Heritage announced Tuesday that Paul Dans was stepping down as director of Project 2025. That announcement triggered a taunting statement from the Trump campaign that has run from Project 20205 like someone running from a hornet’s nest.
After the news broke Dans was stepping down, Trump’s campaign posted a celebratory statement that took a swipe at him. “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.”
That campaign statement seemed to be a warning not only to Dans, who served in the Trump administration in the Office of Personnel Management, but to other prominent names affiliated with Project 2025 who also have close ties to Trump’s first term.
Trump ran from 'abysmal' ideas
In a June 5 Truth Social post, Trump wrote “I know nothing about Project 2025" and said he has “no idea” who is behind it. An analysis of the 900-page document, by liberal CNN, found more than 140 people affiliated with Trump’s first term involved in some aspect of Project 2025.
Trump went on to call some of its plans “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” but did not specify what he was referring to.
Trump’s comment came just three days after social media went nuts after Heritage president Kevin Roberts gave an interview. He observed that conservatives are winning political victories and are experiencing a “second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the Left allows it.”
A ‘game plan’ to be ready
Back in February 2023, in an AFN story, Dans told this news website 50 conservative organizations were organizing to strategize for a future Republican president who would take office in January 2025.
Heritage’s political blueprint, which dates back to 2022, is formally known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. It includes a policy agenda and a “playbook” for the first 180 days of the next Republican administration, as well as a hiring database and a training program called the “Presidential Administration Academy.”
The idea dates back to the early days of the Biden administration, when the think tank put its conservative scholars and political thinkers to work on future plans for a future Republican president.
"Our whole game plan here,” Dans said at the time, now 18 months ago, “is to be ready day one, January 20th, 2025, for conservatives to take the reins of the federal government and start enacting the policy and the reforms, ripping up what the Biden administration's put in place, and kind of getting America back on track.”
Spokesman: Project 2025 will continue
Dans was interviewed by AFN seven months later, in a September 2023 story, after an Associated Press story linked Project 2025 to Trump’s presidential campaign.
The AP story ominously described Heritage-Project 2025 ideas that many conservatives cheer for. One idea is to reclassify federal workers as at-will workers to make it easier for the White House to terminate them. Trump himself signed an executive order to do that, known as Schedule F, which President Biden rescinded, the story said.
That story did not tie Heritage to Trump directly, other than to say Project 2025 was written for a future presidential candidate, which is Trump. The story also took a swipe at Trump, stating that using a written plan for governing would help Trump avoid the “pitfalls” of his previous “ill-prepared” presidential team in 2016.
Brian Phillips, a spokesman for Project 2025, tells AFN this week Heritage credits Dans for overseeing an “amazing book of policies” that came from a coalition of groups and political analysts that grew to more than 100.
Phillips adds Heritage will “absolutely” continue with Project 2025 despite the loss of its director.
“This project and this effort,” he says, “will endure until we make tremendous progress."
