On July 30, Paul Dans, head of the Heritage Foundation's ultraconservative Project 2025, resigned from his position. Dans, who led the movement to draft the blueprint for a second Donald Trump presidency, stepped down amid mounting criticism about the project, including some from the former president himself.
Dans, who served as senior adviser in the first Trump's administration, played a key role in outlining ambitious conservative plans for a potential Republican return to the White House. However, in recent months, Trump has realised that the project was hurting him electorally and has repeatedly criticised it, dismissing some of its proposals as “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal” and distancing himself from the initiative. Chris LaCivita, a top Trump adviser, called it as “a pain in the a*s” for the Trump campaign.
Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, confirmed Dans's resignation. He said Dans was also leaving the Foundation and he wanted to concentrate on Trump's re-election efforts. The Trump campaign, however, issued a statement, saying that the resignation should serve as a warning to those trying to associate themselves with Trump without authorisation and also expressed satisfaction about the project's “demise”. There are, however, multiple reports that Project 2025 is not being shut down, and what has happened was only a reshuffle of resources.
Project 2025, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation—a think tank known for shaping personnel and policies for Republican administrations since the Reagan era—was launched before Trump officially entered the 2024 race. It is aimed at preparing a detailed plan for the first 180 days of a new Trump administration, especially aligning every federal agency with its conservative agenda. In addition, it plans to recruit and train thousands of individuals loyal to the conservative movement for federal government positions. The project clearly has the potential to significantly impact daily life for millions of Americans.
Despite the Trump campaign distancing itself from the project, the fact that its 900-page report has been crafted by some of Trump's close allies cannot be overlooked. The report proposes a significant expansion of presidential power and a reduction in the independence of federal agencies. American media outlets have identified nearly 250 individuals linked to Trump working on the project. Among them are six former cabinet members, four individuals whom Trump nominated as ambassadors and several proponents of his controversial immigration policies.
Notable contributors include former housing and urban development secretary Ben Carson, former acting defence secretary Chris Miller, deputy White House chief of staff Rick Dearborn, former OMB (office of management and budget) director Russ Vought and senior homeland security official Ken Cuccinelli. Former White House personnel director John McEntee, known for purging officials perceived to be disloyal to Trump, played a key role in gathering staff recommendations for the project.
The American Accountability Foundation, one of the organisations that advised Project 2025, has compiled a list of federal employees it believes could obstruct Trump’s plans for a second term. The Heritage Foundation paid it $100,000 for its services.
Project 2025 supports increasing the number of political appointees aligned with the president within the executive branch, with a plan to replace many of the serving nonpartisan career civil servants, whom Trump calls the “deep state”. While critics argue that this could lead to abuse of power and political favouritism, Trump supports these proposals and is expected to implement them if given the opportunity. It also calls for an executive order that would appoint political figures to any “confidential, policy-determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating positions”—a strategy Trump employed at the end of his presidency, which President Joe Biden subsequently overturned.
The project calls for a downsized federal government, which can be achieved by by disbanding federal agencies, such as the department of education—an idea previously supported by Trump—and the department of homeland security. It also recommends privatising agencies like the Transportation Security Administration and ensuring absolute presidential control over the executive branch. The project's opening section says that a modern conservative president’s role is to “limit, control and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people.”
The project wants the department of health and human services to adopt a “biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family”. It plans to criminalise pornography, reject abortion as a form of health care and dismantle climate protections. It looks at imposing caps on the federal funding that states can receive for Medicaid expenses and introducing additional eligibility requirements for the plan, hurting the poor and the needy. It also recommends restricting food stamps and similar social welfare programmes.
On abortion, although Project 2025 does not explicitly call for a total ban, it proposes several measures to significantly restrict access to the procedure. These include directing the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval of the drug mifepristone, using the Comstock Act to prevent abortion equipment or medication by post—an approach activists criticise as a “backdoor” method to restrict abortion—prohibiting federal funds from being used for abortion-related health care coverage, requiring states to report all abortions to the federal government and prohibiting funding for patients travelling across state lines for reproductive health care.
On climate change, the project proposes cutting federal funding for research and investment in renewable energy and asking the next president to "stop the war on oil and natural gas”. It aims to repeal preventive climate change measures and replace carbon-reduction goals with increased fossil fuel energy production and a focus on "energy security”.
The project supports a two-tier individual tax system with rates of 15 per cent and 30 per cent, wants to bring down the corporate income tax rate and lower tax rates for high-income investors.
On immigration, the project looks at a major overhaul, including the immediate deportation of unaccompanied children, increased funding for the southern border wall and fees for asylum seekers. It also suggests pausing funding for NGOs aiding immigration. Additionally, it wants to replace the current employment visa process, family-based chain migration and lottery systems with a merit-based system designed to grant visas only to the most qualified individuals.
The project plans to block federal financial aid for up to two-thirds of American college students if their state allows certain immigrant groups, including Dreamers (children who were brought to the US without documentation) with legal status, to access in-state tuition. It also aims to terminate the legal status of five lakh Dreamers by cutting staff for processing renewal applications and using backlog numbers to automatically suspend application intake for large categories of legal immigration. Furthermore, it proposes suspending updates to the annual eligible country lists for H-2A and H-2B temporary worker visas, which would exclude most immigrants from working in agriculture, construction, hospitality and forestry sectors. Even more alarmingly, Project 2025 wants the new administration use its existing authority to aggressively suspend the issuance of all visas for citizens of countries deemed recalcitrant in accepting deported nationals. As of June 2020, 13 countries, including China and India, are classified as recalcitrant.
No wonder, Democrats see a political opening by associating Project 2025 with Trump, repeatedly warning that it represents his extreme agenda for a potential second term. While Trump has been trying to distance himself from the project, his vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance is seen closely linked with Heritage Foundation's Roberts. He recently wrote the forward to a book by Roberts, which calls for a “second American revolution”. “In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon,” wrote Vance.
In a series of news releases, social media posts and television ads, the Democrats are painting the ideas from Project 2025 as an authoritarian MAGA blueprint. The Harris campaign said Trump was mistaken if he thought that he could distance himself from the initiative. It said the policies proposed by the group were likely to be "inflicted" on the country if Trump were to take office again.
“Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, to inflict on our country,” said Julie Chavez Rodriguez, campaign manager for Harris. “Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people does not make it less real—in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding.”