Former President Donald Trump's campaign on Tuesday celebrated the “demise” of Project 2025, the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s presidential transition project that has become fodder for attacks on the Republican nominee from Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign and other Democrats.
But the Heritage Foundation insists the project will continue even as its director, Trump administration veteran Paul Dans, has stepped down.
“Under Paul Dans’ leadership, Project 2025 has completed exactly what it set out to do: bringing together over 110 leading conservative organizations to create a unified conservative vision, motivated to devolve power from the unelected administrative state, and returning it to the people. This tool was built for any future administration to use,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in a statement. “Paul, who built the project from scratch and bravely led this endeavor over the past two years, will be departing the team and moving up to the front where the fight remains. We are extremely grateful for his and everyone's work on Project 2025 and dedication to saving America.”
“Our collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels—federal, state, and local—will continue,” Roberts added.
A Heritage Foundation source confirmed to Spectrum News that while Dans is stepping down, Project 2025 is not shutting down and Roberts will take on the leadership of the project. Dans did not immediately return a request for comment. Roberts said the project always planned to wrap up its policy drafting process after the major parties’ conventions, but made no mention of the massive staffing database of potential appointees that Project 2025 has vetted.
Trump and his campaign have attempted to distance themselves from Project 2025 and its more extreme policy proposals for a second Trump term, despite the fact that Dans and other veterans of Trump’s first term led the project and — according to a CNN analysis — at least 140 veterans of the Trump administration, including six former Cabinet secretaries, helped craft Project 2025’s 922-page “Mandate for Leadership” planning document. Dans served as the chief of staff in the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and was that office’s White House liaison during Trump’s first term.
On Tuesday, responding to Dans’ departure, senior Trump campaign officials attempted to continue to create distance from the project and described the leadership switch-up as the “demise” of the effort.
"President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” Trump campaign senior advisors Chris LaCivita and Susan Wiles said in a statement. “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."
Despite the attempts to distance themselves from a potentially politically toxic undertaking, key officials involved in Project 2025 continue to hold favor in Trump’s orbit — including one of the 922-page report’s authors, Tom Homan. Trump has repeatedly named Homan, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as someone he would appoint in a second term to help oversee his immigration policies.
Homan received a key speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee earlier this month, which was sponsored in part by the Heritage Foundation. In his remarks, he pledged to help orchestrate Trump’s promised mass deportation operations and work to designate cartels as terrorist organizations.
Vice President Harris and President Joe Biden have attempted to direct voters’ focus on the project, which proposes gutting the administrative state and replacing career government employees with Trump loyalists in order to further the conservative agenda. As recently as earlier on Tuesday, Harris’ campaign highlighted the project’s proposal to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. In remarks in Austin on Monday night marking the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, Biden described it as “an extreme movement and agenda.”
“They’re planning another onslaught, attacking civil rights in America,” Biden said. “For example, Project 2025 calls [for] aggressively attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion all across all aspects of American life.”
At a campaign event in Massachusetts over the weekend, Harris said “Project 2025 is a plan that would return America to a very dark past — and weaken the middle class.”
“By the way, can you believe they put that thing in writing?” She asked, to laughter. “Nine hundred pages of it.”
Ammar Moussa, the Harris campaign director of rapid response, responded to reports that the Heritage Foundation would not be shutting the project down on Tuesday by writing on social media “GOOD.”
"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," Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement. “Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real – in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding."