Project 2025 leader steps down from Heritage Foundation amid negative publicity

The leader of the Project 2025 campaign is stepping down from his role at the Heritage Foundation amid condemnation and demonstrations denouncing the controversial plan to reshape the federal government under the next conservative president.

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts on July 30 issued a statement announcing the departure of Paul Dans, who directed Project 2025 and formerly worked in the Trump White House. The Heritage Foundation plays a leading role in Project 2025, which is made up of a coalition featuring more than 100 groups, including Moms for Liberty and Turning Point USA.

“Paul, who built the project from scratch and bravely led this endeavor over the past two years, will be departing the team and moving up to the front where the fight remains,” Roberts wrote in a statement on X. “We are extremely grateful for his and everyone’s work on Project 2025 and dedication to saving America. Project 2025 will continue our efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels—federal, state, and local.”

The Project 2025 website lists two others on the leadership team: Spencer Chretien and Troup Hemenway, both associate directors.

Project 2025 has raised alarms across the country over its radical 900-page policy platform calling for an extremist takeover of the government.

Project 2025, according to its book, contains four pillars: Pillar I calls for a consensus on how federal agencies should be governed; Pillar II creates a database for candidates to create professional profiles to be reviewed by Project 2025 coalition members; Pillar III establishes an online educational system to explain how the government functions and how to operate within it; and Pillar IV seeks to form agency teams and draft transition plans “to move out upon the president’s utterance of ‘so help me God.'”

The document is packed with hateful rhetoric denouncing “the toxic normalization of transgenderism” and drag artists who they falsely accuse of “invading… school libraries.”

“The next conservative president must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors,” notes the book’s foreword, written by Roberts. “This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”

Individuals who served in the Trump White House have their fingerprints all over Project 2025 — a CNN review found more than 100 Trump administration officials involved, including Dans — but the negative publicity surrounding the campaign seemed to have prompted the former president to distance himself from it.

“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 managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement, according to CNN. “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.”

LGBTQ activists brought greater attention to the threat of Project 2025 during a Times Square rally on the evening of July 27. Community members gathered to denounce Project 2025 with signs saying phrases like “Project 2025 is Christian nationalism” and “No dictators in the USA!”

Speakers at the event included activist Jay W. Walker; Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis; Brian Silva of Americans United for Separation of Church and State; Reginald Thomas Brown of Vocal New York; drag activist and entertainer Brita Filter; Amanda Babine, Tanya Aspansa Walker, and Reggie Evans of Equality NY; Kate Barnhart of New Alternatives for LGBT Homeless Youth; and others.

See some photos from the demonstration below: