Project 2025's director steps down, but the think tank says work will go on

The Heritage Foundation announced Tuesday that the top official behind Project 2025, the conservative think tank’s far-reaching plan to overhaul the U.S. government, is stepping down, but that the project’s remaining work would be led by its president.

Heritage said Paul Dans was stepping down and Project 2025's policy operations are concluding. Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in a statement that the policy work was always set to conclude after party conventions, anyway, but that their personnel work would continue.

"Our collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels—federal, state, and local—will continue," he wrote.

The campaign of Republican former President Donald Trump has tried to disavow the project. Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, who lead the campaign, said in a statement that “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 Trump campaign has sought to distance itself from the sweeping plan to transform the U.S. government in a second Trump administration amid controversy over some of its policy positions on issues such as abortion and immigration. The 900-page plan serves as a conservative guidebook to expand presidential powers and overhaul the federal workforce so that it can be replaced with partisan loyalists.

As polls suggested that voters disapproved of Project 2025, Democrats began to tie Trump to it. It prompted the former president to post on Truth Social: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of