Kevin Roberts, Heritage President: “Work Will Go On”
Trump and Project 2025 Remain Linked Through J.D. Vance
Paul Dans, who served in the Trump Administration as Chief of Staff at the Office of Personnel Management, has stepped away from his position as Director of Project 2025.
In announcing Dan’s departure, Heritage President, Kevin Roberts, applauded Dans for his leadership with Project 2025 and said Dans was leaving the Project 2025 planning program for a new role “moving up to the front where the fight remains.”
In his congratulations for Dans, Roberts also made clear that the agenda set forth in Project 2025 will continue and that Roberts would take over leadership through the election.
We’re Going to Make this Happen Under President Trump
Established in April 2022 by Heritage foundation, former Trump Administration officials, a sophisticated network of Trump and Republican donors and right-wing conservative organizations Project 2025 has become the MAGA movement’s “unified effort to be ready for the next conservative administration to govern”.
Throughout his time at Heritage leading the Project 2025 effort, Paul Dans has been clear that he intends to work for Trump again if he is elected. Earlier this summer on Steve Bannon’s podcast Dans told Bannon that Project 2025’s vision and Trump’s next administration would be inextricably linked: “We’re going to make this happen under President Trump. And this is ultimately his direction and his team’s direction.”
Why is Project 2025 Connected To Trump?
Heritage has a longstanding policy relationship with Trump. During his previous term, Heritage reported that “nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations from Heritage” were included in Trump’s budget and implemented through regulatory guidance.
Dans resignation comes as Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the political blowback over Project 2025 and the Trump campaign’s claim they are not working with Heritage and the coalition supporting Project 2025.
Project 2025 has become increasingly unpopular and a political liability as Democrats have focused on the impact it could have on children’s health and nutrition, health care costs and prescription drug prices, public education, roll back investments in our country’s infrastructure and manufacturing that have supported the growth in our economy over the past four years and would eliminate safeguards and checks and balances in our government.
But a top national security policy advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence said it is “just ludicrous” for Trump and his team to try to distance themselves from Project 2025 now.
“If you look at the collaborators and the authors of this plan, a lot of these people came directly from people that served in Trump’s Cabinet during this administration.”
For example, Russ Vought served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Trump. After Trump lost, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a leading coalition member behind Project 2025. And then earlier this year, Trump appointed Vought as policy director for the 2024 RNC platform committee, and Vought is considered by many as most likely Chief of Staff to President Trump if he is elected in November.
A detailed analysis of the people behind Project 2025 reveals that those behind the agenda include Trump’s former Cabinet secretaries, top White House officials and senior aides – including former Trump appointees to the Interior Department and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Over 140 individuals who worked with Trump have been involved in the development of Project 2025.
Trump and the Make America Great Again PAC ran paid advertising promoting Project 2025, and, in 2022 Trump praised Heritage and Project 2025 at a dinner hosted by the organization, stating:
“This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
Former President Trump’s running mate is also very close to the leaders and funders of Heritage and other organizations that support Project 2025.
Vance wrote the forward for Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ upcoming book, where Vance calls upon conservatives to “circle the wagons and load the muskets” to enact the Project 2025 agenda. The book publishers describe the book as a call for a “Second American Revolution.”
Roberts has already deemed Vance as the future leader of the MAGA and standard bearer for Heritage’s movement. “He is absolutely going to be one of the leaders – if not the leader – of our movement.” And, as he is now positioned to be Vice President, Vance seems to be ready to step into the Presidency with support from the leaders of Project 2025.
