Project 2025 remains nonpartisan, true to 1980s good-gov’t inception despite raucous outcry, key figures say

While the Heritage Foundation’s latest Mandate for Leadership and its overarching Project 2025 have been turned into a right-wing-‘boogeyman’ style Democratic talking point and fodder for Trump critics, its founders and current leaders maintain that its work product past and present speak for itself.

President Donald Trump has also criticized the latest iteration and denied any involvement in its formation: "I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal," Trump said last month.

From the Reagan administration through the present, the Heritage Foundation has published its Mandate for Leadership series almost every election cycle.

However, project leaders, including former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, who is now considered the preeminent "elder statesman" of the conservative movement, contend there is nothing radical about the endeavor.

In an interview on Wednesday, Meese said the major difference between 1980 and 2024 is that the mechanics of the project have changed.

"In the first one, in 1981, it was much more organizational, with information on structure and organizational norms, where – later on in 1989 – it was much more individual policy issues-based," he said.

PROJECT 2025 ISSUES BLISTERING RESPONSE TO HARRIS VIA DOZENS OF INDEPENDENT FACT CHECKS

After then-President-elect Reagan named Meese director of his transition team, Meese recalled being invited to a dinner with members of the Heritage Foundation and other conservatives and being offered early proofs of the 1981 Mandate for Leadership itself.

Charles Heatherly, who worked on the first project during the 1980 cycle, said on Thursday that the Carter crew had been approached to