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ELECTION 2024 - As the Heritage Foundation announced Tuesday that Project 2025's director will soon step down, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continued efforts to distance his campaign from the far-right blueprint, despite the clear and well-documented connections.
"President Trump's campaign has been very clear for over a year 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," Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a campaign statement.
"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," the pair added in an apparent reference to news about the director's upcoming departure.
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, as it is formally called, is a policy agenda, personnel recruitment, training, and a 180-day playbook for the next right-wing president, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and backed by over 100 other organizations. Critics have described it as a "far-right playbook for American authoritarianism."
At least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration—including six former Cabinet secretaries—have been involved with Project 2025, according toa CNN analysis published earlier this month. Among them is the outgoing director, Paul Dans.
"Dans served in the Trump administration as chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management where he managed the federal agency in charge of human resources policy for the more than 2 million federal workers," according to his profile on the Heritage website.
"He also served as OPM's White House liaison and worked integrally with the White House Office of Presidential Personnel to staff the approximately 4,000 presidential appointees across the federal government," Dans' profile states. "In January 2021, President Trump appointed Dans to serve as chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission."
Both Dans and Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts confirmed Tuesday that the project director plans to leave the think tank late next month, with the latter declaring that "under Paul Dans' leadership, Project 2025 has completed exactly what it set out to do," and "we are extremely grateful for his and everyone's work."
While Tuesday's news arrived after weeks of the Trump campaign trying to disavow the initiative, Roberts framed Dans' looming exit as part of a long-established plan, saying that "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."
The Republican National Convention was held in Wisconsin earlier this month—on the first day, Trump announced Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate—and the Democratic National Convention is set to be held in Illinois next month, though the party plans to nominate Vice President Kamala Harris in an online vote as soon as Thursday.
Mirroring Roberts' statement, Dans highlighted the timing of the conventions and emphasized that "we have completed what we set out to do, which was create a unified conservative vision, bringing together over 110 leading organizations, united behind the cause of deconstructing the administrative state."
Both men also stressed that that project's "efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels" will continue.
Like President Joe Biden—who dropped his reelection effort and endorsed his vice president earlier this month—Harris and her campaign have forcefully warned about the threats posed by Project 2025 and spotlighted its connections to Trump and Vance, who wrote the foreword to Roberts' new book.
"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," Harris' campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodriguez, said in a statement Tuesday. "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."
"What remains clear," she added, "is that Trump, Vance, and the Project 2025 agenda will take America backwards: more abortion bans, more suffering, higher costs for the middle class, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, repeal of the Affordable Care Act, dirtier air and water, and empowering Trump to destroy American democracy."
Congressman Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), founder of the Stop Project 2025 Task Force, argued in a lengthy statement Tuesday that "Americans are not stupid" and "this personnel shell game is not fooling anyone."
"These attempts to create the appearance of distance between Trump and Project 2025 are happening because Americans are starting to learn about this extreme takeover plan for Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans to quickly dismantle checks and balances, amass unprecedented presidential power, and seize total control over our government and our individual freedoms," he said. "With recent polling showing how deeply toxic Project 2025 is with the American people, Trump and his political advisers are in full retreat, suggesting they know nothing about Project 2025 and feigning outrage at the notion that their plan is actually their plan."
"We will continue working with dozens of leading advocacy groups and experts to bring Trump's Project 2025 out of the shadows and spotlight it for the American people. Trump can run but he cannot hide," Huffman added. "No amount of spinning or play-fighting can change the fact that Donald Trump is inextricably intertwined with Project 2025."
(Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams where this article was first published.)
