WASHINGTON — Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts will assume leadership of Project 2025 — the conservative initiative for a presidential transition that includes a call to criminalize the production and distribution of pornography — after its current director, Paul Dans, announced his departure Tuesday.
Although some media outlets and politicians framed the news in a way that suggests the suspension of the ambitious right-wing plan to provide a platform and staff for a second Trump administration, Project 2025 will reportedly continue reviewing resumés from like-minded executive branch hopefuls.
The Heritage Foundation told the Associated Press that Dans will leave the group in August and Roberts “will now run Project 2025 operations.”
“Project 2025’s website will remain live and the group will continue vetting resumes for its nearly 20,000-person database of potential officials eager to execute its vision for government,” Heritage told AP.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign issued another statement attempting to distance itself from Project 2025 and echoing the Republican presidential nominee’s previous claims denying that he was familiar with the initiative or even knows the many former Trump staffers directly associated with it.
Trump campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement Tuesday, “President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year 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.”
Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ campaign also issued a statement stressing that the ongoing initiative echoes Trump’s policy statements and that “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.”
Project 2025: From Blueprint to Trump Albatross
As XBIZ reported, for the past few weeks Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, which was published last year but not disavowed by the Trump campaign until Roberts implied in a June interview that he was ready for a potentially violent revolution.
In a post earlier this month on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump wrote, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Given Trump’s documented history of stating outright, easily debunked falsehoods, his allegation that he has “no idea who is behind” Project 2025 surprised few commentators.
Also notable was the former president’s vagueness about exactly which of Project 2025’s proposals he disagrees with.
Roberts Touts Project 2025's Success
On Tuesday, Roberts thanked Dans for helming Project 2025 as it “completed exactly what it set out to do: bringing together over 110 leading conservative organizations to create a unified conservative vision, motivated to devolve power from the unelected administrative state, and returning it to the people.”
Project 2025’s blueprint document for a second Trump administration — which the group repeatedly claimed until this month that it was planning to staff — states that pornography “has no claim to First Amendment protection.”
“Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women,” the document asserts. “Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
Main Image: Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump
