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Politics and Government News
Franco Ordoñez, NPR

Project 2025's director steps down, but the think tank says work will go on

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Paul Dans, director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation, has stepped down after former President Donald Trump became angered by news reports tying him to the plan's policy proposals.
Paul Dans, director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation, has stepped down after former President Donald Trump became angered by news reports tying him to the plan's policy proposals.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Heritage Foundation announced Tuesday that the top official behind Project 2025, the conservative think tank’s far-reaching plan to overhaul the U.S. government, is stepping down, but that the project’s remaining work would be led by its president.

Heritage said Paul Dans was stepping down and Project 2025's policy operations are concluding. Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in a statement that the policy work was always set to conclude after party conventions, anyway, but that their personnel work would continue.

"Our collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels—federal, state, and local—will continue," he wrote.

The campaign of Republican former President Donald Trump has tried to disavow the project. Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, who lead the campaign, said in a statement that “reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you."

The Trump campaign has sought to distance itself from the sweeping plan to transform the U.S. government in a second Trump administration amid controversy over some of its policy positions on issues such as abortion and immigration. The 900-page plan serves as a conservative guidebook to expand presidential powers and overhaul the federal workforce so that it can be replaced with partisan loyalists.

As polls suggested that voters disapproved of Project 2025, Democrats began to tie Trump to it. It prompted the former president to post on Truth Social: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

While Trump has sought to deny a connection, there is plenty of overlap between Project 2025 and his agenda: It proposes mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants. So does Trump. Trump has called for cuts to the federal agencies like the Department of Education. Project 2025 calls for its elimination.

But there are also differences: On abortion, for example, Project 2025 goes further with restrictions than Trump has said he would go.

Democrats seemed ready to continue to tie the project to Trump.

In a Tuesday statement titled, "Project 2025 Isn’t Going Anywhere," Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez insisted that “Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country."

Copyright 2024, NPR