Head of pro-Trump Project 2025 resigns as Democrats step up attacks

Washington — Paul Dans, the director of the Project 2025 The Presidential Transition Initiative, which is managed by the Heritage Foundation, is leaving his post at the think tank, the group’s president confirmed on Tuesday.

Dr. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, said in a statement that Dans, who previously served in the Trump administration, will leave the organization after leading the transition initiative for the past two years. He thanked Dans for his work on Project 2025.

Roberts noted that when Heritage launched the project in April 2022, it set a timeline to complete policy development after the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions, and said it is “sticking to that timeline.” The Republican convention was held in Milwaukee earlier this month, and the Democratic convention will begin in Chicago on August 19.

“Under Paul Dans’ leadership, Project 2025 has accomplished exactly what it set out to do: bring together over 110 leading conservative organizations to create a unified conservative vision motivated to turn power over from the unelected administrative state and return it to the people,” Roberts said. “This tool was created for any future administration.”

In an email to Project 2025 staff obtained by CBS News, Dans said the initiative’s work is “currently suspended” and he will leave Heritage next month.

“With Project 2025, we have accomplished a great deal and are close to completing the project we began: creating a unified conservative vision that brings together over 110 leading organizations united behind the goal of deconstructing the administrative state,” he wrote.

A member of Project 2025’s advisory board said the initiative’s work would likely continue, adding that it would be a “natural evolution of the project” to submit its work, including a database of potential new hires and a list of policy recommendations for the first six months of a possible second Trump term, to the former president’s campaign for review.

Dans’ departure comes after former President Donald Trump sought to distance himself from the project and its sweeping policy agenda, which is intended to serve as a blueprint for the next Republican president to restructure the executive branch.

Trump’s campaign team reiterated in a statement on Tuesday that Project 2025 “has nothing to do with the campaign, does not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated in any way with the campaign or the President.”

“Reports on the end of Project 2025 would be very welcome and should serve as a warning to anyone or groups trying to misrepresent their influence on President Trump and his campaign – it will not end well for you,” said Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, senior advisers to the Trump campaign.

Nevertheless, Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris, their party’s likely presidential nominee, have seized on the project’s nearly 900-page guide in their campaign to suggest that voters reject Trump in the November ballot.

“Donald Trump is planning to take our country backwards,” Harris said Sunday at a campaign rally in Massachusetts. “Just look at his agenda, ‘Project 2025.’ Can you believe they even put that in writing? It’s nine hundred pages.”

In response to Dans’ departure, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Harris’ campaign manager, continued to warn against Project 2025’s policy proposals on abortion, the economy, health care and the environment.

“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 impose on our country,” she said. “Hiding the 920-page plan from the American people doesn’t make it any less real – in fact, it should make voters think even more about what else Trump and his allies are hiding.”

Trump has said he knew nothing about the agenda and called some of the plans “abysmal,” but a number of experts involved in it served in his administration. Dans is among those who worked for the former president, serving as chief of staff in the Office of Personnel Management and the agency’s liaison to the White House. Numerous pro-Trump groups have withdrawn from the project in recent weeks, including America First Legal, an organization led by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

Dans did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his departure on Tuesday.

Trump appointed Dans to chair the National Capital Planning Commission in January 2021, but President Biden fired him from the post after taking office, according to the Washington Post. Other former Trump administration officials who contributed to Project 2025’s policy guidance include Russ Vought, who headed the Office of Management and Budget; former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller; and Ben Carson, who headed the Department of Housing and Urban Development.