Head of pro-Trump Project 2025 steps down as Democrats ramp up attacks

Washington — Paul Dans, the director of the Project 2025 presidential transition initiative overseen by the Heritage Foundation, is leaving his post at the think tank, the group's president confirmed Tuesday.

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

Roberts indicated that when the project was launched in April 2022, Heritage set a timeline for it to finish policy-drafting after the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions, and said it is "sticking to that timeline." The Republican National Convention was held in Milwaukee earlier this month, and the Democratic National Convention will kick off in Chicago on Aug. 19.

"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," Roberts said. "This tool was built for any future administration to use."

In an email sent to Project 2025 staff and obtained by CBS News, Dans said the initiative's work is "presently winding down," and he will leave Heritage next month. 

"With Project 2025, we have accomplished a great deal and are close to finishing what we started, which was to create a unified conservative vision, bringing together over 110 leading organizations, united behind the cause of deconstructing the administrative state," he wrote.

A Project 2025 advisory board member said the initiative's work is likely to continue, adding it was a "natural progression of the project" to submit its work, including a database of potential hires and a list of policy recommendations for the first six months of a potential second Trump term, to the former president's campaign for review.

Dans' departure comes after former President Donald Trump has sought to distance himself from the project and its sweeping policy agenda, which serves as a blueprint for the next Republican president to overhaul the executive branch. 

Trump's campaign reiterated in a statement Tuesday 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."

"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," said Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, senior advisers on the Trump campaign.

Still, Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris, the party's presumptive presidential nominee, have seized on the project's nearly 900-page guide on the campaign trail as part of their pitch for why voters should reject Trump at the ballot in November.

"Donald Trump intends to take our country backward," Harris said Sunday during a campaign event in Massachusetts. "Just look at his Project 2025 agenda. By the way, can you believe they put that thing in writing? Nine hundred pages of it."

In response to Dans' departure, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Harris' campaign manager, continued to warn of Project 2025's policy proposals for 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 inflict on our country," she said. "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."

Trump has said he wasn't aware of the agenda and called some of its plans "abysmal," but a number of experts who contributed to it served in his administration. Dans is among those who worked for the former president, having served as chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management and as the agency's White House liaison. Numerous pro-Trump groups have withdrawn from the project in recent weeks, including America First Legal, an organization led by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller.

Dans didn't immediately return a request for comment about his departure on Tuesday.

Trump appointed Dans in January 2021 to serve as chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission, though President Biden removed him from the post after taking office, according to the Washington Post. Other former officials with the Trump administration who contributed to Project 2025's policy guide include Russ Vought, who led the Office of Management and Budget; former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller; and Ben Carson, who led the Department of Housing and Urban Development.