Paul Dans

Paul Dans is an American lawyer and conservative political operative best known for leading Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's 2025 presidential transition project intended to reshape the United States federal government to reflect right-wing policies. Dans was fired by the Heritage Foundation on July 25, 2024.
Dans' father was a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and his mother had worked for National Institutes of Health and then became a schoolteacher. Dans has three siblings. His ancestors' roots are in the Catholic faith.
Dans received a Bachelor of Science with a major in economics and a Master of Science in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dans worked at architecture and planning firms before attending law school at the University of Virginia, where he was president of the law school's Federalist Society chapter. He later practiced law in New York City.
Following law school, Dans worked at multiple law firms, including LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae and Debevoise & Plimpton, before running a solo law practice for a number of years. In 2009, Dans was hired to help defend Chevron in a class action lawsuit for oil pollution in Ecuador.
Dans worked as a senior advisor in the Office of Community Planning and Development at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Dans then served in the first Trump administration as chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, where he managed the federal agency in charge of human resources policy for the more than two million federal workers. He also served as the Office of Personnel Management's White House liaison and worked with the White House Office of Presidential Personnel to staff the approximately 4,000 presidential appointees across the federal government. Dans worked closely with John McEntee to remove longtime public servants from government. Dans was hired without the knowledge of Dale Cabaniss, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, who resigned abruptly in 2020.
Dans helped to launch Project 2025 in April 2022 and led it until August 2024. Dans described the project as "systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army [of] aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state".
In 2023, Dans stated that Project 2025 had a "great" relationship with President Donald Trump. However, RealClearPolitics reported that Dans had, in fact, repeatedly clashed with the 2024 Trump campaign.
On July 30, 2024, Dans announced he was stepping down from his position as project director, the following month following public criticism by Trump. However, RealClearPolitics reported that Dans was terminated from his position after Heritage had concluded an investigation into his alleged abusive and demeaning behavior, especially towards women. His request for a $3.1 million lump sum, following the termination of his tenure, was rejected.
Paul Dans's twin brother Thomas Emanuel (Tom) Dans is a venture capitalist and was an official in Donald Trump's first administration. In 2025, his organization American Daybreak coordinated controversial trips to Greenland by Donald Trump Jr. and Usha Vance, which were criticized for their promotion of the second Trump administration's Greenland policy.