The force behind Project 2025: Kevin Roberts
Heritage Foundation was founded in 1973, but perhaps its most influential moment came during Reagan’s first term with its first “Mandate for Leadership,” the blueprint the foundation is now trying to replicate with Project 2025. The foundation claims that Reagan gave copies of the manifesto to “every member of his Cabinet” and that nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations it laid out were either “adopted or attempted”.
Project 25 is not new its a kinda rebrand from the Reagan times
Republicans, hardcore Republicans, have always wanted america to head down this path
Same as Reagan was seen as a possible instrument in completing that vision they now see Trump as that instrument in getting the job done
While the Trump campaign initially said the project aligned well with their Agenda 47 proposals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_47
the project(25) has increasingly caused friction with the Trump campaign, which has generally avoided specific policy proposals that can be used to criticize him - The Heritage Foundation has been publishing new editions of its Mandate for Leadership series in schedules that run parallel with each presidential election since 1981
Trump has endorsed a number of the Project 2025 ideas in his speeches and on his website
Nearly half of the project's collaborating organizations have received dark money contributions from a network of fundraising groups linked to Leonard Leo, a major conservative donor and key figure in guiding the selection of Trump's federal judge nominees.
Axios reported that while Heritage had briefed other 2024 Republican presidential primaries candidates on the project, it is "undeniably a Trump-driven operation"
Like many thinktanks that are for extreme things they things evolve through time, heritage foundation and their views have always been there project 25 is no different, it's just getting attention, and rightly so, being aware doesn't mean you have to jump on the outrage, doom & gloom, the world will end, bandwagon
There will always be hardcore hardliners from thinktanks & other organisations who wanna push their agenda onto political candidates right & left side of politics in every country