Paul Dans, who led The Heritage Foundation’s controversial 2025 Presidential Transition Project, or Project 2025, will step down from his post in August, according to an internal email to staff and a person familiar with the matter.
Dans’ departure does not mean that the project, which has been repeatedly criticized by Democrats and Donald Trump, will be shut down. Work on Project 2025 — which includes policy and personnel prescriptions for a Republican administration — will continue, according to a person familiar with the project who was granted anonymity to discuss the matter.
However, the person said the goal for Project 2025 was always to have its work completed before the Republican National Convention, which ended in mid-July.
“Friends and patriots, everything has its time. We have completed what we set out to do, which was to create a unified conservative vision, bringing together over 110 leading organizations united around the cause of deconstructing the administrative state,” Dans wrote in an email shared with POLITICO.
“This tool was created for use by any administration dedicated to conservative ideals. The work on the project was to conclude with the political parties’ nominating conventions. Our work is coming to a close, and at the end of August, I plan to leave Heritage. Election season is upon us, and I want to direct all my efforts toward winning by a landslide,” Dans wrote.
The Daily Beast He first reported his departure.
Dans and spokespeople for Heritage and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, said in a tweet: “When we began Project 2025 in April 2022, we set a timeline for the project to complete its policy writing after this year’s bipartisan conventions, and we will stick to that timeline. Paul, who built the project from the ground up and courageously led this effort for the past two years, will be leaving the team and moving to the front lines, where the fight continues.”
“We are extremely grateful for his work and that of everyone else at Project 2025 and their dedication to saving America,” Roberts wrote. “Our collective efforts to build a staffing apparatus for policymakers at all levels — federal, state, and local — will continue.”
Prior to leading Project 2025, Dans served as chief of staff for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and served as OPM’s White House liaison, where he worked with the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, which staffs presidential appointees across the federal government.
Democrats have criticized and scrutinized Project 2025, which includes a 900-page policy roadmap and a database of potential candidates for positions within a possible Trump administration. Democrats have sought to link vulnerable Republicans and Trump to the initiative, which they say is a proposal for how Trump would reform the government if he returns to power and have called it “extreme” and “dystopian.”
Trump has publicly disavowed Project 2025, saying he knows nothing about its work or who is involved, even though many of the people working for Project 2025 are former senior officials in the Trump administration.
“I haven’t seen it, I have no idea who’s in charge, and unlike our much-welcomed Republican Platform, he had nothing to do with it,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social in July.
Trump and his campaign advisers viewed Project 2025 as a distraction and disliked its portrayal as the Trump White House’s game plan.
“This seems like a normal thing to do as the project is coming to an end and the real transition begins,” said a former Trump administration official familiar with Project 2025.