The director of Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025 announced he would step down on Tuesday, drawing cheers from former President Donald Trump’s campaign which has worked to distance itself from the right-wing initiative.

Paul Dans told colleagues on Tuesday that he is leaving the project, The Post has confirmed.

“Friends and patriots, to everything there is a season. We completed what we set out to do, which was to create a unified conservative vision, bringing together over 110 leading organizations united behind the cause of deconstructing the administrative state,” Dans wrote in an email first obtained by Politico.

Democrats have used Project 2025 as a boogeyman and rallying cry against the Trump campaign, which hailed Dans’ news.

“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,” Trump campaign senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a joint statement.

Still, the Heritage Foundation stressed that Project 2025 will carry on after Dans’ departure – to the apparent dismay of the Trump campaign.

“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,” Wiles and LaCivita said.

Project 2025 began two years ago to hatch plans for the next Republican presidency, including a vast array of suggested executive actions and a list of potential candidates to serve in key staff positions.

The Heritage Foundation partnered with a litany of conservative groups and leaders – including some former members of the Trump administration – to craft the transition plan released a 900-page book detailing its strategy to overhaul the federal government in a conservative direction.

Dans – who served as chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management during Trump’s presidency – had been with Project 2025 since its inception.

Though he is now off the project, he will continue to work with the Heritage Foundation, according to its president Kevin Rogers.

“Under Paul Dans’ leadership, Project 2025 has 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,” Rogers said in a statement.

“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,” he added.

The Trump campaign had been vexed by Project 2025, claiming members affiliated with the program exaggerated their ties to the former president’s reelection efforts. 

Democrats had used the project as a cudgel against Trump to cast him as an extremist, zeroing in on some of its proposals – including calling for the Food and Drug Administration to reverse the approval of mifepistrone, part of a two-drug regimen to induce abortions. 

Trump, 78, has been publicly veering away from federal actions against abortion, saying the issue is one for individual states to decide.

Another contested suggestion in Project 2025’s plan is that the Health and Human Services Department should stick to a “biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.”

Project 2025 is also rife with plans to rip into the Department of Education and dismantle the Department of Homeland Security, among other federal entities.

Moreover, individuals affiliated with Project 2025 have made controversial statements that Democrats have sought to link to Trump.

For example, Democrats seized on comments by Rogers earlier this month claiming the US is “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

The recently rebranded Harris for President campaign has worked to unearth and highlight aspects of the Project 2025 agenda. 

Harris Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez shrugged off Dans’ move in a statement, stressing that “Project 2025 isn’t going anywhere.”

“Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot,” she said. “This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country.”

“What remains clear is that Trump, Vance, and the Project 2025 agenda will take America backwards: more abortion bans, more suffering, higher costs for the middle class, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, repeal of the Affordable Care Act, dirtier air and water, and empowering Trump to destroy American democracy,” she added.

But Trump himself has publicly called out the project, telling voters his fingerprints are nowhere near the Heritage initiative.  

“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,” he wrote on Truth Social earlier this month.