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”.
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.
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