Project 2025 director steps down amid backlash from Trump

(CNN) — The director of Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a potential second Donald Trump term, has stepped down amid intense criticism including from the former president.

Paul Dans, a former top adviser in Trump’s administration, steered Project 2025 as it carved a leading role in shaping discourse around what conservatives dreamed they could accomplish if Republicans won back the White House. While a source with knowledge of the planning said Project 2025 would be effectively ending its policy operations, others familiar with the matter noted that it was always the plan to move on to the next phase now – and efforts to build a conservative personnel apparatus would continue.

Project 2025’s plans to radically reshape the federal government and American life, spelled out in detail in an exhaustive 900-page playbook, provided ample fodder for Democrats to warn against Trump’s return to power.

In recent months, Trump has lashed out against Project 2025, calling some of its ideas “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” He strained to distance himself from the work, claiming he had “no idea who is behind it.” Top Trump adviser Chris LaCivita recently referred to Project 2025 as “a pain the a**” for the Trump campaign.

Dans’ departure was confirmed in a statement to CNN Tuesday by Dr. Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, the group that launched Project 2025. In addition to stepping down from Project 2025, Dans is also leaving the Heritage Foundation.

“Under Paul Dans’ leadership, Project 2025 has completed exactly what it set out to do: bringing together over 110 leading conservative organizations to create a unified conservative vision, motivated to devolve power from the unelected administrative state, and returning it to the people,” Roberts said. “This tool was built for any future administration to use.”

LaCivita and Susie Wiles, both Trump campaign managers, said in a statement that the Trump team “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.”

They continued, “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.”

A spokesperson for Heritage, though, said despite Dans’ exit, work will continue on the current phase of Project 2025, which is a nationwide search to fill a Trump administration with loyal conservatives.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign made clear Tuesday that the change of leadership will not stop its efforts to share Project 2025’s contents with voters. Harris has made criticizing Project 2025 a centerpiece of her early campaign for the presidency, picking up right where President Joe Biden left off.

“Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot,” Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said. “This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our 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.”

Project 2025 includes many policy priorities that are aligned with those of the former president, especially as they relate to cracking down on immigration and purging the federal bureaucracy by making it easier to dismiss civil servants and career officials.

But Project 2025 has lately become a lightning rod for other ideas Trump hasn’t explicitly backed. Within the group’s seminal work, “Mandate for Leadership,” are plans to ban pornography, reverse federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, exclude the morning-after pill and men’s contraceptives from coverage mandated under the Affordable Care Act, make it harder for transgender adults to transition and eliminate the federal agency that oversees the National Weather Service.

Its detailed plans also run counter to Trump’s push for a streamlined GOP platform absent any language that Democrats could wield against Republicans this cycle.

Still, Trump’s efforts to keep the organization at arm’s length were complicated by his close ties to the people behind it.

At least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in the project, a CNN review found, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to “Mandate for Leadership.” Nobody embodied the shift from Trump insider to Project 2025 champion more than Dans.

Dans served as chief of staff at the US Office of Personnel Management during the Trump administration where he served as a liaison between the agency and the White House. He told a gathering of conservative broadcasters earlier this year in Nashville that he intended to work for Trump again if he win.

He has also assured Trump’s supporters that Project 2025 would become a reality if the former president returned to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In June, he told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast that Project 2025 was “gonna be a D-Day invasion plan” and urged listeners to “flood the zone with us.”

“We’re going to make this happen under President Trump,” Dans said. “And this is ultimately his direction and his team’s direction.”

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

CNN’s Em Steck contributed to this report.

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