his work, Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise, is a col- lective effort of hundreds of volunteers who have banded together in the spirit of advancing positive change for America. Our work is by no means

the comprehensive compendium of conservative policies, nor is our group the exclusive cadre of conservative thinkers. The ideas expressed in this volume are not necessarily shared by all. What unites us is the drive to make our country better.

First and foremost, we thank the chapter authors and contributors who gave so freely of their time in service of their country.

We were particularly grateful to have the help of dedicated members of The Heritage Foundation’s management and policy teams. Executive Vice President Derrick Morgan, Chief of Staff Wesley Coopersmith, Associate Director of Project 2025 Spencer Chretien, and Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies Director Paul Ray devoted a significant amount of their valuable time to reviewing and editing the lengthy manuscript and provided expert advice and insight.

The job of transforming the work of dozens of authors and hundreds of contributors into a cohesive manuscript fell upon Heritage’s formidable team of editors led by Director of Research Editors Therese Pennefather, Senior Editor William T. Poole, Marla Hess, Jessica Lowther, Karina Rollins, and Kathleen Scaturro, without whose tireless efforts you would not be reading these words. The talented work of Data Graphics Services Manager John Fleming, Manager of Web Development and Print Projects Jay Simon, Director of Marketing Elizabeth Fender, Senior Graphic Designer Grace Desandro, and Senior Designer Melissa Bluey came together to bring the volume to life. We also thank the dedicated junior staff who provided immeasurable assistance, especially Jordan Embree, Sarah Calvis, and Jonathan Moy.

Most important, we are grateful to the leadership, supporters, and donors of each of the Project 2025 advisory board member organizations and those of The Heritage Foundation, without whom Project 2025 would not be possible.

Thank you.

Paul Dans & Steven Groves

The Project 2025 Advisory Board

Alabama Policy Institute Alliance Defending Freedom American Compass

The American Conservative America First Legal Foundation

American Accountability Foundation American Center for Law and Justice American Cornerstone Institute American Council of Trustees and Alumni American Legislative Exchange Council The American Main Street Initiative American Moment

American Principles Project Center for Equal Opportunity

Center for Family and Human Rights Center for Immigration Studies Center for Renewing America Claremont Institute

Coalition for a Prosperous America Competitive Enterprise Institute Conservative Partnership Institute Concerned Women for America Defense of Freedom Institute Ethics and Public Policy Center Family Policy Alliance

Family Research Council First Liberty Institute Forge Leadership Network

Foundation for Defense of Democracies Foundation for Government Accountability FreedomWorks

The Heritage Foundation Hillsdale College

Honest Elections Project

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Independent Women’s Forum Institute for the American Worker Institute for Energy Research Institute for Women’s Health Intercollegiate Studies Institute James Madison Institute

Keystone Policy

The Leadership Institute Liberty University

National Association of Scholars

National Center for Public Policy Research Pacific Research Institute

Patrick Henry College Personnel Policy Operations

Recovery for America Now Foundation 1792 Exchange

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Texas Public Policy Foundation Teneo Network

Young America’s Foundation

The 2025 Presidential Transition Project

A NOTE ON “PROJECT 2025”

e want you! The 2025 Presidential Transition Project is the conservative movement’s unified effort to be ready for the next conservative Administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025. Welcome

to the mission. By opening this book, you are now a part of it. Indeed, one set of eyes reading these passages will be those of the 47th President of the United States, and we hope every other reader will join in making the incoming Admin- istration a success.

History teaches that a President’s power to implement an agenda is at its apex during the Administration’s opening days. To execute requires a well-conceived, coordinated, unified plan and a trained and committed cadre of personnel to implement it. In recent election cycles, presidential candidates normally began transition planning in the late spring of election year or even after the party’s nomination was secured. That is too late. The federal government’s complexity and growth advance at a seemingly logarithmic rate every four years. For conservatives to have a fighting chance to take on the Adminis- trative State and reform our federal government, the work must start now. The entirety of this effort is to support the next conservative President, whoever he or she may be.

In the winter of 1980, the fledging Heritage Foundation handed to President-elect Ronald Reagan the inaugural Mandate for Leadership. This collective work by conser- vative thought leaders and former government hands—most of whom were not part of Heritage—set out policy prescriptions, agency by agency for the incoming President. The book literally put the conservative movement and Reagan on the same page, and the revolution that followed might never have been, save for this band of committed and volunteer activists. With this volume, we have gone back to the future—and then some.

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

It’s not 1980. In 2023, the game has changed. The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before. The task at hand to reverse this tide and restore our Republic to its original moorings is too great for any one conservative policy shop to spearhead. It requires the collective action of our movement. With the quickening approach of January 2025, we have two years and one chance to get it right.

Project 2025 is more than 50 (and growing) of the nation’s leading conservative organizations joining forces to prepare and seize the day. The axiom goes “person- nel is policy,” and we need a new generation of Americans to answer the call and come to serve. This book is functionally an invitation for you the reader—Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, and Ms. Smith—to come to Washington or support those who can. Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.

The project is built on four pillars.

• Pillar I—this volume—puts in one place a consensus view of how major federal agencies must be governed and where disagreement exists brackets out these differences for the next President to choose a path.

• Pillar II is a personnel database that allows candidates to build their own professional profiles and our coalition members to review and voice their recommendations. These recommendations will then be collated and shared with the President-elect’s team, greatly streamlining the appointment process.

• Pillar III is the Presidential Administration Academy, an online educational system taught by experts from our coalition. For the newcomer, this will explain how the government functions and how to function in government. For the experienced, we will host in-person seminars with advanced training and set the bar for what is expected of senior leadership.

• In Pillar IV—the Playbook—we are forming agency teams and drafting tran- sition plans to move out upon the President’s utterance of “so help me God.”

As Americans living at the approach of our nation’s 250th birthday, we have been given much. As conservatives, we are as much required to steward this precious heritage for the next generation. On behalf of our coalition partners, we thank you and invite you to come join with us at project2025.org.

Paul Dans

Director, Project 2025

Authors

Daren Bakst is Deputy Director, Center for Energy and Environment, and Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Before joining CEI, Daren was a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, where he played a lead- ing role in the launch of the organization’s new energy and environmental center. For a decade, he led Heritage’s food and agricultural policy work, and he edited and co-authored Heritage’s book Farms and Free Enterprise. He has testified numerous times before Congress, has appeared frequently on media outlets, and has played leadership roles in such organizations such as the Federalist Society, American Agricultural Law Association, and Food and Drug Law Institute (serving on the Food and Drug Law Journal’s editorial advisory board).

Jonathan Berry is managing partner at Boyden Gray & Associates PLLC. He served as acting Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor, overseeing all aspects of rulemaking and policy development. At the U.S. Depart- ment of Justice, he assisted with the development of regulatory policy and with the nominations of Justice Neil Gorsuch and dozens of other judges. He previ- ously served as Chief Counsel for the Trump transition and earlier clerked for Associate Justice Samuel Alito and Judge Jerry Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He is a graduate of Yale College and Columbia University School of Law.

Lindsey M. Burke is Director of the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Burke served on Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s transition steering committee and landing team for education. She serves on the Board of Visitors for George Mason University, the board of the Educational Free- dom Institute, and the advisory board of the Independent Women’s Forum’s Education Freedom Center. Dr. Burke’s research has been published in such journals as Social Science Quarterly, Educational Research and Evaluation, and Research in Educational Administration and Leadership. She holds a BA from Hollins University, an MA from the University of Virginia, and a PhD from George Mason University.

David R. Burton is Senior Fellow in Economic Policy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He focuses on securities regulation, tax policy, business law, entrepreneurship, administra- tive law, financial privacy, the U.S. Department of Commerce, corporate welfare,

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

international investment, international information sharing, the U.S. economic relationship with China, and climate-related financial risk. Previously, Burton was General Counsel at the National Small Business Association; a partner in the Argus Group; Vice President, Finance, and General Counsel for New England Machinery; and manager of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Tax Policy Center. He holds a JD from the University of Maryland School of Law and a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Adam Candeub is a professor of law at Michigan State University. His scholarly research focuses on telecommunication, antitrust, and Internet issues. He served as acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Deputy Associate Attorney Gen- eral at the Justice Department during the Trump Administration. He received his BA magna cum laude from Yale University and his JD magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Dustin J. Carmack is Research Fellow for Cybersecurity, Intelligence, and Emerg- ing Technologies in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation. Previously, he served in the Intelligence Community as Chief of Staff to the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe. In Congress, he served as Chief of Staff to Congressman John Ratcliffe (TX-04) and Congressman Ron DeSantis (FL-06). Mr. Carmack studied at Truman State University in Missouri and Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Brendan Carr has nearly 20 years of private-sector and public-sector experience in communications and tech policy. He currently serves as the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission. Prior to this role, Carr served as the Federal Communication Commission’s General Counsel. Earlier, he worked as an attorney at Wiley Rein LLP. Previously, he clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. After graduating from Georgetown University, he earned his JD magna cum laude from the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law where he served as an editor of the Catholic Univer- sity Law Review.

Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., MD, is Founder and Chairman of the American Corner- stone Institute and previously served as the 17th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Born in Detroit to a single mother with a third-grade education, Dr. Carson was raised to love reading and education. He attended Yale and earned his MD from the University of Michigan Medical School. For nearly 30 years, Dr. Carson served as Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, where he performed the first separation of twins conjoined at the back of the head.

2025 Presidential Transition Project

Ken Cuccinelli served as Acting Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2019 and then, from November 2019 through the end of the Trump Administration, as Acting Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. During his tenure as Acting Deputy Secretary, Ken also served as the Chief Regulatory Officer for the Department of Homeland Security. He also has served the Commonwealth of Virginia, first as a state senator and then as Virginia’s 46th Attorney General.

Rick Dearborn served as Deputy Chief of Staff for President Donald Trump and was responsible for the day-to-day operations of five separate departments of the Executive Office of the President. He also served as Executive Director of the 2016 President-elect Donald Trump transition team. Before that, Rick served in several roles, including as Chief of Staff, in the office of then-U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) for nearly two decades. Between his two tours in Senator Sessions’ office, he was appointed by President George W. Bush as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Congressional Affairs. Earlier in his career, Rick worked for the National Repub- lican Senatorial Committee, the Senate Republican Conference, and the Senate Steering Committee. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a BA in Public Administration and a minor in economics.

Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a nation- ally syndicated columnist. Her primary research interests include the U.S. economy, the federal budget, taxation, tax competition, and cronyism. De Rugy is the author of a weekly opinion column for the Creators Syndicate, writes regular columns for Reason magazine, and blogs about economics at National Review Online’s The Corner. She received her MA in economics from the Paris Dauphine University and her PhD in economics from the Panthéon-Sorbonne University.

Donald Devine is Senior Scholar at The Fund for American Studies in Washington, DC. He was President Ronald Reagan’s first-term Office of Personnel Management Director when The Washington Post labeled him “Reagan’s Terrible Swift Sword of the Civil Service” for cutting bureaucracy and reducing spending by billions of dol- lars. He was a professor at the University of Maryland and Bellevue University and is a columnist and author of 10 books, including his recent The Enduring Tension.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, an Oxford-educated economist, directs the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation and is adjunct professor of economics at George Washington University. Diana served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the U.S. Department of Trans- portation, where she directed the Department’s $1.2 billion research budget; the

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Office of Positioning, Navigation and Timing and Spectrum Management; and the University Transportation Center program. Diana worked in senior roles in the White House under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, where she was Chief of Staff of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Thomas F. Gilman served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Administration and Chief Financial Officer of the U.S. Department of Commerce in the Trump Administration. Currently, he is a Director of ACLJ Action and Chairman of Torn- gat Metals. Tom is the former CEO of Chrysler Financial and has had a 40-plus year career as a senior executive and entrepreneur in the global automotive industry, including roles at Chrysler Corporation, Cerberus Capital Management, Asbury Automotive Group, TD Auto Finance, and Automotive Capital Services. He holds a BS in finance from Villanova University.

Mandy M. Gunasekara of Oxford, Mississippi, is a principal at Section VII Strat- egies, a Senior Policy Analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, and Visiting Fellow in the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foun- dation. During the Trump Administration, Mandy served as the Chief of Staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as well as Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation. She previously served in numer- ous roles at the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, including as Majority Counsel for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee under Chair- man Jim Inhofe. She received her BA from Mississippi College and her JD from the University of Mississippi School of Law.

Gene Hamilton is Vice-President and General Counsel of America First Legal Foun- dation. Gene served as Counselor to the Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice; Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security; General Counsel on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary; Assistant Chief Counsel at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and as an Attorney Advisor in the Secretary’s Honors Program for Attorneys at the Department of Homeland Security. Gene graduated from the Washington and Lee University School of Law magna cum laude and Order of the Coif and has a BA in international affairs from the University of Georgia.

Jennifer Hazelton has worked as a senior strategic consultant for the Depart- ment of Defense in Industrial Base Policy and has held senior positions at USAID, the Export–Import Bank of the United States, and the State Department. She was also a communications director in the U.S. Congress and worked as an award-win- ning journalist for CNN and Fox News Channel. Hazelton holds an MA in business administration from Emory University and earned her BA from the Univer- sity of Georgia.

2025 Presidential Transition Project

Karen Kerrigan is President and CEO of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council and has helped to strengthen U.S. entrepreneurship and global business growth for 28 years. She has provided counsel across the globe via training missions focused on entrepreneurial development, effective advocacy, policy formation, and implementation. Karen testifies regularly before Congress and has served on numerous federal advisory boards representing the interests of entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Dennis Dean Kirk is Associate Director for Personnel Policy with the 2025 Pres- idential Transition Project at The Heritage Foundation. Born and raised in Kansas, he graduated with honors from Northern Arizona University and Washburn Uni- versity Law School. Dennis has over 45 years of experience in private law and public federal government counsel services. He served in President George Bush’s Administration in the U.S. Army’s Office of General Counsel and later as Associate General Counsel for Strategic Integration and Business Transformation, where he was recognized with the Exceptional Civilian and Meritorious Civilian Service Awards and other awards. During the Trump Administration, Dennis served in senior positions at the Office of Personnel Management and was nominated by President Trump to be Chairman of the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Kent Lassman is President and CEO of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Educated at the Catholic University of America and North Carolina State Univer- sity, he has written on telecommunications, privacy, environmental, antitrust, and consumer protection regulation as well as trade policy and the design of regulatory systems. Kent’s policy research and advocacy have taken him to 45 state capitals, more than a dozen countries, and deep into the heart of the federal regulatory state.

Bernard L. McNamee is an energy and regulatory attorney with a major law firm and was formerly a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He is also the Street Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the Appalachian School of Law. In addition to serving as a Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner, McNamee has served in various senior policy and legal positions throughout his career, including at the U.S. Department of Energy, for U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, and for Virginia Governor George Allen. McNamee also served four attorneys general in two states (Virginia and Texas).

Christopher Miller served in several positions during the Trump Administration, including as Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense, Director of the National Counter- terrorism Center, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Combating Terrorism, and Senior Director for Counterterrorism and Trans- national Threats at the National Security Council. Before his civilian service in the

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Department of Defense, Miller was an Army Green Beret in the 5th Special Forces Group with multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, achieving the rank of colonel. Miller earned a BA from George Washington University and an MA from the Naval War College. He also graduated from the College of Naval Command and Staff and the Army War College.

Stephen Moore is a conservative economist and author. He is currently a senior economist at FreedomWorks, a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and a Fox News analyst. From 2005 to 2014, Moore served as the senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal editorial page and as a member of the Journal’s editorial board. He still contributes regularly to the Journal’s editorial page. He is a frequent lecturer to business investment and university audiences around the world on the U.S. economic and political outlook in Washington, DC.

Mora Namdar is an attorney and Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council. She speaks fluent Farsi and is an expert on U.S. national security, human rights, global communications, the Middle East, and international law. Mora served as senior advisor for critical issues at the U.S. State Department and was appointed by President Donald Trump to perform the duties of the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs. She also served as Vice President of Legal, Compliance, and Risk at the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

Peter Navarro holds a PhD in economics from Harvard and was one of only three senior White House officials to serve with Donald Trump from the 2016 campaign to the end of the President’s first term. He was the West Wing’s chief China hawk and trade czar and served as Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy and Defense Production Act Policy Coordinator. His books include The Coming China Wars (2006); Death by China (2011); Crouching Tiger (2015); and his White House memoirs In Trump Time (2021) and Taking Back Trump’s America (2022). His top-rated Taking Back Trump’s America podcast appears on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

William Perry Pendley was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He earned a BA and an MA from George Washington University, was a U.S. Marine Corps captain, and earned his JD from the University of Wyoming College of Law. He was an attorney on Capitol Hill, a senior official for President Ronald Reagan, and leader of the Bureau of Land Management for President Donald Trump. For 30 years, he was president of Mountain States Legal Foundation where he argued and won cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. He authored five books, includ- ing Sagebrush Rebel: Reagan’s Battle with Environmental Extremists and Why It Matters Today.

2025 Presidential Transition Project

Max Primorac is Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He was acting Chief Operating Officer and Assistant to the Administrator, Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, at the

U.S. Agency for International Development. Previously he was deputy director of Iraq’s reconstruction program at the U.S. Department of State and a senior adviser in the Office of the Secretary. Max was educated at Franklin and Marshall College and the University of Chicago.

Roger Severino is Vice President of Domestic Policy at The Heritage Founda- tion. As director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 2017 to 2021, he led a team of more than 250 staff enforcing civil rights, conscience, and health information privacy laws. Roger sub- sequently founded the HHS Accountability Project at the Ethics & Public Policy Center. He holds a JD from Harvard Law School, an MA in public policy from Carnegie Mellon University, and a BA from the University of Southern California.

Kiron K. Skinner is President and CEO of the Foundation for America and the World, Taube Professor of International Relations and Politics at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy, W. Glenn Campbell Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a Visiting Fellow and Senior Advisor at The Heritage Foundation. Skinner served as Director of Policy Planning and Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of State from 2018 to 2019 and was a member of the Defense Business Board at the U.S. Department of Defense in 2020. Skinner holds an MA and a PhD in political science from Harvard University and undergraduate degrees from Spelman College and Sacramento City College.

Brooks D. Tucker served in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as Assis- tant Secretary for Congressional and Legislative Affairs from 2017 to 2021 and as Acting Chief of Staff from 2020 to 2021. He helped to craft the policy frame- work for President-elect Trump’s transition team and served as the Senior Policy Adviser for National Security and Veterans Affairs to Senator Richard Burr from 2010 to 2015. A retired Marine lieutenant colonel, Brooks served in Afghanistan, Iraq, North Africa, the Caucasus, and the Western Pacific. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland, Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course, and Marine Corps Command and Staff College and holds a Certificate in Legislative Studies from Georgetown University.

Hans A. von Spakovsky is Senior Legal Fellow and Manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative in the Edwin Meese Center III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He is a former member of President Donald Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. From 2006 to 2007, von

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Spakovsky was a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission. He served as career Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2002 to 2005.

Russ Vought is Founder and President of the Center for Renewing America. A longtime conservative leader on Capitol Hill, Russ served in President Trump’s Cabinet as Director of the Office of Management and Budget, where he oversaw the implementation of the presidential budget, key policies on deregulation, and a landmark effort to eliminate critical race theory and other radical ideologies in executive agencies. Prior to his White House service, Russ spent nearly two decades in the broader conservative movement on Capitol Hill, including as Policy Direc- tor for the House Republican Conference, Executive Director of the Republican Study Committee, and Legislative Assistant to former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm. Russ graduated with a BA from Wheaton College and received a JD from George Washington University Law School.

William L. Walton is Chairman of the Resolute Protector Foundation and host of The Bill Walton Show. In 2016 and 2017, Mr. Walton served in President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team as Agency Action Leader for all the federal eco- nomic agencies. He served as Chairman of the Board and CEO of Allied Capital Corporation, a $6 billion NYSE-traded private investment firm, from 1997 to 2010. He is the immediate past President of the Council for National Policy. His extensive board service includes The Heritage Foundation, American Conservative Union, American Enterprise Institute, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Venture Cap- ital Association, and Financial Services Roundtable.

Paul Winfree is Distinguished Fellow in Economic Policy and Public Leadership at The Heritage Foundation. Before rejoining Heritage in 2018, Paul was Deputy Assistant to the President, Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council, and Director of Budget Policy at the White House. During the 2016 presidential transi- tion, he led the team responsible for the Office of Management and Budget. He also has served as a senior staff member for the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget. Paul served in both the Biden and Trump Administrations for three terms as the Chair of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board that oversees the Fulbright pro- gram and educational exchanges sponsored by the Department of State.

EDITORS

Paul Dans is Director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project at The Heritage Foundation, organizing policy and personnel recommendations and training for appointees in the next presidential Administration. Before joining Heritage, he served in the Trump Administration as Chief of Staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel

2025 Presidential Transition Project

Management, as OPM’s White House liaison, and as a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Paul has extensive experience in high-stakes commercial litigation and worked for several large international law firms in New York City from 1997 to 2012 before founding his own law firm. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and received his graduate and undergraduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Steven Groves is the Margaret Thatcher Fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation. Groves served in the Trump Adminis- tration, first as Ambassador Nikki Haley’s Chief of Staff at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. He later joined the White House as Assistant Special Counsel, representing the White House in the Mueller investigation. Groves also served as White House Deputy Press Secretary. His prior positions include Senior Counsel for the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and associate at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP. Groves holds an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center, a JD from Ohio Northern University's College of Law, and a BA from Florida State University.

T

Contributors

he contributors listed below generously volunteered their time and effort to assist the authors in the development and writing of this volume’s 30 chapters. The policy views and reform proposals herein are not an all-inclu-

sive catalogue of conservative ideas for the next President, nor is there unanimity among the contributors or the organizations with which they are affiliated with regard to the recommendations.

Mark Albrecht

Chris Anderson, Office of Senator Steve Daines Jeff Anderson, The American Main Street Initiative Michael Anton, Hillsdale College

EJ Antoni, The Heritage Foundation

Andrew “Art” Arthur, Center for Immigration Studies

Paul Atkins, Patomak Global Partners

Julie Axelrod, Center for Immigration Studies

James Bacon James Baehr

Stewart Baker, Steptoe and Johnson LLP

Erik Baptist, Alliance Defending Freedom Brent Bennett, Texas Public Policy Foundation John Berlau, Competitive Enterprise Institute Russell Berman, Hoover Institution

Sanjai Bhagat, University of Colorado Boulder Stephen Billy, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Brad Bishop, American Cornerstone Institute Willis Bixby, WWBX, LLC

Josh Blackman, South Texas College of Law

Jim Blew, Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies

Robert Bortins, Classical Conversations

Rachel Bovard, Conservative Partnership Institute

Robert Bowes

Matt Bowman, Alliance Defending Freedom Steven G. Bradbury, The Heritage Foundation Preston Brashers, The Heritage Foundation Jonathan Bronitsky, ATHOS

Kyle Brosnan, The Heritage Foundation

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Patrick T. Brown, Ethics and Public Policy Center

Robert Burkett, ACLJ Action

Michael Burley, American Cornerstone Institute David R. Burton, The Heritage Foundation Jonathan Butcher, The Heritage Foundation Mark Buzby, Buzby Maritime Associates, LLC Margaret Byfield, American Stewards of Liberty David Byrd, Korn Ferry

Anthony Campau, Center for Renewing America James Jay Carafano, The Heritage Foundation Frank Carroll, Professional Forest Management Oren Cass, American Compass

Brian J. Cavanaugh, American Global Strategies

Spencer Chretien, The Heritage Foundation

Claire Christensen, American Cornerstone Institute

Victoria Coates, The Heritage Foundation Ellie Cohanim, Independent Women’s Forum Ezra Cohen

Elbridge Colby, Marathon Initiative

Earl Comstock, White & Case LLP

Lisa Correnti, Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam)

Monica Crowley, The Nixon Seminar

Laura Cunliffe, Independent Women’s Forum

Tom Dans, Amberwave Partners

Sohan Dasgupta, Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP

Sergio de la Peña

Chris De Ruyter, National Center for Urban Operations Corey DeAngelis, American Federation for Children Caroline DeBerry, Paragon Health Institute

Arielle Del Turco, Family Research Council

Irv Dennis, American Cornerstone Institute

David Deptula, Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies

Donald Devine, The Fund for American Studies

Chuck DeVore, Texas Public Policy Foundation

C. Wallace DeWitt, Allen & Overy LLP

James Di Pane, The Heritage Foundation Matthew Dickerson, The Heritage Foundation Michael Ding, America First Legal Foundation David Ditch, The Heritage Foundation

Natalie Dodson, Ethics and Public Policy Center

Dave Dorey, The Fairness Center

Max Eden, American Enterprise Institute

2025 Presidential Transition Project

Troy Edgar, IBM Consulting

Joseph Edlow, The Heritage Foundation

Jen Ehlinger, Booz Allen Hamilton

John Ehrett, Office of Senator Josh Hawley

Kristen Eichamer, The Heritage Foundation

Robert S. Eitel, Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies

Will Estrada, Parents Rights Foundation Jon Feere, Center for Immigration Studies Baruch Feigenbaum, Reason Foundation Travis Fisher, The Heritage Foundation

George Fishman, Center for Immigration Studies

Leslie Ford, The Heritage Foundation

Aharon Friedman, Federal Policy Group

Bruce Frohnen, Ohio Northern University College of Law

Joel Frushone, Ernst & Young

Finch Fulton

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, The Heritage Foundation Caleigh Gabel, American Cornerstone Institute Christopher Gacek, Family Research Council Alexandra Gaiser, River Financial Inc.

Mario Garza

Patty-Jane Geller, The Heritage Foundation Andrew Gillen, Texas Public Policy Foundation James S. Gilmore III, Gilmore Global Group LLC Vance Ginn, Economic Consulting, LLC

Alma Golden, The Institute for Women’s Health Mike Gonzalez, The Heritage Foundation Chadwick R. Gore, Defense Forum Foundation David Gortler, Ethics and Public Policy Center Brian Gottstein, The Heritage Foundation

Dan Greenberg, Competitive Enterprise Institute

Rob Greenway, Hudson Institute

Rachel Greszler, The Heritage Foundation

DJ Gribbin, Madrus Consulting

Garrison Grisedale, American Cornerstone Institute

Joseph Grogan, USC Schaeffer School for Health Policy and Economics

Andrew Guernsey

Jeffrey Gunter, Republican Jewish Coalition

Joe Guy, Club for Growth

Joseph Guzman

Amalia Halikias, The Heritage Foundation

Gene Hamilton, America First Legal Foundation

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Richard Hanania, Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology

Simon Hankinson, The Heritage Foundation

David Harlow

Derek Harvey, Office of Congressman Devin Nunes Jason Hayes, Mackinac Center for Public Policy Jennifer Hazelton

Lou Heinzer Edie Heipel

Troup Hemenway, Personnel Policy Operations

Nathan Hitchen, Equal Rights Institute

Pete Hoekstra

Gabriella Hoffman, Independent Women’s Forum

Tom Homan, The Heritage Foundation

Chris Horner

Mike Howell, The Heritage Foundation

Valerie Huber, The Institute for Women’s Health Andrew Hughes, American Cornerstone Institute Joseph Humire, Center for a Secure Free Society Christopher Iacovella, American Securities Association Melanie Israel, The Heritage Foundation

Ken Ivory, Utah House of Representatives Roman Jankowski, The Heritage Foundation Abby Jones

Emilie Kao, Alliance Defending Freedom

Jared M. Kelson, Boyden Gray & Associates Aaron Kheriaty, Ethics and Public Policy Center Ali Kilmartin, Alliance Defending Freedom

Julie Kirchner, Federation for American Immigration Reform

Dan Kish, Institute for Energy Research

Kenneth A. Klukowski

Adam Korzeniewski, American Principles Project Kathy Nuebel Kovarik, Sagitta Solutions, LLC Bethany Kozma, Keystone Policy

Matthew Kozma

Julius Krein, American Affairs

Stanley Kurtz, Ethics and Public Policy Center

David LaCerte, Baker Botts, LLP

Paul J. Larkin, The Heritage Foundation

Kent Lassman, Competitive Enterprise Institute

James R. Lawrence III, Envisage Law Paul Lawrence, Lawrence Consulting Nathan Leamer, Targeted Victory

2025 Presidential Transition Project

David Legates, University of Delaware (Ret.) Marlo Lewis, Competitive Enterprise Institute Ben Lieberman, Competitive Enterprise Institute John Ligon

Evelyn Lim, American Cornerstone Institute Mario Loyola, Competitive Enterprise Institute John G. Malcolm, The Heritage Foundation Joseph Masterman, Cooper & Kirk, PLLC

Earl Matthews, The Vandenberg Coalition Dan Mauler, Heritage Action for America Drew McCall, American Cornerstone Institute Trent McCotter, Boyden Gray & Associates

Micah Meadowcroft, The American Conservative Edwin Meese III, The Heritage Foundation Jessica Melugin, Competitive Enterprise Institute Frank Mermoud, Orpheus International

Mark Miller, Office of Governor Kristi Noem Cleta Mitchell, Conservative Partnership Institute Kevin E. Moley

Caitlin Moon, American Center for Law & Justice David Moore, Brigham Young University Law School Clare Morell, Ethics and Public Policy Center

Mark Morgan, The Heritage Foundation

Hunter Morgen, American Cornerstone Institute Rachel Morrison, Ethics and Public Policy Center Jonathan Moy, The Heritage Foundation

Iain Murray, Competitive Enterprise Institute Ryan Nabil, National Taxpayers Union Michael Nasi, Jackson Walker LLP

Lucien Niemeyer, The Niemeyer Group, LLC

Nazak Nikakhtar, Wiley Rein LLP

Milan “Mitch” Nikolich

Matt O’Brien, Immigration Reform Law Institute

Caleb Orr, Boyden Gray & Associates

Michael Pack Leah Pedersen

Michael Pillsbury, The Heritage Foundation

Patrick Pizzella, Leadership Institute

Robert Poole, Reason Foundation

Kevin Preskenis, Allymar Health Solutions

Pam Pryor, National Committee for Religious Freedom

Thomas Pyle, Institute for Energy Research

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

John Ratcliffe, American Global Strategies Paul Ray, The Heritage Foundation Joseph Reddan, Flexilis Forestry, LLC

Jay W. Richards, The Heritage Foundation Jordan Richardson, Heise Suarez Melville, P.A. Jason Richwine, Center for Immigration Studies Shaun Rieley, The American Conservative

Lora Ries, The Heritage Foundation

Leo Rios

Mark Robeck, Energy Evolution Consulting LLC

James Rockas, ACLJ Action

Mark Royce, NOVA-Annandale College

Reed Rubinstein, America First Legal Foundation William Ruger, American Institute for Economic Research Austin Ruse, Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) Brent D. Sadler, The Heritage Foundation

Alexander William Salter, Texas Tech University

Jon Sanders, John Locke Foundation

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Robby Stephany Saunders, Coalition for a Prosperous America

David Sauve

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Josh Sewell, Taxpayers for Common Sense Kathleen Sgamma, Western Energy Alliance Matt Sharp, Alliance Defending Freedom Judy Shelton, Independent Institute Nathan Simington

Loren Smith, Skyline Policy Risk Group Zack Smith, The Heritage Foundation Jack Spencer, The Heritage Foundation

Adrienne Spero, U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security

Thomas W. Spoehr, The Heritage Foundation

Peter St Onge, The Heritage Foundation

Chris Stanley, Functional Government Initiative

Paula M. Stannard

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William Steiger, Independent Consultant Kenny Stein, Institute for Energy Research Corey Stewart, Stewart PLLC

Mari Stull

Katharine T. Sullivan, 1792 Exchange Brett Swearingen, Miller Johnson Michael Sweeney

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Foreword

A PROMISE TO AMERICA

Kevin D. Roberts, PhD

orty-four years ago, the United States and the conservative movement were in dire straits. Both had been betrayed by the Washington establishment and were uncertain whom to trust. Both were internally splintered and stra-

tegically adrift. Worse still, at that moment of acute vulnerability and division, we found ourselves besieged by existential adversaries, foreign and domestic. The late 1970s were by any measure a historic low point for America and the political coa- lition dedicated to preserving its unique legacy of human flourishing and freedom. Today, America and the conservative movement are enduring an era of division and danger akin to the late 1970s. Now, as then, our political class has been discred- ited by wholesale dishonesty and corruption. Look at America under the ruling and cultural elite today: Inflation is ravaging family budgets, drug overdose deaths continue to escalate, and children suffer the toxic normalization of transgender- ism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries. Overseas, a totalitarian Communist dictatorship in Beijing is engaged in a strategic, cultural, and economic Cold War against America’s interests, values, and people—all while globalist elites in Washington awaken only slowly to that growing threat. Moreover, low-income communities are drowning in addiction and government dependence. Contemporary elites have even repurposed the worst ingredients of 1970s “radical chic” to build the totalitarian cult known today as “The Great Awokening.” And now, as then, the Republican Party seems to have little understanding about what

to do. Most alarming of all, the very moral foundations of our society are in peril. Yet students of history will note that, notwithstanding all those challenges,

the late 1970s proved to be the moment when the political Right unified itself

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

and the country and led the United States to historic political, economic, and global victories.

The Heritage Foundation is proud to have played a small but pivotal role in that story. It was in early 1979—amid stagflation, gas lines, and the Red Army’s inva- sion of Afghanistan, the nadir of Jimmy Carter’s days of malaise—that Heritage launched the Mandate for Leadership project. We brought together hundreds of conservative scholars and academics across the conservative movement. Together, this team created a 20-volume, 3,000-page governing handbook containing more than 2,000 conservative policies to reform the federal government and rescue the American people from Washington dysfunction. It was a promise from the conservative movement to the country—confident, specific, and clear.

Mandate for Leadership was published in January 1981—the same month Ronald Reagan was sworn into his presidency. By the end of that year, more than 60 percent of its recommendations had become policy—and Reagan was on his way to ending stagflation, reviving American confidence and prosperity, and winning the Cold War. The bad news today is that our political establishment and cultural elite have once again driven America toward decline. The good news is that we know the way out even though the challenges today are not what they were in the 1970s. Conservatives should be confident that we can rescue our kids, reclaim our culture, revive our economy, and defeat the anti-American Left—at home and abroad. We

did it before and will do it again.

As Ronald Reagan put it:

Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation[.]1

This is the duty history has put before us and the standard by which our gen- eration of conservatives will be judged. And we should not want it any other way.

The legacy of Mandate for Leadership, and indeed of the entire Reagan Rev- olution, is that if conservatives want to save the country, we need a bold and courageous plan. This book is the first step in that plan.

THE CONSERVATIVE PROMISE

This volume—The Conservative Promise—is the opening salvo of the 2025 Pres- idential Transition Project, launched by The Heritage Foundation and our many partners in April 2022. Its 30 chapters lay out hundreds of clear and concrete policy recommendations for White House offices, Cabinet departments, Congress, and agencies, commissions, and boards.

Just as important as the scope of The Conservative Promise’s recommendations is the breadth of its authorship. This book is the product of more than 400 scholars

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and policy experts from across the conservative movement and around the country. Contributors include former elected officials, world-renowned economists, and veterans from four presidential Administrations. This is an agenda prepared by and for conservatives who will be ready on Day One of the next Administration to save our country from the brink of disaster.

The Heritage Foundation is once again facilitating this work. But as our dozens of partners and hundreds of authors will attest, this book is the work of the entire conservative movement. As such, the authors express consensus recommendations already forged, especially along four broad fronts that will decide America’s future:

1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.

2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.

3. Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.

4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”

What makes these four pieces of the conservative promise so valuable to the next President is that they cut through superficial distractions and focus on the moral and foundational challenges America faces in this moment of history. This was one of the secrets of conservatives’ success in the Reagan Era, one our gener- ation should emulate.

As in the late 1970s, Americans today experience the failures of political and cul- tural elites in countless ways: in the job market and in the grocery store checkout lines, on the streets and in our schools, in the media and within our institutions. But in truth, these daily dysfunctions are not innumerable problems, but innumerable manifestations of a few core crises.

In 1979, the threats we faced were the Soviet Union, the socialism of 1970s lib- erals, and the predatory deviancy of cultural elites. Reagan defeated these beasts by ignoring their tentacles and striking instead at their hearts.

His approach to the Cold War? “We win and they lose.”

His economic agenda? The human dignity of work and its many rewards.

His platform in the culture wars? The “community of values embodied in these words: family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom.”

This book—and Project 2025 as a whole—will arm the next conservative Pres- ident with the same kind of strategic clarity, but for a new age.

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

PROMISE #1: RESTORE THE FAMILY AS THE CENTERPIECE OF AMERICAN LIFE AND PROTECT OUR CHILDREN.

The next conservative President must get to work pursuing the true priority of

politics—the well-being of the American family.

In many ways, the entire point of centralizing political power is to subvert the family. Its purpose is to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatu- ral ones. You see this in the popular left-wing aphorism, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” But in real life, most of the things people “do together” have nothing to do with government. These are the mediating institutions that serve as the building blocks of any healthy society. Marriage. Family. Work. Church. School. Volunteering. The name real people give to the things we do together is community, not government. Our lives are full of interwoven, overlapping communities, and our individual and collective happiness depends upon them. But the most important community in each of our lives—and the life of the nation—is the family.

Today, the American family is in crisis. Forty percent of all children are born to unmarried mothers, including more than 70 percent of black children. There is no government program that can replace the hole in a child’s soul cut out by the absence of a father. Fatherlessness is one of the principal sources of Ameri- can poverty, crime, mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, rejection of the church, and high school dropouts. So many of the problems government programs are designed to solve—but can’t—are ultimately problems created by the crisis of marriage and the family. The world has never seen a thriving, healthy, free, and prosperous society where most children grow up without their married parents. If current trends continue, we are heading toward social implosion.

Furthermore, the next conservative President must understand that using gov- ernment alone to respond to symptoms of the family crisis is a dead end. Federal power must instead be wielded to reverse the crisis and rescue America’s kids from familial breakdown. The Conservative Promise includes dozens of specific policies to accomplish this existential task.

Some are obvious and long-standing goals like eliminating marriage penalties in federal welfare programs and the tax code and installing work requirements for food stamps. But we must go further. It’s time for policymakers to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family.

Today the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject woke progressivism. They will soon turn to Christian schools and clubs with the same totalitarian intent.

The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion

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(“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensi- tive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists. Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that

facilitate its spread should be shuttered.

In our schools, the question of parental authority over their children’s education is a simple one: Schools serve parents, not the other way around. That is, of course, the best argument for universal school choice—a goal all conservatives and con- servative Presidents must pursue. But even before we achieve that long-term goal, parents’ rights as their children’s primary educators should be non-negotiable in American schools. States, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, princi- pals, and teachers who disagree should be immediately cut off from federal funds. The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity and even their moral status while on the other they are taught to deny the very creatureliness that inheres in being

human and consists in accepting the givenness of our nature as men or women.

Allowing parents or physicians to “reassign” the sex of a minor is child abuse and must end. For public institutions to use taxpayer dollars to declare the superiority or inferiority of certain races, sexes, and religions is a violation of the Constitu- tion and civil rights law and cannot be tolerated by any government anywhere in the country.

But the pro-family promises expressed in this book, and central to the next conservative President’s agenda, must go much further than the traditional, narrow definition of “family issues.” Every threat to family stability must be confronted. This resolve should color each of our policies. Consider our approach to Big Tech. The worst of these companies prey on children, like drug dealers, to get them addicted to their mobile apps. Many Silicon Valley executives famously don’t let their own kids have smart phones.2 They nevertheless make billions of dollars addicting other people’s children to theirs. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms are specifically designed to create the digital

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

dependencies that fuel mental illness and anxiety, to fray children’s bonds with their parents and siblings. Federal policy cannot allow this industrial-scale child abuse to continue.

Finally, conservatives should gratefully celebrate the greatest pro-family win in a generation: overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that for five decades made a mockery of our Constitution and facilitated the deaths of tens of millions of unborn children. But the Dobbs decision is just the beginning. Conservatives in the states and in Washington, including in the next conservative Administration, should push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America. In particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion. Conservatives should ardently pursue these pro-life and pro-family policies while recognizing the many women who find themselves in immensely difficult and often tragic situations and the hero- ism of every choice to become a mother. Alternative options to abortion, especially adoption, should receive federal and state support.

In summary, the next President has a moral responsibility to lead the nation in restoring a culture of life in America again.

PROMISE #2: DISMANTLE THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE AND RETURN SELF-GOVERNANCE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

Of course, the surest way to put the federal government back to work for the

American people is to reduce its size and scope back to something resembling the original constitutional intent. Conservatives desire a smaller government not for its own sake, but for the sake of human flourishing. But the Washington Establishment doesn’t want a constitutionally limited government because it means they lose power and are held more accountable by the people who put them in power.

Like restoring popular sovereignty, the task of reattaching the federal gov- ernment’s constitutional and democratic tethers calls to mind Ronald Reagan’s observation that “there are no easy answers, but there are simple answers.”

In the case of making the federal government smaller, more effective, and accountable, the simple answer is the Constitution itself. The surest proof of this is how strenuously and creatively generations of progressives and many Repub- lican insiders have worked to cut themselves free from the strictures of the 1789 Constitution and subsequent amendments.

Consider the federal budget. Under current law, Congress is required to pass a budget—and 12 issue-specific spending bills comporting with it—every single year. The last time Congress did so was in 1996. Congress no longer meaningfully budgets, authorizes, or categorizes spending.

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Instead, party leaders negotiate one multitrillion-dollar spending bill—several thousand pages long—and then vote on it before anyone, literally, has had a chance to read it. Debate time is restricted. Amendments are prohibited. And all of this is backed up against a midnight deadline when the previous “omnibus” spending bill will run out and the federal government “shuts down.”

This process is not designed to empower 330 million American citizens and their elected representatives, but rather to empower the party elites secretly nego- tiating without any public scrutiny or oversight.

In the end, congressional leaders’ behavior and incentives here are no differ- ent from those of global elites insulating policy decisions—over the climate, trade, public health, you name it—from the sovereignty of national electorates. Public scrutiny and democratic accountability make life harder for policymakers—so they skirt it. It’s not dysfunction; it’s corruption.

And despite its gaudy price tag, the federal budget is not even close to the worst example of this corruption. That distinction belongs to the “Administrative State,” the dismantling of which must a top priority for the next conservative President. The term Administrative State refers to the policymaking work done by the bureaucracies of all the federal government’s departments, agencies, and millions of employees. Under Article I of the Constitution, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” That is, federal law is enacted only by

elected legislators in both houses of Congress.

This exclusive authority was part of the Framers’ doctrine of “separated powers.” They not only split the federal government’s legislative, executive, and judicial powers into different branches. They also gave each branch checks over the others. Under our Constitution, the legislative branch—Congress—is far and away the most powerful and, correspondingly, the most accountable to the people.

In recent decades, members of the House and Senate discovered that if they give away that power to the Article II branch of government, they can also deny responsi- bility for its actions. So today in Washington, most policy is no longer set by Congress at all, but by the Administrative State. Given the choice between being powerful but vulnerable or irrelevant but famous, most Members of Congress have chosen the latter.

Congress passes intentionally vague laws that delegate decision-making over a given issue to a federal agency. That agency’s bureaucrats—not just unelected but seemingly un-fireable—then leap at the chance to fill the vacuum created by Congress’s preening cowardice. The federal government is growing larger and less constitutionally accountable—even to the President—every year.

• A combination of elected and unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency quietly strangles domestic energy production through difficult-to-understand rulemaking processes;

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

• Bureaucrats at the Department of Homeland Security, following the lead of a feckless Administration, order border and immigration enforcement agencies to help migrants criminally enter our country with impunity;

• Bureaucrats at the Department of Education inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms;

• Bureaucrats at the Department of Justice force school districts to undermine girls’ sports and parents’ rights to satisfy transgender extremists;

• Woke bureaucrats at the Pentagon force troops to attend “training” seminars about “white privilege”; and

• Bureaucrats at the State Department infuse U.S. foreign aid programs with woke extremism about “intersectionality” and abortion.3

Unaccountable federal spending is the secret lifeblood of the Great Awokening. Nearly every power center held by the Left is funded or supported, one way or another, through the bureaucracy by Congress. Colleges and school districts are funded by tax dollars. The Administrative State holds 100 percent of its power at the sufferance of Congress, and its insulation from presidential discipline is an unconstitutional fairy tale spun by the Washington Establishment to protect its turf. Members of Congress shield themselves from constitutional accountability often when the White House allows them to get away with it. Cultural institutions like public libraries and public health agencies are only as “independent” from public accountability as elected officials and voters permit.

Let’s be clear: The most egregious regulations promulgated by the current Administration come from one place: the Oval Office. The President cannot hide behind the agencies; as his many executive orders make clear, his is the respon- sibility for the regulations that threaten American communities, schools, and families. A conservative President must move swiftly to do away with these vast abuses of presidential power and remove the career and political bureaucrats who fuel it.

Properly considered, restoring fiscal limits and constitutional accountability to the federal government is a continuation of restoring national sovereignty to the American people. In foreign affairs, global strategy, federal budgeting and pol- icymaking, the same pattern emerges again and again. Ruling elites slash and tear at restrictions and accountability placed on them. They centralize power up and away from the American people: to supra-national treaties and organizations, to left-wing “experts,” to sight-unseen all-or-nothing legislating, to the unelected career bureaucrats of the Administrative State.

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As monolithic as the Left’s institutional power appears to be, it originates with appropriations from Congress and is made complete by a feckless President. A conservative President must look to the legislative branch for decisive action. The Administrative State is not going anywhere until Congress acts to retrieve its own power from bureaucrats and the White House. But in the meantime, there are many executive tools a courageous conservative President can use to handcuff the bureaucracy, push Congress to return to its constitutional responsibility, restore power over Washington to the American people, bring the Administrative State to heel, and in the process defang and defund the woke culture warriors who have infiltrated every last institution in America.

The Conservative Promise lays out how to use many of these tools including: how to fire supposedly “un-fireable” federal bureaucrats; how to shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices; how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of government; how to restore the American people’s constitutional authority over the Administrative State; and how to save untold taxpayer dollars in the process. Finally, the President can restore public confidence and accountability to our most important government function of all: national defense. The American people desire a military full of highly skilled servicemen and women who can protect the homeland and our interests overseas. The next conservative President must end the Left’s social experimentation with the military, restore warfighting as its sole mission, and set defeating the threat of the Chinese Communist Party as its high-

est priority.

The next conservative President must possess the courage to relentlessly put the interests of the everyday American over the desires of the ruling elite. Their outrage cannot be prevented; it must simply be ignored. And it can be. The Left derives its power from the institutions they control. But those institutions are only powerful to the extent that constitutional officers surrender their own legitimate authority to them. A President who refuses to do so and uses his or her office to reimpose constitutional authority over federal policymaking can begin to correct decades of corruption and remove thousands of bureaucrats from the positions of public trust they have so long abused.

PROMISE #3: DEFEND OUR NATION’S SOVEREIGNTY, BORDERS, AND BOUNTY AGAINST GLOBAL THREATS.

The United States belongs to “We the people.” All government authority derives

from the consent of the people, and our nation’s success derives from the character of its people. The American people’s right to rule ourselves is the obverse of our duty: We cannot outsource to others our obligation to ensure the conditions that allow our families, local communities, churches and synagogues, and neighbor- hoods to thrive. The buck stops with each of us, so each of us must have the freedom to pursue the good for ourselves and those entrusted to our care.

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

To most Americans, this is common sense. But in Washington, D.C. and other centers of Leftist power like the media and the academy, this statement of basic civics is branded hate speech. Progressive elites speak in lofty terms of openness, progress, expertise, cooperation, and globalization. But too often, these terms are just rhetorical Trojan horses concealing their true intention—stripping “we the people” of our constitutional authority over our country’s future.

America’s corporate and political elites do not believe in the ideals to which our nation is dedicated—self-governance, the rule of law, and ordered liberty. They certainly do not trust the American people, and they disdain the Constitution’s restrictions on their ambitions.

Instead, they believe in a kind of 21st century Wilsonian order in which the “enlightened,” highly educated managerial elite runs things rather than the humble, patriotic working families who make up the majority of what the elites contemp- tuously call “fly-over country.”

This Wilsonian hubris has spread like a cancer through many of America’s larg- est corporations, its public institutions, and its popular culture. Those who run our so-called American corporations have bent to the will of the woke agenda and care more for their foreign investors and organizations than their American workers and customers. Today, nearly every top-tier U.S. university president or Wall Street hedge fund manager has more in common with a socialist, European head of state than with the parents at a high school football game in Waco, Texas. Many elites’ entire identity, it seems, is wrapped up in their sense of superiority over those people. But under our Constitution, they are the mere equals of the workers who shower after work instead of before.

This is as it should and must be. Intellectual sophistication, advanced degrees, financial success, and all other markers of elite status have no bearing on a per- son’s knowledge of the one thing most necessary for governance: what it means to live well. That knowledge is available to each of us, no matter how humble our backgrounds or how unpretentious our attainments. It is open to us to read in the book of human nature, to which we are all offered the key just by merit of our shared humanity. One of the great premises of American political life is that everyone who can read in that book must have a voice in deciding the course and fate of our Republic.

Progressive policymakers and pundits in America either fail to understand this premise or intentionally reject it. They enthusiastically support supranational organizations like the United Nations and European Union, which are run and staffed almost entirely by people who share their values and are mostly insulated from the influence of national elections. That’s why they are eager for America to sign international treaties on everything from pharmaceutical patents to climate change to “the rights of the child”—and why those treaties invariably endorse poli- cies that could never pass through the U.S. Congress. Like the progressive Woodrow

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Wilson a century ago, the woke Left today seeks a world, bound by global treaties they write, in which they exercise dictatorial powers over all nations without being subject to democratic accountability.

That’s why today’s progressive Left so cavalierly supports open borders despite the lawless humanitarian crisis their policy created along America’s southern border. They seek to purge the very concept of the nation-state from the Amer- ican ethos, no matter how much crime increases or resources drop for schools and hospitals or wages decrease for the working class. Open-borders activism is a classic example of what the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”—publicly promoting one’s own virtue without risking any personal incon- venience. Indeed, the only direct impact of open borders on pro-open borders elites is that the constant flow of illegal immigration suppresses the wages of their housekeepers, landscapers, and busboys.

“Cheap grace” aptly describes the Left’s love affair with environmental extrem- ism. Those who suffer most from the policies environmentalism would have us enact are the aged, poor, and vulnerable. It is not a political cause, but a pseu- do-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue.

At its very heart, environmental extremism is decidedly anti-human. Stew- ardship and conservation are supplanted by population control and economic regression. Environmental ideologues would ban the fuels that run almost all of the world’s cars, planes, factories, farms, and electricity grids. Abandoning confidence in human resilience and creativity in responding to the challenges of the future would raise impediments to the most meaningful human activities. They would stand human affairs on their head, regarding human activity itself as fundamentally a threat to be sacrificed to the god of nature.

The same goals are the heart of elite support for economic globalization. For 30 years, America’s political, economic, and cultural leaders embraced and enriched Communist China and its genocidal Communist Party while hollowing out Ameri- ca’s industrial base. What may have started out with good intentions has now been made clear. Unfettered trade with China has been a catastrophe. It has made a handful of American corporations enormously profitable while twisting their business incentives away from the American people’s needs. For a generation, pol- iticians of both parties promised that engagement with Beijing would grow our economy while injecting American values into China. The opposite has happened. American factories have closed. Jobs have been outsourced. Our manufacturing economy has been financialized. And all along, the corporations profiting failed to export our values of human rights and freedom; rather, they imported China’s anti-American values into their C-suites.

Even before the rise of Big Tech, Wall Street ignored China’s serial theft of American intellectual property. It outright cheered the elimination of American

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

manufacturing jobs. (“Learn to code!” they would gloat.) These were just the price of progress. Engagement was at every step Beijing’s project, not America’s. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictated terms, only to break them whenever it suited them. They stole our technology, spied on our people, and threatened our allies, all with trillions of dollars of wealth and military power financed by their access to our market.

Then came the rise of Big Tech, which is now less a contributor to the U.S. economy than it is a tool of China’s government. In exchange for cheap labor and regulatory special treatment from Beijing, America’s largest technology firms funnel data about Americans to the CCP. They hand over sensitive intellectual property with military and intelligence applications to keep the money rolling in. They let Beijing censor Chinese users on their platforms. They let the CCP set their corporate policies about mobile apps. And they run interference for our rival’s political priorities in Washington. One side of Big-Tech companies’ business model is old-fashioned American competitiveness and world-changing techno- logical innovation; but increasingly, that side of these businesses is overshadowed by their role as operatives in the lucrative employ of America’s most dangerous international enemy.

If you want to understand the danger posed by collaboration between Big Tech and the CCP, look no further than TikTok. The highly addictive video app, used by 80 million Americans every month and overwhelmingly popular among teenage girls, is in effect a tool of Chinese espionage. The ties between TikTok and the Chinese government are not loose, and they are not coincidental.

The same can be observed of many U.S. colleges and universities. Through the CCP's Confucius Institutes, Beijing has been just as successful at compromising and coopting our higher education system as they have at compromising and coopt- ing corporate America.

A casual reader might take the last few pages as surveying a broad array of challenges facing the American people and the next conservative President: supra- national policymaking, border security, globalization, engagement with China, manufacturing, Big Tech, and Beijing-compromised colleges.

But these really are not many issues, but two: (1) that China is a totalitarian enemy of the United States, not a strategic partner or fair competitor, and (2) that America’s elites have betrayed the American people. The solution to all of the above problems is not to tinker with this or that government program, to replace this or that bureaucrat. These are problems not of technocratic efficiency but of national sovereignty and constitutional governance. We solve them not by trimming and reshaping the leaves but by ripping out the trees—root and branch.

International organizations and agreements that erode our Constitution, rule of law, or popular sovereignty should not be reformed: They should be aban- doned. Illegal immigration should be ended, not mitigated; the border sealed, not

2025 Presidential Transition Project

reprioritized. Economic engagement with China should be ended, not rethought. Our manufacturing and industrial base should be restored, not allowed to dete- riorate further. Confucius Institutes, TikTok, and any other arm of Chinese propaganda and espionage should be outlawed, not merely monitored. Univer- sities taking money from the CCP should lose their accreditation, charters, and eligibility for federal funds.

The next conservative President should go beyond merely defending America’s energy interests but go on offense, asserting them around the world. America’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas are not an environmental problem; they are the lifeblood of economic growth. American dominance of the global energy market would be a good thing: for the world, and, more importantly, for “we the people.” It’s not just about jobs, even though unleashing domestic energy production would create millions of them. It’s not just about higher wages for workers who didn’t go to college, though they would receive the raises they have missed out on for two generations. Full-spectrum strategic energy dominance would facilitate the reinvigoration of America’s entire industrial and manufacturing sector as we dis- entangle our economy from China. Globally, it would rebalance power away from dangerous regimes in Russia and the Middle East. It would build powerful alliances with fast-growing nations in Africa and provide us the leverage to counter Chi- nese ambitions in South America and the Pacific. Locally, it would drive billions of dollars of private investment to the communities that have been hammered by globalization since the 1990s. And it would clarify our intentions to Beijing that the next President can ensure that a large part of America’s reindustrialization is in the production of the equipment we will need to dissuade future foreign meddling with U.S. vital interests.

PROMISE #4 SECURE OUR GOD-GIVEN INDIVIDUAL RIGHT TO ENJOY “THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY.”

The Declaration of Independence famously asserted the belief of America’s

Founders that “all men are created equal” and endowed with God-given rights to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” It’s the last—“the pursuit of Happi- ness”—that is central to America’s heroic experiment in self-government.

When the Founders spoke of “pursuit of Happiness,” what they meant might be understood today as in essence “pursuit of Blessedness.” That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought. This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family—marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like. Many find happiness through their work. Think of dedicated teach- ers or health care professionals you know, entrepreneurs or plumbers throwing themselves into their businesses—anyone who sees a job well done as a personal reward. Religious devotion and spirituality are the greatest sources of happiness

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

around the world. Still others find themselves happiest in their local voluntary communities of friends, their neighbors, their civic or charitable work.

The American Republic was founded on principles prioritizing and maximizing individuals’ rights to live their best life or to enjoy what the Framers called “the Blessings of Liberty.” It’s this radical equality—liberty for all—not just of rights but of authority—that the rich and powerful have hated about democracy in America since 1776. They resent Americans’ audacity in insisting that we don’t need them to tell us how to live. It’s this inalienable right of self-direction—of each person’s opportunity to direct himself or herself, and his or her community, to the good— that the ruling class disdains.

With the Declaration and Constitution, our nation’s Founders handed to us the means with which to preserve this right. Abraham Lincoln wrote of the Dec- laration as an “apple of gold” in a silver frame, the Constitution. So must the next conservative President look to these documents when the elites mount their next assault on liberty.

Left to our own devices, the American people rejected European monarchy and colonialism just as we rejected slavery, second-class citizenship for women, mercantilism, socialism, Wilsonian globalism, Fascism, Communism, and (today) wokeism. To the Left, these assertions of patriotic self-assurance are just so many signs of our moral depravity and intellectual inferiority—proof that, in fact, we need a ruling elite making decisions for us.

But the next conservative President should be proud, not ashamed of Americans’ unique culture of social equality and ordered liberty. After all, the countries where Marxist elites have won political and economic power are all weaker, poorer, and less free for it.

The United States remains the most innovative and upwardly mobile society in the world. Government should stop trying to substitute its own preferences for those of the people. And the next conservative President should champion the dynamic genius of free enterprise against the grim miseries of elite-di- rected socialism.

The promise of socialism—Communism, Marxism, progressivism, Fascism, whatever name it chooses—is simple: Government control of the economy can ensure equal outcomes for all people. The problem is that it has never done so. There is no such thing as “the government.” There are just people who work for the government and wield its power and who—at almost every opportunity—wield it to serve themselves first and everyone else a distant second. This is not a failing of one nation or socialist party, but inherent in human nature.

Nighttime satellite images of the Korean peninsula famously show the free-mar- ket South lit up, with homes, businesses, and cities electrified from coast to coast. By contrast, Communist North Korea is almost completely dark, except for the small dot of the capital city, Pyongyang, where a psychotic dictator and his cronies

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live. The same phenomenon is on display in the infuriating fact that four of the six richest counties in the United States are suburbs of Washington, D.C.—a city infamous for its lack of native productive industries.

We see the same corruption expressed on an individual level whenever billion- aire climate activists, who want to outlaw carbon-fueled transportation, fly to A-list conferences on their private jets. Or when COVID-19 shutdown politicians like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and California Governor Gavin Newsom were caught at the hair salon or dining at fancy restaurants after moralizing about how everyone else must stay home and forgo such luxuries during the pandemic. For socialists, who are almost always well-to-do, socialism is not a means of equalizing outcomes, but a means of accumulating power. They never get around to helping anyone else.

The Soviet empire was a social and economic failure. North Korea, despite the opulence of its tyrants, is one of the poorest nations in the world. Cuba is so corrupt that its people regularly risk their lives to escape to Florida on rafts. Venezuela was once the richest nation in South America; today, a decade after a Marxist dictator took over, 94 percent of Venezuelans live in poverty.4 Even socialist Senator Bernie Sanders’ home state of Vermont was forced to repeal the state’s single-payer health care system just three years after creating it.

In every case, socialist elites promised that if only they could direct the econ- omy, everything would be better. Very quickly, everything got worse. In socialist nation after socialist nation, the only way the government could keep its disgrun- tled people in line was to surveil and terrorize them.

By contrast, in countries with a high degree of economic freedom, elites are not in charge because everyone is in charge. People work, build, invest, save, and create according to their own interests and in service to the common good of their fellow citizens.

There is a reason why the private economy hews to the maxim “the customer is always right” while government bureaucracies are notoriously user-unfriendly, just as there is a reason why private charities are cheerful and government welfare systems are not. It’s not because grocery store clerks and PTA moms are “good” and federal bureaucrats are “bad.” It’s because private enterprises—for-profit or nonprofit—must cooperate, to give, to succeed.

So as the American people take back their sovereignty, constitutional authority, respect for their families and communities, they should also take back their right to pursue the good life.

The next President should promote pro-growth economic policies that spur new jobs and investment, higher wages, and productivity. Yes, that agenda should include overdue tax and regulatory reform, but it should go further and include antitrust enforcement against corporate monopolies. It should promote educa- tional opportunities outside the woke-dominated system of public schools and

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

universities, including trade schools, apprenticeship programs, and student-loan alternatives that fund students’ dreams instead of Marxist academics. Just as important as expanding opportunities for workers and small businesses, the next President should crack down on the crony capitalist corruption that enables America’s largest corporations to profit through political influence rather than competitive enterprise and customer satisfaction.

Analogous pro-growth reforms for America’s voluntary civil society are also in order. America is not an economy; it is a country. Economic freedom is not the only important freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the freedom to assemble also represent key components of the American promise. Today, in addition to the problem of Big Tech censorship, we see speakers at universities shouted down, parents investigated and arrested for attempting to speak at school board meetings, and donors to conservative causes harassed and intimidated. The next conservative President must defend our First Amendment rights.

BEST EFFORT

Ultimately, the Left does not believe that all men are created equal—they think they are special. They certainly don’t think all people have an unalienable right to pursue the good life. They think only they themselves have such a right along with a moral responsibility to make decisions for everyone else. They don’t think any citizen, state, business, church, or charity should be allowed any freedom until they first bend the knee.

This book, this agenda, the entire Project 2025 is a plan to unite the conservative movement and the American people against elite rule and woke culture warriors. Our movement has not been united in recent years, and our country has paid the price. In the past decade, though, the breakdown of the family, the rise of China, the Great Awokening, Big Tech’s abuses, and the erosion of constitutional accountability in Washington have rendered these divisions not just inconvenient but politically suicidal. Every hour the Left directs federal policy and elite institu- tions, our sovereignty, our Constitution, our families, and our freedom are a step

closer to disappearing.

Conservatives have just two years and one shot to get this right. With enemies at home and abroad, there is no margin for error. Time is running short. If we fail, the fight for the very idea of America may be lost.

But we should take this small window of opportunity we have left to act with courage and confidence, not despair. The last time our nation and movement were so near defeat, we rallied together behind a great leader and great ideas, tran- scended our differences, rescued our nation, and changed the world. It’s time to do it again.

Now, as then, we know who we are fighting and what we are fighting for: for our Republic, our freedom, and for each other. The next conservative President

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will enter office on January 20, 2025, with a simple choice: greatness or failure. It will be a daunting test, but no more so than every generation of Americans has faced and passed.

The Conservative Promise represents the best effort of the conservative move- ment in 2023—and the next conservative President’s last opportunity to save our republic.

ENDNOTES

1. Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 5, 1967, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/january-

5-1967-inaugural-address-public-ceremony (accessed March 14, 2023).

2. Quispe López, “6 Tech Executives Who Raise Their Kids Tech-Free or Seriously Limit Their Screen Time,” Business Insider, March 5, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-execs-screen-time-children-bill-gates- steve-jobs-2019-9#google-ceo-sundar-pichais-middle-school-aged-son-doesnt-own-a-cell-phone-and-the- tv-can-only-be-accessed-with-activation-energy-1 (accessed March 14, 2023).

3. Simon Hankinson, “‘Woke’ Public Diplomacy Undermines the State Department’s Core Mission and Weakens

U.S. Foreign Policy,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3738, December 12, 2022, https://www.heritage. org/global-politics/report/woke-public-diplomacy-undermines-the-state-departments-core-mission-and.

4. Michelle Nichols, “Venezuelans Facing ‘Unprecedented Challenges,’ Many Need Aid—Internal U.N. Report,” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-un/venezuelans-facing-unprecedented-challenges- many-need-aid-internal-u-n-report-idUSKCN1R92AG (accessed March 14, 2023).

Section One

TAKING THE REINS OF GOVERNMENT

A

merica’s Bicentennial, which culminated on July 4, 1976, was a spirited and unifying celebration of our country, its Founding, and its ideals. As we approach our nation’s 250th anniversary, which will take place during the

next presidency, America is now divided between two opposing forces: woke revolu- tionaries and those who believe in the ideals of the American revolution. The former believe that America is—and always has been—“systemically racist” and that it is not worth celebrating and must be fundamentally transformed, largely through a cen- tralized administrative state. The latter believe in America’s history and heroes, its principles and promise, and in everyday Americans and the American way of life. They believe in the Constitution and republican government. Conservatives—the Ameri- canists in this battle—must fight for the soul of America, which is very much at stake. Just two years after the death of the last surviving Constitutional Convention delegate, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln warned that the greatest threat to America would come not from without, but from within. This is evident today: Whether it be mask and vaccine mandates, school and business closures, efforts to keep Americans from driving gas cars or using gas stoves, or efforts to defund the police, indoctrinate schoolchildren, alter beloved books, abridge free speech, undermine the colorblind ideal, or deny the biological reality that there are only two sexes, the Left’s steady stream of insanity appears to be never-ending. The next Administration must stand up for American ideals, American families, and

American culture—all things in which, thankfully, most Americans still believe. Highlighting this need, former director of the Office of Management and Budget

Russ Vought writes in Chapter 2, “The modern conservative President’s task is to

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

limit, control, and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people.” At the core of this goal is the work of the White House and the central personnel agencies. Article II of the Constitution vests all federal executive power in a Pres- ident, made accountable to the citizenry through regular elections. Our Founders wrote, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Accordingly, Vought writes, “it is the President’s agenda that should matter to the departments and agencies,” not their own.

Yet the federal bureaucracy has a mind of its own. Federal employees are often ideologically aligned—not with the majority of the American people—but with one another, posing a profound problem for republican government, a government “of, by, and for” the people. As Donald Devine, Dennis Kirk, and Paul Dans write in Chapter 3, “An autonomous bureaucracy has neither independent constitu- tional status nor separate moral legitimacy.” Byzantine personnel rules provide the bureaucrats with their chief means of self-protection. What’s more, knowledge of such rules is used to thwart the President’s appointees and agenda. As Devine, Kirk, and Dans write, “Managing the immense bureaucracy of the federal government is impossible without an understanding of the key central personnel agencies and their governing laws and regulations.”

Many of these laws and regulations governing a largely underworked, over- compensated, and unaccountable federal civilian workforce are so irrational that they would be comical in a less important context. This is true whether it comes to evaluating employees’ performance or hiring new employees. Only in the federal government could an applicant in the hiring process be sent to the front of the line because of a “history of drug addiction” or “alcoholism,” or due to “morbid obesity,” “irritable bowel syndrome,” or a “psychiatric disorder.” The next Admin- istration should insist that the federal government’s hiring, evaluation, retention, and compensation practices benefit taxpayers, rather than benefiting the lowest rung of the federal workforce.

In order to carry out the President’s desires, political appointees must be given the tools, knowledge, and support to overcome the federal government’s obstructionist Human Resources departments. More fundamentally, the new Administration must fill its ranks with political appointees. Devine, Kirk, and Dans observe that “the Trump Administration appointed fewer political appointees in its first few months in office” than any other recent presidency. This left career employees in charge in many places. This can occur even after departments have been fully staffed with political appointees. Vought writes that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should establish a “reputation as the keeper of ‘commander’s intent,’” yet OMB is dominated by career employees who often try to overrule political appointees serving in the various executive depart- ments. Empowering political appointees across the Administration is crucial to a President’s success.

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Above all, the President and those who serve under him or her must be commit- ted to the Constitution and the rule of law. This is particularly true of a conservative Administration, which knows that the President is there to uphold the Constitu- tion, not the other way around. If a conservative Administration does not respect the Constitution, no Administration will. In Chapter 1, former deputy chief of staff to the President Rick Dearborn writes that the White House Counsel “must take seriously the duty to protect the powers and privileges of the President from encroachments by Congress, the judiciary, and the administrative components of departments and agencies.” Equally important, the President must enforce the Constitution and laws as written, rather than proclaiming new “law” unilaterally. Presidents should not issue mask or vaccine mandates, arbitrarily transfer student loan debt, or issue monarchical mandates of any sort. Legislatures make the laws in a republic, not executives.

It is crucial that all three branches of the federal government respect what Mad- ison called the “double security” to our liberties: the separation of powers among the three branches, and the separation of powers between the federal government and the states. This double security has been greatly compromised over the years. Vought writes that “the modern executive branch…writes federal policy, enforces that policy, and often adjudicates whether that policy was properly drafted and enforced.” He describes this as “constitutionally dire” and “in urgent need of repair,” adding: “Nothing less than the survival of self-governance in America is at stake.” When it comes to ensuring that freedom can flourish, nothing is more import- ant than deconstructing the centralized administrative state. Political appointees who are answerable to the President and have decision-making authority in the executive branch are key to this essential task. The next Administration must not cede such authority to non-partisan “experts,” who pursue their own ends while engaging in groupthink, insulated from American voters. The following chapters detail how the next Administration can be responsive to the American people (not to entrenched “elites”); how it can take care that all the laws are “faithfully exe- cuted,” not merely those that the President desires to see executed; and how it can

achieve results and not be stymied by an unelected bureaucracy.

1

WHITE HOUSE OFFICE

Rick Dearborn

rom popular culture to academia, the American presidency has long been a prominent fixture of the national imagination—naturally so since it is the beating heart of our nation’s power and prestige. It has played, for instance,

a feature role in innumerable movies and television shows and has been prodded, analyzed, and critiqued by countless books, essays, and studies. But like nearly everything else in life, there is no substitute for firsthand experience, which this manual has compiled from the experience of presidential appointees and provides in accessible form for future use.

With respect to the presidency, it is best to begin with our Republic’s founda- tional document. The Constitution gives the “executive Power” to the President.1 It designates him as “Commander in Chief”2 and gives him the responsibility to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”3 It further prescribes that the President might seek the assistance of “the principal Officer in each of the execu- tive Departments.”4 Beginning with George Washington, every President has been supported by some form of White House office consisting of direct staff officers as well as a Cabinet comprised of department and agency heads.

Since the inaugural Administration of the late 18th century, citizens have chosen to devote both their time and their talent to defending and strengthening our nation by serving at the pleasure of the President. Their shared patriotic endeavor has proven to be a noble one, not least because the jobs in what is now known as the White House Office (WHO) are among the most demanding in all of government.

The President must rely on the men and women appointed to the WHO. There simply are not enough hours in the day to manage the affairs of state single-handedly,

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

so delegation is not just advisable: It is essential. The decisions that assistants and senior advisers make will directly impact the Administration, its legacy, and—most important—the fate of the country. Their agenda must therefore be the President’s agenda. Choosing who will carry out that agenda on a daily basis is not only one of the first decisions a President makes in office, but also one of the most critical. The tone and tempo of an administration are often determined on January 20.

CHIEF OF STAFF

As with most of the positions that will be covered in this first chapter, the Chief of Staff is also an Assistant to the President. However, the chief is truly first among equals. Of all presidential staff members, the chief is the most critical to implementa- tion of the President’s vision for the country. The chief also has a dual role as manager of the staffs of both the WHO and the Executive Office of the President (EOP).5

The Chief of Staff’s first managerial task is to establish an organizational chart for the WHO. It should be simple and contain clear lines of authority and respon- sibility to avoid conflicts. It should also identify specific points of contact for each element of the government outside of the White House. These contacts should include the White House Liaisons who are selected by the Office of Presidential Personnel (PPO).

Receiving guidance from the President, the chief endeavors to implement the President’s agenda by setting priorities for the WHO. This process begins by taking stock of the President’s campaign promises, identifying current and prospective opportunities, and then delegating policy priorities among the departments and agencies of the Cabinet and throughout the three White House policy councils:

• The National Economic Council (NEC);

• The Domestic Policy Council (DPC); and

• The National Security Council (NSC).

The President is briefed on all of his policy priorities by his Cabinet and senior staff as directed by the chief. The chief—along with senior WHO staff—maps out the issues and themes that will be covered daily and weekly. The chief then works with the policy councils, the Cabinet, and the Office of Communications and Office of Legislative Affairs (OLA) to sequence and execute the rollout of policies and announcements. White House Counsel and senior advisers and senior counselors are also intimately involved.

All senior staff report to the Chief of Staff, either directly or through his two or three deputies, unless the President determines that a particular Assistant to the President reports directly to him. Most chiefs have interacted directly with

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Cabinet officers and a select number of direct reports. In most cases, the direct reports to the chief are his two or three deputies, the Communications Director, PPO Director, White House Counsel, and senior advisers. Occasionally, the Office of Public Liaison (OPL), the Cabinet Secretary, and Intergovernmental Affairs (IGA) also report directly to the chief. Usually, however, they report instead to a Deputy Chief of Staff.

The Chief of Staff’s main challenge is time management. His use of his deputies, meetings with senior staff, and direction provided to the WHO must all balance with the daily needs of the President. A successful chief steers the West Wing using his management of and influence with the various individuals and entities around him. It goes without saying that selecting the right person to be chief is vital.

DEPUTY CHIEFS OF STAFF

In recent years, Presidents typically have appointed two Deputy Chiefs of Staff: a Deputy Chief of Staff for Management and Operations and a Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. There also have been other types of deputy chiefs whose roles have included, for example, overseeing strategy, planning, and implementation. Chiefs of Staff have then occasionally appointed a principal Deputy Chief to be in charge of guiding decision-making, organizational structure, and information flow.

PRINCIPAL DEPUTY CHIEFS OF STAFF

Not all Chiefs of Staff have tapped a principal deputy. A major reason is that doing so adds another layer of command complexity. When principal deputies have been installed, their roles have varied based on the needs of particular chiefs. Most principal deputies have functioned as doorkeepers, sorting through action items, taking on those that can be handled at their own level, and passing up others that truly require the attention of the Chief of Staff or the President. Principal deputies also have assumed control of the scheduling functions, normally under the operations deputy, and have worked directly with the policy councils at the direction of the Chief of Staff. The OPL and Office of Political Affairs (OPA) also

have reported to a principal deputy.

Deputy Chief of Staff for Management and Operations. The Deputy Chief of Staff for Management and Operations oversees the President’s schedule and all logistical aspects of his movement within and outside of the White House (for example, both air travel on Air Force One and Marine One and ground transpor- tation). This deputy also interfaces directly with the Secret Service as well as the military offices tasked with keeping the President and his family safe.

In the past, this deputy has also worked with the NSC, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and the Intelligence Community and on advancing all foreign trips. If their roles are separated from that of the policy deputy, this deputy should have a strong grasp of international affairs and robust foreign policy credentials.

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

This deputy further manages all facets of the working White House: technology, grounds management, support staff, personnel administration, and communica- tions. This individual therefore needs to be meticulous and ideally should possess a great deal of command-and-control experience.

Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. In some Administrations, the functions of the IGA, OPA, and OPL and other advisers within the WHO have fallen under the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. For conservatives, this arrangement could help to connect the WHO’s outreach to political and external groups and be a strong conduit for state and local elected officials, state party organizations, and both grasstop and grassroots groups.

This deputy chief works directly with the Chief of Staff, Cabinet officers, and all three policy councils to support the development and implementation of the President’s agenda. This deputy chief should therefore have impressive policy cre- dentials in the realms of economic, domestic, and social affairs.

SENIOR ADVISERS

Presidents have surrounded themselves with senior advisers whose experi- ence and interests are not necessarily neatly defined. In recent Administrations, senior advisers have been appointed to offer broad guidance on political matters and communications issues; others have acted as “czars” for specific projects or policy areas.

The most powerful senior advisers frequently have had a long personal relation- ship with the President and often have spent a significant amount of time with him within and outside of the White House. They have been asked not only to provide guidance on a variety of policy issues, but also to offer instruction on communi- cating with the American people and the media.

In a number of Administrations, new offices—or “councils”—have been created to support senior advisers. For the most part, their functions have been duplicative or overlapping, as a result of which these offices have tended to be short-lived. Even so, senior advisers should be provided the staff and resources that their portfo- lios require. To ensure that senior advisers are effective, their portfolios must be clearly delineated and clearly communicated across the White House. This too is a responsibility of the Chief of Staff.

OFFICE OF WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL

The Office of White House Counsel provides legal guidance to the President and elements of the EOP on a host of issues, including presidential powers and privi- leges, ethics compliance, review of clemency applications, and judicial nominations. The selection of White House Counsel is one of the most important decisions an incoming President will make. The office is not designed to create or advance pol- icies on its own initiative—nor should it do so. Rather, it is dedicated to guiding

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the President and his reports on how (within the bounds of the law) to pursue and realize the President’s agenda.

While the White House Counsel does not serve as the President’s personal attor- ney in nonofficial matters, it is almost impossible to delineate exactly where an issue is strictly personal and has no bearing on the President’s official function. The White House Counsel needs to be deeply committed both to the President’s agenda and to affording the President proactive counsel and zealous representation. That individual directly advises the President as he performs the duties of the office, and this requires a relationship that is built on trust, confidentiality, and candor.

The Office of White House Counsel is also responsible for ensuring that each component of the White House adheres to all applicable legal and ethical guide- lines, which often requires ongoing training and monitoring to ensure compliance. This means ensuring that White House staff regularly consult with office attor- neys on required financial disclosures, received gifts, potential conflicts of interest, and other ethical concerns. The Office of White House Counsel is the first line of defense for the EOP. Its staff must take seriously the duty to protect the powers and privileges of the President from encroachments by Congress, the judiciary, and the administrative components of departments and agencies.

In addition to the White House Counsel, the office includes deputies, assistants, associates, and legal support staff. The assistant and associate attorneys are often specialists in particular areas of the law and offer guidance to the EOP on issues related to national security, criminal law, environmental law, and a host of admin- istrative and regulatory matters. Attorneys working in the Office of White House Counsel serve as legal advisers to the White House policy operation by reviewing executive orders, agency regulations, and other policy-related functions. Here again, subordinates should be deeply committed to the President’s agenda and see their role as helping to accomplish the agenda through problem solving and advocacy. They should not erect roadblocks out of an abundance of caution; rather, they should offer practical legal advice on how to promote the President’s agenda within the bounds of the law.

The White House Counsel’s office cannot serve as a finishing school to credential the next set of white-shoe law firm attorneys or federal judges in waiting who cabin their opinions for fear their elite credentials could be tarnished through a policy disagreement. Rather, it should function more as an activist yet ethical plaintiffs’ firm that advocates for its client—the Administration’s agenda—within the limits imposed by the Constitution and the duties of the legal profession.

The Office of White House Counsel also serves as the primary gateway for communication between the White House and the Department of Justice (DOJ). Traditionally, both the White House Counsel and the Attorney General have issued a memo requiring all contact between the two institutions to occur only between the Office of White House Counsel and the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

General. The next Administration should reexamine this policy and determine whether it might be more efficient or more appropriate for communication to occur through additional channels. The White House Counsel also works closely with the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel to seek opinions on, for example, matters of policy development and the constitutionality of presidential power and privileges and with OLA and the DOJ Office of Legal Policy on presidential judicial nominees.

When a new President takes office, he will need to decide expeditiously how to handle any major ongoing litigation or other pending legal matters that might pres- ent a challenge to his agenda. To offer guidance, the White House Counsel must get up to speed as quickly as possible on all significant ongoing legal challenges across the executive branch that might affect the new Administration’s policy agenda and must be prepared at the outset of the Administration to present recommenda- tions to the President, including recommendations for reconsidering or reversing positions of the previous Administration in any significant litigation. This review will usually require consulting with the new political leadership at the Justice Department, including during the transition period.

No day is predictable at the White House. Therefore, to handle the pace and volatility of affairs, the Office of White House Counsel must offer measured legal guidance in a timely manner. This often means forgoing law review–style memos about esoteric legal concepts and instead quickly providing high-level yet incisive guidance. Due to evolving world events, domestic affairs, and political pressures, the office often faces legal questions for which there may not be a wealth of precedent. Attorneys in the Office of White House Counsel must therefore work collaboratively within the White House and the Department of Justice, relying on each other as a team, to ensure that proper legal guidance is delivered to the President.

The President should choose a White House Counsel who is well-versed in the Constitution, administrative and regulatory law, and the inner workings of Congress and the political process. Instead of choosing a specialist, the President should hire a counsel with extensive experience with a wide range of complex legal subjects. Moreover, while a candidate with elite credentials might seem ideal, the best one will be above all loyal to the President and the Constitution.

STAFF SECRETARY

The Office of the Staff Secretary is rarely visible to the outside world, but it performs work of tremendous importance. The office is similar to a military com- mander’s adjutant as it is responsible for fielding and managing a vast amount of information at the top of its organization. This includes information on its way into the Oval Office as well as information flowing out from the Oval Office. Because of its gatekeeping function, the position of Staff Secretary is one of extreme trust, and the individual who possesses it should be vetted to work as an “honest broker” in the President’s service.

2025 Presidential Transition Project

The Office of the Staff Secretary has been described as the last substantive control point before papers reach the Oval Office. A great deal of information is headed toward the Oval Office at any moment. This includes presidential decision memos; bills passed by Congress (which may be accompanied by signing or veto statements); and briefing books, reading materials, samples of constituent mail, personal mail, and drafts of speeches. The Staff Secretary makes certain that these materials are complete, well-ordered, and up to date before they reach the Presi- dent. This necessarily means that the Staff Secretary plays a key role in determining who weighs in on policy matters and when.

As noted above, the Staff Secretary also handles information leaving the Oval Office. The President may have questions after reviewing incoming material, may wish to seek more information, or may demand revisions. The Staff Secretary is often responsible for directing these requests to the appropriate places and fol- lowing up on them to ensure that they are completed.

One of the Staff Secretary’s critical functions is managing and overseeing the clearance process for the President’s daily/nightly briefing book. This book is filled with all the reading material and leading documentation the President needs in the morning and the evening to help him make decisions. The Staff Secretary also oversees the use of the President’s signature, whether by hand or by autopen, and manages the Office of the Executive Clerk, Office of Records Management, and Office of Presidential Correspondence.

OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS

The Office of Communications, which operates under the Director of Com- munications, conveys the President’s agenda to the public through various media, including speeches and remarks, press briefings, off-the-record discussions with reporters, and social media. Depending on how a President chooses to structure his White House, the Office of Communications may include the Office of the Press Secretary (Press Office), but no matter how it is structured, the office must work closely with the Press Office as well as the President’s speechwriters and digital strategists.

Operational functions of the Office of Communications include scheduling and running press briefings, interviews, meetings, media appearances, speeches, and a range of other events. The Office of Communications must maintain robust rela- tionships with the White House Press Corps, the White House Correspondents’ Association, regional stakeholders, and key interest groups. No legal entitle- ment exists for the provision of permanent space for media on the White House campus, and the next Administration should reexamine the balance between media demands and space constraints on the White House premises.

Leadership within the Office of Communications should include a Com- munications Director (who is a direct report to the Chief of Staff ), a Deputy

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Communications Director, a Deputy Director for Strategic Communications, and a Press Secretary. This leadership team must work together closely to drive the national narrative about the White House.

The best resource for the Office of Communications is the President. The Pres- ident conveys the White House’s overall message through one or two inaugural addresses, State of the Union addresses, speeches to Congress, and press confer- ences. The office must also ensure that the various White House offices disseminate a unified message to the public. The Communications Director and Press Secretary in particular should be careful to avoid contradicting the President or delivering conflicting information.

The speechwriting team is a critical component of the communications team. Speechwriting is a unique talent: The writers selected must understand policy, should have a firm grasp of history and other liberal-arts disciplines, and should be able to learn and adopt the President’s style of rhetoric and mode of delivery.

The Press Secretary is the President’s spokesperson, communicating to the American people through the media. The Press Secretary engages with the White House Press Corps formally through press briefings and informally through impromptu gaggles and meetings. Individuals who serve in this role must be quick on their feet, which means, when appropriate, deftly refuting and rebutting corre- spondents’ questions and comments.

The Communications Director must convey the President’s mission to the American people. Especially for conservatives, this means navigating the main- stream media to ensure that the President’s agenda is conveyed effectively and accurately. The Communications Director must be politically savvy and very aware of the ongoing activities of the other White House offices. The new Administration should examine the nature of the relationship between itself and the White House Correspondents Association and consider whether an alternative coordinating body might be more suitable.

OFFICE OF LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS (OLA)

Created by President Dwight Eisenhower, the OLA has continued to serve as the liaison between the White House and Congress. The White House must work with congressional leaders to ensure presidential nominees, for roles such as Cabinet secretaries and ambassadors, are confirmed by the Senate. The White House also relies on Congress to enact reforms promised by the President on the campaign trail, whether those promises relate to health care, education, or national defense. Because Congress holds the power of the purse, White House staffers must ensure that there is enough support on the Hill to secure the necessary funding through the appropriations process to fulfill the President’s agenda.

The OLA reports directly to the Chief of Staff and in some Administrations has done so under the guidance of a Deputy Chief of Staff (usually the Deputy Chief

2025 Presidential Transition Project

for Policy). Regardless of the person to whom the OLA reports, however, the office exercises a certain autonomy on behalf of the President and the Chief of Staff in directly influencing congressional leaders of both major political parties. The OLA often must function as the mediator among the parties and find common ground to facilitate the successful enactment of the President’s agenda.

As is the case with many White House offices (but especially the Office of Com- munications), the OLA must ensure that congressional leaders receive one unified message. If other actors within the White House maintain their own relationships with congressional leaders and staffers, it may appear that the President’s agenda is fractured and lacks consensus. This dynamic has caused real problems for many Presidents in the past.

Internally, OLA staffers need to be involved in policy discussions, budget reviews, and other important meetings. They must also provide advice to policy staffers regarding whether certain ideas are politically feasible. Externally, OLA staffers have to communicate continuously with congressional offices of both parties in both the House and the Senate to ensure that the President has enough support to enact his legislative priorities or sustain votes.

The OLA requires staffers who are effective communicators and can provide a dose of reality to other White House staffers when necessary. Although a policy proposal from within the White House may be a great idea, OLA staffers must ensure that it is politically feasible. OLA staffers must therefore be skilled in both politics and policy. Furthermore, the President should seek out individuals who can advance his agenda and at the same time forge pathways with members of the opposing political party on other priorities.

Most important, the OLA must function as a well-oiled machine: precisely synced. The President cannot afford to have a tennis player on—much less as the leader of—his football team.

OFFICE OF PRESIDENTIAL PERSONNEL (PPO)

The political axiom that “personnel is policy” was popularized under President Ronald Reagan during the 1981 presidential transition. One of the most important offices in the White House is the PPO, which was created under President Richard Nixon to centralize political appointments. Departments and agencies had and still have direct legal authority on hiring and firing, but the power to fill Schedule C posi- tions—the core of political jobs—is vested with the President. Therefore, the White House, not the department or agency, has the final word on political appointments. PPO’s primary responsibility is to staff the executive branch with individuals who are equipped to implement the President’s agenda. Although its focus should be identifying and recruiting leaders to fill the approximately 1,000 appointments that require Senate confirmation, PPO must also fill approximately 3,000 political jobs that require dedicated conservatives to support the Administration’s political leadership.

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Frequently, many medium-tier and top-tier jobs have been filled by policy experts tasked with accomplishing much of the work of the Administration. At the same time, appointees in the entry-level jobs have brought invaluable energy and commitment to the White House and have proved to be the “farm team” for the conservative movement.

The Office of Presidential Personnel is responsible for:

• Identifying potential political personnel both actively through recruitment and passively by fielding resumes and adjudicating requests from

political actors.

• Vetting potential political personnel by conducting political background checks and reviewing any clearance and fitness assessments by departments and agencies.

• Making recommendations to the President and to other appointment authorities on behalf of the President.

• Identifying programmatic political workforce needs early and developing plans (for example, Schedule F).

• Maintaining a strong relationship with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) both for operational purposes and to effectuate the President’s direct Title 5 authorities. The President is in charge of the federal workforce and exercises control principally by working through the Director of the Office of Personnel Management.

• Training and connecting political personnel.

• Playing “bad cop” in a way that other White House offices cannot (including serving as the office that takes direct responsibility for firings and hirings).

• Serving as a personnel link between conservative organizations and the executive branch.

In most Administrations, PPO will staff more than 100 positions during a transi- tion and thousands of noncareer positions during the President’s first term. Direct authority and a strong relationship with the President are necessary attributes for any PPO Director. Historically, PPO has had direct review and control of personnel files, including security clearance dossiers.

2025 Presidential Transition Project

At the highest level, PPO is tasked with long-term, strategic workforce devel- opment. The “billets” of political appointments are of immense importance in credentialing and training future leaders. In addition, whatever one’s view of the constitutionality of various civil service rules (for example, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 19986) might be, it is necessary to ensure that departments and agencies have robust cadres of political staff just below senior levels in the event of unexpected vacancies.

OFFICE OF POLITICAL AFFAIRS (OPA)

The OPA is the primary office within the executive branch for managing the President’s political interests. Although its specific functions vary from Admin- istration to Administration, the OPA typically serves as the liaison between the President and associated political entities: national committees, federal and state campaigns, and interest groups. Within legal guidelines, the OPA engages in out- reach, conducts casework, and—if the President is up for reelection—assists with his campaign. The OPA may also monitor congressional campaigns, arrange pres- idential visits with other political campaigns, and recommend campaign staff to the Office of Presidential Personnel for service in the executive branch.

The OPA further serves as a line of communication between the White House and the President’s political party. This includes both relaying the President’s ambitions to political interests and listening to the needs of political interests. This relationship allows for the exchange of information between the White House and political actors across the country. The OPA should have one director of political affairs who reports either to the Chief of Staff or to a Deputy Chief of Staff. The OPA should also include various deputy directors, each of whom is responsible for a certain geographical region of the country.

Because nearly all White House activities are in some way inherently political, the OPA needs to be aware of all presidential actions and activities—including travel, policy decisions, speeches, nominations, and responses to matters of national security—and consider how they might affect the President’s image. The OPA must therefore have a designated staffer who communicates not only with other White House offices, but also with the Cabinet and executive branch agencies.

OFFICE OF CABINET AFFAIRS (OCA)

The OCA’s role has changed to some degree over the course of various Adminis- trations, but its overriding function remains the same: to ensure the coordination of policy and communication between the White House and the Cabinet. Most important, the OCA coordinates all Cabinet meetings with the President. It should also organize and administer regular meetings of the Deputy Secretaries because they also typically serve vital roles in the departments and agencies and, further, often become acting secretaries when Cabinet members resign.

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

There should be one Cabinet Secretary who reports to the Chief of Staff’s office, either directly or through a deputy chief, according to the chief’s preference and focus. The Cabinet Secretary maintains a direct relationship with all members of the Cabinet.

The OCA further consists of deputies and special assistants who work with each department’s principal, Deputy Secretary, Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, and other senior staff. The OCA also connects the departments to WHO offices.

The OCA coordinates with the Chief of Staff’s office and the Office of Communi- cations to promote the President’s agenda through the Cabinet departments and agencies. The Cabinet’s communications staffers are obviously another critical component of this operation.

In prior Administrations, the OCA has played a vital role by tracking the Pres- ident’s agenda for the Chief of Staff, Deputy Chiefs, and senior advisers. It has worked with each department and agency to advance policy priorities. In the future, amplifying this function would truly benefit both the President and the conser- vative movement.

From time to time throughout an Administration, travel optics, ethics chal- lenges, and Hatch Act7 issues involving Cabinet members, deputies, and senior staffers can arise. The OCA is normally tasked with keeping the WHO informed of such developments and providing support if and when necessary.

The ideal Cabinet Secretary will have exceptional organizational skills and be a seasoned political operative or attorney. Because many Cabinet officials have been former presidential candidates, governors, ambassadors, and Members of Congress, the ideal candidate should also possess the ability to interact with and persuade accomplished individuals.

OFFICE OF PUBLIC LIAISON (OPL)

The OPL is critically important in building coalitions and support for the Pres- ident’s agenda across every aligned social, faith-based, minority, and economic interest group. It is a critical tool for shaping public opinion and keeping myriad supporters, as well as “frenemies” and opponents alike who are within reach, better informed.

The OPL is a notably large office. It should have one Director who reports to the Chief of Staff’s office, either directly or through a deputy, according to the chief’s preference and focus. The Director must maintain relationships not only with other WHO heads, but also with the senior staff of every Cabinet department and agency. Since a President’s agenda is always in motion, it is important for the OPL to facilitate listening sessions to receive the views of the various leaders and mem- bers of key interest groups.

The OPL should also have a sufficient number of deputies and special assistants to cover the vast number of disparate interest groups that are engaged daily. The

2025 Presidential Transition Project

OPL has, by far, held more meetings in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) and within the West Wing itself than any other office within the WHO.

The OPL is the chief White House enforcer and gatekeeper among these var- ious interest groups. It has operated best whenever the Chief of Staff has given it permission to use both the proverbial “carrot” and the proverbial “stick.” To make this work, communication with the chief’s office is vital. Additionally, the OPL has had an outsized role in presidential scheduling and both official and political travel. The OPL Director should come from the President’s election campaign or Cap- itol Hill—but should not have deeply entrenched connections to a K Street entity or any other potential stakeholder. Some prior relationships can create real or perceived biases toward one group or another. The Director should be amiable, gregarious, highly organized, and willing to shoulder criticism and pushback from

interest groups and other elements of the Administration.

Unlike the Director, OPL deputies and special assistants need a deep under- standing of the capital, from K Street to Capitol Hill. They should have extensive experience in private industry, the labor sector, the conservative movement, and among the specific interest groups with which they will be asked to engage on behalf of the White House.

OPL staffers work with more external and internal parties than any other WHO staffers. In turn, they must be effective communicators and initiative-takers. They must also be able to influence, persuade, and—most important—listen to various stakeholders and ensure that they feel heard. All OPL staffers must understand from the outset that their jobs might be modified or even phased out entirely as the Administration’s priorities change.

OFFICE OF INTERGOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS (IGA)

The IGA connects the White House to state, county, local, and tribal govern- ments. In other words, it is the one-stop shop for disseminating an Administration’s agenda to all non–federal government entities.

The IGA should have a Director to whom one or two Deputy Directors report. The Director must ensure that the White House remains connected to all non– federal government entities. The interests and perspectives of these entities are represented in policy discussions, organized events with the West Wing, EOP senior staff, and IGA staff throughout the departments and agencies.

The IGA can be staffed in a variety of ways, but two arrangements are most common:

• Each deputy and that deputy’s staffers are responsible for a type of government.

• A group of staffers is responsible for a specific geographical region of the country.

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

The IGA, as suggested above, represents the interests and perspectives of non– federal government entities, but its primary job is to make sure that these entities understand an Administration’s agenda and ultimately support it.

The IGA must work with all other White House offices, especially the OPA and the OPL, and manage its staff throughout the departments and agencies. IGA staff- ers must therefore have communication skills, understand political nuance, and be willing to engage in complex policy discussions. They should also be not just generally responsive, but also proactive in seeking out the interests and perspec- tives of non–federal government entities.

WHITE HOUSE POLICY COUNCILS

As the federal government has ballooned in size over the past century, it has become increasingly difficult for the President alone to direct his agenda across the executive branch. Three White House policy councils have come into existence to help the President to control the bureaucracy and ensure continued alignment between agency leadership and White House priorities. Those councils—as pre- viewed above—are the NSC, NEC, and DPC. Each is headed by an Assistant to the President and performs three significant functions.

• Policy Coordination. The primary role of the policy councils is to coordinate the development of Administration policy. This frequently includes developing significant legislative priorities, coordinating policy decisions that impact multiple departments and agencies, and at times coordinating policy decisions within a single department or agency. This process must ensure that all relevant offices are included; that competing or conflicting opinions are thoroughly discussed and evaluated; and, when there is disagreement among White House senior staff or among Cabinet members, a well-structured question is presented to the President for an intermediate or final decision.

• Policy Advice. By virtue of working in the White House, the heads of the three policy councils will also function as independent policy advisers to the President. This aspect of the role will vary depending on the individual in this position and the President’s governing philosophy. Incumbents have ranged from “honest brokers,” who mostly coordinate and ensure that all opinions are fairly presented to the President, to “policy deciders,” who largely drive a given policy topic on behalf of the President.

• Policy Implementation. The policy councils also manage and mediate the implementation of previous policy decisions. Implementation of a new statute or an executive order frequently takes years and involves many

2025 Presidential Transition Project

distinct and more granular policy decisions along the way. It is essential to have a centralized process for evaluating and coordinating these decisions, especially if they involve more than one Cabinet department or agency with differing opinions on the best approach for securing the President’s goals.

The above functions have recently been managed by policy councils through a tiered interagency policy process. This process helps to identify differences of opinion and reach a decision without having to take every issue to the President. It can be used to address a single question or monitor a recurring issue on an ongoing basis. Typically, the process involves multiple Cabinet departments and agencies that have a pertinent role, policy interest, or disagreement. Each policy council’s process could involve the following committees:

• Policy Coordinating Committee (PCC). A PCC is led by a Special Assistant to the President from the policy council and includes political Assistant Secretary–level experts from the relevant departments, agencies, or offices. The purpose is to determine where consensus exists, clearly identify where there are differing opinions, and develop options for resolving the remaining questions. If no outstanding questions or disagreements exist, the PCC may resolve the issue and move toward implementation at the agency level.

• Deputies Committee (DC). A DC is a meeting of presidentially appointed executives chaired by the policy council’s Deputy Assistant to the President and relevant Deputy Secretaries. It evaluates the options produced by the PCC and frequently directs the PCC to add, expand, or reevaluate an option or even to reach a compromise and resolve an issue at that level.

• Principals Committee (PC). When questions are not resolved by a DC, the Director of the Policy Council will chair a PC, which is attended by the relevant Cabinet Secretaries and senior White House political staff. This is the final opportunity for the President’s most senior advisers to discuss the question, make sure that each principal’s position is carefully understood, and see whether consensus or a compromise might be reached. If not,

the Chief of Staff’s office will schedule time for the PC to meet with the President for a final decision.

Despite having seemingly clear and separate portfolios, the three policy coun- cils frequently have areas of overlap, which can result in confusion, duplication, or conflict. For example, there are the areas of immigration and border security

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

(either NSC or DPC); health care, energy, and environment (either NEC or DPC); and trade and international economic policy (either NSC or NEC). Identifying these potentially problematic areas and assigning policy responsibilities to only one council where possible will help to speed up the policy-coordination process. While other chapters will cover specific policy goals for each department or agency, incoming policy councils will need to move rapidly to lead policy processes around cross-cutting agency topics, including countering China, enforcing immi- gration laws, reversing regulatory policies in order to promote energy production, combating the Left’s aggressive attacks on life and religious liberty, and confronting

“wokeism” throughout the federal government.

National Security Council. The NSC is intended to be an interdepartmen- tal body within the White House that can set national security policy with a whole-of-government approach. Unlike the other policy councils, the NSC was established by statute.8 Statutory members and advisers who are currently part of the NSC include the President and Vice President; the Secretaries of State, Defense, and Energy; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and the Director of National Intelligence.9

The NSC staff, and particularly the National Security Adviser, should be vetted for foreign and security policy experience and insight. The National Secu- rity Adviser and NSC staff advise the President on matters of foreign policy and national security, serve as an information conduit in times of crisis, and as liaisons ensuring that written communications are properly shared among NSC members. Special attention should be given to the use of detailees to staff the NSC. In recent years, the NSC’s staff size has been rightsized from its peak of 400 in 2015 down to 100–150 professional members. The next Administration should try to

limit the number of detailees to ensure more direct presidential control.

National Economic Council. The NEC was established in 1993 by executive order and has four key functions:

• To “coordinate the economic policy-making process with respect to domestic and international economic issues.”

• To “coordinate economic policy advice to the President.”

• To “ensure that policy decisions and programs are consistent with the President’s stated goals” and “that those goals are being effectively pursued.”

• To “monitor implementation of the President’s economic policy agenda.”10

The NEC Director coordinates and implements the President’s economic policy objectives by working with Cabinet secretaries, their departments, and multiple

2025 Presidential Transition Project

agencies. The Director is supported by a staff of policy experts in various fields, including infrastructure, manufacturing, research and development, agriculture, small business, financial regulation, housing, technology and innovation, and fiscal policy.

The NEC considers economic policy matters, and the DPC typically considers anything related to domestic matters with the exception of economic policy mat- ters. It also differs from the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). Whereas the NEC is in charge of policy development, the CEA acts as the White House’s internal research arm for economic analysis.

It is therefore critically important to find people with the right qualifica- tions to head both the NEC and the CEA. The CEA is almost always led by a well-known academic economist, and the NEC is regularly led by someone with expertise in directing the President’s economic policy process. Those who have served in the role have ranged from former CEOs of the nation’s largest invest- ment firms to financial-services industry managers to seasoned congressional staffers who have managed the economic policy issues for top financial and tax-writing committees.

Domestic Policy Council. The Domestic Policy Council (DPC) consists of advisers to the President on noneconomic domestic policy issues as well as inter- national issues with a significant domestic component (such as immigration). It is one of the primary policy councils serving the President along with the NSC and NEC. The Director serves as the principal DPC adviser to the President, along with members of the Cabinet, and the Deputy Director chairs the committee respon- sible for coordinating domestic policy development at the Deputy Secretary level. In this respect, both the Director and the Deputy Director have critical institu- tional functions that affect the development of domestic policy throughout the Administration.

The DPC also has policy experts (for example, Special Assistants to the Presi- dent or SAPs) who are responsible for developing and coordinating, as well as for advising the President, on specific issues. It is essential that DPC policy expertise reflect the most prominent issues that are before the Administration: issues such as the environment, health care, housing, and immigration. In addition, DPC SAPs should demonstrate a working knowledge of the rulemaking process (although they need not necessarily be experts on regulation) because a working knowledge of the rulemaking process will facilitate the DPC’s effectiveness in coordinating Administration policy.

The DPC also needs to work closely with other offices within the Executive Office of the President to promote economic opportunity and private-sector inno- vation. This includes working with the Office of Management and Budget and its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs as well as the Council of Economic Advisers, Council on Environmental Quality, and Office of Science and Technology

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Policy. To this end, the Director should chair a standing meeting with the princi- pals from each of the other EOP offices to enhance coordination from within the White House.

Several areas will be especially important as the DPC works to develop a well-defined domestic policy agenda. One is the promotion of innovation as a foundation for economic growth and opportunity. The President should establish an economic opportunity working group, chaired by the DPC Director, to coordi- nate the development of policies that promote economic opportunity. Another important area is the promotion of health care reform to bring down costs for the American people and the pressure that spending on health programs puts on the federal budget. Finally, DPC should coordinate with the NSC on a policy agenda to enhance border security.

OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT (OVP)

In modern U.S. history, the Vice President has acted as a significant adviser to the President. Once elected, the VP helps to promote and, in many instances, put into place and execute the President’s agenda. The President may additionally determine the inclusion of OVP staff in White House meetings, including Policy Coordinating Committee, Deputies Committee, and Principals Committee dis- cussions as has been done in various recent Administrations.

Recent Presidents have decided to give Vice Presidents space in the West Wing. The VP’s proximity to the President—as well as to the Chief of Staff and additional senior advisers—makes his or her role a powerful one within the West Wing.

Presidents typically tap VPs to lead various Administration efforts. These efforts have included serving on the NSC Principals Committee, heading the National Space Council, addressing immigration and border issues, leading the response to health care crises, and supervising workforce programs. VPs traditionally also spearhead projects of personal interest that have been authorized by the President. The VP is also charged with breaking tie votes in the Senate and in recent years has served abroad as a brand ambassador for the White House and more broadly the United States, announcing Administration priorities and coordinating with heads of state and other top foreign government officials. The Vice President, as

President of the Senate, could be a President’s emissary to the Senate.

OFFICE OF THE FIRST LADY/FIRST GENTLEMAN

The First Lady or First Gentleman plays an interesting role in the formation, implementation, and execution of policy in concert with the President. Active and interested first spouses often champion a select number of signature issues, whether they be thorny social issues or deeper policy issues. One advantage of the first spouse’s taking on hot-button social issues is that any political backlash will be less severe than it would be for the President.

2025 Presidential Transition Project

The first spouse normally appoints a chief of staff who has enough assistants to support the spouse’s activities in the East Wing of the White House. This group works exclusively with the first spouse and senior members of the White House along with EOP personnel to implement and execute the first spouse’s priorities, which reflect the first spouse’s passions and interests and are often identified as important in discussions with the President. Executed well, they can be strategi- cally useful in accelerating the Administration’s agenda. Past East Wing initiatives have focused on such issues as combating bullying, fighting drug abuse, promoting literacy, and encouraging physical education for young adults and children.

The first spouse is afforded significant resources. His or her staff also works with the President’s policy team, members of the Cabinet, and other EOP staff.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The preparation of this chapter was a collective enterprise of individuals involved in the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. All contributors to this chapter are listed at the front of this volume, but Edwin Meese III, Donald Devine, Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, and Jonathan Bronitsky deserve special mention. The author alone assumes responsibility for the content of this chapter, and no views expressed herein should be attributed to any other individual.

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

ENDNOTES

1. U.S. Constitution, art. II, § 1, https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/ (accessed February 14, 2023).

2. U.S. Constitution, art. II, § 2.

3. U.S. Constitution, art. II, § 3.

4. U.S. Constitution, art. II, § 2.

5. See Chapter 2, “Executive Office of the President,” infra.

6. H.R. 4328, Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, Public Law No. 105- 277, 105th Congress, October 21, 1998, Division C, Title I, § 151, https://www.congress.gov/105/plaws/publ277/

PLAW-105publ277.pdf (accessed February 15, 2023).

7. S. 1871, An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, Public Law No. 76-252, 76th Congress, August 2, 1939, https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/53/STATUTE-53-Pg1147.pdf (accessed March 7, 2023).

8. S. 758, National Security Act of 1947, Public Law No. 80-253, 80th Congress, July 26, 1947, https://govtrackus. s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/61/STATUTE-61-Pg495.pdf (accessed February 15, 2023). “The National Security Council was established by the National Security Act of 1947 (PL 235 – 61 Stat. 496; U.S.C. 402), amended by the National Security Act Amendments of 1949 (63 Stat. 579; 50 U.S.C. 401 et seq.). Later in 1949, as part of the Reorganization Plan, the Council was placed in the Executive Office of the President.” The White House, “National Security Council,” https://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/ (accessed February 15, 2023).

9. See Chapter 2, “Executive Office of the President,” infra.

10. President William J. Clinton, Executive Order 12835, “Establishment of the National Economic Council,” January 25, 1993, in Federal Register, Vol. 58, No. 16 (January 27, 1993), pp. 6189–6190, https://www.govinfo.

gov/content/pkg/FR-1993-01-27/pdf/FR-1993-01-27.pdf (accessed March 7, 2023).

2

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

OF THE UNITED STATES

Russ Vought

n its opening words, Article II of the U.S. Constitution makes it abundantly clear that “[t]he executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”1 That enormous power is not vested in departments or agencies, in staff or administrative bodies, in nongovernmental organizations or other equities and interests close to the government. The President must set and enforce a plan for the executive branch. Sadly, however, a President today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences—or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences

of a radical, supposedly “woke” faction of the country.

The modern conservative President’s task is to limit, control, and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people. This challenge is created and exacerbated by factors like Congress’s decades-long tendency to delegate its lawmaking power to agency bureaucracies, the pervasive notion of expert “inde- pendence” that protects so-called expert authorities from scrutiny, the presumed inability to hold career civil servants accountable for their performance, and the increasing reality that many agencies are not only too big and powerful, but also increasingly weaponized against the public and a President who is elected by the people and empowered by the Constitution to govern.

In Federalist No. 47, James Madison warned that “[t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”2 Regrettably, that wise and cautionary note describes to a significant degree the modern executive branch, which—whether controlled

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

by the bureaucracy or by the President—writes federal policy, enforces that policy, and often adjudicates whether that policy was properly drafted and enforced. The overall situation is constitutionally dire, unsustainably expensive, and in urgent need of repair. Nothing less than the survival of self-governance in America is at stake.

The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power— including power currently held by the executive branch—to the American people. Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and self-denial: boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will and self-denial to use the bureaucratic machine to send power away from Washington and back to America’s families, faith communities, local governments, and states.

Fortunately, a President who is willing to lead will find in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) the levers necessary to reverse this trend and impose a sound direction for the nation on the federal bureaucracy. The effectiveness of those EOP levers depends on the fundamental premise that it is the President’s agenda that should matter to the departments and agencies that operate under his constitutional authority and that, as a general matter, it is the President’s chosen advisers who have the best sense of the President’s aims and intentions, both with respect to the policies he intends to enact and with respect to the interests that must be secured to govern successfully on behalf of the American people. This chapter focuses on key features of and recommendations for several of the EOP’s important components.

U.S. OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET (OMB)

OMB assists the President in the execution of his policy agenda across the gov- ernment by employing many statutory and executive procedural levers to bring the bureaucracy in line with all budgetary, regulatory, and management decisions. Properly understood, it is a President’s air-traffic control system with the abil- ity and charge to ensure that all policy initiatives are flying in sync and with the authority to let planes take off and, at times, ground planes that are flying off course. OMB’s key roles include:

• Developing and enforcing the President’s budget and executing the appropriations laws that fund the government;

• Managing agency and personnel performance, procurement policy, financial management, and information technology;

• Developing the President’s regulatory agenda, reviewing new regulatory actions, reviewing federal information collections, and setting and enforcing federal information policy; and

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• Coordinating and clearing agency communications with Congress, including testimonies and views on draft legislation.

OMB cannot perform its role on behalf of the President effectively if it is not inti- mately involved in all aspects of the White House policy process and lacks knowledge of what the agencies are doing. Internally to the EOP, ensuring that the policy-for- mulation procedures developed by the White House to serve the President include OMB is one of any OMB Director’s major responsibilities. A common meme of those who intend to evade OMB review is to argue that where “resources” are not being discussed, OMB’s participation is optional. This ignores both OMB’s role in all down- stream execution and the reality that it has the only statutory tools in the White House that are powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies. The Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approxima- tion of the President’s mind as it pertains to the policy agenda while always being ready with actual options to effect that agenda within existing legal authorities and resources. This role cannot be performed adequately if the Director acts instead as the ambassador of the institutional interests of OMB and the wider bureaucracy to the White House. Once its reputation as the keeper of “commander’s intent” is established, then and only then does OMB have the ability to shape the most

efficient way to pursue an objective.

Externally, the Director must ensure that OMB has sufficient visibility into the deep caverns of agency decision-making. One indispensable statutory tool to that end is to ensure that policy officials—the Program Associate Directors (PADs) managing the vast Resource Management Offices (RMOs)—personally sign what are known as the apportionments. In 1870, Congress passed the Anti-Deficiency Act3 to prevent the common agency practice of spending down all appropriated funding, creating artificial funding shortfalls that Congress would have to fill. The law mandated that all funding be allotted or “apportioned” in installments. This process, whereby agencies come to OMB for allotments of appropriated funding, is essential to the effective financial stewardship of taxpayer dollars. OMB can then direct on behalf of a President the amount, duration, and purpose of any appor- tioned funding to ensure against waste, fraud, and abuse and ensure consistency with the President’s agenda and applicable laws.

The vast majority of these apportionments were signed by career officials—the Deputy Associate Directors (DADs)—until the Trump Administration placed this responsibility in the hands of the PADs and thereby opened wide vistas of oversight that had escaped the attention of policy officials. The Biden Administration sub- sequently reversed this decision. No Director should be chosen who is unwilling to restore apportionment decision-making to the PADs’ personal review, who is not aggressive in wielding the tool on behalf of the President’s agenda, or who is unable to defend the power against attacks from Congress.

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It should be noted that each of OMB’s primary functions, along with other executive and statutory roles, is carried out with the help of many essential OMB support offices. The two most important offices for moving OMB at the will of a Director are the Budget Review Division (BRD) and the Office of General Counsel (OGC). The Director should have a direct and effective relationship with the head of the BRD (considered the top career official within OMB) and transmit most instructions through that office because the rest of the agency is institution- ally inclined toward its direction and responds accordingly. The BRD inevitably will translate the directions from policy officials to the career staff, and at every stage, it is obviously vital that the Director ensure that this translation is an accurate one.

In addition, many key considerations involved in enacting a President’s agenda hinge on existing legal authorities. The Director must ensure the appointment of a General Counsel who is respected yet creative and fearless in his or her abil- ity to challenge legal precedents that serve to protect the status quo. This is vital within OMB not only with respect to the adequate development of policy options for the President’s review, but also with respect to agencies that attempt to protect their own institutional interests and foreclose certain avenues based on the mere assertion (and not proof) that the law disallows it or that, conversely, attempt to disregard the clear statutory commands of Congress.

In general, the Director should empower a strong Deputy Director with author- ity over the Deputy for Management, the PADs, and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to work diligently to break down barriers within OMB and not allow turf disputes or a lack of visibility to undermine the agency’s prin- cipal budget, management, and regulatory functions. OMB should work toward a “One OMB” position on behalf of the President and represent that view during the various policymaking processes.

Budget. The United States today faces an untenable fiscal situation and owes

$31 trillion on a debt that is steadily increasing. The OMB Director should present a fiscal goal to the President early in the budget development process to address the federal government’s fiscal irresponsibility. This goal would help to align the months-long process of developing the actual proposals for inclusion in the budget. Though some mistakenly regard it as a mere paper-pushing exercise, the Pres- ident’s budget is in fact a powerful mechanism for setting and enforcing public policy at federal agencies. The budget team includes six Resource Management Offices that, together with the BRD and other components, help the Director of OMB to develop and execute detailed agency spending plans that bear on every major aspect of policy formation and execution at federal agencies. Through initial priority-setting and ongoing supervision of agency spending, OMB’s budget team plays a key role in executing policy across the executive branch, including at many

agencies wrongly regarded as “independent.”

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The RMOs, each of which is led by a political appointee known as the PAD and a career DAD, are separated into six functional units:

• National Security.

• Natural Resources, Energy, and Science.

• Health.

• Education, Income Maintenance, and Labor.

• Transportation, Justice, and Homeland Security.

• Treasury, Commerce, and Housing.

Because the RMOs are institutionally ingrained in nearly all policymaking and implementation across the executive branch, they play a critical role in helping the Director to implement the President’s public policy agenda. However, because each RMO is responsible for formulating and supervising such a wide range of policy details, many granular but critical policy decisions are effectively left to the career professionals who serve across Administrations.

To enhance the OMB Director’s ability to help the President drive policy at the agencies, the existing six RMOs should be divided into smaller subject-matter areas, allowing for more PADs, and each of these PADs should have a Deputy PAD. This expanded pool of RMOs with additional political leadership would enable more comprehensive direction and oversight of policy development and implementation. Regardless of whether Congress adopts the President’s full set of budget rec- ommendations, the President should reintroduce the concept of administrative pay-as-you-go, or administrative PAYGO. This simple procedural requirement imposes budget neutrality on the discretionary choices of federal agencies, of which there are many in nearly all areas of policymaking. This simple step forces the executive branch to control what it can control. The principle may occasionally yield to other overarching requirements, such as a presidential regulatory budget, but in nearly all cases, administrative PAYGO plays a unique and indispensable

role in enforcing fiscal responsibility at federal departments and agencies.

The President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal disci- pline on the federal government. Anything short of that would constitute abject failure. Management. The Management Office of OMB (the “M-Side” as it is often called) is responsible for carrying out several important agency oversight functions, many of which are statutory. The Management team includes the following offices

led by presidentially appointed Senate-confirmed individuals:

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

• The Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP).

• The Office of Performance and Personnel Management (OPPM).

• The Office of Federal Financial Management (OFFM).

• The Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer (OFCIO).

• The Made in America Office (MIAO), which was added by the Biden Administration and is not a Senate-confirmed slot.

Each of these offices has responsibilities and authorities that a President can use to help drive policy across the government. It is vital that the Director and his political staff, not the careerists, drive these offices in pursuit of the President’s actual priorities and not let them set their own agenda based on the wishes of the sprawling “good government” management community in and outside of govern- ment. Many Directors do not properly prioritize the management portfolio, leaving it to the Deputy for Management, but such neglect creates purposeless bureaucracy that impedes a President’s agenda—an “M Train to Nowhere.”

OFPP. This office plays a critical role in leading the development of new policies and regulations concerning federal contracting and procurement. Through the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council, which is generally chaired by the OFPP Administrator, OFPP helps the Director to set a wide range of policies for all of those who contract with the executive branch. In the past, those governmentwide contracting rules have played a key role in helping to implement the President’s policy agenda. This office should be engaged early and often in OMB’s effort to drive policy, including by obtaining transparency about entities that are awarded federal contracts and grants and by using government contracts to push back against woke policies in corporate America.

OPPM. Through this office, the Director helps federal agencies to establish their performance goals and performance review processes. OPPM also works with the

U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to establish and manage personnel policies and practices across the federal government. The Director should instruct OPPM to establish annual performance goals and review processes for agencies that reflect the President’s agenda. OPPM should also be part of the President’s strategy to set and enforce sensible policies and practices for the federal workforce. OFFM. This office helps the Director to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in fed- eral programs—for example, through the Do Not Pay program. It should be part of

efforts to save precious taxpayer resources.

OFCIO. This office guides the federal government’s use and adoption of Inter- net-based technologies to improve government operations and save taxpayer

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money. As a function of its leadership role, it is critical in interagency discussions on a wide range of technology issues. The office thus is an important part of the President’s efforts to modernize, strengthen, and set technology-adoption policy for the executive branch.

MIAO. Building on the example and work of the Trump Administration, Presi- dent Biden established this office to centralize, carry out, and further develop the federal government’s Buy-American and other Made-in-America commitments. Its work ought to be continued and further strengthened.

Regulatory and Information Policy. OMB’s OIRA plays an enormous and vital role in reining in the regulatory state and ensuring that regulations achieve important benefits while imposing minimal burdens on Americans. The President should maintain Executive Order (EO) 12866,4 the foundation of OIRA’s review of regulatory actions. The Administration should likewise maintain the recent extension of those standards to regulatory actions of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.5 Regulatory analysis and OIRA review should also be required of the historically “independent” agencies as the Office of Legal Counsel has found is legally permissible.6

If the current Administration proceeds with its declared intent to modify aspects of EO 12866 or review OMB Circular A-4,7 the related document that provides the foundation for cost-benefit analysis, the next President should imme- diately begin to undo those changes and develop a rigorous, data-driven approach that will result in the least burdensome rules possible. The next President should also revive the directive in Executive Order 138918 that significant guidance doc- uments also must pass through OIRA review.

Because OIRA review often leads to fewer regulatory burdens, more regulatory benefits, and better coordination of regulatory policy, funding for OIRA tends to pay large dividends. Yet over the years, funding for OIRA has diminished. This trend should be reversed. The budget should also include sufficient full-time equiv- alent (FTE) employees to form regulatory advance teams that would consult with agencies on cost-benefit analysis and good regulatory practices at the beginning of the rulemaking process for the most important regulations. These teams would help agencies take cost-benefit analysis into account from the beginning of their rulemaking efforts, which in turn would result in higher-quality regulations and a swifter eventual OIRA review. To preserve the integrity of OIRA review, the staff who consult at the beginning of a rulemaking should not handle its eventual review.

The next President should also reinstate the many executive orders signed by President Trump that were designed to make the regulatory process more just, efficient, and transparent. Executive Orders 13771,9 13777,10 13891,11 13892,12

13893,13 13924 Section 6,14 13979,15 and 1398016 should be revived (with modifica- tions as needed). Executive Order 1313217 on federalism should be strengthened so that state regulatory and fiscal operations are not commandeered by the federal

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

government through so-called cooperative federalism programs. Additionally, the President should revise and sign an updated version of President Ronald Reagan’s Executive Order 1263018 on federal takings.

The next President should strengthen implementation of the Information Qual- ity Act,19 robustly use the authority of the Paperwork Reduction Act,20 carefully enforce the Privacy Act,21 and ensure the sound execution of OIRA’s statistical and other information policy functions. Regulatory cooperation agreements can also promote the further adoption of good regulatory practices, which improve market conditions for America and her allies. OIRA should also work with other components of OMB to revise and apply OMB’s uniform Guidance for Grants and Agreements22 and ensure that federal contract and grant guidelines satisfy EO 12866 and other centralized standards as appropriate.

But executive reforms and actions, while vital, are not enough: Congress also must act. The next President should work with Congress to pass significant reg- ulatory policy and process reforms, which could go a long way toward reining in the administrative state. Excellent examples of such legislation include the Reg- ulatory Accountability Act,23 SMART Act,24 GOOD Act,25 Early Participation in Regulations Act,26 Unfunded Mandates Accountability and Transparency Act,27 and REINS Act.28

Finally, the next President should work with Congress to maximize the utility of the Congressional Review Act (CRA),29 which allows Congress to undo midnight regulatory actions (including those disguised as “guidance”) on an accelerated timeline. To leverage the CRA’s power to the maximum extent, Congress and the President should enact the Midnight Rules Relief Act,30 which would help to ensure that multiple regulatory actions could be packaged and voted on at the same time. Immediate and robust use of the CRA would allow the President to focus his rulemaking resources on major new regulatory reforms rather than devoting months or years to undoing the final rulemakings of the Biden Administration.

Legislative Clearance and Coordination. OMB plays a critical role in ensur- ing that the executive branch is aligned on legislative proposals and language, agency testimonies, and other communications with Congress. The Director should use these authorities to enforce policy and message consistency aggressively and promote the effective engagement of the executive branch in legislative processes.

NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL (NSC)

The National Security Council (NSC) was established by statute to support the President in developing and implementing national security policy by coordinating across relevant departments and agencies, integrating authorities and resources toward common ends, and objectively assessing progress toward established goals. Led by the National Security Advisor (NSA), the NSC staff will be success- ful in implementing the President’s national security goals only if it is made up

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of personnel with technical expertise and experience as well as an alignment to the President’s declared national security policy priorities. The NSC must then chart a course that articulates and achieves the President’s national security goals and objectives. The President should empower a strong NSC that not only has the power to convene the policy process, but also is entrusted with the full power of the presidency to drive the bureaucracy.

In organizing (by means of Presidential Directive31) an NSC staff that is more responsive and aligned with the President’s goals and empowered to implement them, the NSA should immediately evaluate and eliminate directorates that are not aligned with the President’s agenda and replace them with new directorates as appropriate that can drive implementation of the President’s signature national security priorities. In addition to realigning the staff organization to the President’s priorities, the NSA should assign responsibility for implementation of specific policy initiatives to senior NSC officials from across the NSC staff structure. These officials should develop, direct, and execute tangible action plans in coordination with multiple agencies to achieve measurable, time-defined milestones.

Aligning NSC staff to the President’s national security goals will provide clearer direction, a mandate for action, and a baseline of accountability that can be used to evaluate staff performance and the NSC’s overall progress. Accountable senior officials, themselves either political appointees or a minimum number of career detailees, who are selected and vetted politically and report directly to political staff should be the main day-to-day managers for interagency coordination and implementation of their assigned national security policy objectives. They should provide policy analysis for consideration by the broader NSC and relevant agencies and ensure timely responses to decisions made by the President. The accountable senior officials should be established at the direction of the NSA and draw on per- sonnel and expertise from beyond the NSC, including OMB, the National Economic Council, and relevant federal agencies.

The NSC staff and principals should work in tandem with the National Eco- nomic Council and OMB at all levels, presenting a united effort to achieve the President’s goals and drawing on the latter’s statutory authorities to guide the bureaucracy. To accomplish national objectives effectively, foreign policy should fully incorporate the economic instruments of national power. National security policy must also include the prioritized allocation of resources. When policies are divorced from the resources required to implement them, they are stillborn—aca- demic exercises that undermine our national security and leave departments and agencies to their own devices.

The accountable senior officials should be empowered to identify, recruit, clear, and hire staff who are aligned with and willing to shepherd the President’s national security priorities. NSC staff leads, under the direction of the NSA, should have the discretion to reduce the number of positions that need high-level clearances,

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

and the NSC should be adequately resourced and authorized to adjudicate and hold security clearances internally with investigators who work directly for the NSC and whose sole task is to clear NSC officials. If certain staff are determined not to need high-level clearances, the question becomes whether they should be part of the NSC at all.

The NSC should take a leading role in directing the drafting and thorough review of all formal strategies: the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strat- egy, the Nuclear Posture Review, the Missile Defense Strategy, etc. In particular, the National Defense Strategy, which by tradition has evaded significant review, should be prioritized for White House review by the NSC and OMB. Both should also conduct reviews of operational war plans and global force planning and allo- cations with the Secretary of Defense to align them with presidential priorities and review all key policy and guidance intended for implementation by the heads of the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the Intelligence Community before they are authorized for distribution. The NSC should rigorously review all general and flag officer promotions to prioritize the core roles and responsibilities of the military over social engineering and non-defense matters, including climate change, critical race theory, manufactured extremism, and other polarizing policies that weaken our armed forces and discourage our nation’s finest men and women from enlisting to serve in defense of our liberty.

The NSC staff will need to consolidate the functions of both the NSC and the Homeland Security Council (HSC), incorporate the recently established Office of the National Cyber Director, and evaluate the required regional and functional directorates. Given the aforementioned prerequisites, the NSC should be prop- erly resourced with sufficient policy professionals, and the NSA should prioritize staffing the vast majority of NSC directorates with aligned political appointees and trusted career officials. For instance, the NSA should return all nonessen- tial detailees to their home agencies on their first day in office so that the new Administration can proceed efficiently without the personnel land mines left by the previous stewards and as soon as possible should replace all essential detailees with staff aligned to the new President’s priorities. The HSC has overseen pandemic response, and its incorporation is important.

In the end, change requires intervention, and the NSC staff should be appro- priately recruited, manned, and empowered to achieve the President’s national security and foreign policy objectives and maintain robust policy analysis and discussion while minimizing resistance from those who have an agenda or who jealously guard their resources and autonomy at the expense of national security and sound policy development. This resistance and inertia can be inadvertently enabled by a small and unempowered NSC.

Additionally, the White House Chief of Staff and NSA must ensure that the NSC is functioning in tandem with the rest of the White House staff to benefit from

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the best strategic thinking of the President’s top advisers. History shows that an unsupervised NSC staff can stray from its statutory role and adversely affect a Pres- ident and his policies. Moreover, while the NSC should be fully incorporated into the White House, it should also be allowed to do its job without the impediment of dually hatted staff that report to other offices. For instance, the NSC needs its own counsel to inform what legal options can be provided to the President. The White House Counsel should be part of that policy process as the President’s top legal adviser. These recommendations provide a clear road map for rapidly sizing and solidifying the NSC staff to support and achieve the President’s objectives beginning on Inauguration Day.

NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL (NEC)

The National Economic Council is one of the policy councils serving the Pres- ident along with the NSC and the Domestic Policy Council (DPC). The Director serves as principal adviser to the President on domestic and international eco- nomic policy and communicates the President’s economic message to the media. The Deputy Director is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the council, which includes chairing the committee that coordinates economic policy devel- opment at the Deputy Secretary level. In effect, the Director and Deputy Director are the officials who are primarily responsible for the development of economic policymaking for the Administration. Once a policy is adopted, it is the appropri- ate agency’s responsibility to implement it. The NEC’s policy process is also used to determine whether the President should support or oppose legislation passed by Congress.

In addition to its leadership, the NEC has policy experts (for example, Special Assistants to the President or SAPs) who are responsible for developing and coor- dinating, as well as advising the President, on specific issues. It is essential that the policy expertise of the NEC reflect the current environment’s most pressing issues. Today, this would include (among other topics) taxes, energy and envi- ronment, technology, infrastructure, health care, financial services, workforce, agriculture, antitrust and competition policy, and retirement programs. NEC’s SAPs should have a working knowledge of how the Administration can implement policy through the rulemaking process, although it is not necessary that they be experts on regulation themselves, particularly given OMB’s role. This will facilitate the NEC’s effectiveness in coordinating Administration policy.

The NEC needs to work closely with other offices within the Executive Office of the President to promote innovation by the private sector and create an envi- ronment that will stimulate economic activity while reducing federal spending and debt. This includes working with the DPC, NSC, OMB, Council of Economic Advisers, Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, Office of Cabinet Affairs, White House Counsel, Council on Environmental Quality, Office of Legislative Affairs,

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

and Office of Science and Technology Policy. To this end, the NEC Director should chair a standing meeting with the principals from each of the other EOP offices to enhance coordination from within the White House.

In the past, there has been tension among the DPC, NEC, and NSC over juris- diction. It is important to set clear jurisdictions at the start of an Administration to prevent needless and counterproductive turf fights. In addition, the Principal Deputy for international economic policy is jointly appointed at NEC and NSC and could end up serving two different interests. To avoid such problems, international economic policy should be entirely coordinated from NEC.

It will be especially important for the NEC to work seamlessly with the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), which provides the President and the White House offices with the latest economic data and forecasts, as well as estimates of the eco- nomic impact of proposed policies, and prepares the annual Economic Report of the President. The CEA is not a policy council and therefore does not run policy processes, which is the responsibility of the NEC, DPC, and NSC. However, the CEA does play a key role in ensuring that any policy considered by the councils is rigorously evaluated for its economic impacts.

The NEC works closely with the White House Office of Communications and Office of Speechwriting to ensure that the White House’s messaging and media engagement communicate the President’s economic policy effectively.

The NEC also plays a key role in advancing the President’s economic agenda by advising the Office of Presidential Personnel on appointments to key economic posts, including positions in financial regulatory agencies. The NEC helps to ensure that each economic post is held by a person who shares the President’s policy pri- orities and works well with the rest of the Administration’s economic team. The financial regulators are run partly by civil servants (some of whom were politi- cal appointees in prior liberal Administrations) who often resist a conservative Administration’s policies. It is therefore critical that an Administration not only appoints capable individuals to lead these agencies, but also has personnel who can be hired into senior staff positions within the agencies.

A few areas will be especially important if the NEC is to develop a well-defined economic policy agenda. One is the promotion of innovation as a foundation for economic growth and opportunity. Another is the creation of an environment that fosters economic growth through tax reform and the elimination of regulatory and procedural barriers.

OFFICE OF THE U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE (USTR)

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative provides the President with the internal White House resources necessary to formulate and execute a unified, whole-of-government approach to trade policy. The President should ensure that the USTR is empowered to serve in that leadership role, much as other

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EOP components organize and drive a coordinated policy agenda on behalf of the President.

The People’s Republic of China’s predatory trade practices have disrupted the open-market trading system that has provided mutual benefit to all participating countries—including China—for decades. The failure of the World Trade Organi- zation (WTO) to discipline China for abrogation of its trading commitments has seriously undermined its credibility and made it a largely ineffective institution. The United States, through an empowered USTR, must act to rebalance and refocus international trading relationships in favor of democratic nations that embrace free, fair, and open trade principles built on market-driven economies.

Chapter 26 of this book outlines recommended trade policy priorities for the incoming President. However, regardless of the approach, successful implemen- tation of that trade agenda will require the President to articulate a clear policy direction and instructions for the executive branch to operate in a coordinated fashion under the leadership of an empowered USTR.

To address these and other challenges, protect the American worker, and secure free and open markets for our communities and businesses, the next President must leverage the institutional resources and strength of the USTR and neither allow institutional interests to drive a fragmented trade policy that is developed from the ground up nor cater to parochial interests across government and Wash- ington’s broader industry of influence.

The USTR’s mission is vitally important in reorienting the global trading system in a direction that is open, fair, and prosperous. In order to achieve the President’s policy goals, a strong USTR must be empowered to set trade policy from the White House with the authority and resources to represent the interests of the Presi- dent’s trade agenda with adequate budget, staff, analysis, and expertise to engage meaningfully in internal and interagency policy deliberations. The USTR should organize and harness existing interagency trade committees to serve the Presi- dent’s trade agenda and drive a consensus among federal stakeholders, dispose of legacy advisory committees with members who serve special interests, direct action to implement policy priorities, measure progress toward implementing the President’s agenda, and hold agencies and officials accountable for delivering the President’s agenda. The USTR’s leadership should not only coordinate and enforce the President’s agenda across the federal community, but also set and enforce the President’s trade agenda internally.

Trade policy and priorities should be set by the President and implemented by the U.S. Trade Representative in cooperation with the other economic and national security officials, not by the range of governmental and nongovernmental interests that attempt to force their policy preferences on the USTR. A strong USTR empow- ered with the necessary resources, authorities, and interagency cooperation will protect U.S. interests in the global marketplace more effectively.

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COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS (CEA)

Congress established the Council of Economic Advisers in 1946 to advise the President on economic policy based on data, research, and evidence. The CEA is one of the oldest congressionally created offices within the White House complex and plays a broad role in bringing economic expertise to Administration policy across a large range of policy areas. The CEA has one presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed chair, two presidentially appointed members who assist and often have expertise that complements the chair, and approximately 40 staff employees.

Statutorily, the CEA is charged with being the President’s principal source of economic advice. However, this role has diminished over time as its policy appraisal and especially formulation and recommendation functions have been taken over or diluted by other economic policy bodies within the White House. By law, the CEA is required to publish an annual Economic Report of the President within 10 days after submission of the budget. This report is not just a messaging document; it is an opportunity to provide greater rigor in support of policy areas that the White House is prioritizing and to build up the external credibility of those ideas.

A future conservative Administration should utilize the CEA as the senior inter- nal White House economists much as the White House Counsel’s office functions as the senior internal White House lawyers. This does not mean that there are no economists in other offices. There are, just as there often are lawyers in the policy councils and other White House offices, but the CEA’s role, like the White House Counsel’s, is to employ its unique expertise (particularly on the technical side) to ensure that sound analysis is contributing to and shaping the policy discussion.

In practice, this means that CEA staff do not “coordinate” the policy process in the way that the DPC or NEC would, but they should be integral to the EOP’s policy development processes. CEA staff should support sound policy development and execution by actively contributing to running policy dialogues, proactively raising issues that need to be addressed, consulting on questions that arise, and guiding EOP and agency officials on the analytical foundations of policy. Structurally, the White House Chief of Staff should ensure that the CEA has a seat at the policymak- ing table on all relevant policy.

Senior economists traditionally have not gone through the Office of Presidential Personnel process and more often than not are hired on an academic-year cycle. As a result, senior economists hired in the summer of a presidential election year tend to remain on staff until the next summer even if a President from the opposite party takes power and installs a new slate of CEA political appointees for chair, members, etc. Although these hiring practices create some continuity, the presence of senior economists who were never fully vetted for their alignment with White House policy objectives or who were holdovers from a recently departed Administra- tion can breed skepticism and distrust of the CEA by other units within the White

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House, creating the risk that the CEA’s role in the policymaking process will be diminished. A future Administration should consider hiring that reflects the White House calendar (mid-January) and involves the Office of Presidential Personnel.

NATIONAL SPACE COUNCIL (NSPC)

The National Space Council is responsible for providing advice and recommen- dations to the President on the formulation and implementation of space policy and strategy. It is charged with conducting a whole-of-government approach to the nation’s space interests: civil, military, intelligence, commercial, or diplomatic. Historically, it has been chaired by the Vice President at the President’s direction, and its members consist of members of the Cabinet and other senior executive branch officials as specified by the President in Executive Order 13803.32 The NSpC’s purpose is to ensure that the President’s priorities relative to space are carried out and, as necessary, to resolve policy conflicts among departments and agencies that are related to space.

Space projects and programs are risky, complex, expensive, and time consum- ing—although commercial space innovations are lowering costs and accelerating schedules. Nevertheless, while fiscal discipline should not be ignored, long-term policy stability is crucial to investors, innovators, industry, and agencies. Policy stability is easier when policies and programs are aligned with long-term national interests as opposed to those of particular advocacy groups or political factions. The Trump Administration’s major space policies—including the U.S. Space Force, the Artemis program to land the next Americans on the moon, and support for a strong commercial space sector—have endured under the Biden Administration. Major challenges remain in implementation and regulatory reform to keep up with rapidly evolving space markets and competitors. These include the long-term sustainability of space activities in light of increasing orbital debris; creation of space situational awareness services for civil and commercial uses; management of mega-constellations; licensing of new commercial remote sensing capabilities; keeping up with licensing demands due to high launch rates; transitioning Inter- national Space Station operations to multiple, privately owned space platforms; and (most important) accelerating the acquisition and fielding of national security

space capabilities in response to an increasingly aggressive China.

The Vice President should have a clear understanding with the National Secu- rity Advisor and the White House Counsel that they and their respective staffs will work within the White House to determine the scope and leadership of policy reviews that can overlap multiple areas of responsibility. A similar understanding is necessary with the heads of other policy councils such as the NEC, DPC, and National Science and Technology Council (NSTC).

As a result of the President’s direction and the Vice President’s leadership, the NSpC under the Trump Administration was able to coordinate a wide range of

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

space policy reviews, legislative proposals, and regulatory reforms smoothly. The NSpC generally led on space issues within the EOP, but other White House offices also took on space topics.

• As a member of the NSpC, and in coordination with other members, the Office of Science and Technology Policy developed a national space weather strategy, research and development (R&D) plans to mitigate the effects of orbital debris, and protocols for planetary protection to avoid biological contamination of celestial bodies.

• The Council of Economic Advisers did research on the economic benefits of space property rights.

• OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Reform updated and streamlined commercial launch licensing and commercial remote sensing satellite rules.

During the Trump Administration, if a topic was purely military, such as stand- ing up the U.S. Space Command, the NSC took the lead. If a topic cut across military, civil, and commercial sectors, as was the case with cybersecurity in space, the NSpC and NSC would cochair the policy review groups.

Trusted, collegial relationships across the White House complex are critical to successful space policy development, implementation, and oversight. Nowhere is this more important than in the relationship between the NSpC staff and OMB staff who oversee civil and national security–related space spending. Teamwork between the NSpC and OMB staff can communicate clear presidential priorities to departments and agencies, facilitating smooth development of the President’s budget request. The NSpC and OMB have many opportunities to collaborate in promoting presidential priorities while finding offsets in lower-priority programs and funding lines.

OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY (OSTP)

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was created by the National Science and Technology Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act of 1976.33 Before its creation, Presidents received their advice and counsel on such matters through advisers and boards that had no statutory authority. The Director of OSTP is one of the few Senate-confirmed positions within the Executive Office of the President. Consistent with other laws, the President may delegate to the Director of OSTP directive authority over other elements of the executive branch. Other EOP policy officials and organizations such as the NSC and NEC are formally only advisory with relevant agency directives issued by the President.

2025 Presidential Transition Project

The OSTP’s functions, as contained in the law, are to advise the President of scientific and technological considerations, evaluate the effectiveness of the federal effort, and generally lead and coordinate the federal government’s R&D programs. If science is being manipulated at the agencies to support separate political and institutional agendas, the President should increase the prominence of the OSTP’s Director either formally or informally. This would elevate the role of science in policy discussions and subsequent outcomes and theoretically help to balance out agencies like the Departments of Energy, State, and Commerce and the Envi- ronmental Protection Agency and Council on Environmental Quality. The OSTP can also help to bring technical expertise to regulatory matters in support of OMB. The OSTP should continue to play a lead role in coordinating federal R&D pro- grams. Recent legislation, especially the CHIPS and Science Act,34 has expanded federal policy and funding across the enterprise, and there is a need for more sig- nificant leadership in this area both to ensure effectiveness and to avoid duplication of effort. As befitting its location in the White House, the OSTP must be concerned with advancing national interests and not merely the parochial concerns of depart-

ments, agencies, or parts of the scientific community.

During the Trump and Biden Administrations, there has been a bipartisan focus on prioritizing R&D funding around the so-called Industries of the Future (IOTF). Under President Trump, IOTF priorities were artificial intelligence (AI), quantum information science (QIS), advanced communications/5G, advanced manufacturing, and biotechnology. Under President Biden, this list has been expanded to include advanced materials, robotics, battery technology, cybersecurity, green products and clean technology, plant genetics and agricultural technologies, nanotechnology, and semiconductor and microelectronics technologies. These priorities should be eval- uated and narrowed to ensure consistency with the next Administration’s priorities. Given a long list of priorities, coordinating efforts across agencies and mea- suring success are extremely challenging. The OSTP and OMB are required to work together on an annual basis to prioritize the funding requests and whatever Congress adds on top of them, but there continues to be concern about mission

creep and funds expended on nonscientific R&D.

The President should also issue an executive order to reshape the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and related climate change research pro- grams. The USGCRP produces strategic plans and research (for example, the National Climate Assessment) that reduce the scope of legally proper options in presidential decision-making and in agency rulemakings and adjudications. Also, since much environmental policymaking must run the gauntlet of judicial review, USGCRP actions can frustrate successful litigation defense in ways that the career bureaucracy should not be permitted to control. The process for producing assess- ments should include diverse viewpoints. The OSTP and OMB should jointly assess the independence of the contractors used to conduct much of this outsourced

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

government research that serves as the basis for policymaking. The next President should critically analyze and, if required, refuse to accept any USGCRP assessment prepared under the Biden Administration.

The President should also restore related EOP research components to their purely informational and advisory roles. Consistent with the Global Change Research Act of 1990,35 USGCRP-related EOP components should be confined to a more limited advisory role. These components should include but not necessarily be limited to the OSTP; the NSTC’s Committee on Environment; the USGCRP’s Interagency Groups (for example, the Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group); and the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology. As a general matter, the new Administration should separate the scientific risk assessment function from the risk management function, which is the exclusive domain of elected policymakers and the public.

Finally, 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. Similarly, the Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding. As with other federal departments and agencies, the Biden Administration’s leveraging of the federal government’s resources to further the woke agenda should be reversed and scrubbed from all policy manuals, guidance documents, and agendas, and scientific excellence and innovation should be restored as the OSTP’s top priority.

COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY (CEQ)

The Council on Environmental Quality is the EOP component with the prin- cipal task of administering the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)36 by issuing regulations and interpretive documents and by overseeing the processes of individual permitting agencies’ own NEPA regulations, including categorical exclusions. The CEQ also coordinates environmental policy across the federal government, and its influence has waxed and waned across Administrations.

The President should instruct the CEQ to rewrite its regulations implementing NEPA along the lines of the historic 2020 effort and restoring its key provisions such as banning the use of cumulative impact analysis. This effort should incor- porate new learning and more aggressive reform options that were not included in the 2020 reform package with the overall goal of streamlining the process to build on the Supreme Court ruling that “CEQ’s interpretation of NEPA is entitled to substantial deference.”37 It should frame the new regulations to limit the scope for judicial review of agency NEPA analysis and judicial remedies, as well as to vindicate the strong public interest in effective and timely agency action.

The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC), of which the CEQ is a part, has been empowered by Congress through significant new funding and amendments to FAST-41.38 The President should build on this foundation to

2025 Presidential Transition Project

further empower the FPISC by making its Executive Director an EOP appointee with delegated presidential directive authority over executive branch permitting agencies. For instance, the implementation of Executive Order 13807’s One Federal Decision39 revealed many ways that the systems established by EO 13807 can be improved. The new President should seek to issue a new executive order to create a unified process for major infrastructure projects that includes giving project proponents more control of any regulatory clocks.

The President should issue an executive order establishing a Senior Advisor to coordinate the policy development and implementation of relevant energy and environment policy by officials across the EOP (for example, the policy staff of the NSC, NEC, DPC, CEQ, and OSTP) and abolishing the existing Office of Domestic Cli- mate Policy. The Senior Advisor would report directly to the Chief of Staff. The role would be similar to the role that Brian Deese and John Podesta had in the Obama White House. This energy/environment coordinator would help to lead the fight for sound energy and environment policies both domestically and internationally. The President should eliminate the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), which is cochaired by the OSTP, OMB, and CEA, and by

executive order should end the use of SCC analysis.

Finally, the President should work with Congress to establish a sweeping mod- ernization of the entire permitting system across all departments and agencies that is aimed at reducing litigation risk and giving agencies the authority to establish programmatic, general, and provisional permits.

OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY (ONDCP)

Congress created the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) through the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 198840 to serve as a coordinative auxiliary for the Pres- ident on all matters related to drug policy. The next President’s top drug policy priority must be to address the current fentanyl crisis and reduce the number of overdoses and fatalities. This crisis resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 Americans in 2021.

The next Administration must reaffirm a commitment to preventing drug use before it starts, providing treatment that leads to long-term recovery, and reducing the availability of illicit drugs in the United States. The drug trafficking environ- ment is exponentially more dynamic and dangerous today than it was just five years ago as powerful synthetic opioids (fentanyl and its analogues) are mixed into other drugs of abuse. Drug trafficking organizations are extremely nimble and able to adapt quickly to federal government actions and changes in user behavior. Disrupting the flow of drugs across our borders and into our communities is of paramount importance, both to save lives and to bolster our public health efforts. For these reasons, the Director of ONDCP should make it a point to consult with federal border enforcement officials.

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

The National Drug Control Program agencies represented a total of $41 billion in fiscal year 2022. Whereas the position for overseeing budget activities is tradi- tionally held by a career official, it is imperative that a political appointee lead the ONDCP budget office to ensure coordination between the OMB Program Associate Director and the ONDCP budgetary appointee.

ONDCP grant-making activities have been controversial over the years, par- ticularly within conservative Administrations concerned that the White House lacks the expertise to oversee such programs directly. The ONDCP administers two grant programs: the Drug-Free Communities Support Program and the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program. While it makes sense to transfer these programs eventually to the Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Services, respectively, it is vital that the ONDCP Director ensure in the immediate term that these grant programs are funding the President’s drug control priorities and not woke nonprofits with leftist policy agendas. Thus, the President must insure that the ONDCP is managed by political appointees who are commit- ted to the Administration’s agenda and not acquiesce to management by political or career military personnel who oversaw the prior Administration’s ONDCP.

GENDER POLICY COUNCIL (GPC)

The President should immediately revoke Executive Order 1402041 and every policy, including subregulatory guidance documents, produced on behalf of or related to the establishment or promotion of the Gender Policy Council and its subsidiary issues. Abolishing the Gender Policy Council would eliminate central promotion of abortion (“health services”); comprehensive sexuality education (“education”); and the new woke gender ideology, which has as a principal tenet “gender affirming care” and “sex-change” surgeries on minors. In addition to elim- inating the council, developing new structures and positions will have the dual effect of demonstrating that promoting life and strengthening the family is a pri- ority while also facilitating more seamless coordination and consistency across the U.S. government.

Specifically, the President should appoint a position/point of contact with the rank of Special Assistant to the President or higher to coordinate and lead the Pres- ident’s domestic priorities on issues related to life and family in cooperation with the Domestic Policy Council. This position would be responsible for facilitating meetings, discussions, and agreements among personnel; coordinating Adminis- tration policy; and ensuring agency support for implementation of policies related to the promotion of life and family in the United States.

OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT (OVP)

The Vice President is elected to the second highest office in the nation and plays a constitutionally vital role as President-in-waiting. The Vice President is also

2025 Presidential Transition Project

the President of the Senate and is charged with breaking tie votes in that body. In recent years, the Vice President has been granted office space in the West Wing and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

The OVP is another one of the levers that the President should use to execute his agenda. This is particularly true because there is significant and unique leverage that the Vice President’s leadership of the OVP can evoke to shape policy discus- sions and outcomes. Every other appointed White House official serves at the pleasure of the President, whereas the Vice President is elected, and the process for filling vacancies in that Article II constitutional office, which includes confir- mation of a replacement Vice President by a majority of both Houses of Congress, is governed by the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.42

The Vice President has his or her own economic advisers, domestic policy and national security staff, and daily intelligence briefings. The Vice President should fill his or her office with strong and sound policy minds to effectively assist the President in fulfilling his agenda.

The Vice President is also a statutory member of the National Security Council.43 In theory, in light of the fact that the Vice President is a member of the Smithso- nian Institution’s Board of Regents,44 there is nothing to prevent Congress from assigning the Vice President additional statutory duties.

All of the component councils and offices discussed in this chapter include real policy development and implementation authority, and a robust OVP should be fully integrated into all policy-formation procedures. Only a Vice President who is deeply steeped in the interworking of the interagency and policy councils can offer useful advice and prove helpful in accomplishing the President’s agenda. It is also obvious, in view of the fact that many former Vice Presidents have gone on to be elected President in their own right,45 that the Vice Presidency can act as a training ground for presidential office.

In the past, the Vice President has been tasked with leading certain initiatives or issues. For example, Mike Pence was tasked with coordinating the federal response to COVID-19, and both Pence and Kamala Harris have chaired the National Space Council. Vice Presidents Richard Cheney and Dan Quayle were also active on the deregulatory front and in imposing regulatory moratoria. However, OVP offi- cials should be fully integrated into each and every process from the start of a new Administration and not have to wait to be invited to join various meetings or working groups on an ad hoc basis. For example, the budget and regulatory review processes are linchpins in the execution of policy, and the OVP should have a seat at the table through every phase of policy development.

Past Vice Presidents have also spent significant time abroad serving as a type of brand ambassador for the White House and, more broadly, for the United States, announcing Administration priorities and coordinating with heads of state and other top officials of foreign governments. The Vice President, as President of the

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Senate, often serves as a presidential emissary to the Senate and thus can be espe- cially helpful in securing passage of the President’s legislative agenda.

To the extent that he or she desires, a Vice President can have a direct role in shaping Administration policy. A Vice President who regularly attends meetings and disperses staff across the interagency and policy councils is a Vice President whose voice will be heard.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Special thanks to those who contributed to this chapter: Stephen Billy, Scott Pace, Casey Mulligan, Edie Heipel, Mike Duffey, Vance Ginn, Iain Murray, Laura Cunliffe, Mario Loyola, Anthony Campau, Paige Agostin, Molly Sikes, Paul Ray, Kenneth A. Klukowski, Michael Anton, Robert Greenway, Valerie Huber, James Rockas, Paul Winfree, Aaron Hedlund, Brian McCormack, David Legates, Art Kleinschmidt, Paul Larkin, Kayla Tonnessen, Jeffrey B. Clark, Jonathan Wolfson, and Bob Burkett.

2025 Presidential Transition Project

ENDNOTES

1. U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii#section1 (accessed January 30, 2023).

2. James Madison, The Federalist Papers No. 47, January 30, 1788, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/

Madison/01-10-02-0266 (accessed January 30, 2023).

3. 31 U.S.C. §§ 1341(a)(1)(A) and 1341(a)(1)(B), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/1341 (accessed January 30, 2023); § 1342, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/1342 (accessed January 30, 2023); and

§ 1517(a), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/1517(a) (accessed January 30, 2023).

4. President William J. Clinton, Executive Order 12866, “Regulatory Planning and Review,” September 30, 1993, in Federal Register, Vol. 58, No. 190 (October 4, 1993), pp. 51735–51744, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/

FR-1993-10-04/pdf/FR-1993-10-04.pdf (accessed March 9, 2023).

5. Brent J. McIntosh, General Counsel, Department of the Treasury, and Neomi Rao, Administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Memorandum of Agreement, “The Department of the Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget Review of Tax Regulations Under Executive Order 12866,” April 11, 2018, https://home.treasury.gov/sites/default/files/2018-04/04-11%20Signed%20Treasury%20OIRA%20MOA.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

6. See Steven A. Engel, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, “Extending Regulatory Review Under Executive Order 12866 to Independent Regulatory Agencies,” 43 Op. O.L.C. (Oct. 8, 2019), https:// www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opinions/attachments/2020/12/30/2019-10-08-extend-reg-review.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

7. Office of Management and Budget, Circular A-4, “Regulatory Analysis,” September 17, 2003, https:// www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/legacy_drupal_files/omb/circulars/A4/a-4.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

8. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13891, “Promoting the Rule of Law Through Improved Agency Guidance Documents,” October 9, 2019, in Federal Register, Vol. 84, No. 199 (October 15, 2019), pp. 55235–

55238, https://home.treasury.gov/sites/default/files/2018-04/04-11%20Signed%20Treasury%20OIRA%20MOA.

pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

9. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13771, “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs,” January 30, 2017, in Federal Register, Vol. 82, No. 22 (February 3, 20170, pp. 9339–9341, https://www.govinfo.

gov/content/pkg/FR-2017-02-03/pdf/2017-02451.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

10. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13777, “Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda,” February 24, 2017, in Federal Register, Vol. 82, No. 39 (March 1, 2017), pp. 12285–12287, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/

pkg/FR-2017-03-01/pdf/2017-04107.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

11. See note 8, supra.

12. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13892, “Promoting the Rule of Law Through Transparency and Fairness in Civil Administrative Enforcement and Adjudication,” in Federal Register, Vol. 84, No. 199 (October 15, 2019), pp. 55239–55243, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-10-15/pdf/2019-22624.pdf

(accessed January 31, 2023).

13. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13893, “Increasing Government Accountability for Administrative Actions by Reinvigorating Administrative PAYGO,” October 10, 2019, in Federal Register, Vol. 84, No. 200 (October 16, 2019), pp. 55487–55488, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-10-16/pdf/2019-22749.

pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

14. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13924, “Regulatory Relief to Support Economic Recovery,” May 19, 2020, in Federal Register, Vol. 85, No. 100 (May 22, 2020), pp. 31353–31356, esp. 31355, https://www.govinfo.

gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-05-22/pdf/2020-11301.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

15. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13979, “Ensuring Democratic Accountability in Agency Rulemaking,” January 18, 2021, in Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 13 (January 22, 2021), pp. 6813–6815, https://

www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-01-22/pdf/2021-01644.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

16. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13980, “Protecting Americans from Overcriminalization Through Regulatory Reform,” January 18, 2021, in Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 13 (January 22, 2021),

pp. 6817–6820, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-01-22/pdf/2021-01645.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

17. President William J. Clinton, Executive Order 13132, “Federalism,” August 4, 1999, in Federal Register, Vol. 64, No. 153 (August 10, 1999), pp. 43255–43259, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1999-08-10/pdf/99-

20729.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

18. President Ronald Reagan, Executive Order 12630, “Governmental Actions and Interference with Constitutionally Protected Property Rights,” March 15, 1988, in Federal Register, Vol. 53, No. 53 (March 18,

1988), pp. 8859–8862, https://www.regulationwriters.com/downloads/Executive_Orders/EO_12630.pdf

(accessed January 31, 2023).

19. Section 115 in H.R. 4577, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2001, Public Law No. 106-544, 106th Congress,

December 21, 2000, https://www.congress.gov/106/plaws/publ554/PLAW-106publ554.pdf (accessed

January 31, 2023).

20. H.R. 6410, Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, Public Law No. 96-511, 96th Congress, December 11, 1980, https://

www.congress.gov/96/statute/STATUTE-94/STATUTE-94-Pg2812.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

21. S. 3418, An Act to Amend Title 5, United States Code, by Adding a Section 552a, to Safeguard Individual Privacy from the Misuse of Federal Records, to Provide that Individuals Be Granted Access to Records Concerning Them Which Are Maintained by Federal Agencies, to Establish a Privacy Protection Study Commission, and for Other Purposes (Privacy Act of 1974), Public Law No. 93-579, 93rd Congress, December 31, 1974, https://www.congress.gov/93/statute/STATUTE-88/STATUTE-88-Pg1896.pdf (accessed

January 31, 2023).

22. Office of Management and Budget, “Guidance for Grants and Agreements,” Final Guidance, Federal Register, Vol. 85, No. 157 (August 13, 2020), pp. 49506–49582, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-08-13/ pdf/2020-17468.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023), and “Guidance for Grants and Agreements,” Correcting Amendments, Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 33 (February 22, 2021), pp. 10439–10440, https://www.govinfo.

gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-02-22/pdf/2021-02969.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

23. H.R. 5, Regulatory Accountability Act of 2017, 115th Congress, introduced January 3, 2017, https://www. congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5 (accessed January 31, 20/23), and S. 951, Regulatory Accountability Act of 2017, 115th Congress, introduced April 26, 2017, https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th- congress/senate-bill/951 (accessed January 31, 2023).

24. S. 2314, Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act (SMART Act), 116th Congress, introduced July 30, 2019, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2314/text (accessed January 31, 2023).

25. H.R. 1605, Guidance Out of Darkness Act (GOOD Act), 117th Congress, introduced March 8, 2021, https://www. congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1605 (accessed January 31, 2023).

26. S. 2804, Early Participation in Regulations Act of 2021, 117th Congress, introduced September 22, 2021, https:// www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2804 (accessed January 31, 2023).

27. S. 170, Unfunded Mandates Accountability and Transparency Act, 117th Congress, introduced February 2, 2021, https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/170 (accessed January 31, 2023).

28. H.R. 277, Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2023 (REINS Act), 118th Congress, introduced January 11, 2023, https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/277/all-info?r=217

(accessed January 31, 2023).

29. Subtitle E, “Congressional Review,” in H.R. 3136, Contract with America Advancement Act of 1996, Public Law No. 104-121, 104th Congress, March 29, 1996, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-104publ121/pdf/

PLAW-104publ121.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

30. H.R. 115, Midnight Rules Relief Act of 2023, 118th Congress, introduced January 9, 2023, https://www.congress.

gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/115/text?s=1&r=18 (accessed January 31, 2023).

31. See Federation of American Scientists, Intelligence Resource Program, “Presidential Directives and Executive Orders,” https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/direct.htm (accessed February 1, 2023), and Library of Congress, Researchers, Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room, “Presidential Directives and Where to Find Them,” March 30, 2022, https://www.loc.gov/rr/news/directives.html (accessed February 1, 2023).

32. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13803, “Reviving the National Space Council,” June 30, 2017, in

Federal Register, Vol. 82, No. 129 (July 7, 2017), pp. 31429–31432, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-

2017-07-07/pdf/2017-14378.pdf (accessed February 1, 2023).

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33. H.R. 10230, National Science and Technology Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act of 1976, Public Law No. 94-282, 94th Congress, May 11, 1976, https://www.congress.gov/94/statute/STATUTE-90/STATUTE-90-Pg459.

pdf (accessed February 1, 2023).

34. H.R. 4346, CHIPS [Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors] and Science Act, Public Law No. 117-167, 117th Congress, August 9, 2022, https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ167/PLAW-117publ167.pdf

(accessed February 1, 2023).

35. S. 169, Global Change Research Act of 1990, Public Law No. 101-606, 101st Congress, November 16, 1990,

https://www.congress.gov/101/statute/STATUTE-104/STATUTE-104-Pg3096.pdf (accessed February 1, 2023).

36. S. 1075, National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, Public Law No. 91-190, 91st Congress, January 1, 1970,

https://uscode.house.gov/statutes/pl/91/190.pdf (accessed February 1, 2023).

37. Andrus v. Sierra Club, 442 U.S. 347, 358 (1979), https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep442/

usrep442347/usrep442347.pdf (accessed March 7, 2023).

38. Title XLI (41) in H.R. 22, Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act), Public Law No. 114-94, 114th Congress, December 4, 2015, https://www.congress.gov/114/statute/STATUTE-129/STATUTE-129-Pg1312.pdf

(accessed February 1, 2023).

39. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13807, “Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the Environmental Review and Permitting Process for Infrastructure Projects,” August 15, 2017, in Federal Register, Vol. 82, No. 163 (August 24, 2017), pp. 40463–40469, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2017-08-24/

pdf/2017-18134.pdf (accessed February 1, 2023).

40. H.R. 5210, Anti-Drug Abuse of 1988, Public Law No. 100-690, 100th Congress, November 18, 1988, https://www.

congress.gov/100/statute/STATUTE-102/STATUTE-102-Pg4181.pdf (accessed February 1, 2023).

41. President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Executive Order 14020, “Establishment of the White House Gender Policy Council,” March 8, 2021, in Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 46 (March 11, 2021), pp. 13797–13801, https://www.

govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-03-11/pdf/2021-05183.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

42. U.S. Constitution, Amendment XXV, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxv (accessed March 9, 2023).

43. 50 U.S.C. § 3021(c)(1), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3021 (accessed March 9, 2023).

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THÁNG 4-2024

THÁNG 3-2024

MINH THỊ

LỊCH SỬ ĐÃ CHỨNG MINH, KHÔNG MỘT ĐÁM NGOẠI NHÂN NÀO YÊU THƯƠNG ĐẤT NƯỚC, DÂN TỘC CỦA CHÚNG TA NẾU CHÍNH CHÚNG TA KHÔNG BIẾT YÊU THƯƠNG LẤY ĐẤT NƯỚC VÀ DÂN TỘC CỦA MÌNH.

DÂN TỘC VIỆT NAM PHẢI TỰ QUYẾT ĐỊNH LẤY VẬN MỆNH CỦA MÌNH CHỨ KHÔNG THỂ VAN NÀI, CẦU XIN ĐƯỢC TRỞ THÀNH QUÂN CỜ PHỤC VỤ CHO LỢI ÍCH CỦA NGOẠI BANG VÀ NHỮNG THẾ LỰC QUỐC TẾ.

Email: kimau48@yahoo.com or kimau48@gmail.com. Cell: 404-593-4036. Facebook: Kim Âu

</ head>

Contents

T

Acknowledgments

The Project 2025 Advisory Board

The 2025 Presidential Transition Project

A NOTE ON “PROJECT 2025”

Authors

T

Contributors

Foreword

A PROMISE TO AMERICA

Kevin D. Roberts, PhD

Section One

A

1

WHITE HOUSE OFFICE

Rick Dearborn

2

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

OF THE UNITED STATES

Russ Vought

Phương Pháp12 Bước Tiến Hành Để Thay Đổi Chế Đ

Contents

T Acknowledgments

The Project 2025 Advisory Board

The 2025 Presidential Transition Project

A NOTE ON “PROJECT 2025”

Authors

T Contributors

Foreword

A PROMISE TO AMERICA

Kevin D. Roberts, PhD

Section One

A

1

WHITE HOUSE OFFICE

Rick Dearborn

2

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

OF THE UNITED STATES

Russ Vought

Phương Pháp12 Bước Tiến Hành Để Thay Đổi Chế Đ

T

Acknowledgments

T

Contributors