There's no reason to pretend about Project 2025 anymore;

[D. Spaulding]

Federal Agency Scrubs Metadata After Memo Exposes Authors Were Affiliated With Controversial Project 2025
https://www.mediaite.com/news/federal-agency-scrubs-metadata-after-memo-exposes-authors-were-affiliated-with-controversial-project-2025/

And from MSNBC:

As a candidate, Donald Trump said he knew "nothing" about Project 2025, the conservative playbook put together by a group of some of his former top advisers.

As president, he's following through on a lot of its ideas.

Some overlap between a Republican president and a conservative think tank's policy ideas would be expected, but Trump's immediate embrace of very specific ideas in the 900-page proposal makes his disavowals of it on the campaign trail seem disingenuous, at best.

In some cases, Project 2025 was building on Trump's ideas, as with its proposal to reimplement a plan from his first term to gain more control over federal workers. In other cases, such as withdrawing from a global tax deal, the Trump administration seems to be picking up on an idea in Project 2025 that the candidate hadn't said much about.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/project-2025-trump-executive-orders-rcna189395