Lindsey Graham Gets Challenged by Project 2025 Architect

A chief architect of Project 2025, Paul Dans, is launching a Republican primary challenge to Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, joining a crowded field that will test the loyalties of President Trump and his MAGA movement in next year's midterm election. Dans told the AP the Trump administration's federal workforce reductions and cuts to federal programs are what he had hoped for in drafting Project 2025. But he said there's "more work to do," particularly in the Senate. "What we've done with Project 2025 is really change the game in terms of closing the door on the progressive era," Dans said in an AP interview. "If you look at where the chokepoint is, it's the United States Senate. That's the headwaters of the swamp."

Dans, who is set to formally announce his campaign at an event Wednesday in Charleston, said Graham has spent most of his career in Washington and "it's time to show him the door." Challenging the long-serving Graham, who has routinely batted back contenders over the years, is something of a political long shot in what is fast becoming a crowded field ahead of the November 2026 midterm election that will determine control of Congress. Trump early on gave his endorsement of Graham, a political confidant and regular golfing partner of the president, despite their on-again-off-again relationship. Graham has secured the state's leading Republicans, Sen. Tim Scott and Gov. Henry McMaster, to chair his 2026 run and has millions of dollars in his campaign account.

Other candidates include Republican former Lt. Gov. André Bauer, a wealthy developer, and Democratic challenger Dr. Annie Andrews. Dans expects to have support from Project 2025 allies, as well as Trump supporters in the state who have tired of Graham. After Trump left the White House, Dans went to work at the Heritage Foundation as he organized Project 2025. The nearly 1,000-page policy blueprint, with chapters written by leading conservative thinkers, calls for dismantling the federal government and downsizing its workforce, among other right-wing proposals for the current White House. "I believe that there is a 'deep state' out there, and I'm the single one who stepped forward at the end of the first term of Trump and really started to drain the swamp," Dans said.