Project 2025 director leaves after Democratic attacks and Trump criticism

FILE - Paul Dans, director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation, speaks at the National Religious Broadcasters convention, Feb. 22, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)

NEW YORK — The director of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 vision for a complete overhaul of the federal government stepped down Tuesday amid blowback from Donald Trump's campaign, which has tried to disavow the program created by many of the former U.S. president's allies and former aides.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said Paul Dans' exit comes after the project "completed exactly what it set out to do." Roberts, who has emerged as a chief spokesman for the effort, plans to lead Project 2025 going forward.

"Our collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels -- federal, state, and local -- will continue," Roberts said.

What started as an obscure far-right wish list is now a focal point in the 2024 campaign. Democrats for the past several months have made Project 2025 a key election-year cudgel, pointing to the ultraconservative policy blueprint as a glimpse into how extreme another Trump administration could be.

The nearly 1,000-page handbook lays out sweeping changes in the federal government, including altering personnel rules to ensure government workers are more loyal to the president. Heritage is building a database of potential new hires to staff a second Trump White House.

Yet Trump has repeatedly disavowed the document, saying on social media he hasn't read it and doesn't know anything about it. At a rally in Michigan earlier this month, he said Project 2025 was written by people on the "severe right" and some of the things in it are "seriously extreme."

"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," Trump campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement.

They said, "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."

But Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump's running mate, wrote a foreword to a forthcoming book by Roberts in which he lauds the Heritage Foundation's work. A copy of the foreword was obtained by The Associated Press.

"The Heritage Foundation isn't some random outpost on Capitol Hill; it is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump," wrote Vance.

Quoting Roberts elsewhere in the book, Vance writes: "We are now all realizing that it's time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon."

Trump campaign representatives did not respond to messages inquiring about whether the campaign asked or pushed for Dans to step down from the project. The Heritage Foundation said Dans left voluntarily and it was not under pressure from the Trump campaign. Dans didn't immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Project 2025 has many ties to Trump's orbit

In many ways, Project 2025 served as a potential far-right White House in waiting, a constellation of outside groups that would be ready for action if Trump wins a second term.

The project included not only the detailed policy proposals that Trump could put into place on day one at the White House. Project 2025 was also building a personnel database of resumes for potential hires, drawing Americans to Washington to staff a new Trump administration.

Many Trump allies and former top aides contributed to the project. Dans formerly worked as a personnel official for the Trump administration. And Trump regularly campaigns on many of the same proposals in the Project 2025 book -- from mass deportations to upending the Justice Department -- though some of its other proposals, including further taxes on tips, conflict with some of what Trump has pledged on the campaign trail.

It was clear that Project 2025 was becoming a liability for Trump and the Republican Party.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign and top Democrats have repeatedly tied Trump to Project 2025 as they argue against a second term for the former president.

The Harris campaign said Project 2025 remains linked to Trump's agenda, written by his allies for him to "inflict" on the country.

"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," said Harris for President Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez.

For months Trump's campaign had warned outside groups, and Heritage in particular, that they did not speak for the former president.

In an interview from the Republican convention first published by Politico, LaCivita said Project 2025 was a problem because "the issues that are going to win us this campaign are not the issues that they want to talk about."

It was almost certain than Trump's campaign forced the shakeup, said one former Heritage aide granted anonymity to discuss the situation.

Trump's team was well aware it couldn't risk any missteps from Heritage in this final stretch ahead of the election.

By announcing the departure, Roberts appeared to be sending a signal to the Trump campaign that changes were being made at Heritage to tamp down any concerns over Project 2025, said another conservative familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.

If Trump wins the White House, he almost certainly will need to rely on Heritage and other outside entities to help quickly staff a new administration, the person said.

Heritage says Project 2025 is not going away

Project 2025's website will remain live and the group will continue vetting resumes for its nearly 20,000-person database of potential officials eager to execute its vision for government, the Heritage Foundation said Tuesday.

The group said Dans, who had started the project from scratch more than two years ago, will leave the Heritage Foundation in August. Roberts will now run Project 2025 operations.

Roberts has faced criticism in recent weeks after he said on an episode of former Trump aide Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast that the country is in the midst of a "second American Revolution" that will be bloodless "if the left allows it to be."

Earlier this month, in an interview before beginning a prison sentence for defying a congressional subpoena, Bannon mentioned Roberts as the type of leader who could land a top job in a Trump White House.

Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price in New York and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report