at Capitol. June 19.1996
with Sen. JohnMc Cain
with General John K Singlaub
CNBC .Fox .FoxAtl .. CFR. CBS .CNN .VTV.
.WhiteHouse .NationalArchives .FedReBank
.Fed Register .Congr Record .History .CBO
.US Gov .CongRecord .C-SPAN .CFR .RedState
.VideosLibrary .NationalPriProject .Verge .Fee
.JudicialWatch .FRUS .WorldTribune .Slate
.Conspiracy .GloPolicy .Energy .CDP .Archive
.AkdartvInvestors .DeepState .ScieceDirect
.NatReview .Hill .Dailly .StateNation .WND
-RealClearPolitics .Zegnet .LawNews .NYPost
.SourceIntel .Intelnews .QZ .NewAme
.GloSec .GloIntel .GloResearch .GloPolitics
.Infowar .TownHall .Commieblaster .EXAMINER
.MediaBFCheck .FactReport .PolitiFact .IDEAL
.MediaCheck .Fact .Snopes .MediaMatters
.Diplomat .NEWSLINK .Newsweek .Salon
.OpenSecret .Sunlight .Pol Critique .
.N.W.Order .Illuminatti News.GlobalElite
.NewMax .CNS .DailyStorm .F.Policy .Whale
.Observe .Ame Progress .Fai .City .BusInsider
.Guardian .Political Insider .Law .Media .Above
.SourWatch .Wikileaks .Federalist .Ramussen
.Online Books .BREIBART.INTERCEIPT.PRWatch
.AmFreePress .Politico .Atlantic .PBS .WSWS
.NPRadio .ForeignTrade .Brookings .WTimes
.FAS .Millenium .Investors .ZeroHedge .DailySign
.Propublica .Inter Investigate .Intelligent Media
.Russia News .Tass Defense .Russia Militaty
.Scien&Tech .ACLU .Veteran .Gateway. DeepState
.Open Culture .Syndicate .Capital .Commodity
.DeepStateJournal .Create .Research .XinHua
.Nghiên Cứu QT .NCBiển Đông .Triết Chính Trị
.TVQG1 .TVQG .TVPG .BKVN .TVHoa Sen
.Ca Dao .HVCông Dân .HVNG .DấuHiệuThờiĐại
.BảoTàngLS.NghiênCứuLS .Nhân Quyền.Sài Gòn Báo
.Thời Đại.Văn Hiến .Sách Hiếm.Hợp Lưu
.Sức Khỏe .Vatican .Catholic .TS KhoaHọc
.KH.TV .Đại Kỷ Nguyên .Tinh Hoa .Danh Ngôn
.Viễn Đông .Người Việt.Việt Báo.Quán Văn
.TCCS .Việt Thức .Việt List .Việt Mỹ .Xây Dựng
.Phi Dũng .Hoa Vô Ưu.ChúngTa .Eurasia.
CaliToday .NVR .Phê Bình . TriThucVN
.Việt Luận .Nam Úc .Người Dân .Buddhism
.Tiền Phong .Xã Luận .VTV .HTV .Trí Thức
.Dân Trí .Tuổi Trẻ .Express .Tấm Gương
.Lao Động .Thanh Niên .Tiền Phong .MTG
.Echo .Sài Gòn .Luật Khoa .Văn Nghệ .SOTT
.ĐCS .Bắc Bộ Phủ .Ng.TDũng .Ba Sàm .CafeVN
.Văn Học .Điện Ảnh .VTC .Cục Lưu Trữ .SoHa
.ST/HTV .Thống Kê .Điều Ngự .VNM .Bình Dân
.Đà Lạt * Vấn Đề * Kẻ Sĩ * Lịch Sử *.Trái Chiều
.Tác Phẩm * Khào Cứu * Dịch Thuật * Tự Điển *
KIM ÂU -CHÍNHNGHĨA -TINH HOA - STKIM ÂU
CHÍNHNGHĨA MEDIA-VIETNAMESE COMMANDOS
BIÊTKÍCH -STATENATION - LƯUTRỮ -VIDEO/TV
DICTIONAIRIES -TÁCGỈA-TÁCPHẨM - BÁOCHÍ . WORLD - KHẢOCỨU - DỊCHTHUẬT -TỰĐIỂN -THAM KHẢO - VĂNHỌC - MỤCLỤC-POPULATION - WBANK - BNG ARCHIVES - POPMEC- POPSCIENCE - CONSTITUTION
VẤN ĐỀ - LÀMSAO - USFACT- POP - FDA EXPRESS. LAWFARE .WATCHDOG- THỜI THẾ - EIR.
ĐẶC BIỆT
The Invisible Government Dan Moot
The Invisible Government David Wise
ADVERTISEMENT
Le Monde -France24. Liberation- Center for Strategic- Sputnik
https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/
Space - NASA - Space News - Nasa Flight - Children Defense
Pokemon.Game Info. Bách Việt Lĩnh Nam.US Histor. Insider
World History - Global Times - Conspiracy - Banking - Sciences
World Timeline - EpochViet - Asian Report - State Government
https://lens.monash.edu/@politics-society/2022/08/19/1384992/much-azov-about-nothing-how-the-ukrainian-neo-nazis-canard-fooled-the-world
with General Micheal Ryan
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
NIK- JAP- SCMP- CND- JAN- JTO-VOE- ASIA- BRIEF- ECNS-TUFTS- DIPLOMAT- JUSTSECU- SPENDING- FAS - GWINNETT JAKARTA -- KYO- CHIA - HARVARD - INDIATO - LOTUS- CONSORTIUM - COUNTERPUNCH- POYNTER- BULLETIN - CHI DAILY
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
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS............................................................................
ix
THE
PROJECT 2025
ADVISORY
BOARD.............................................
xi
THE 2025
PRESIDENTIAL
TRANSITION
PROJECT:
A
NOTE
ON “PROJECT
2025”............................................................
xiii
CONTRIBUTORS....................................................................................
xxv
FOREWORD:
A PROMISE
TO
AMERICA...............................................
1
SECTION
1: TAKING
THE REINS
OF
GOVERNMENT...................
19
1.
WHITE
HOUSE
OFFICE.......................................................................
23
2.
EXECUTIVE OFFICE
OF THE
PRESIDENT
OF
THE UNITED
STATES.....................................................................
43
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
5.
DEPARTMENT
OF HOMELAND
SECURITY........................................
133
6.
DEPARTMENT
OF
STATE...................................................................
171
7.
INTELLIGENCE
COMMUNITY...........................................................
201
8.
MEDIA
AGENCIES...............................................................................
235
U.S.
AGENCY
FOR
GLOBAL
MEDIA..............................................
235
CORPORATION
FOR PUBLIC
BROADCASTING...........................
246
9.
AGENCY
FOR
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT..............................
253
SECTION
3: THE
GENERAL
WELFARE...........................................
283
10.
DEPARTMENT
OF
AGRICULTURE.....................................................
289
11.
DEPARTMENT
OF
EDUCATION........................................................
319
AND
RELATED
COMMISSIONS.........................................................
363
13.
ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTION
AGENCY......................................
417
AND
HUMAN
SERVICES......................................................................
449
AND URBAN
DEVELOPMENT.............................................................
503
16.
DEPARTMENT
OF THE
INTERIOR......................................................
517
17.
DEPARTMENT
OF
JUSTICE...............................................................
545
AND
RELATED
AGENCIES.................................................................
581
19.
DEPARTMENT
OF
TRANSPORTATION.............................................
619
20.
DEPARTMENT
OF VETERANS
AFFAIRS...........................................
641
SECTION 4:
THE
ECONOMY............................................................
657
21.
DEPARTMENT OF
COMMERCE.......................................................
663
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
THE CASE
FOR THE
EXPORT–IMPORT
BANK..............................
724
24.
FEDERAL
RESERVE..........................................................................
731
25.
SMALL BUSINESS
ADMINISTRATION...............................................
745
THE CASE
FOR FAIR
TRADE..........................................................
765
THE CASE
FOR FREE
TRADE........................................................
796
SECTION 5:
INDEPENDENT
REGULATORY
AGENCIES...........
825
27.
FINANCIAL REGULATORY
AGENCIES.............................................
829
SECURITIES AND
EXCHANGE
COMMISSION
AND RELATED
AGENCIES.............................................................
829
CONSUMER FINANCIAL
PROTECTION
BUREAU..........................
837
28.
FEDERAL
COMMUNICATIONS
COMMISSION...................................
845
29.
FEDERAL ELECTION
COMMISSION...............................................
861
30.
FEDERAL
TRADE
COMMISSION......................................................
869
|
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
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
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
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.
|
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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