Project 2025 S Chief Architect Says Trump Is Executing The Plan Beyond

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 28, 2025, 4:55 PM

project 2025 s chief architect says trump is executing the plan beyond

Thank you for reading! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value in-depth analysis through a pro-democracy lens, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference. Donald Trump spent the Summer of 2024 desperately lying to voters about his ties to Project 2025.

After he won, he picked at least 11 Project 2025 authors, contributors, and advisory board members for top jobs. Once he took office, he immediately pursued the Project 2025 agenda. For those of us paying attention, this was no surprise. Since the fall of 2023, I’ve written articles and made MSNBC appearances warning about how Trump’s official Agenda 47 directly aligns with Project 2025. Now, we’re witnessing the Heritage Foundation’s playbook unfold in real-time, and one of its chief architects is openly bragging about it. Paul Dans served as director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation until August 2024, when he was forced out.

Dans’s resignation from the project came as the Trump Campaign was receiving public backlash for its ties to Project 2025. Trump’s team falsely sought to separate themselves from the endeavor, so the Heritage Foundation had Dans take the fall with a publicized resignation. But, as I noted in my article at the time, Project 2025 was still actively recruiting loyalists, and its policies were already embedded in Trump’s Agenda 47. Now, after months in the wilderness, Paul Dans is speaking out and seeking credit. This weekend, Politico published an interview headlined “The Architect of Project 2025 Is Ready for His Victory Lap.” Trump publicly disavowed the conservative blueprint on the campaign trail

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We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it. Eight months after Donald Trump publicly distanced himself from Project 2025, the conservative blueprint appears to have influenced Trump’s early decisions — a reality that one of the authors says was “beyond his wildest... The plan to restructure the US administration, with people loyal to President Donald Trump, is illuminated by the new president’s loyal ally and “architect” of the conservative manifesto “Project 2025,” Paul Dans. In an interview with Kathimerini, the lawyer, who also worked for the first Trump administration and for two years overseeing the drafting of the 900-page program for the second administration, warns that those who... Dans had stepped down last July, as director of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that had been commissioned to draft the “Project 2025” document. Trump was then said to want to distance himself from the proposals contained in the plan.

In his first two weeks back in the White House, however, the president seems to be implementing that agenda to the letter, as Dans notes. During the election process, both sides emphasized “Project 2025.” What does this, for many, radical project stand for? I think the Democrats tried to cast it as radical. It is a reform, a massive change, and it actually demarcates the end of the “progressive era” and the return of the American government back to its constitutional form, which was put in place... So, what we are calling for is the restoration of democracy, not the so-called “end of democracy” that our friends on the left have tried to couch it as. And “Project 2025” is now accomplishing its goal, which was always to make sure that the next president could hit the ground running on day one with a series of policies and personnel, and...

President Trump offered buyout packages to federal employees to resign. To many, Trump is implementing “Schedule F.” In your opinion, what does “Schedule F” mean for the state and how crucial is it for the new administration to have its people in state positions? “Schedule F” is part of a larger personnel reform, the essence of which is to put Americans back into their government. What has happened over the last 100 years is a progressive government run by elites who are not held accountable. Thus, we have a permanent class in Washington who cannot be removed. With President Donald Trump’s radical rehaul of America well underway, right-wing policy engineer Russell Vought wants you to believe Project 2025 was never meant to be his road map.

During Sunday’s episode of “State of the Union,” CNN moderator Dana Bash got an icy answer when she asked Vought if the overlap between Trump’s agenda and the hyper-conservative political program meant that Project... Though the president repeatedly distanced himself from Project 2025 during his campaign, second-term Trump achievements like eliminating DEI, banning transgender troops and sending the military to crack down on the southern border were all... But Vought, who is now Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, shot down the idea that the Heritage Foundation-helmed initiative inspired any of the president’s actions. Claiming Trump was “very public” about his plans during his campaign, the political operative told Bash it is “delusional” to think the president was not the sole architect of his executive strategy. Eight months after Donald Trump publicly distanced himself from Project 2025, the conservative blueprint appears to have influenced Trump’s early decisions — a reality that one of the authors says was “beyond his wildest... The 900-plus-page policy book details how a second Trump administration could overhaul the federal government as America knew it, like dismantling departments, expanding his executive authority, putting an end to diversity, equity, and inclusion...

On the campaign trail, Democrats warned about the dangers of Project 2025 while Trump repeatedly distanced himself from it. “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” he wrote on Truth Social last July. Later that month, Paul Dans, a lawyer and chief architect of Project 2025, resigned. Now, he says he has no hard feelings and is thrilled that the second Trump administration appears to be following the controversial blueprint. “It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams,” Dans told Politico, when asked if Trump was diverging from his vision.

“It’s not going to be the easiest road to hoe going forward. 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.”

Project 2025 S Chief Architect Says Trump Is Executing The Plan Beyond

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