By Li Khan, The Island Packet (Hilton Head Island, S.C.)
HILTON HEAD, S.C. — Paul Dans wants you to know two things.
First, that Project 2025 was born at his “kitchen table.”
And second: U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s 33-year reign in Washington, D.C., must come to an end.
“There is a time for a purpose for every season, and the time now is to get rid of Lindsey Graham,” Dans said at a meet and greet at the Old Oyster Factory on Hilton Head Monday evening.
Dans, formerly the director of Project 2025 for the Heritage Foundation, is mounting a primary challenge to Graham, the high-profile Republican and staunch ally of President Donald Trump in the Republican primaries for the 2026 U.S. Senate election.
In March, Trump endorsed Graham via a social media post.
Dans has heavily criticized Graham as a “warmonger,” and vows to put a stop to “endless wars.”
“We had three wars, endless wars, that broke so many people, that spilled American blood, that spent trillions of dollars abroad,” Dans said. “I doubt any of you are going to vacation in Iraq anytime soon, like nothing happened. Really, we just broke it and left.”
Dans called U.S. spending in Ukraine into question, a subject that has become a point of division within the Republican Party.
Graham faces another challenger in the Republican primaries next year: Greenville businessman Mark Lynch. Both are staunch Trump loyalists campaigning on fierce jabs at Graham. Both have used the slogan “God Family Country.”
Who is Paul Dans?
Dans is best known for directing Project 2025, a political initiative created by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Established in 2022, and published in 2023, the 887-page document sought to provide a blueprint for the next conservative presidency. It also included a personnel database of potential candidates willing to serve in the administration.
“What essentially it was, was a plan to be ready to go day one for the next conservative president,” Dans said.
As leader of the project, Dans said he built the structure of the plan, and brought together over 110 conservative organizations to help write it.
The project received harsh criticism from Democrats, who called it “dystopian.” Trump’s campaign distanced itself from the plan and disavowed the project. The Heritage Foundation subsequently announced that Dans would step down.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has implemented many of the policies outlined in Project 2025.
At the meet-and-greet on Hilton Head, Dans read out a few key objectives from Project 2025 that have been implemented:
—Reinstate service members who were fired because of their refusal to comply with COVID-19 vaccine mandates. (Page 103; implemented Jan. 27, 2025)
—Rescind the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission climate disclosure rule. (Page 832; implemented Feb. 11, 2025)
—Remove the words “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” “diversity, equity and inclusion,” “abortion,” “reproductive health” and “and gender equality” from every federal rule. (Page 4; implemented Jan. 31, 2025)
—Enforce the Hyde amendment banning any federal funds from being used for abortion and abortion counseling. (Page 471; implemented Jan. 24, 2025)
—Expand public funding for private schools. (Page 350; implemented Jan. 29 2025)
—Deploy active-duty military personnel and National Guardsmen to the border. (Page 555; implemented Jan. 20, 2025)
—Restore “freedom of speech” and end “federal censorship” by prohibiting the U.S government from engaging in activities related to combating the spread of “so-called misinformation and disinformation” by Americans who are not tied to any plausible criminal activity. (Page 550; implemented Jan. 20, 2025)
“Every day that I think another one of these Trump policies gets adopted, it feels like an angel gets his wings from Project 2025,” Dans said. “These are the way the president endorses me and I’ll take it.”
Dans: Stop ‘endless wars’
A key talking point for Dans, and a major gripe he has with Graham, is that the U.S. needs to stop engaging in “endless wars.”
“We cannot keep asking asking the bravest among us, these soldiers, to lay down their lives … for objectives that don’t fit in our national security interest,” Dans said.
He draws ties between heavy government spending and obstacles to homeownership for young Americans.
“All these endless wars have made this massive deficit that crowds out private borrowing to buy houses,” Dans said. “The kids today, the average age of the first time homeowner is 38 years old.”
Dans suggested the money spent on “endless wars” could be used to repair and build homes in American cities.
“What we have to concentrate on is building more starter homes and certainly repairing housing stock out in rural America as well, and that means not spending $300 billion in Ukraine,” Dans continued. “Let’s rebuild Sumter. Let’s rebuild Orangeburg.”
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, $187 billion has been “appropriated” towards the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine response, as of June 30, 2025.
Dans on immigration
In an interview with The Island Packet, Dans described himself as the “grandson of immigrants,” and understands that people migrate to the U.S. to “make a better life for their family.”
“But at some point, we have to be a nation of borders,” Dans said.
In September, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted an operation outside a Bluffton plant nursery that led to the arrest of five individuals charged with using other’s Social Security numbers for work.
Plant nurseries, landscaping companies, construction firms and cleaning companies are among the many businesses in the Hilton Head area that rely heavily on immigrant labor. Approximately, 17,900 residents of the Hilton Head-Bluffton-Beaufort area were born outside the United States, according to U.S. Census data.
During peak season, business owners report that they rely on guest worker programs to staff key roles. They commonly link staffing challenges to Hilton Head’s rising cost of living and heavy traffic.
Asked for a solution to Hilton Head’s labor problems, Dans criticized “the left” for allowing the labor market to “flood” with migrant labor, arguing that many American workers “have been run out of the workforce.”
“We have to be a nation of laws fundamentally,” Dan said. “To be able to come in and break the law as your first official act is a problem for our country. So I think one, let’s get the left to even agree that criminal aliens can be deported.”
Asked if he would support making it easier for people to immigrate to the U.S. legally, Dans said the U.S. “can’t solve all the world’s problems by letting people here.”
He suggested immigration has a “reverse effect” where “the best and brightest are leaving their homelands.”
“I think to the extent that we can get Americans investing in these places and making life better in a way, and for people in Central America to not have to come here in the first place, that would be positive,” Dans said.
Tenet Media and Tim Pool
In July 2024, Dans appeared on an episode of “The Culture War” with right-wing podcaster Tim Pool on Tenet Media called, “The Media is Lying About Project 2025,” USA Today reported. The episode is no longer available on YouTube but can still be found on Apple podcasts.
Tenet Media became the subject of media scrutiny in September 2024, when the U.S. Department of Justice released an indictment alleging that a “Tennessee-based online content creation company” had received $10 million from Russian media company RT.
The indictment did not name the company, referring to the Tennessee company only as “U.S. company.” American media outlets identified the company as Tenet Media.
The indictment alleges that, after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, RT created “an ‘entire empire of covert projects’ designed to shape public opinion in ‘Western audiences’” as a response to sanctions.
YouTube subsequently took down Tenet Media’s channel in September 2024.
Dans told The Island Packet the allegations “had nothing to do with me,” and that it was “some kind of lie, or a salacious lie.”
“I don’t know about those allegations at all, but they had nothing to do with me, honestly,” Dans said.
_____
© 2025 The Island Packet (Hilton Head, S.C.). Visit www.islandpacket.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
