As reports about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and concerns about Joe Biden’s ability to beat him continue to permeate headlines, we mustn’t be distracted from how Trump will govern if given another presidential term. “Project 2025” provides a roadmap for a second Trump administration to target reproductive health care, efforts to remediate the climate crisis, immigrants, unions, civil rights for LGBTQ people, and administrative agencies that protect our health and safety. His first administration also proved he is eager to impose huge tax cuts for corporations and the superrich.

Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, whom Trump tapped to be his running mate, favors many of Trump’s white supremacist, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-climate policies.

A combination of Trump’s authoritarian character and the Supreme Court’s grant of absolute immunity to U.S. presidents for official acts will mean it’s open season on Trump’s perceived enemies should he secure a second term — and the policies he aims to implement are chilling.

The likely priorities of a second Trump administration are spelled out in the Heritage Foundation’s 920-page blueprint for a radical right-wing agenda called “Mandate for Leadership: A Conservative Promise” for 2025. Commonly known as “Project 2025,” this roadmap to fascism, sponsored by more than 100 reactionary groups and spearheaded by over a dozen former Trump officials, cost more than $20 million to produce.

“The next Administration will face a significant challenge in unwinding policies and procedures that are used to advance radical gender, racial, and equity initiatives under the banner of science,” Trump’s former Budget Director Russell Vought, president of the Center for Renewing America (CRA), wrote in one section of the blueprint. “Similarly, the Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding.”

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on July 5, “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” Still, he went on to wish them good luck.

“The Trump campaign has tried to distance itself from the most radical aspects of Project 2025. There are no benefits — only political liabilities — to endorsing so many specifics,” Jonathan Blitzer wrote in The New Yorker.

“Trump’s supporters already know what he stands for, in a general sense. And there is the more delicate matter of the former President’s ego,” Blitzer said. A former senior White House official told Blitzer that Trump “wouldn’t want to be seen as taking guidance from any other human being. He doesn’t like to be seen as someone who doesn’t know everything already.”

But Trump’s anti-immigrant, anti-union, anti-education, pro-fossil fuel “Agenda 47” has “tremendous overlap” with Project 2025, said Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts. Trump’s attempts to distance himself from the project are “a political tactical decision,” Roberts added. Project 2025 Director Paul Dans noted in a video that Trump is “very bought in with this.”

“Project 2025 is more than an idea, it’s a dystopian plot that’s already in motion to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish checks and balances, chip away at church-state separation, and impose a far-right agenda that infringes on basic liberties and violates public will,” California Rep. Jared Huffman, who leads a Stop Project 2025 Task Force of House........

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