The Freedom Foundation Religion Foundation warns that although the primary architect of Project 2025 just announced that he is stepping down, the threat posed by the autocratic and Christian nationalist roadmap continues.
Earlier today, the Heritage Foundation announced that Paul Dans, who directed the controversial 2025 Presidential Transition Project, is leaving his role in August. Dans previously served as chief of staff and White House liaison at the Office of Personnel Management during the Trump administration.
News media report that Dans is stepping down amid the intense scrutiny of the 900-plus page proposal for the first 180 days in office of the next Republican president. Yet Politico reports that the work of Project 2025 — which includes policy and personnel prescriptions for a Republican administration — will continue, according to a person familiar with the project who was granted anonymity to discuss the matter.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts confirmed in a tweet, “When we began Project 2025 in April 2022, we set a timeline for the project to conclude its policy drafting after the two party conventions this year, and we are sticking to that timeline. Paul, who built the project from scratch and bravely led this endeavor over the past two years, will be departing the team and moving up to the front where the fight remains.” Roberts emphasized that “Project 2025 will continue our efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels — federal, state, and local. I look forward to leading this team to continued success.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Christian nationalists take cover when their unpopular policies were widely exposed. Project Blitz, for example, was a precursor for Project 2025 launched in 2016 by Christian nationalists to remake the United States in their own theocratic image, one step at a time. After FFRF and 42 other national groups united to oppose Project Blitz, the group was renamed as “Freedom for All.”
Project 2025 was convened by the Heritage Foundation and has a reported whopping $22 million budget and an “advisory board” that consists of dozens of notorious organizations. Some are well-known for advancing policies that favor wealthy corporations over the American people, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). But the advisory board also includes Christian nationalist groups committed to promoting Christian supremacy and dismantling civil rights for everyone else — such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, First Liberty Institute, Moms for Liberty and Turning Point USA. These wealthy organizations have worked to promote a false, Christian nationalist version of American history.
The central goal of Project 2025 is to consolidate power in an Oval Office run by its creators and supporters. Project 2025 openly calls for eliminating the independence of the Department of Justice and other federal agencies. It would also eliminate the Department of Education — thereby removing all federal support of public schools and weakening them across the country. It calls for mandatory religious exemptions from accreditation “standards and criteria” for private schools.
As noted by law school Professor Mary Ziegler, FFRF’s 2023 “Forward Award” honoree, Project 2025 calls on the FDA to limit and then eliminate access to mifepristone, the besieged medication abortion pill. The secretary of Health and Human Services could override the FDA’s drug approval decisions, creating a second avenue for a strengthened executive to ban mifepristone. Project 2025 also argues that the Justice Department should enforce the antediluvian Comstock Act, passed in 1873, which in part barred use of the mails for abortifacients. If federally enforced, the Comstock Act could override state abortion rights protections.
Finally, Project 2025 takes aim at efforts to address climate change — unsurprising given the Heritage Foundation’s reported ties to fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch. Crucial agency offices related to energy transition would be eliminated in the Department of Energy. The Environmental Protection Agency’s focus on climate change would be gutted and those favoring drilling and privatizing public lands would be in charge. This aligns with the trend of climate change denial by Christian nationalist organizations.
“Project 2025 is an existential threat, not just to the First Amendment but to our entire democracy,” notes FFRF Co-President Dan Barker, “and now that the threat has been revealed to the country, Christian conservatives want to disown it and pretend it doesn’t exist.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 40,000 members and several chapters across the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
