House Democrats step up to try to stop Project 2025 plans for a Trump White House

WASHINGTON (AP) — Warning about the far-right Project 2025 agenda for a Donald Trump White House, a group of House Democrats has launched a task force to start fighting the proposal and stop it from taking hold if the Republican former president returns to power.

Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California is unveiling The Stop Project 2025 Task Force on Tuesday, the latest sign that congressional Democrats and outside groups are treating Trump’s campaign seriously in the expected rematch against Democratic President Joe Biden this fall.

“The stakes just couldn’t be higher,” Huffman told The Associated Press.

Huffman said the Project 2025 agenda will hit “like a Blitzkrieg” and lawmakers need to be ready.

“If we're trying to react to it and understand it in real time, it's too late,” he said. “We need to see it coming well in advance and prepare ourselves accordingly.”

The Democratic-led task force comes as groups on and off Capitol Hill are increasingly alarmed over Project 2025, a sweeping blueprint from the conservative Heritage Foundation that is preparing to quickly help staff a new GOP administration with plans for dismantling aspects of the federal government and installing loyalists for a second Trump term.

Kevin Roberts, the president of The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America, scoffed at the “unserious” effort and said the left is “in a frenzy” as Project 2025 tries to wrest control of the federal bureaucracy.

“Project 2025 will not be ‘stopped,’" Roberts said in a statement. He said the Democrats fighting Project 2025 are "more than welcome to try. We will not give up and we will win.”

While the Trump campaign has repeatedly said that outside groups do not speak for the former president,...