Project 2025 leader quits conservative think tank

Trump has disavowed Project 2025, though critics point out it is led by former administration officials

The director of the ultra-conservative Project 2025 has stepped down, saying he will now focus on getting Donald Trump back into the White House.

Paul Dans announced he will leave the Heritage Foundation think-tank, which published the document, to "direct all my efforts to winning, bigly!"

Project 2025 proposes, among other things, hugely expanding the powers of the US president, gutting federal services, restricting access to abortion and large tax cuts.

Trump has said he has no connection to the policy document and does not agree with much of its content, which was written by a team including several dozen former members of his administration.

Kevin Roberts, the president of Heritage, said that Mr Dans "built the project from scratch and bravely led this endeavour over the past two years" but is now "moving up to the front where the fight remains".

Mr Roberts said that he would be taking over leadership of the team. A source familiar with the project told the BBC that the project was not shutting down and the change was a reshuffle.

Mr Dans said in a statement that he would leave his post as head of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project in August.

"Electoral season is upon us, and I want to direct all my efforts to winning, bigly!" he said. "To everything there is a season."

He said Project 2025's policy platform was always expected to be finalised around the time of the Republican convention earlier this month.

"We completed what we set out to do, which was create a unified conservative vision... united behind the cause of deconstructing the administrative state.

"This tool was built for any administration, dedicated to conservative ideals."

He added that other members of the team would "continue to put Project 2025 and its recommendations in a place to be of best assistance to the new Conservative Administration, in November".

A Project 2025 advisory board member told CBS, the BBC's US news partner, that it would submit work, including a database of potential hires and a list of policy recommendations, to the former president's campaign for review.

Mr Dans worked in personnel-related roles in the first Trump administration, including as chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management.

At Heritage he organised policy and personnel recommendations and training for appointees in the next presidential administration, according to the think tank's website.

Ongoing project

Project 2025's defining document - its so-called Mandate for Leadership - has drawn intense media scrutiny and liberal opposition since Trump became the Republican nominee.

It is not uncommon for Washington think tanks to propose policy wish lists for potential governments-in-waiting.

However, there is much overlap between Project 2025 and the Republican Party's official platform as well as the rhetoric of some of its most visible figures.

The 922-page document sets out four main policy aims: restore the family as the centrepiece of American life; dismantle the administrative state; defend the nation's sovereignty and borders, and, secure God-given individual rights to live freely.

Among its proposals are:

• bringing the entire federal bureaucracy under presidential control

• dismantling the departments of Education and Homeland Security

• slashing federal money for renewable energy

• halting sales of the abortion pill

• sweeping tax cuts.

In response to Mr Dan's announcement, Trump's campaign reiterated that the former president was "very clear 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.

"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."

Vice-President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic candidate, said that Project 2025 "isn't going anywhere".

“This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country," her campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said.

“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."