2 trillion in savings, now revised that to $150 billion, and even that number may be tough to achieve, given the inaccurate claims that NPR and other outlets have tracked. Given that many federal agencies already had oversight in the form of Congress, internal inspector generals, is it possible that it's overstating the amount of waste that exists to be found and eliminated?
ROBERTS: No, I think it's still early in the process. In fact, it's remarkable that, as we've seen, the federal government gets so large and bloated since the New Deal that, in a span of only 3.5 months, DOGE has identified $160 billion in savings. Time will tell about how much they, in fact, save. We - our estimates at Heritage are that they'll be much closer to a trillion dollars. But keep in mind, more importantly than even the quibble we're having about the - what they have identified now in terms of dollar savings, what they have changed in Washington, D.C. - no longer is the question, can we, in fact, save money? The answer is, we already are. Look at the GDP report that came out. The reason that GDP is down a little bit is because for the first time since Trump was in office in his first term, government is spending less money.
SUMMERS: OK.
ROBERTS: We need years and decades of that to get this country back on track.
SUMMERS: I want to get to another item that's a key agenda item of President Trump, and that is securing the border. Project 2025 called for mass deportations. From your view, is the Trump administration doing this in the most effective way possible?
ROBERTS: They are. I mean, the biggest obstacle to this are the several dozen sanctuary cities who are housing illegal aliens who are felons, who ought to be not only out of this country but in prisons, like the one in El Salvador. And the problem with this is, for illegal aliens who are not felons, which is a majority of them, some of them actually are subject to being rounded up in these ICE raids because mayors of these sanctuary cities are housing these felons. It would be good if those obstacles get out of the way so we can focus on the real lawbreakers.
SUMMERS: You've brought up sanctuary cities. I want to bring up some of the court challenges the administration is facing in some of these high-profile cases. Courts have said that everyone deported under the Alien Enemies Act are constitutionally owed due process, a meaningful opportunity to challenge their deportations. Legally, is this administration carrying out the immigration objectives laid out in the plan in ways you approve of?
ROBERTS: A hundred percent - illegal aliens are owed one process, and that's an immigration court hearing. They've received that. A great example of the absurdity of some of these legal claims, as well as the rhetoric by some policymakers and those in corporate media, is the so-called Maryland man, who's not at all a Maryland man whatsoever but an El Salvador man. Who...
SUMMERS: You're speaking there...
ROBERTS: ...Is to say that...
SUMMERS: ...About the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, correct?
ROBERTS: That's correct.
SUMMERS: In that case, he was deported despite a court order, which was supposed to present this (ph). The government has refused to return him to the United States for a deportation hearing, despite a Supreme Court order which asked the government to facilitate this. Is the administration making...
ROBERTS: Facilitate's the operative word. And, in fact, that El Salvador man has been found twice in an immigration court to be a member and leader of MS-13. He is in El Salvador where he should stay for...
SUMMERS: His lawyers...
ROBERTS: ...The rest of his life.
SUMMERS: ...Have contended that he is not, and he has said that he is not.
ROBERTS: His lawyers are well-paid by the radical left, and they're lying.
SUMMERS: Is the administration, in that case, making a fair claim of executive power?
ROBERTS: Not only fair, we celebrate it, and it's one of the reasons we put the banner on the side of our building. It's glorious.
SUMMERS: Do you worry that deportations under this administration could be taken too far? For instance, the claims that we have reported on and others - President Trump has suggested that he is considering deporting American citizens who were convicted of crimes to El Salvador.
ROBERTS: I don't think they go too far. In fact, Tom Homan, the border czar, is a great friend of ours. He was a visiting fellow here at Heritage. I know him to be not only extraordinarily competent but also extraordinarily virtuous. He makes the decisions he does on the - for the sake of the everyday American, not for the sake of illegal aliens who should never have come here to begin with.
SUMMERS: I will...
ROBERTS: It's interesting...
SUMMERS: I will just jump in again...
ROBERTS: ...This conversation is just focused on that and not on the 21 million people who arrived here...
SUMMERS: Sir, I'm going to jump in again here. I'm asking about President Trump's comments suggesting that he is considering deporting American citizens who are convicted of crimes to El Salvador and your response.
ROBERTS: And I told you I'm not worried about it. I'm asking you why you wouldn't, with all the audience you have, be more focused on the negative effects of 21 million people being here illegally - 168,000 of whom we know are convicted felons.
SUMMERS: I'm going to move on to another topic here.
ROBERTS: I bet you will.
SUMMERS: Project 2025 is supportive of reciprocal tariffs. Are you pleased with what you've seen so far?
ROBERTS: So far, so good. I will say that we're hopeful that as Treasury Secretary Bessent and Commerce Secretary Lutnick continue to take a leadership role in the negotiating of bilateral trade agreements, that we'll see more clarity about a zealous focus of a reciprocal tariff regime generally, to the point of your question. But as we have called for at Heritage over the last three years, because we believe we're in a new cold war with China, a very zealous focus on the Chinese Communist Party - if this tariff regime continues to move toward that, then I think that there will be great benefits - economic, political, national security, social and otherwise.
SUMMERS: We've got about a minute left here. I just want to note that we've seen such volatility in the stock market for weeks. Investors have lost billions, and there is economic data out today showing the economy contracting. Will the president continue to have the support he needs if the economy perhaps tips into recession?
ROBERTS: It looks like it, and I don't - I think it's too early to say that the economy will go into a recession. In fact, I think it's at least as likely, given the data we saw today, which is much more positive than has been suggested, that the economy will be fine. No doubt, to your point, the market has been choppy. The market was going to be choppy anyway. There are a lot of large corporations that have been significantly overvalued in the market. It's a factor that ought to be considered here. But the point is that as the administration continues to clarify its tariff regime, but most importantly, as it continues to share news about potential, maybe even likely, bilateral trade agreements, I think you're going to see the economy actually take off and be very positive the rest of the year.
SUMMERS: We'll have to leave it there. That's Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation and its lobbying arm, Heritage Action for America. Thank you so much for your time.
ROBERTS: Thanks for having me. Take care.
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