Paul Dans oversaw the project for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank behind the proposal to reshape the federal government. Democrats have used the plans to attack Donald Trump, who has sought to distance himself from it.
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Paul Dans at a Heritage Foundation Leadership Summit in 2023. Mr. Dans is stepping down from his role as director of Project 2025.
The director of Project 2025, the right-wing policy blueprint and personnel project prepared for the next Republican president that became a political cudgel used by Democrats, is departing after the effort drew criticism from former President Donald J. Trump.
The project, which has been a collaborative effort across the conservative ecosystem led by the Heritage Foundation, has become a lightning rod on the 2024 campaign trail. The group had spent months developing an expansive set of policies, and the president of the Heritage Foundation said on Tuesday it was concluding its drafting of new ideas as planned.
“When we began Project 2025 in April 2022, we set a timeline for the project to conclude its policy drafting after the two party conventions this year, and we are sticking to that timeline,” Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, said in a statement praising Paul Dans, the outgoing director.
Mr. Trump has tried to distance himself from the specifics inside the 900-page plan for months, saying the sweeping agenda to reshape the federal government is not his, though many of the proposals were crafted by people who served in the first Trump administration.
“It’s a group of very, very conservative people. And they wrote a document that many of the points are fine. Many of the points are absolutely ridiculous,” Mr. Trump said in an interview on Fox News last week. During the same interview, he insisted he had “never seen” the plan and had “nothing to do with” it.
President Biden, and now Vice President Kamala Harris, have repeatedly used some of the less popular planks to attack Mr. Trump. Ms. Harris brings up Project 2025 during almost every campaign stop. At a fund-raiser this weekend, she described it as “a plan that would return America to a very dark past.”
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