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THÁNG 9-2024

DEBT CLOCK . WORLMETERS . TRÍ TUỆ MỸ . SCHOLARSCIRCLE. CENSUS - SCIENTIFIC - COVERT- CBO - EPOCH  ĐKN - REALVOICE -JUSTNEWS- NEWSMAX - BREIBART - REDSTATE - PJMEDIA - EPV - REUTERS - AP - NTD - REPUBLIC  TTV - BBC - VOA - RFI - RFA - HOUSE - TỬ VI - VTV- HTV - PLUS - TTRE - VTX - SOHA -TN - CHINA - SINHUA - FOXNATION - FOXNEWS - NBC - ESPN - SPORT - ABC- LEARNING - IMEDIA -NEWSLINK - WHITEHOUSE- CONGRESS -FED REGISTER -OAN DIỄN ĐÀN - UPI - IRAN - DUTCH - FRANCE 24 - MOSCOW - INDIA - NEWSNOW- KOTAHON - NEWSPUNCH - CDC - WHO  BLOOMBERG - WORLDTRIBUNE - WND - MSNBC- REALCLEAR - PBS - SCIENCE - HUMAN EVENT - TABLET - AMAC - WSWS  PROPUBICA -INVESTOPI-CONVERSATION - BALANCE - QUORA - FIREPOWER  GLOBAL- NDTV- ALJAZEER- TASS- DAWN  NATURAL- PEOPLE- BRIGHTEON - CITY JOURNAL- EUGENIC- 21CENTURY - PULLMAN- SPUTNIK- COMPACT - DNYUZ- CNA

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NHẬN ĐỊNH - QUAN ĐIỂM

 

Project 2025

PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION PROJECT

 

 

 

© 2023 by The Heritage Foundation 214 Massachusetts Ave., NE Washington, DC 20002

(202) 546-4400 | heritage.org

 

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

 

ISBN: 978-0-89195-174-2

 

Foreword by Kevin D. Roberts, PhD Edited by Paul Dans and Steven Groves


 


Contents


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS............................................................................ ix

THE PROJECT 2025 ADVISORY BOARD............................................. xi

THE 2025 PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION PROJECT:

A NOTE ON “PROJECT 2025”............................................................ xiii

AUTHORS............................................................................................... xv

CONTRIBUTORS.................................................................................... xxv

FOREWORD: A PROMISE TO AMERICA............................................... 1

Kevin D. Roberts, PhD

SECTION 1: TAKING THE REINS OF GOVERNMENT................... 19

1.        WHITE HOUSE OFFICE....................................................................... 23

Rick Dearborn

2.        EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

OF THE UNITED STATES..................................................................... 43

Russ Vought

3.        CENTRAL PERSONNEL AGENCIES:

MANAGING THE BUREAUCRACY......................................................... 69

Donald Devine, Dennis Dean Kirk, and Paul Dans

SECTION 2: THE COMMON DEFENSE............................................... 87

4.        DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE................................................................ 91

Christopher Miller

5.        DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY........................................ 133

Ken Cuccinelli

6.        DEPARTMENT OF STATE................................................................... 171

Kiron K. Skinner

7.        INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY........................................................... 201

Dustin J. Carmack

8.        MEDIA AGENCIES............................................................................... 235

U.S. AGENCY FOR GLOBAL MEDIA.............................................. 235

Mora Namdar

CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING........................... 246

Mike Gonzalez

9.       AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.............................. 253

Max Primorac

SECTION 3: THE GENERAL WELFARE........................................... 283

10.     DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE..................................................... 289

Daren Bakst

11.     DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION........................................................ 319

Lindsey M. Burke

12.     DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

AND RELATED COMMISSIONS......................................................... 363

Bernard L. McNamee

13.     ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY...................................... 417

Mandy M. Gunasekara

14.     DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

AND HUMAN SERVICES...................................................................... 449

Roger Severino

15.     DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING

AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT............................................................. 503

Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., MD

16.     DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR...................................................... 517

William Perry Pendley

17.     DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE............................................................... 545

Gene Hamilton

18.     DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

AND RELATED AGENCIES................................................................. 581

Jonathan Berry

19.     DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION............................................. 619

Diana Furchtgott-Roth

20.    DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS........................................... 641

Brooks D. Tucker


SECTION 4: THE ECONOMY............................................................ 657

21.    DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE....................................................... 663

Thomas F. Gilman

22.    DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY.................................................... 691

William L. Walton, Stephen Moore, and David R. Burton

23.    EXPORT–IMPORT BANK.................................................................... 717

THE EXPORT–IMPORT BANK SHOULD BE ABOLISHED............... 717

Veronique de Rugy

THE CASE FOR THE EXPORT–IMPORT BANK.............................. 724

Jennifer Hazelton

24.    FEDERAL RESERVE.......................................................................... 731

Paul Winfree

25.    SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION............................................... 745

Karen Kerrigan

26.   TRADE................................................................................................ 765

THE CASE FOR FAIR TRADE.......................................................... 765

Peter Navarro

THE CASE FOR FREE TRADE........................................................ 796

Kent Lassman

SECTION 5: INDEPENDENT REGULATORY AGENCIES........... 825

27.    FINANCIAL REGULATORY AGENCIES............................................. 829

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

AND RELATED AGENCIES............................................................. 829

David R. Burton

CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU.......................... 837

Robert Bowes

28.    FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION................................... 845

Brendan Carr

29.    FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION............................................... 861

Hans A. von Spakovsky

30.     FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION...................................................... 869

Adam Candeub

ONWARD!............................................................................................ 883

Edwin J. Feulner


 


T

 
Acknowledgments

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”

 

 

W

 
We 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.


 

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,


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.


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


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.


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

Carla Sands, America First Policy Institute

Robby Stephany Saunders, Coalition for a Prosperous America

David Sauve

Brett D. Schaefer, The Heritage Foundation

Nina Owcharenko Schaefer, The Heritage Foundation

Matt Schuck, American Cornerstone Institute

Justin Schwab, CGCN Law

Jon Schweppe, American Principles Project

Marc Scribner, Reason Foundation

Darin Selnick, Selnick Consulting

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

Parker Stathatos, Texas Public Policy Foundation


2025 Presidential Transition Project

 

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

Robert Swope

Aaron Szabo, CGCN Group

Katy Talento, AllBetter Health

Tony Tata, Tata Leadership Group, LLC

Farnaz Farkish Thompson

Todd Thurman, American Cornerstone Institute

Brett Tolman, Tolman Group

Kayla M. Tonnessen, Recovery for America Now Foundation

Joe Trotter, American Legislative Exchange Council

Tevi Troy, Mercatus Center

Clayton Tufts

Erin Valdez, Texas Public Policy Foundation

Mark Vandroff

Jessica M. Vaughan, Center for Immigration Studies

John “JV” Venable, The Heritage Foundation

Morgan Lorraine Viña, Jewish Institute for National Security of America

Andrew N. Vollmer, Mercatus Center

Hans A. von Spakovsky, The Heritage Foundation Greg Walcher, Natural Resources Group, LLC David M. Walsh, Takota Group

Erin Walsh, The Heritage Foundation

Jacklyn Ward, American Cornerstone Institute

Emma Waters, The Heritage Foundation

Michael Williams, American Cornerstone Institute

Aaron Wolff Jonathan Wolfson

Alexei Woltornist, ATHOS

Frank Wuco

Cesar Ybarra, FreedomWorks

John Zadrozny, America First Legal Foundation

Laura Zorc, FreedomWorks


 


Foreword

 

A PROMISE TO AMERICA

Kevin D. Roberts, PhD

 

 

F

 
Forty-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 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 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.


 

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


(“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 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.


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;


   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.


 

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.

 

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

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

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


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 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


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  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


2025 Presidential Transition Project

 

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).


 

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

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