A year ago, Paul Dans was the director of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative plan from which MAGA officials distanced themselves as the presidential election approached.
Democrats, for their part, warned of the plan’s “radical” agenda, saying it would involve banning abortion, eliminating LGBTQ+ rights and seizing complete presidential power over federal agencies, as well as eliminating some of them, including the Department of Education.
Trump himself tried not to associate his name with the program, stating on Truth Social that he had no idea who was behind it.
However, two months after the MAGA leader’s return to the White House, it seems clear that the administration is trying to accomplish many of the goals that were listed in the Heritage Foundation’s plan. Dans himself, this week, said he was pleased with how Project 2025 has become the de facto “playbook” of the Trump 2.0 government.
“It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams,” Dans said. “The deep state is going to get its breath back. But the way that they’ve been able to move and upset the orthodoxy, and at the same time really capture the imagination of the people, I think portends a great four years.”
“We had hoped, those of us who worked putting together Project 2025, that the next conservative president would seize the day”, he added to Politico, “but Trump is seizing every minute of every hour. Project 2025 was done outside of President Trump. It was done by the conservative movement to really say, ‘This is what we believe in. This is what we want to see in the next conservative president’”.
“Our Constitution vests the executive power squarely and solely in the president of the United States”, Dans continued, “And over the last 100 years, these encroachments on that power were not only unconstitutional, they were anti-democratic and lacking in moral legitimacy in the sense that the people vote every four years for a president to put forward new policy, and if his policies are being impeded by an unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy, that is a problem that needs reformation.”
Dans then commented on the possible closure of the Department of Education, stating: “It’s been an historic target of the conservative movement from the time it was stood up. The damage done by the federalization of education — you can’t argue with the results — America earns a failing grade. the declining test scores, the poor literacy rate — it’s just not working.”
Finally, the former director of Project 2025 praised Elon Musk’s work as head of DOGE, and supported the dismantling of USAID, an agency he said had been totally disrupted during the Biden administration.
