Heritage Foundation To Launch a ‘Conservative LinkedIn’ for Next GOP Presidency, Taking Early Aim at the ‘Deep State’

In preparation for the next Republican presidency, conservatives will soon launch a database and training course for those committed to their policy goals in the hopes of quickly staffing the federal government. The Sun spoke with the program’s director, Paul Dans, about his organization’s plan to get moving. The goal is to get “trained personnel identified, ready to start on day one and hit the ground running,” Mr. Dans said in a phone interview. The organization, known as Project 2025, has been incorporated into the conservative Heritage Foundation. Prior to starting the organization, Mr. Dans served as White House liaison and chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the hiring and employment of thousands of political appointees. Alongside his colleagues, Mr. Dans will implement the four pillars of the organization: getting names and resumes into their database, releasing a policy book on their goals, offering training courses led by alumni of Republican administrations on how to manage the bureaucracy, and developing a calendar for potential accomplishments in the first 180 days of the next presidency. Mr. Dans styles the first pillar as a kind of conservative LinkedIn. He wants to “get folks into a database where they can curate their own page and make a profile.” He said one of the mistakes of the Trump administration was not moving quickly enough to staff all political appointments in order to work through the bureaucracy. The courses, he said, “will be built out over the coming year that basically teaches people how government functions and how they need to function within the government to be effective.” Mr. Dans believes understanding how to deal with “recalcitrant bureaucrats” is one of the most important aspects of Project 2025. Conservatives have long maligned the federal workers who they say slow-walk policies and the rulemaking process to stymie their agenda. Last year, Steve Bannon called for 4,000 “shock troops” to be quickly appointed in order to allow for “deconstructing the administrative state.” Project 2025 is currently accepting submissions of names and resumes for the organization, though the training will not begin for a few weeks. Mr. Dans anticipates that “thousands” will have signed up before the next presidential election. Asked what he wants to hammer into the minds of his students, Mr. Dans said they need to be “as prepared as possible” and think about their federal service as being as significant and critical as those who serve in the military. Bureaucrats are in their positions “in some cases for life,” Mr. Dans said. “In some cases, the bureaucrat is happy to implement the policy, but oftentimes they will slow-walk” conservative goals. In the final days of his administration, President Trump signed Executive Order 13957, commonly known as Schedule F. The policy would allow the president to have an easier time firing these lifetime bureaucrats by making them at-will employees. Mr. Dans said such a policy is critical for conservative success and hopes all GOP presidential candidates will commit to doing something along those lines. “At the end of the day, the political appointee serves at the pleasure of the president,” he said. They must be an “instrument of the president to implement the agenda that he or she campaigned on.”As chief of staff at OPM, Mr. Dans was tasked with implementing the Schedule F order. “There are very valuable people in the federal workforce,” he said, and the order “doesn’t necessarily mean they will be terminated, but they will realize that if they go contrary to the political direction of the president, then their position will be in jeopardy.” Mr. Dans wants his soon-to-be students to know that they can’t be in search of “resume embellishing” or joining “the revolving door of Washington.” He hopes they will be ready to fight.

Heritage Foundation To Launch a ‘Conservative LinkedIn’ for Next GOP Presidency, Taking Early Aim at the ‘Deep State’

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