Project 2025

PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION PROJECT

214 Massachusetts Ave., NE

Washington, DC 20002

(202) 546-4400 | heritage.org

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

Foreword by Kevin D. Roberts, PhD

Edited by Paul Dans and Steven Groves

Contents

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

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

THE 2025 PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION PROJECT:

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

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

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

FOREWORD: A PROMISE TO AMERICA ................................................................. 

Kevin D. Roberts, PhD

SECTION 1: TAKING THE REINS OF GOVERNMENT ..........................

 WHITE HOUSE OFFICE ....................................................................................................

Rick Dearborn

 EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

OF THE UNITED STATES .................................................................................................

Russ Vought

 CENTRAL PERSONNEL AGENCIES:

MANAGING THE BUREAUCRACY ............................................................................. 

Donald Devine, Dennis Dean Kirk, and Paul Dans

SECTION 2: THE COMMON DEFENSE .............................................................. 

 DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE ........................................................................................ 

Christopher Miller

 DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY ..................................................... 

Ken Cuccinelli

 DEPARTMENT OF STATE .............................................................................................

Kiron K. Skinner

 INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY .....................................................................................

Dustin J. Carmack

 MEDIA AGENCIES ............................................................................................................ 

U.S. AGENCY FOR GLOBAL MEDIA ................................................................ 

Mora Namdar

CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING ..................................... 

Mike Gonzalez

 AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ....................................... 

Max Primorac

SECTION 3: THE GENERAL WELFARE ......................................................... 

 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ......................................................................... 

Daren Bakst

 DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION .............................................................................. 

Lindsey M. Burke

 DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

AND RELATED COMMISSIONS ................................................................................. 

Bernard L. McNamee

 ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ......................................................

Mandy M. Gunasekara

 DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

AND HUMAN SERVICES ............................................................................................... 

Roger Severino

 DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING

AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT ................................................................................... 

Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., MD

 DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR ..........................................................................

William Perry Pendley

 DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE ....................................................................................... 

Gene Hamilton

 DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

AND RELATED AGENCIES ...........................................................................................

Jonathan Berry

 DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION .............................................................. 

Diana Furchtgott-Roth

 DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS ............................................................

Brooks D. Tucker

SECTION 4: THE ECONOMY .....................................................................................

 DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE ............................................................................... 

Thomas F. Gilman

 DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY .......................................................................

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

 EXPORT–IMPORT BANK ...............................................................................................

THE EXPORT–IMPORT BANK SHOULD BE ABOLISHED ....................

Veronique de Rugy

THE CASE FOR THE EXPORT–IMPORT BANK ......................................... 

Jennifer Hazelton

 FEDERAL RESERVE .........................................................................................................

Paul Winfree

 SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION ................................................................. 

Karen Kerrigan

 TRADE ...................................................................................................................................... 

THE CASE FOR FAIR TRADE ............................................................................... 

Peter Navarro

THE CASE FOR FREE TRADE .............................................................................. 

Kent Lassman

SECTION 5: INDEPENDENT REGULATORY AGENCIES ............... 

 FINANCIAL REGULATORY AGENCIES ............................................................... 

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

AND RELATED AGENCIES ..................................................................................... 

David R. Burton

CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU ...................................

Robert Bowes

 FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION ............................................... 

Brendan Carr

 FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION ...................................................................... 

Hans A. von Spakovsky

 FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION ............................................................................ 

Adam Candeub

ONWARD! ............................................................................................................................... 

Edwin J. Feulner

— ix —

Acknowledgments

his work, Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise, is a col-

lective eort 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 Sta 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 eorts 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

sta 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

— xi —

The Project 2025

Advisory Board

Alabama Policy Institute

Alliance Defending Freedom

American Compass

The American Conservative

America First Legal Foundation

American Accountability Foundation

American Center for Law and Justice

American Cornerstone Institute

American Council of Trustees and Alumni

American Legislative Exchange Council

The American Main Street Initiative

American Moment

American Principles Project

Center for Equal Opportunity

Center for Family and Human Rights

Center for Immigration Studies

Center for Renewing America

Claremont Institute

Coalition for a Prosperous America

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Conservative Partnership Institute

Concerned Women for America

Defense of Freedom Institute

Ethics and Public Policy Center

Family Policy Alliance

Family Research Council

First Liberty Institute

Forge Leadership Network

Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Foundation for Government Accountability

FreedomWorks

The Heritage Foundation

Hillsdale College

Honest Elections Project

— xii —

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

— xiii —

The 2025 Presidential

Transition Project

A NOTE ON

“PROJECT 2025”

e want you! The 2025 Presidential Transition Project is the conservative

movement’s unified effort to be ready for the next conservative

Administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025. Welcome

to the mission. By opening this book, you are now a part of it. Indeed, one set

of eyes reading these passages will be those of the 47th President of the United

States, and we hope every other reader will join in making the incoming Admin-

istration a success.

History teaches that a President’s power to implement an agenda is at its apex during

the Administration’s opening days. To execute requires a well-conceived, coordinated,

uniﬁed plan and a trained and committed cadre of personnel to implement it. In recent

election cycles, presidential candidates normally began transition planning in the late

spring of election year or even after the party’s nomination was secured. That is too late.

The federal government’s complexity and growth advance at a seemingly logarithmic

rate every four years. For conservatives to have a ﬁghting chance to take on the Adminis-

trative State and reform our federal government, the work must start now. The entirety

of this eort 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.

— xiv —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

It’s not 1980. In 2023, the game has changed. The long march of cultural Marxism

through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth,

weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and

liberty under siege as never before. The task at hand to reverse this tide and restore

our Republic to its original moorings is too great for any one conservative policy shop

to spearhead. It requires the collective action of our movement. With the quickening

approach of January 2025, we have two years and one chance to get it right.

Project 2025 is more than 50 (and growing) of the nation’s leading conservative

organizations joining forces to prepare and seize the day. The axiom goes “person-

nel is policy,” and we need a new generation of Americans to answer the call and

come to serve. This book is functionally an invitation for you the reader—Mr. Smith,

Mrs. Smith, and Ms. Smith—to come to Washington or support those who can. Our

goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives

to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.

The project is built on four pillars.

Pillar I—this volume—puts in one place a consensus view of how major

federal agencies must be governed and where disagreement exists brackets

out these dierences 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

— xv —

Authors

Daren Bakst is Deputy Director, Center for Energy and Environment, and Senior

Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Before joining CEI, Daren

was a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, where he played a lead-

ing role in the launch of the organization’s new energy and environmental center.

For a decade, he led Heritage’s food and agricultural policy work, and he edited and

co-authored Heritage’s book Farms and Free Enterprise. He has testiﬁed numerous

times before Congress, has appeared frequently on media outlets, and has played

leadership roles in such organizations such as the Federalist Society, American

Agricultural Law Association, and Food and Drug Law Institute (serving on the

Food and Drug Law Journal’s editorial advisory board).

Jonathan Berry is managing partner at Boyden Gray & Associates PLLC. He

served as acting Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor,

overseeing all aspects of rulemaking and policy development. At the U.S. Depart-

ment of Justice, he assisted with the development of regulatory policy and with

the nominations of Justice Neil Gorsuch and dozens of other judges. He previ-

ously served as Chief Counsel for the Trump transition and earlier clerked for

Associate Justice Samuel Alito and Judge Jerry Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals

for the Fifth Circuit. He is a graduate of Yale College and Columbia University

School of Law.

Lindsey M. Burke is Director of the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage

Foundation. Burke served on Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s transition

steering committee and landing team for education. She serves on the Board

of Visitors for George Mason University, the board of the Educational Free-

dom Institute, and the advisory board of the Independent Women’s Forum’s

Education Freedom Center. Dr. Burke’s research has been published in such

journals as Social Science Quarterly, Educational Research and Evaluation, and

Research in Educational Administration and Leadership. She holds a BA from

Hollins University, an MA from the University of Virginia, and a PhD from George

Mason University.

David R. Burton is Senior Fellow in Economic Policy in the Thomas A. Roe

Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He focuses

on securities regulation, tax policy, business law, entrepreneurship, administra-

tive law, ﬁnancial privacy, the U.S. Department of Commerce, corporate welfare,

— xvi —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

international investment, international information sharing, the U.S. economic

relationship with China, and climate-related ﬁnancial risk. Previously, Burton was

General Counsel at the National Small Business Association; a partner in the Argus

Group; Vice President, Finance, and General Counsel for New England Machinery;

and manager of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Tax Policy Center. He holds a JD

from the University of Maryland School of Law and a BA in Economics from the

University of Chicago.

Adam Candeub is a professor of law at Michigan State University. His scholarly

research focuses on telecommunication, antitrust, and Internet issues. He served

as acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Deputy Associate Attorney Gen-

eral at the Justice Department during the Trump Administration. He received his

BA magna cum laude from Yale University and his JD magna cum laude from the

University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Dustin J. Carmack is Research Fellow for Cybersecurity, Intelligence, and Emerg-

ing Technologies in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage

Foundation. Previously, he served in the Intelligence Community as Chief of Sta

to the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratclie. In Congress, he served

as Chief of Sta to Congressman John Ratclie (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.

— xvii —

Authors

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 Ocer 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 Sta for President Donald Trump and

was responsible for the day-to-day operations of ﬁve separate departments of the

Executive Oce 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 Sta, in the oce of then-U.S. Senator Je Sessions

(R-AL) for nearly two decades. Between his two tours in Senator Sessions’ oce,

he was appointed by President George W. Bush as Assistant Secretary of Energy for

Congressional Aairs. 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 Oce 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

— xviii —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Oce 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 Sta of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Thomas F. Gilman served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Administration

and Chief Financial Ocer 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 Sta at

the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as well as Principal Deputy Assistant

Administrator for the Oce 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 aairs 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.

— xix —

Authors

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, eective 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 Oce 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 Oce 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

— xx —

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

Sta 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 Aairs. 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 ocials 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 Oce 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 ocial 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.

— xxi —

Authors

Max Primorac is Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign

Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He was acting Chief Operating Ocer

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 Oce 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 Oce 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 sta

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 Aairs as Assis-

tant Secretary for Congressional and Legislative Aairs from 2017 to 2021 and

as Acting Chief of Sta 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 Aairs 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 Ocer Course, and Marine Corps

Command and Sta 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

— xxii —

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 Oce of Management and Budget, where he oversaw

the implementation of the presidential budget, key policies on deregulation, and

a landmark eort 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 Oce of Management and Budget. He also

has served as a senior sta 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 Sta at the U.S. Oce of Personnel

— xxiii —

Authors

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 Sta 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.

— xxv —

Contributors

he contributors listed below generously volunteered their time and eort

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 aliated with

regard to the recommendations.

Mark Albrecht

Chris Anderson, Oce of Senator Steve Daines

Je 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

— xxvi —

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 Cunlie, 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

— xxvii —

Contributors

Troy Edgar, IBM Consulting

Joseph Edlow, The Heritage Foundation

Jen Ehlinger, Booz Allen Hamilton

John Ehrett, Oce 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

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 Schaeer School for Health Policy and Economics

Andrew Guernsey

Jerey Gunter, Republican Jewish Coalition

Joe Guy, Club for Growth

Joseph Guzman

Amalia Halikias, The Heritage Foundation

Gene Hamilton, America First LegalFoundation

— xxviii —

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, Oce 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 Homan, 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 Aairs

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

— xxix —

Contributors

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, Oce of Governor Kristi Noem

Cleta Mitchell, Conservative Partnership Institute

Kevin E. Moley

Caitlin Moon, American Center for Law & Justice

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

Christopher B. Porter

Kevin Preskenis, Allymar Health Solutions

Pam Pryor, National Committee for Religious Freedom

Thomas Pyle, Institute for Energy Research

— xxx —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

John Ratclie, 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

— xxxi —

Contributors

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 Vandro

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 Wol

Jonathan Wolfson

Alexei Woltornist, ATHOS

Frank Wuco

Cesar Ybarra, FreedomWorks

John Zadrozny, America First LegalFoundation

Laura Zorc, FreedomWorks

— 1 —

A PROMISE

TO AMERICA

Kevin D. Roberts, PhD

orty-four years ago, the United States and the conservative movement were

in dire straits. Both had been betrayed by the Washington establishment

and were uncertain whom to trust. Both were internally splintered and stra-

tegically adrift. Worse still, at that moment of acute vulnerability and division, we

found ourselves besieged by existential adversaries, foreign and domestic. The late

1970s were by any measure a historic low point for America and the political coa-

lition dedicated to preserving its unique legacy of human ﬂourishing and freedom.

Today, America and the conservative movement are enduring an era of division

and danger akin to the late 1970s. Now, as then, our political class has been discred-

ited by wholesale dishonesty and corruption. Look at America under the ruling

and cultural elite today: Inﬂation is ravaging family budgets, drug overdose deaths

continue to escalate, and children suer 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

Foreword

— 2 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

and the country and led the United States to historic political, economic, and

global victories.

The Heritage Foundation is proud to have played a small but pivotal role in that

story. It was in early 1979—amid stagﬂation, gas lines, and the Red Army’s inva-

sion of Afghanistan, the nadir of Jimmy Carter’s days of malaise—that Heritage

launched the Mandate for Leadership project. We brought together hundreds of

conservative scholars and academics across the conservative movement. Together,

this team created a 20-volume, 3,000-page governing handbook containing more

than 2,000 conservative policies to reform the federal government and rescue

the American people from Washington dysfunction. It was a promise from the

conservative movement to the country—conﬁdent, speciﬁc, and clear.

Mandate for Leadership was published in January 1981—the same month Ronald

Reagan was sworn into his presidency. By the end of that year, more than 60 percent

of its recommendations had become policy—and Reagan was on his way to ending

stagﬂation, reviving American conﬁdence and prosperity, and winning the Cold War.

The bad news today is that our political establishment and cultural elite have

once again driven America toward decline. The good news is that we know the

way out even though the challenges today are not what they were in the 1970s.

Conservatives should be conﬁdent that we can rescue our kids, reclaim our culture,

revive our economy, and defeat the anti-American Left—at home and abroad. We

did it before and will do it again.

As Ronald Reagan put it:

Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from

extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and

defended constantly by each generation[.]

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 oces, 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

— 3 —

Foreword

and policy experts from across the conservative movement and around the country.

Contributors include former elected ocials, 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:

 Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect

our children.

 Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the

American people.

 Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.

 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.

— 4 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

PROMISE #1: RESTORE THE FAMILY AS THE CENTERPIECE

OF AMERICAN LIFE AND PROTECT OUR CHILDREN.

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

politics—the well-being of the American family.

In many ways, the entire point of centralizing political power is to subvert the

family. Its purpose is to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatu-

ral ones. You see this in the popular left-wing aphorism, “Government is simply

the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” But in real life, most of

the things people “do together” have nothing to do with government. These are

the mediating institutions that serve as the building blocks of any healthy society.

Marriage. Family. Work. Church. School. Volunteering. The name real people give

to the things we do together is community, not government. Our lives are full of

interwoven, overlapping communities, and our individual and collective happiness

depends upon them. But the most important community in each of our lives—and

the life of the nation—is the family.

Today, the American family is in crisis. Forty percent of all children are born

to unmarried mothers, including more than 70 percent of black children. There

is no government program that can replace the hole in a child’s soul cut out by

the absence of a father. Fatherlessness is one of the principal sources of Ameri-

can poverty, crime, mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, rejection of the

church, and high school dropouts. So many of the problems government programs

are designed to solve—but can’t—are ultimately problems created by the crisis of

marriage and the family. The world has never seen a thriving, healthy, free, and

prosperous society where most children grow up without their married parents.

If current trends continue, we are heading toward social implosion.

Furthermore, the next conservative President must understand that using gov-

ernment alone to respond to symptoms of the family crisis is a dead end. Federal

power must instead be wielded to reverse the crisis and rescue America’s kids from

familial breakdown. The Conservative Promise includes dozens of speciﬁc policies

to accomplish this existential task.

Some are obvious and long-standing goals like eliminating marriage penalties

in federal welfare programs and the tax code and installing work requirements for

food stamps. But we must go further. It’s time for policymakers to elevate family

authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government

power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family.

Today the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities

that reject woke progressivism. They will soon turn to Christian schools and clubs

with the same totalitarian intent.

The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil

society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms

sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion

— 5 —

Foreword

(“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 oenders. 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 o 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 arm 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.

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

— 6 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

dependencies that fuel mental illness and anxiety, to fray children’s bonds with

their parents and siblings. Federal policy cannot allow this industrial-scale child

abuse to continue.

Finally, conservatives should gratefully celebrate the greatest pro-family win

in a generation: overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that for ﬁve decades made a

mockery of our Constitution and facilitated the deaths of tens of millions of unborn

children. But the Dobbs decision is just the beginning. Conservatives in the states

and in Washington, including in the next conservative Administration, should

push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America. In

particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the

most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying

existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with

statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion. Conservatives should ardently

pursue these pro-life and pro-family policies while recognizing the many women

who ﬁnd themselves in immensely dicult 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 eective, 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.

— 7 —

Foreword

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 dier

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 dierent 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

dicult-to-understand rulemaking processes;

— 8 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Bureaucrats at the Department of Homeland Security, following the lead

of a feckless Administration, order border and immigration enforcement

agencies to help migrants criminally enter our country with impunity;

Bureaucrats at the Department of Education inject racist, anti-American,

ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms;

Bureaucrats at the Department of Justice force school districts to

undermine girls’ sports and parents’ rights to satisfy transgender extremists;

Woke bureaucrats at the Pentagon force troops to attend “training”

seminars about “white privilege”; and

Bureaucrats at the State Department infuse U.S. foreign aid programs with

woke extremism about “intersectionality” and abortion.

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 suerance 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 ocials and voters permit.

Let’s be clear: The most egregious regulations promulgated by the current

Administration come from one place: the Oval Oce. 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 aairs, 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.

— 9 —

Foreword

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 handcu 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 oces; 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 ocers surrender their own legitimate

authority to them. A President who refuses to do so and uses his or her oce 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.

— 10 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

To most Americans, this is common sense. But in Washington, D.C. and other

centers of Leftist power like the media and the academy, this statement of basic

civics is branded hate speech. Progressive elites speak in lofty terms of openness,

progress, expertise, cooperation, and globalization. But too often, these terms are

just rhetorical Trojan horses concealing their true intention—stripping “we the

people” of our constitutional authority over our country’s future.

America’s corporate and political elites do not believe in the ideals to which our

nation is dedicated—self-governance, the rule of law, and ordered liberty. They

certainly do not trust the American people, and they disdain the Constitution’s

restrictions on their ambitions.

Instead, they believe in a kind of 21st century Wilsonian order in which the

“enlightened,” highly educated managerial elite runs things rather than the humble,

patriotic working families who make up the majority of what the elites contemp-

tuously call “ﬂy-over country.”

This Wilsonian hubris has spread like a cancer through many of America’s larg-

est corporations, its public institutions, and its popular culture. Those who run our

so-called American corporations have bent to the will of the woke agenda and care

more for their foreign investors and organizations than their American workers

and customers. Today, nearly every top-tier U.S. university president or Wall Street

hedge fund manager has more in common with a socialist, European head of state

than with the parents at a high school football game in Waco, Texas. Many elites’

entire identity, it seems, is wrapped up in their sense of superiority over those

people. But under our Constitution, they are the mere equals of the workers who

shower after work instead of before.

This is as it should and must be. Intellectual sophistication, advanced degrees,

ﬁnancial success, and all other markers of elite status have no bearing on a per-

son’s knowledge of the one thing most necessary for governance: what it means

to live well. That knowledge is available to each of us, no matter how humble our

backgrounds or how unpretentious our attainments. It is open to us to read in

the book of human nature, to which we are all oered 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

staed 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

— 11 —

Foreword

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 Bonhoeer 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 aair with environmental extrem-

ism. Those who suer 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 aairs 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

— 12 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

manufacturing jobs. (“Learn to code!” they would gloat.) These were just the price

of progress. Engagement was at every step Beijing’s project, not America’s. The

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictated terms, only to break them whenever it

suited them. They stole our technology, spied on our people, and threatened our

allies, all with trillions of dollars of wealth and military power ﬁnanced by their

access to our market.

Then came the rise of Big Tech, which is now less a contributor to the U.S.

economy than it is a tool of China’s government. In exchange for cheap labor and

regulatory special treatment from Beijing, America’s largest technology ﬁrms

funnel data about Americans to the CCP. They hand over sensitive intellectual

property with military and intelligence applications to keep the money rolling

in. They let Beijing censor Chinese users on their platforms. They let the CCP

set their corporate policies about mobile apps. And they run interference for our

rival’s political priorities in Washington. One side of Big-Tech companies’ business

model is old-fashioned American competitiveness and world-changing techno-

logical innovation; but increasingly, that side of these businesses is overshadowed

by their role as operatives in the lucrative employ of America’s most dangerous

international enemy.

If you want to understand the danger posed by collaboration between Big Tech

and the CCP, look no further than TikTok. The highly addictive video app, used by

80 million Americans every month and overwhelmingly popular among teenage

girls, is in eect 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 eciency 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

— 13 —

Foreword

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 oense, 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

— 14 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

around the world. Still others ﬁnd themselves happiest in their local voluntary

communities of friends, their neighbors, their civic or charitable work.

The American Republic was founded on principles prioritizing and maximizing

individuals’ rights to live their best life or to enjoy what the Framers called “the

Blessings of Liberty.” It’s this radical equality—liberty for all—not just of rights but

of authority—that the rich and powerful have hated about democracy in America

since 1776. They resent Americans’ audacity in insisting that we don’t need them

to tell us how to live. It’s this inalienable right of self-direction—of each person’s

opportunity to direct himself or herself, and his or her community, to the good—

that the ruling class disdains.

With the Declaration and Constitution, our nation’s Founders handed to us

the means with which to preserve this right. Abraham Lincoln wrote of the Dec-

laration as an “apple of gold” in a silver frame, the Constitution. So must the next

conservative President look to these documents when the elites mount their next

assault on liberty.

Left to our own devices, the American people rejected European monarchy

and colonialism just as we rejected slavery, second-class citizenship for women,

mercantilism, socialism, Wilsonian globalism, Fascism, Communism, and (today)

wokeism. To the Left, these assertions of patriotic self-assurance are just so many

signs of our moral depravity and intellectual inferiority—proof that, in fact, we

need a ruling elite making decisions for us.

But the next conservative President should be proud, not ashamed of Americans’

unique culture of social equality and ordered liberty. After all, the countries where

Marxist elites have won political and economic power are all weaker, poorer, and

less free for it.

The United States remains the most innovative and upwardly mobile society

in the world. Government should stop trying to substitute its own preferences

for those of the people. And the next conservative President should champion

the dynamic genius of free enterprise against the grim miseries of elite-di-

rected socialism.

The promise of socialism—Communism, Marxism, progressivism, Fascism,

whatever name it chooses—is simple: Government control of the economy can

ensure equal outcomes for all people. The problem is that it has never done so.

There is no such thing as “the government.” There are just people who work for

the government and wield its power and who—at almost every opportunity—wield

it to serve themselves ﬁrst and everyone else a distant second. This is not a failing

of one nation or socialist party, but inherent in human nature.

Nighttime satellite images of the Korean peninsula famously show the free-mar-

ket South lit up, with homes, businesses, and cities electriﬁed from coast to coast.

By contrast, Communist North Korea is almost completely dark, except for the

small dot of the capital city, Pyongyang, where a psychotic dictator and his cronies

— 15 —

Foreword

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.

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

— 16 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

universities, including trade schools, apprenticeship programs, and student-loan

alternatives that fund students’ dreams instead of Marxist academics. Just as

important as expanding opportunities for workers and small businesses, the

next President should crack down on the crony capitalist corruption that enables

America’s largest corporations to proﬁt through political inﬂuence rather than

competitive enterprise and customer satisfaction.

Analogous pro-growth reforms for America’s voluntary civil society are also

in order. America is not an economy; it is a country. Economic freedom is not the

only important freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the freedom

to assemble also represent key components of the American promise. Today, in

addition to the problem of Big Tech censorship, we see speakers at universities

shouted down, parents investigated and arrested for attempting to speak at school

board meetings, and donors to conservative causes harassed and intimidated. The

next conservative President must defend our First Amendment rights.

BEST EFFORT

Ultimately, the Left does not believe that all men are created equal—they think

they are special. They certainly don’t think all people have an unalienable right to

pursue the good life. They think only they themselves have such a right along with

a moral responsibility to make decisions for everyone else. They don’t think any

citizen, state, business, church, or charity should be allowed any freedom until

they ﬁrst bend the knee.

This book, this agenda, the entire Project 2025 is a plan to unite the conservative

movement and the American people against elite rule and woke culture warriors.

Our movement has not been united in recent years, and our country has paid

the price. In the past decade, though, the breakdown of the family, the rise of

China, the Great Awokening, Big Tech’s abuses, and the erosion of constitutional

accountability in Washington have rendered these divisions not just inconvenient

but politically suicidal. Every hour the Left directs federal policy and elite institu-

tions, our sovereignty, our Constitution, our families, and our freedom are a step

closer to disappearing.

Conservatives have just two years and one shot to get this right. With enemies

at home and abroad, there is no margin for error. Time is running short. If we fail,

the ﬁght for the very idea of America may be lost.

But we should take this small window of opportunity we have left to act with

courage and conﬁdence, not despair. The last time our nation and movement were

so near defeat, we rallied together behind a great leader and great ideas, tran-

scended our dierences, 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

— 17 —

Foreword

will enter oce 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 eort of the conservative move-

ment in 2023—and the next conservative President’s last opportunity to save

our republic.

ENDNOTES

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

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

 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).

 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.

 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).

— 19 —

Section One

TAKING THE REINS

OF GOVERNMENT

merica’s Bicentennial, which culminated on July 4, 1976, was a spirited

and unifying celebration of our country, its Founding, and its ideals. As we

approach our nation’s 250th anniversary, which will take place during the

next presidency, America is now divided between two opposing forces: woke revolu-

tionaries and those who believe in the ideals of the American revolution. The former

believe that America is—and always has been—“systemically racist” and that it is not

worth celebrating and must be fundamentally transformed, largely through a cen-

tralized administrative state. The latter believe in America’s history and heroes, its

principles and promise, and in everyday Americans and the American way of life. They

believe in the Constitution and republican government. Conservatives—the Ameri-

canists in this battle—must ﬁght for the soul of America, which is very much at stake.

Just two years after the death of the last surviving Constitutional Convention

delegate, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln warned that the greatest threat to

America would come not from without, but from within. This is evident today:

Whether it be mask and vaccine mandates, school and business closures, eorts

to keep Americans from driving gas cars or using gas stoves, or eorts to defund

the police, indoctrinate schoolchildren, alter beloved books, abridge free speech,

undermine the colorblind ideal, or deny the biological reality that there are only

two sexes, the Left’s steady stream of insanity appears to be never-ending. The

next Administration must stand up for American ideals, American families, and

American culture—all things in which, thankfully, most Americans still believe.

Highlighting this need, former director of the Oce of Management and Budget

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

— 20 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

limit, control, and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people.”

At the core of this goal is the work of the White House and the central personnel

agencies. Article II of the Constitution vests all federal executive power in a Pres-

ident, made accountable to the citizenry through regular elections. Our Founders

wrote, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States

of America.” Accordingly, Vought writes, “it is the President’s agenda that should

matter to the departments and agencies,” not their own.

Yet the federal bureaucracy has a mind of its own. Federal employees are often

ideologically aligned—not with the majority of the American people—but with one

another, posing a profound problem for republican government, a government

“of, by, and for” the people. As Donald Devine, Dennis Kirk, and Paul Dans write

in Chapter 3, “An autonomous bureaucracy has neither independent constitu-

tional status nor separate moral legitimacy.” Byzantine personnel rules provide the

bureaucrats with their chief means of self-protection. What’s more, knowledge of

such rules is used to thwart the President’s appointees and agenda. As Devine, Kirk,

and Dans write, “Managing the immense bureaucracy of the federal government

is impossible without an understanding of the key central personnel agencies and

their governing laws and regulations.”

Many of these laws and regulations governing a largely underworked, over-

compensated, and unaccountable federal civilian workforce are so irrational that

they would be comical in a less important context. This is true whether it comes to

evaluating employees’ performance or hiring new employees. Only in the federal

government could an applicant in the hiring process be sent to the front of the

line because of a “history of drug addiction” or “alcoholism,” or due to “morbid

obesity,” “irritable bowel syndrome,” or a “psychiatric disorder.” The next Admin-

istration should insist that the federal government’s hiring, evaluation, retention,

and compensation practices beneﬁt taxpayers, rather than beneﬁting the lowest

rung of the federal workforce.

In order to carry out the President’s desires, political appointees must be

given the tools, knowledge, and support to overcome the federal government’s

obstructionist Human Resources departments. More fundamentally, the new

Administration must ﬁll its ranks with political appointees. Devine, Kirk, and Dans

observe that “the Trump Administration appointed fewer political appointees in

its ﬁrst few months in oce” than any other recent presidency. This left career

employees in charge in many places. This can occur even after departments have

been fully staed with political appointees. Vought writes that the White House

Oce of Management and Budget (OMB) should establish a “reputation as the

keeper of ‘commander’s intent,’” yet OMB is dominated by career employees who

often try to overrule political appointees serving in the various executive depart-

ments. Empowering political appointees across the Administration is crucial to

a President’s success.

— 21 —

Section 1: Taking the Reins of Government

Above all, the President and those who serve under him or her must be commit-

ted to the Constitution and the rule of law. This is particularly true of a conservative

Administration, which knows that the President is there to uphold the Constitu-

tion, not the other way around. If a conservative Administration does not respect

the Constitution, no Administration will. In Chapter 1, former deputy chief of

sta to the President Rick Dearborn writes that the White House Counsel “must

take seriously the duty to protect the powers and privileges of the President from

encroachments by Congress, the judiciary, and the administrative components of

departments and agencies.” Equally important, the President must enforce the

Constitution and laws as written, rather than proclaiming new “law” unilaterally.

Presidents should not issue mask or vaccine mandates, arbitrarily transfer student

loan debt, or issue monarchical mandates of any sort. Legislatures make the laws

in a republic, not executives.

It is crucial that all three branches of the federal government respect what Mad-

ison called the “double security” to our liberties: the separation of powers among

the three branches, and the separation of powers between the federal government

and the states. This double security has been greatly compromised over the years.

Vought writes that “the modern executive branch…writes federal policy, enforces

that policy, and often adjudicates whether that policy was properly drafted and

enforced.” He describes this as “constitutionally dire” and “in urgent need of repair,”

adding: “Nothing less than the survival of self-governance in America is at stake.”

When it comes to ensuring that freedom can ﬂourish, nothing is more import-

ant than deconstructing the centralized administrative state. Political appointees

who are answerable to the President and have decision-making authority in the

executive branch are key to this essential task. The next Administration must not

cede such authority to non-partisan “experts,” who pursue their own ends while

engaging in groupthink, insulated from American voters. The following chapters

detail how the next Administration can be responsive to the American people (not

to entrenched “elites”); how it can take care that all the laws are “faithfully exe-

cuted,” not merely those that the President desires to see executed; and how it can

achieve results and not be stymied by an unelected bureaucracy.

— 23 —

WHITE HOUSE OFFICE

Rick Dearborn

rom popular culture to academia, the American presidency has long been a

prominent ﬁxture of the national imagination—naturally so since it is the

beating heart of our nation’s power and prestige. It has played, for instance,

a feature role in innumerable movies and television shows and has been prodded,

analyzed, and critiqued by countless books, essays, and studies. But like nearly

everything else in life, there is no substitute for ﬁrsthand experience, which this

manual has compiled from the experience of presidential appointees and provides

in accessible form for future use.

With respect to the presidency, it is best to begin with our Republic’s founda-

tional document. The Constitution gives the “executive Power” to the President.

It designates him as “Commander in Chief”

and gives him the responsibility to

“take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

It further prescribes that the

President might seek the assistance of “the principal Ocer in each of the execu-

tive Departments.”

Beginning with George Washington, every President has been

supported by some form of White House oce consisting of direct sta ocers as

well as a Cabinet comprised of department and agency heads.

Since the inaugural Administration of the late 18th century, citizens have chosen

to devote both their time and their talent to defending and strengthening our nation

by serving at the pleasure of the President. Their shared patriotic endeavor has

proven to be a noble one, not least because the jobs in what is now known as the

White House Oce (WHO) are among the most demanding in all of government.

The President must rely on the men and women appointed to the WHO. There

simply are not enough hours in the day to manage the aairs of state single-handedly,

— 24 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

so delegation is not just advisable: It is essential. The decisions that assistants and

senior advisers make will directly impact the Administration, its legacy, and—most

important—the fate of the country. Their agenda must therefore be the President’s

agenda. Choosing who will carry out that agenda on a daily basis is not only one of

the ﬁrst decisions a President makes in oce, but also one of the most critical. The

tone and tempo of an administration are often determined on January 20.

CHIEF OF STAFF

As with most of the positions that will be covered in this ﬁrst chapter, the Chief

of Sta is also an Assistant to the President. However, the chief is truly ﬁrst among

equals. Of all presidential sta members, the chief is the most critical to implementa-

tion of the President’s vision for the country. The chief also has a dual role as manager

of the stas of both the WHO and the Executive Oce of the President (EOP).

The Chief of Sta’s ﬁrst managerial task is to establish an organizational chart

for the WHO. It should be simple and contain clear lines of authority and respon-

sibility to avoid conﬂicts. It should also identify speciﬁc points of contact for each

element of the government outside of the White House. These contacts should

include the White House Liaisons who are selected by the Oce of Presidential

Personnel (PPO).

Receiving guidance from the President, the chief endeavors to implement the

President’s agenda by setting priorities for the WHO. This process begins by taking

stock of the President’s campaign promises, identifying current and prospective

opportunities, and then delegating policy priorities among the departments and

agencies of the Cabinet and throughout the three White House policy councils:

The National Economic Council (NEC);

The Domestic Policy Council (DPC); and

The National Security Council (NSC).

The President is briefed on all of his policy priorities by his Cabinet and senior

sta as directed by the chief. The chief—along with senior WHO sta—maps out

the issues and themes that will be covered daily and weekly. The chief then works

with the policy councils, the Cabinet, and the Oce of Communications and Oce

of Legislative Aairs (OLA) to sequence and execute the rollout of policies and

announcements. White House Counsel and senior advisers and senior counselors

are also intimately involved.

All senior sta report to the Chief of Sta, either directly or through his two

or three deputies, unless the President determines that a particular Assistant to

the President reports directly to him. Most chiefs have interacted directly with

— 25 —

White House Oce

Cabinet ocers and a select number of direct reports. In most cases, the direct

reports to the chief are his two or three deputies, the Communications Director,

PPO Director, White House Counsel, and senior advisers. Occasionally, the Oce

of Public Liaison (OPL), the Cabinet Secretary, and Intergovernmental Aairs

(IGA) also report directly to the chief. Usually, however, they report instead to a

Deputy Chief of Sta.

The Chief of Sta’s main challenge is time management. His use of his deputies,

meetings with senior sta, and direction provided to the WHO must all balance

with the daily needs of the President. A successful chief steers the West Wing using

his management of and inﬂuence with the various individuals and entities around

him. It goes without saying that selecting the right person to be chief is vital.

DEPUTY CHIEFS OF STAFF

In recent years, Presidents typically have appointed two Deputy Chiefs of Sta:

a Deputy Chief of Sta for Management and Operations and a Deputy Chief of

Sta for Policy. There also have been other types of deputy chiefs whose roles have

included, for example, overseeing strategy, planning, and implementation. Chiefs

of Sta have then occasionally appointed a principal Deputy Chief to be in charge

of guiding decision-making, organizational structure, and information ﬂow.

PRINCIPAL DEPUTY CHIEFS OF STAFF

Not all Chiefs of Sta have tapped a principal deputy. A major reason is that

doing so adds another layer of command complexity. When principal deputies

have been installed, their roles have varied based on the needs of particular chiefs.

Most principal deputies have functioned as doorkeepers, sorting through action

items, taking on those that can be handled at their own level, and passing up others

that truly require the attention of the Chief of Sta or the President. Principal

deputies also have assumed control of the scheduling functions, normally under

the operations deputy, and have worked directly with the policy councils at the

direction of the Chief of Sta. The OPL and Oce of Political Aairs (OPA) also

have reported to a principal deputy.

Deputy Chief of Sta for Management and Operations. The Deputy Chief

of Sta for Management and Operations oversees the President’s schedule and

all logistical aspects of his movement within and outside of the White House (for

example, both air travel on Air Force One and Marine One and ground transpor-

tation). This deputy also interfaces directly with the Secret Service as well as the

military oces tasked with keeping the President and his family safe.

In the past, this deputy has also worked with the NSC, the Secretary of Defense,

the Secretary of State, and the Intelligence Community and on advancing all foreign

trips. If their roles are separated from that of the policy deputy, this deputy should

have a strong grasp of international aairs and robust foreign policy credentials.

— 26 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

This deputy further manages all facets of the working White House: technology,

grounds management, support sta, personnel administration, and communica-

tions. This individual therefore needs to be meticulous and ideally should possess

a great deal of command-and-control experience.

Deputy Chief of Sta for Policy. In some Administrations, the functions of

the IGA, OPA, and OPL and other advisers within the WHO have fallen under the

Deputy Chief of Sta for Policy. For conservatives, this arrangement could help

to connect the WHO’s outreach to political and external groups and be a strong

conduit for state and local elected ocials, state party organizations, and both

grasstop and grassroots groups.

This deputy chief works directly with the Chief of Sta, Cabinet ocers, and

all three policy councils to support the development and implementation of the

President’s agenda. This deputy chief should therefore have impressive policy cre-

dentials in the realms of economic, domestic, and social aairs.

SENIOR ADVISERS

Presidents have surrounded themselves with senior advisers whose experi-

ence and interests are not necessarily neatly deﬁned. In recent Administrations,

senior advisers have been appointed to oer broad guidance on political matters

and communications issues; others have acted as “czars” for speciﬁc projects or

policy areas.

The most powerful senior advisers frequently have had a long personal relation-

ship with the President and often have spent a signiﬁcant amount of time with him

within and outside of the White House. They have been asked not only to provide

guidance on a variety of policy issues, but also to oer instruction on communi-

cating with the American people and the media.

In a number of Administrations, new oces—or “councils”—have been created

to support senior advisers. For the most part, their functions have been duplicative

or overlapping, as a result of which these oces have tended to be short-lived. Even

so, senior advisers should be provided the sta and resources that their portfo-

lios require. To ensure that senior advisers are eective, their portfolios must be

clearly delineated and clearly communicated across the White House. This too is

a responsibility of the Chief of Sta.

OFFICE OF WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL

The Oce of White House Counsel provides legal guidance to the President and

elements of the EOP on a host of issues, including presidential powers and privi-

leges, ethics compliance, review of clemency applications, and judicial nominations.

The selection of White House Counsel is one of the most important decisions an

incoming President will make. The oce is not designed to create or advance pol-

icies on its own initiative—nor should it do so. Rather, it is dedicated to guiding

— 27 —

White House Oce

the President and his reports on how (within the bounds of the law) to pursue and

realize the President’s agenda.

While the White House Counsel does not serve as the President’s personal attor-

ney in nonocial matters, it is almost impossible to delineate exactly where an

issue is strictly personal and has no bearing on the President’s ocial function. The

White House Counsel needs to be deeply committed both to the President’s agenda

and to aording the President proactive counsel and zealous representation. That

individual directly advises the President as he performs the duties of the oce,

and this requires a relationship that is built on trust, conﬁdentiality, and candor.

The Oce of White House Counsel is also responsible for ensuring that each

component of the White House adheres to all applicable legal and ethical guide-

lines, which often requires ongoing training and monitoring to ensure compliance.

This means ensuring that White House sta regularly consult with oce attor-

neys on required ﬁnancial disclosures, received gifts, potential conﬂicts of interest,

and other ethical concerns. The Oce of White House Counsel is the ﬁrst line of

defense for the EOP. Its sta must take seriously the duty to protect the powers

and privileges of the President from encroachments by Congress, the judiciary,

and the administrative components of departments and agencies.

In addition to the White House Counsel, the oce includes deputies, assistants,

associates, and legal support sta. The assistant and associate attorneys are often

specialists in particular areas of the law and oer guidance to the EOP on issues

related to national security, criminal law, environmental law, and a host of admin-

istrative and regulatory matters. Attorneys working in the Oce of White House

Counsel serve as legal advisers to the White House policy operation by reviewing

executive orders, agency regulations, and other policy-related functions. Here

again, subordinates should be deeply committed to the President’s agenda and

see their role as helping to accomplish the agenda through problem solving and

advocacy. They should not erect roadblocks out of an abundance of caution; rather,

they should oer practical legal advice on how to promote the President’s agenda

within the bounds of the law.

The White House Counsel’s oce cannot serve as a ﬁnishing school to credential

the next set of white-shoe law ﬁrm attorneys or federal judges in waiting who cabin

their opinions for fear their elite credentials could be tarnished through a policy

disagreement. Rather, it should function more as an activist yet ethical plaintis’

ﬁrm that advocates for its client—the Administration’s agenda—within the limits

imposed by the Constitution and the duties of the legal profession.

The Oce of White House Counsel also serves as the primary gateway for

communication between the White House and the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Traditionally, both the White House Counsel and the Attorney General have issued

a memo requiring all contact between the two institutions to occur only between

the Oce of White House Counsel and the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney

— 28 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

General. The next Administration should reexamine this policy and determine

whether it might be more ecient or more appropriate for communication to occur

through additional channels. The White House Counsel also works closely with

the DOJ Oce of Legal Counsel to seek opinions on, for example, matters of policy

development and the constitutionality of presidential power and privileges and

with OLA and the DOJ Oce of Legal Policy on presidential judicial nominees.

When a new President takes oce, he will need to decide expeditiously how to

handle any major ongoing litigation or other pending legal matters that might pres-

ent a challenge to his agenda. To oer guidance, the White House Counsel must get

up to speed as quickly as possible on all signiﬁcant ongoing legal challenges across

the executive branch that might aect the new Administration’s policy agenda and

must be prepared at the outset of the Administration to present recommenda-

tions to the President, including recommendations for reconsidering or reversing

positions of the previous Administration in any signiﬁcant litigation. This review

will usually require consulting with the new political leadership at the Justice

Department, including during the transition period.

No day is predictable at the White House. Therefore, to handle the pace and

volatility of aairs, the Oce of White House Counsel must oer measured legal

guidance in a timely manner. This often means forgoing law review–style memos

about esoteric legal concepts and instead quickly providing high-level yet incisive

guidance. Due to evolving world events, domestic aairs, and political pressures, the

oce often faces legal questions for which there may not be a wealth of precedent.

Attorneys in the Oce of White House Counsel must therefore work collaboratively

within the White House and the Department of Justice, relying on each other as a

team, to ensure that proper legal guidance is delivered to the President.

The President should choose a White House Counsel who is well-versed in

the Constitution, administrative and regulatory law, and the inner workings of

Congress and the political process. Instead of choosing a specialist, the President

should hire a counsel with extensive experience with a wide range of complex legal

subjects. Moreover, while a candidate with elite credentials might seem ideal, the

best one will be above all loyal to the President and the Constitution.

STAFF SECRETARY

The Oce of the Sta Secretary is rarely visible to the outside world, but it

performs work of tremendous importance. The oce is similar to a military com-

mander’s adjutant as it is responsible for ﬁelding and managing a vast amount of

information at the top of its organization. This includes information on its way into

the Oval Oce as well as information ﬂowing out from the Oval Oce. Because

of its gatekeeping function, the position of Sta Secretary is one of extreme trust,

and the individual who possesses it should be vetted to work as an “honest broker”

in the President’s service.

— 29 —

White House Oce

The Oce of the Sta Secretary has been described as the last substantive

control point before papers reach the Oval Oce. A great deal of information is

headed toward the Oval Oce at any moment. This includes presidential decision

memos; bills passed by Congress (which may be accompanied by signing or veto

statements); and brieﬁng books, reading materials, samples of constituent mail,

personal mail, and drafts of speeches. The Sta Secretary makes certain that these

materials are complete, well-ordered, and up to date before they reach the Presi-

dent. This necessarily means that the Sta Secretary plays a key role in determining

who weighs in on policy matters and when.

As noted above, the Sta Secretary also handles information leaving the Oval

Oce. The President may have questions after reviewing incoming material, may

wish to seek more information, or may demand revisions. The Sta Secretary is

often responsible for directing these requests to the appropriate places and fol-

lowing up on them to ensure that they are completed.

One of the Sta Secretary’s critical functions is managing and overseeing the

clearance process for the President’s daily/nightly brieﬁng book. This book is ﬁlled

with all the reading material and leading documentation the President needs in

the morning and the evening to help him make decisions. The Sta Secretary also

oversees the use of the President’s signature, whether by hand or by autopen, and

manages the Oce of the Executive Clerk, Oce of Records Management, and

Oce of Presidential Correspondence.

OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS

The Oce of Communications, which operates under the Director of Com-

munications, conveys the President’s agenda to the public through various media,

including speeches and remarks, press brieﬁngs, o-the-record discussions with

reporters, and social media. Depending on how a President chooses to structure

his White House, the Oce of Communications may include the Oce of the Press

Secretary (Press Oce), but no matter how it is structured, the oce must work

closely with the Press Oce as well as the President’s speechwriters and digital

strategists.

Operational functions of the Oce of Communications include scheduling and

running press brieﬁngs, interviews, meetings, media appearances, speeches, and a

range of other events. The Oce of Communications must maintain robust rela-

tionships with the White House Press Corps, the White House Correspondents’

Association, regional stakeholders, and key interest groups. No legal entitle-

ment exists for the provision of permanent space for media on the White House

campus, and the next Administration should reexamine the balance between media

demands and space constraints on the White House premises.

Leadership within the Office of Communications should include a Com-

munications Director (who is a direct report to the Chief of Sta), a Deputy

— 30 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Communications Director, a Deputy Director for Strategic Communications, and

a Press Secretary. This leadership team must work together closely to drive the

national narrative about the White House.

The best resource for the Oce of Communications is the President. The Pres-

ident conveys the White House’s overall message through one or two inaugural

addresses, State of the Union addresses, speeches to Congress, and press confer-

ences. The oce must also ensure that the various White House oces disseminate

a uniﬁed message to the public. The Communications Director and Press Secretary

in particular should be careful to avoid contradicting the President or delivering

conﬂicting information.

The speechwriting team is a critical component of the communications team.

Speechwriting is a unique talent: The writers selected must understand policy,

should have a ﬁrm grasp of history and other liberal-arts disciplines, and should

be able to learn and adopt the President’s style of rhetoric and mode of delivery.

The Press Secretary is the President’s spokesperson, communicating to the

American people through the media. The Press Secretary engages with the White

House Press Corps formally through press brieﬁngs and informally through

impromptu gaggles and meetings. Individuals who serve in this role must be quick

on their feet, which means, when appropriate, deftly refuting and rebutting corre-

spondents’ questions and comments.

The Communications Director must convey the President’s mission to the

American people. Especially for conservatives, this means navigating the main-

stream media to ensure that the President’s agenda is conveyed eectively and

accurately. The Communications Director must be politically savvy and very aware

of the ongoing activities of the other White House oces. The new Administration

should examine the nature of the relationship between itself and the White House

Correspondents Association and consider whether an alternative coordinating

body might be more suitable.

OFFICE OF LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS (OLA)

Created by President Dwight Eisenhower, the OLA has continued to serve as the

liaison between the White House and Congress. The White House must work with

congressional leaders to ensure presidential nominees, for roles such as Cabinet

secretaries and ambassadors, are conﬁrmed by the Senate. The White House also

relies on Congress to enact reforms promised by the President on the campaign

trail, whether those promises relate to health care, education, or national defense.

Because Congress holds the power of the purse, White House staers must ensure

that there is enough support on the Hill to secure the necessary funding through

the appropriations process to fulﬁll the President’s agenda.

The OLA reports directly to the Chief of Sta and in some Administrations has

done so under the guidance of a Deputy Chief of Sta (usually the Deputy Chief

— 31 —

White House Oce

for Policy). Regardless of the person to whom the OLA reports, however, the oce

exercises a certain autonomy on behalf of the President and the Chief of Sta in

directly inﬂuencing congressional leaders of both major political parties. The OLA

often must function as the mediator among the parties and ﬁnd common ground

to facilitate the successful enactment of the President’s agenda.

As is the case with many White House oces (but especially the Oce of Com-

munications), the OLA must ensure that congressional leaders receive one uniﬁed

message. If other actors within the White House maintain their own relationships

with congressional leaders and staers, it may appear that the President’s agenda

is fractured and lacks consensus. This dynamic has caused real problems for many

Presidents in the past.

Internally, OLA staers need to be involved in policy discussions, budget reviews,

and other important meetings. They must also provide advice to policy staers

regarding whether certain ideas are politically feasible. Externally, OLA staers

have to communicate continuously with congressional oces of both parties in

both the House and the Senate to ensure that the President has enough support

to enact his legislative priorities or sustain votes.

The OLA requires staers who are eective communicators and can provide a

dose of reality to other White House staers when necessary. Although a policy

proposal from within the White House may be a great idea, OLA staers must

ensure that it is politically feasible. OLA staers must therefore be skilled in both

politics and policy. Furthermore, the President should seek out individuals who

can advance his agenda and at the same time forge pathways with members of the

opposing political party on other priorities.

Most important, the OLA must function as a well-oiled machine: precisely

synced. The President cannot aord to have a tennis player on—much less as the

leader of—his football team.

OFFICE OF PRESIDENTIAL PERSONNEL (PPO)

The political axiom that “personnel is policy” was popularized under President

Ronald Reagan during the 1981 presidential transition. One of the most important

oces in the White House is the PPO, which was created under President Richard

Nixon to centralize political appointments. Departments and agencies had and still

have direct legal authority on hiring and ﬁring, but the power to ﬁll Schedule C posi-

tions—the core of political jobs—is vested with the President. Therefore, the White

House, not the department or agency, has the ﬁnal word on political appointments.

PPO’s primary responsibility is to sta the executive branch with individuals

who are equipped to implement the President’s agenda. Although its focus should

be identifying and recruiting leaders to ﬁll the approximately 1,000 appointments that

require Senate conﬁrmation, PPO must also ﬁll approximately 3,000 political jobs that

require dedicated conservatives to support the Administration’s political leadership.

— 32 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Frequently, many medium-tier and top-tier jobs have been ﬁlled by policy

experts tasked with accomplishing much of the work of the Administration. At

the same time, appointees in the entry-level jobs have brought invaluable energy

and commitment to the White House and have proved to be the “farm team” for

the conservative movement.

The Oce of Presidential Personnel is responsible for:

Identifying potential political personnel both actively through recruitment

and passively by ﬁelding resumes and adjudicating requests from

political actors.

Vetting potential political personnel by conducting political background

checks and reviewing any clearance and ﬁtness assessments by departments

and agencies.

Making recommendations to the President and to other appointment

authorities on behalf of the President.

Identifying programmatic political workforce needs early and developing

plans (for example, Schedule F).

Maintaining a strong relationship with the Oce of Personnel Management

(OPM) both for operational purposes and to eectuate the President’s direct

Title 5 authorities. The President is in charge of the federal workforce and

exercises control principally by working through the Director of the Oce

of Personnel Management.

Training and connecting political personnel.

Playing “bad cop” in a way that other White House oces cannot

(including serving as the oce that takes direct responsibility for ﬁrings

and hirings).

Serving as a personnel link between conservative organizations and the

executive branch.

In most Administrations, PPO will sta more than 100 positions during a transi-

tion and thousands of noncareer positions during the President’s ﬁrst term. Direct

authority and a strong relationship with the President are necessary attributes for

any PPO Director. Historically, PPO has had direct review and control of personnel

ﬁles, including security clearance dossiers.

— 33 —

White House Oce

At the highest level, PPO is tasked with long-term, strategic workforce devel-

opment. The “billets” of political appointments are of immense importance in

credentialing and training future leaders. In addition, whatever one’s view of the

constitutionality of various civil service rules (for example, the Federal Vacancies

Reform Act of 1998

) might be, it is necessary to ensure that departments and

agencies have robust cadres of political sta just below senior levels in the event

of unexpected vacancies.

OFFICE OF POLITICAL AFFAIRS (OPA)

The OPA is the primary oce within the executive branch for managing the

President’s political interests. Although its speciﬁc functions vary from Admin-

istration to Administration, the OPA typically serves as the liaison between the

President and associated political entities: national committees, federal and state

campaigns, and interest groups. Within legal guidelines, the OPA engages in out-

reach, conducts casework, and—if the President is up for reelection—assists with

his campaign. The OPA may also monitor congressional campaigns, arrange pres-

idential visits with other political campaigns, and recommend campaign sta to

the Oce of Presidential Personnel for service in the executive branch.

The OPA further serves as a line of communication between the White House

and the President’s political party. This includes both relaying the President’s

ambitions to political interests and listening to the needs of political interests. This

relationship allows for the exchange of information between the White House and

political actors across the country. The OPA should have one director of political

aairs who reports either to the Chief of Sta or to a Deputy Chief of Sta. The

OPA should also include various deputy directors, each of whom is responsible for

a certain geographical region of the country.

Because nearly all White House activities are in some way inherently political,

the OPA needs to be aware of all presidential actions and activities—including

travel, policy decisions, speeches, nominations, and responses to matters of

national security—and consider how they might aect the President’s image. The

OPA must therefore have a designated staer who communicates not only with

other White House oces, but also with the Cabinet and executive branch agencies.

OFFICE OF CABINET AFFAIRS (OCA)

The OCA’s role has changed to some degree over the course of various Adminis-

trations, but its overriding function remains the same: to ensure the coordination

of policy and communication between the White House and the Cabinet. Most

important, the OCA coordinates all Cabinet meetings with the President. It should

also organize and administer regular meetings of the Deputy Secretaries because

they also typically serve vital roles in the departments and agencies and, further,

often become acting secretaries when Cabinet members resign.

— 34 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

There should be one Cabinet Secretary who reports to the Chief of Sta’s oce,

either directly or through a deputy chief, according to the chief’s preference and

focus. The Cabinet Secretary maintains a direct relationship with all members of

the Cabinet.

The OCA further consists of deputies and special assistants who work with each

department’s principal, Deputy Secretary, Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries,

and other senior sta. The OCA also connects the departments to WHO oces.

The OCA coordinates with the Chief of Sta’s oce and the Oce of Communi-

cations to promote the President’s agenda through the Cabinet departments and

agencies. The Cabinet’s communications staers are obviously another critical

component of this operation.

In prior Administrations, the OCA has played a vital role by tracking the Pres-

ident’s agenda for the Chief of Sta, Deputy Chiefs, and senior advisers. It has

worked with each department and agency to advance policy priorities. In the future,

amplifying this function would truly beneﬁt both the President and the conser-

vative movement.

From time to time throughout an Administration, travel optics, ethics chal-

lenges, and Hatch Act

issues involving Cabinet members, deputies, and senior

staers can arise. The OCA is normally tasked with keeping the WHO informed

of such developments and providing support if and when necessary.

The ideal Cabinet Secretary will have exceptional organizational skills and be

a seasoned political operative or attorney. Because many Cabinet ocials have

been former presidential candidates, governors, ambassadors, and Members of

Congress, the ideal candidate should also possess the ability to interact with and

persuade accomplished individuals.

OFFICE OF PUBLIC LIAISON (OPL)

The OPL is critically important in building coalitions and support for the Pres-

ident’s agenda across every aligned social, faith-based, minority, and economic

interest group. It is a critical tool for shaping public opinion and keeping myriad

supporters, as well as “frenemies” and opponents alike who are within reach,

better informed.

The OPL is a notably large oce. It should have one Director who reports to the

Chief of Sta’s oce, either directly or through a deputy, according to the chief’s

preference and focus. The Director must maintain relationships not only with

other WHO heads, but also with the senior sta of every Cabinet department and

agency. Since a President’s agenda is always in motion, it is important for the OPL

to facilitate listening sessions to receive the views of the various leaders and mem-

bers of key interest groups.

The OPL should also have a sucient number of deputies and special assistants

to cover the vast number of disparate interest groups that are engaged daily. The

— 35 —

White House Oce

OPL has, by far, held more meetings in the Eisenhower Executive Oce Building

(EEOB) and within the West Wing itself than any other oce within the WHO.

The OPL is the chief White House enforcer and gatekeeper among these var-

ious interest groups. It has operated best whenever the Chief of Sta has given it

permission to use both the proverbial “carrot” and the proverbial “stick.” To make

this work, communication with the chief’s oce is vital. Additionally, the OPL has

had an outsized role in presidential scheduling and both ocial and political travel.

The OPL Director should come from the President’s election campaign or Cap-

itol Hill—but should not have deeply entrenched connections to a K Street entity

or any other potential stakeholder. Some prior relationships can create real or

perceived biases toward one group or another. The Director should be amiable,

gregarious, highly organized, and willing to shoulder criticism and pushback from

interest groups and other elements of the Administration.

Unlike the Director, OPL deputies and special assistants need a deep under-

standing of the capital, from K Street to Capitol Hill. They should have extensive

experience in private industry, the labor sector, the conservative movement, and

among the speciﬁc interest groups with which they will be asked to engage on

behalf of the White House.

OPL staers work with more external and internal parties than any other WHO

staers. In turn, they must be eective communicators and initiative-takers. They

must also be able to inﬂuence, persuade, and—most important—listen to various

stakeholders and ensure that they feel heard. All OPL staers must understand

from the outset that their jobs might be modiﬁed or even phased out entirely as

the Administration’s priorities change.

OFFICE OF INTERGOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS (IGA)

The IGA connects the White House to state, county, local, and tribal govern-

ments. In other words, it is the one-stop shop for disseminating an Administration’s

agenda to all non–federal government entities.

The IGA should have a Director to whom one or two Deputy Directors report.

The Director must ensure that the White House remains connected to all non–

federal government entities. The interests and perspectives of these entities are

represented in policy discussions, organized events with the West Wing, EOP

senior sta, and IGA sta throughout the departments and agencies.

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

most common:

Each deputy and that deputy’s staers are responsible for a type of government.

A group of staers is responsible for a speciﬁc geographical region of

the country.

— 36 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

The IGA, as suggested above, represents the interests and perspectives of non–

federal government entities, but its primary job is to make sure that these entities

understand an Administration’s agenda and ultimately support it.

The IGA must work with all other White House oces, especially the OPA and

the OPL, and manage its sta throughout the departments and agencies. IGA sta-

ers must therefore have communication skills, understand political nuance, and

be willing to engage in complex policy discussions. They should also be not just

generally responsive, but also proactive in seeking out the interests and perspec-

tives of non–federal government entities.

WHITE HOUSE POLICY COUNCILS

As the federal government has ballooned in size over the past century, it has

become increasingly dicult for the President alone to direct his agenda across

the executive branch. Three White House policy councils have come into existence

to help the President to control the bureaucracy and ensure continued alignment

between agency leadership and White House priorities. Those councils—as pre-

viewed above—are the NSC, NEC, and DPC. Each is headed by an Assistant to the

President and performs three signiﬁcant functions.

Policy Coordination. The primary role of the policy councils is to

coordinate the development of Administration policy. This frequently

includes developing signiﬁcant legislative priorities, coordinating policy

decisions that impact multiple departments and agencies, and at times

coordinating policy decisions within a single department or agency. This

process must ensure that all relevant oces are included; that competing

or conﬂicting opinions are thoroughly discussed and evaluated; and, when

there is disagreement among White House senior sta or among Cabinet

members, a well-structured question is presented to the President for an

intermediate or ﬁnal decision.

Policy Advice. By virtue of working in the White House, the heads of the

three policy councils will also function as independent policy advisers to

the President. This aspect of the role will vary depending on the individual

in this position and the President’s governing philosophy. Incumbents have

ranged from “honest brokers,” who mostly coordinate and ensure that all

opinions are fairly presented to the President, to “policy deciders,” who

largely drive a given policy topic on behalf of the President.

Policy Implementation. The policy councils also manage and mediate

the implementation of previous policy decisions. Implementation of a new

statute or an executive order frequently takes years and involves many

— 37 —

White House Oce

distinct and more granular policy decisions along the way. It is essential

to have a centralized process for evaluating and coordinating these

decisions, especially if they involve more than one Cabinet department

or agency with diering opinions on the best approach for securing the

President’s goals.

The above functions have recently been managed by policy councils through

a tiered interagency policy process. This process helps to identify dierences of

opinion and reach a decision without having to take every issue to the President. It

can be used to address a single question or monitor a recurring issue on an ongoing

basis. Typically, the process involves multiple Cabinet departments and agencies

that have a pertinent role, policy interest, or disagreement. Each policy council’s

process could involve the following committees:

Policy Coordinating Committee (PCC). A PCC is led by a Special

Assistant to the President from the policy council and includes political

Assistant Secretary–level experts from the relevant departments,

agencies, or oces. The purpose is to determine where consensus exists,

clearly identify where there are diering opinions, and develop options

for resolving the remaining questions. If no outstanding questions or

disagreements exist, the PCC may resolve the issue and move toward

implementation at the agency level.

Deputies Committee (DC). A DC is a meeting of presidentially appointed

executives chaired by the policy council’s Deputy Assistant to the President

and relevant Deputy Secretaries. It evaluates the options produced by the

PCC and frequently directs the PCC to add, expand, or reevaluate an option

or even to reach a compromise and resolve an issue at that level.

Principals Committee (PC). When questions are not resolved by a DC,

the Director of the Policy Council will chair a PC, which is attended by the

relevant Cabinet Secretaries and senior White House political sta. This is

the ﬁnal opportunity for the President’s most senior advisers to discuss the

question, make sure that each principal’s position is carefully understood,

and see whether consensus or a compromise might be reached. If not,

the Chief of Sta’s oce will schedule time for the PC to meet with the

President for a ﬁnal decision.

Despite having seemingly clear and separate portfolios, the three policy coun-

cils frequently have areas of overlap, which can result in confusion, duplication,

or conﬂict. For example, there are the areas of immigration and border security

— 38 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

(either NSC or DPC); health care, energy, and environment (either NEC or DPC);

and trade and international economic policy (either NSC or NEC). Identifying

these potentially problematic areas and assigning policy responsibilities to only

one council where possible will help to speed up the policy-coordination process.

While other chapters will cover speciﬁc policy goals for each department or

agency, incoming policy councils will need to move rapidly to lead policy processes

around cross-cutting agency topics, including countering China, enforcing immi-

gration laws, reversing regulatory policies in order to promote energy production,

combating the Left’s aggressive attacks on life and religious liberty, and confronting

“wokeism” throughout the federal government.

National Security Council. The NSC is intended to be an interdepartmen-

tal body within the White House that can set national security policy with a

whole-of-government approach. Unlike the other policy councils, the NSC was

established by statute.

Statutory members and advisers who are currently part of

the NSC include the President and Vice President; the Secretaries of State, Defense,

and Energy; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta; and the Director of National

Intelligence.

The NSC staff, and particularly the National Security Adviser, should be

vetted for foreign and security policy experience and insight. The National Secu-

rity Adviser and NSC sta advise the President on matters of foreign policy and

national security, serve as an information conduit in times of crisis, and as liaisons

ensuring that written communications are properly shared among NSC members.

Special attention should be given to the use of detailees to sta the NSC. In

recent years, the NSC’s sta size has been rightsized from its peak of 400 in 2015

down to 100–150 professional members. The next Administration should try to

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

National Economic Council. The NEC was established in 1993 by executive

order and has four key functions:

To “coordinate the economic policy-making process with respect to

domestic and international economic issues.”

To “coordinate economic policy advice to the President.”

To “ensure that policy decisions and programs are consistent with the

President’s stated goals” and “that those goals are being eectively pursued.”

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

The NEC Director coordinates and implements the President’s economic policy

objectives by working with Cabinet secretaries, their departments, and multiple

— 39 —

White House Oce

agencies. The Director is supported by a sta of policy experts in various ﬁelds,

including infrastructure, manufacturing, research and development, agriculture,

small business, ﬁnancial regulation, housing, technology and innovation, and

ﬁscal policy.

The NEC considers economic policy matters, and the DPC typically considers

anything related to domestic matters with the exception of economic policy mat-

ters. It also diers from the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). Whereas the

NEC is in charge of policy development, the CEA acts as the White House’s internal

research arm for economic analysis.

It is therefore critically important to ﬁnd people with the right qualiﬁca-

tions to head both the NEC and the CEA. The CEA is almost always led by a

well-known academic economist, and the NEC is regularly led by someone with

expertise in directing the President’s economic policy process. Those who have

served in the role have ranged from former CEOs of the nation’s largest invest-

ment ﬁrms to ﬁnancial-services industry managers to seasoned congressional

staers who have managed the economic policy issues for top ﬁnancial and

tax-writing committees.

Domestic Policy Council. The Domestic Policy Council (DPC) consists of

advisers to the President on noneconomic domestic policy issues as well as inter-

national issues with a signiﬁcant domestic component (such as immigration). It is

one of the primary policy councils serving the President along with the NSC and

NEC. The Director serves as the principal DPC adviser to the President, along with

members of the Cabinet, and the Deputy Director chairs the committee respon-

sible for coordinating domestic policy development at the Deputy Secretary level.

In this respect, both the Director and the Deputy Director have critical institu-

tional functions that aect the development of domestic policy throughout the

Administration.

The DPC also has policy experts (for example, Special Assistants to the Presi-

dent or SAPs) who are responsible for developing and coordinating, as well as for

advising the President, on speciﬁc issues. It is essential that DPC policy expertise

reﬂect the most prominent issues that are before the Administration: issues such

as the environment, health care, housing, and immigration. In addition, DPC SAPs

should demonstrate a working knowledge of the rulemaking process (although

they need not necessarily be experts on regulation) because a working knowledge

of the rulemaking process will facilitate the DPC’s eectiveness in coordinating

Administration policy.

The DPC also needs to work closely with other oces within the Executive

Oce of the President to promote economic opportunity and private-sector inno-

vation. This includes working with the Oce of Management and Budget and its

Oce of Information and Regulatory Aairs as well as the Council of Economic

Advisers, Council on Environmental Quality, and Oce of Science and Technology

— 40 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Policy. To this end, the Director should chair a standing meeting with the princi-

pals from each of the other EOP oces to enhance coordination from within the

White House.

Several areas will be especially important as the DPC works to develop a

well-deﬁned domestic policy agenda. One is the promotion of innovation as a

foundation for economic growth and opportunity. The President should establish

an economic opportunity working group, chaired by the DPC Director, to coordi-

nate the development of policies that promote economic opportunity. Another

important area is the promotion of health care reform to bring down costs for the

American people and the pressure that spending on health programs puts on the

federal budget. Finally, DPC should coordinate with the NSC on a policy agenda

to enhance border security.

OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT (OVP)

In modern U.S. history, the Vice President has acted as a signiﬁcant adviser to

the President. Once elected, the VP helps to promote and, in many instances, put

into place and execute the President’s agenda. The President may additionally

determine the inclusion of OVP sta in White House meetings, including Policy

Coordinating Committee, Deputies Committee, and Principals Committee dis-

cussions as has been done in various recent Administrations.

Recent Presidents have decided to give Vice Presidents space in the West Wing.

The VP’s proximity to the President—as well as to the Chief of Sta and additional

senior advisers—makes his or her role a powerful one within the West Wing.

Presidents typically tap VPs to lead various Administration eorts. These eorts

have included serving on the NSC Principals Committee, heading the National

Space Council, addressing immigration and border issues, leading the response

to health care crises, and supervising workforce programs. VPs traditionally also

spearhead projects of personal interest that have been authorized by the President.

The VP is also charged with breaking tie votes in the Senate and in recent years

has served abroad as a brand ambassador for the White House and more broadly

the United States, announcing Administration priorities and coordinating with

heads of state and other top foreign government ocials. The Vice President, as

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

OFFICE OF THE FIRST LADY/FIRST GENTLEMAN

The First Lady or First Gentleman plays an interesting role in the formation,

implementation, and execution of policy in concert with the President. Active

and interested ﬁrst spouses often champion a select number of signature issues,

whether they be thorny social issues or deeper policy issues. One advantage of the

ﬁrst spouse’s taking on hot-button social issues is that any political backlash will

be less severe than it would be for the President.

— 41 —

White House Oce

The ﬁrst spouse normally appoints a chief of sta who has enough assistants

to support the spouse’s activities in the East Wing of the White House. This group

works exclusively with the ﬁrst spouse and senior members of the White House

along with EOP personnel to implement and execute the ﬁrst spouse’s priorities,

which reﬂect the ﬁrst spouse’s passions and interests and are often identiﬁed as

important in discussions with the President. Executed well, they can be strategi-

cally useful in accelerating the Administration’s agenda. Past East Wing initiatives

have focused on such issues as combating bullying, ﬁghting drug abuse, promoting

literacy, and encouraging physical education for young adults and children.

The ﬁrst spouse is aorded signiﬁcant resources. His or her sta also works with

the President’s policy team, members of the Cabinet, and other EOP sta.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The preparation of this chapter was a collective enterprise of individuals involved in the

2025 Presidential Transition Project. All contributors to this chapter are listed at the front of this volume, but Edwin

Meese III, Donald Devine, Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, and Jonathan Bronitsky deserve special mention. The

author alone assumes responsibility for the content of this chapter, and no views expressed herein should be

attributed to any other individual.

— 42 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

ENDNOTES

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

 U.S. Constitution, art. II, § 2.

 U.S. Constitution, art. II, § 3.

 U.S. Constitution, art. II, § 2.

 See Chapter 2, “Executive Oce of the President,” infra.

 H.R. 4328, Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, Public Law No. 105-

277, 105th Congress, October 21, 1998, Division C, Title I, § 151, https://www.congress.gov/105/plaws/publ277/

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

 S. 1871, An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, Public Law No. 76-252, 76th Congress, August 2, 1939,

https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/53/STATUTE-53-Pg1147.pdf (accessed March 7, 2023).

 S. 758, National Security Act of 1947, Public Law No. 80-253, 80th Congress, July 26, 1947, https://govtrackus.

s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/61/STATUTE-61-Pg495.pdf (accessed February 15, 2023). “The National

Security Council was established by the National Security Act of 1947 (PL 235 – 61 Stat. 496; U.S.C. 402),

amended by the National Security Act Amendments of 1949 (63 Stat. 579; 50 U.S.C. 401 et seq.). Later in 1949,

as part of the Reorganization Plan, the Council was placed in the Executive Oce of the President.” The White

House, “National Security Council,” https://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/ (accessed February 15, 2023).

 See Chapter 2, “Executive Oce of the President,” infra.

 President William J. Clinton, Executive Order 12835, “Establishment of the National Economic Council,”

January 25, 1993, in Federal Register, Vol. 58, No. 16 (January 27, 1993), pp. 6189–6190, https://www.govinfo.

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

— 43 —

n its opening words, Article II of the U.S. Constitution makes it abundantly

clear that “[t]he executive power shall be vested in a President of the United

States of America.”

That enormous power is not vested in departments or

agencies, in sta or administrative bodies, in nongovernmental organizations or

other equities and interests close to the government. The President must set and

enforce a plan for the executive branch. Sadly, however, a President today assumes

oce to ﬁnd a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its

own policy plans and preferences—or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences

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

The modern conservative President’s task is to limit, control, and direct the

executive branch on behalf of the American people. This challenge is created

and exacerbated by factors like Congress’s decades-long tendency to delegate its

lawmaking power to agency bureaucracies, the pervasive notion of expert “inde-

pendence” that protects so-called expert authorities from scrutiny, the presumed

inability to hold career civil servants accountable for their performance, and the

increasing reality that many agencies are not only too big and powerful, but also

increasingly weaponized against the public and a President who is elected by the

people and empowered by the Constitution to govern.

In Federalist No. 47, James Madison warned that “[t]he accumulation of all powers,

legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many,

and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the

very deﬁnition of tyranny.”

Regrettably, that wise and cautionary note describes

to a signiﬁcant degree the modern executive branch, which—whether controlled

EXECUTIVE OFFICE

OF THE PRESIDENT

OF THE UNITED STATES

Russ Vought

— 44 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

by the bureaucracy or by the President—writes federal policy, enforces that policy,

and often adjudicates whether that policy was properly drafted and enforced. The

overall situation is constitutionally dire, unsustainably expensive, and in urgent need

of repair. Nothing less than the survival of self-governance in America is at stake.

The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need

for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power—

including power currently held by the executive branch—to the American people.

Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and

self-denial: boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will and

self-denial to use the bureaucratic machine to send power away from Washington

and back to America’s families, faith communities, local governments, and states.

Fortunately, a President who is willing to lead will ﬁnd in the Executive Oce

of the President (EOP) the levers necessary to reverse this trend and impose a

sound direction for the nation on the federal bureaucracy. The eectiveness of

those EOP levers depends on the fundamental premise that it is the President’s

agenda that should matter to the departments and agencies that operate under his

constitutional authority and that, as a general matter, it is the President’s chosen

advisers who have the best sense of the President’s aims and intentions, both with

respect to the policies he intends to enact and with respect to the interests that

must be secured to govern successfully on behalf of the American people. This

chapter focuses on key features of and recommendations for several of the EOP’s

important components.

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

OMB assists the President in the execution of his policy agenda across the gov-

ernment by employing many statutory and executive procedural levers to bring

the bureaucracy in line with all budgetary, regulatory, and management decisions.

Properly understood, it is a President’s air-trac control system with the abil-

ity and charge to ensure that all policy initiatives are ﬂying in sync and with the

authority to let planes take o and, at times, ground planes that are ﬂying o course.

OMB’s key roles include:

Developing and enforcing the President’s budget and executing the

appropriations laws that fund the government;

Managing agency and personnel performance, procurement policy,

ﬁnancial management, and information technology;

Developing the President’s regulatory agenda, reviewing new regulatory

actions, reviewing federal information collections, and setting and enforcing

federal information policy; and

— 45 —

Executive Oce of the President of the United States

Coordinating and clearing agency communications with Congress,

including testimonies and views on draft legislation.

OMB cannot perform its role on behalf of the President eectively if it is not inti-

mately involved in all aspects of the White House policy process and lacks knowledge

of what the agencies are doing. Internally to the EOP, ensuring that the policy-for-

mulation procedures developed by the White House to serve the President include

OMB is one of any OMB Director’s major responsibilities. A common meme of those

who intend to evade OMB review is to argue that where “resources” are not being

discussed, OMB’s participation is optional. This ignores both OMB’s role in all down-

stream execution and the reality that it has the only statutory tools in the White

House that are powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.

The Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approxima-

tion of the President’s mind as it pertains to the policy agenda while always being

ready with actual options to eect that agenda within existing legal authorities and

resources. This role cannot be performed adequately if the Director acts instead as

the ambassador of the institutional interests of OMB and the wider bureaucracy

to the White House. Once its reputation as the keeper of “commander’s intent”

is established, then and only then does OMB have the ability to shape the most

ecient way to pursue an objective.

Externally, the Director must ensure that OMB has sucient visibility into

the deep caverns of agency decision-making. One indispensable statutory tool to

that end is to ensure that policy ocials—the Program Associate Directors (PADs)

managing the vast Resource Management Oces (RMOs)—personally sign what

are known as the apportionments. In 1870, Congress passed the Anti-Deﬁciency

Act

to prevent the common agency practice of spending down all appropriated

funding, creating artiﬁcial funding shortfalls that Congress would have to ﬁll. The

law mandated that all funding be allotted or “apportioned” in installments. This

process, whereby agencies come to OMB for allotments of appropriated funding, is

essential to the eective ﬁnancial stewardship of taxpayer dollars. OMB can then

direct on behalf of a President the amount, duration, and purpose of any appor-

tioned funding to ensure against waste, fraud, and abuse and ensure consistency

with the President’s agenda and applicable laws.

The vast majority of these apportionments were signed by career ocials—the

Deputy Associate Directors (DADs)—until the Trump Administration placed this

responsibility in the hands of the PADs and thereby opened wide vistas of oversight

that had escaped the attention of policy ocials. The Biden Administration sub-

sequently reversed this decision. No Director should be chosen who is unwilling

to restore apportionment decision-making to the PADs’ personal review, who is

not aggressive in wielding the tool on behalf of the President’s agenda, or who is

unable to defend the power against attacks from Congress.

— 46 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

It should be noted that each of OMB’s primary functions, along with other

executive and statutory roles, is carried out with the help of many essential OMB

support oces. The two most important oces for moving OMB at the will of a

Director are the Budget Review Division (BRD) and the Oce of General Counsel

(OGC). The Director should have a direct and eective relationship with the head

of the BRD (considered the top career ocial within OMB) and transmit most

instructions through that oce because the rest of the agency is institution-

ally inclined toward its direction and responds accordingly. The BRD inevitably

will translate the directions from policy ocials to the career sta, and at every

stage, it is obviously vital that the Director ensure that this translation is an

accurate one.

In addition, many key considerations involved in enacting a President’s agenda

hinge on existing legal authorities. The Director must ensure the appointment

of a General Counsel who is respected yet creative and fearless in his or her abil-

ity to challenge legal precedents that serve to protect the status quo. This is vital

within OMB not only with respect to the adequate development of policy options

for the President’s review, but also with respect to agencies that attempt to protect

their own institutional interests and foreclose certain avenues based on the mere

assertion (and not proof) that the law disallows it or that, conversely, attempt to

disregard the clear statutory commands of Congress.

In general, the Director should empower a strong Deputy Director with author-

ity over the Deputy for Management, the PADs, and the Oce of Information and

Regulatory Aairs (OIRA) to work diligently to break down barriers within OMB

and not allow turf disputes or a lack of visibility to undermine the agency’s prin-

cipal budget, management, and regulatory functions. OMB should work toward a

“One OMB” position on behalf of the President and represent that view during the

various policymaking processes.

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

$31 trillion on a debt that is steadily increasing. The OMB Director should present

a ﬁscal goal to the President early in the budget development process to address

the federal government’s ﬁscal irresponsibility. This goal would help to align the

months-long process of developing the actual proposals for inclusion in the budget.

Though some mistakenly regard it as a mere paper-pushing exercise, the Pres-

ident’s budget is in fact a powerful mechanism for setting and enforcing public

policy at federal agencies. The budget team includes six Resource Management

Oces that, together with the BRD and other components, help the Director of

OMB to develop and execute detailed agency spending plans that bear on every

major aspect of policy formation and execution at federal agencies. Through initial

priority-setting and ongoing supervision of agency spending, OMB’s budget team

plays a key role in executing policy across the executive branch, including at many

agencies wrongly regarded as “independent.”

— 47 —

Executive Oce of the President of the United States

The RMOs, each of which is led by a political appointee known as the PAD and

a career DAD, are separated into six functional units:

National Security.

Natural Resources, Energy, and Science.

Health.

Education, Income Maintenance, and Labor.

Transportation, Justice, and Homeland Security.

Treasury, Commerce, and Housing.

Because the RMOs are institutionally ingrained in nearly all policymaking and

implementation across the executive branch, they play a critical role in helping the

Director to implement the President’s public policy agenda. However, because each

RMO is responsible for formulating and supervising such a wide range of policy

details, many granular but critical policy decisions are eectively left to the career

professionals who serve across Administrations.

To enhance the OMB Director’s ability to help the President drive policy at the

agencies, the existing six RMOs should be divided into smaller subject-matter areas,

allowing for more PADs, and each of these PADs should have a Deputy PAD. This

expanded pool of RMOs with additional political leadership would enable more

comprehensive direction and oversight of policy development and implementation.

Regardless of whether Congress adopts the President’s full set of budget rec-

ommendations, the President should reintroduce the concept of administrative

pay-as-you-go, or administrative PAYGO. This simple procedural requirement

imposes budget neutrality on the discretionary choices of federal agencies, of

which there are many in nearly all areas of policymaking. This simple step forces

the executive branch to control what it can control. The principle may occasionally

yield to other overarching requirements, such as a presidential regulatory budget,

but in nearly all cases, administrative PAYGO plays a unique and indispensable

role in enforcing ﬁscal responsibility at federal departments and agencies.

The President should use every possible tool to propose and impose ﬁscal disci-

pline on the federal government. Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.

Management. The Management Oce of OMB (the “M-Side” as it is often

called) is responsible for carrying out several important agency oversight functions,

many of which are statutory. The Management team includes the following oces

led by presidentially appointed Senate-conﬁrmed individuals:

— 48 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

The Oce of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP).

The Oce of Performance and Personnel Management (OPPM).

The Oce of Federal Financial Management (OFFM).

The Oce of the Federal Chief Information Ocer (OFCIO).

The Made in America Oce (MIAO), which was added by the Biden

Administration and is not a Senate-conﬁrmed slot.

Each of these oces has responsibilities and authorities that a President can

use to help drive policy across the government. It is vital that the Director and his

political sta, not the careerists, drive these oces in pursuit of the President’s

actual priorities and not let them set their own agenda based on the wishes of the

sprawling “good government” management community in and outside of govern-

ment. Many Directors do not properly prioritize the management portfolio, leaving

it to the Deputy for Management, but such neglect creates purposeless bureaucracy

that impedes a President’s agenda—an “M Train to Nowhere.”

OFPP. This oce plays a critical role in leading the development of new policies

and regulations concerning federal contracting and procurement. Through the

Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council, which is generally chaired by the OFPP

Administrator, OFPP helps the Director to set a wide range of policies for all of

those who contract with the executive branch. In the past, those governmentwide

contracting rules have played a key role in helping to implement the President’s

policy agenda. This oce should be engaged early and often in OMB’s eort to drive

policy, including by obtaining transparency about entities that are awarded federal

contracts and grants and by using government contracts to push back against woke

policies in corporate America.

OPPM. Through this oce, the Director helps federal agencies to establish their

performance goals and performance review processes. OPPM also works with the

U.S. Oce of Personnel Management (OPM) to establish and manage personnel

policies and practices across the federal government. The Director should instruct

OPPM to establish annual performance goals and review processes for agencies

that reﬂect the President’s agenda. OPPM should also be part of the President’s

strategy to set and enforce sensible policies and practices for the federal workforce.

OFFM. This oce helps the Director to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in fed-

eral programs—for example, through the Do Not Pay program. It should be part of

eorts to save precious taxpayer resources.

OFCIO. This oce guides the federal government’s use and adoption of Inter-

net-based technologies to improve government operations and save taxpayer

— 49 —

Executive Oce of the President of the United States

money. As a function of its leadership role, it is critical in interagency discussions

on a wide range of technology issues. The oce thus is an important part of the

President’s eorts to modernize, strengthen, and set technology-adoption policy

for the executive branch.

MIAO. Building on the example and work of the Trump Administration, Presi-

dent Biden established this oce to centralize, carry out, and further develop the

federal government’s Buy-American and other Made-in-America commitments.

Its work ought to be continued and further strengthened.

Regulatory and Information Policy. OMB’s OIRA plays an enormous and

vital role in reining in the regulatory state and ensuring that regulations achieve

important beneﬁts while imposing minimal burdens on Americans. The President

should maintain Executive Order (EO) 12866,

the foundation of OIRA’s review

of regulatory actions. The Administration should likewise maintain the recent

extension of those standards to regulatory actions of the U.S. Department of the

Treasury.

Regulatory analysis and OIRA review should also be required of the

historically “independent” agencies as the Oce of Legal Counsel has found is

legally permissible.

If the current Administration proceeds with its declared intent to modify

aspects of EO 12866 or review OMB Circular A-4,

the related document that

provides the foundation for cost-beneﬁt analysis, the next President should imme-

diately begin to undo those changes and develop a rigorous, data-driven approach

that will result in the least burdensome rules possible. The next President should

also revive the directive in Executive Order 13891

that signiﬁcant guidance doc-

uments also must pass through OIRA review.

Because OIRA review often leads to fewer regulatory burdens, more regulatory

beneﬁts, and better coordination of regulatory policy, funding for OIRA tends to

pay large dividends. Yet over the years, funding for OIRA has diminished. This

trend should be reversed. The budget should also include sucient full-time equiv-

alent (FTE) employees to form regulatory advance teams that would consult with

agencies on cost-beneﬁt analysis and good regulatory practices at the beginning

of the rulemaking process for the most important regulations. These teams would

help agencies take cost-beneﬁt analysis into account from the beginning of their

rulemaking eorts, which in turn would result in higher-quality regulations and a

swifter eventual OIRA review. To preserve the integrity of OIRA review, the sta

who consult at the beginning of a rulemaking should not handle its eventual review.

The next President should also reinstate the many executive orders signed

by President Trump that were designed to make the regulatory process more

just, ecient, and transparent. Executive Orders 13771,

13777,

13891,

13892,

13893,

13924 Section 6,

13979,

and 13980

should be revived (with modiﬁca-

tions as needed). Executive Order 13132

on federalism should be strengthened

so that state regulatory and ﬁscal operations are not commandeered by the federal

— 50 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

government through so-called cooperative federalism programs. Additionally, the

President should revise and sign an updated version of President Ronald Reagan’s

Executive Order 12630

on federal takings.

The next President should strengthen implementation of the Information Qual-

ity Act,

robustly use the authority of the Paperwork Reduction Act,

carefully

enforce the Privacy Act,

and ensure the sound execution of OIRA’s statistical

and other information policy functions. Regulatory cooperation agreements can

also promote the further adoption of good regulatory practices, which improve

market conditions for America and her allies. OIRA should also work with other

components of OMB to revise and apply OMB’s uniform Guidance for Grants and

Agreements

and ensure that federal contract and grant guidelines satisfy EO

12866 and other centralized standards as appropriate.

But executive reforms and actions, while vital, are not enough: Congress also

must act. The next President should work with Congress to pass signiﬁcant reg-

ulatory policy and process reforms, which could go a long way toward reining in

the administrative state. Excellent examples of such legislation include the Reg-

ulatory Accountability Act,

SMART Act,

GOOD Act,

Early Participation in

Regulations Act,

Unfunded Mandates Accountability and Transparency Act,

and REINS Act.

Finally, the next President should work with Congress to maximize the utility

of the Congressional Review Act (CRA),

which allows Congress to undo midnight

regulatory actions (including those disguised as “guidance”) on an accelerated

timeline. To leverage the CRA’s power to the maximum extent, Congress and

the President should enact the Midnight Rules Relief Act,

which would help to

ensure that multiple regulatory actions could be packaged and voted on at the same

time. Immediate and robust use of the CRA would allow the President to focus

his rulemaking resources on major new regulatory reforms rather than devoting

months or years to undoing the ﬁnal rulemakings of the Biden Administration.

Legislative Clearance and Coordination. OMB plays a critical role in ensur-

ing that the executive branch is aligned on legislative proposals and language,

agency testimonies, and other communications with Congress. The Director should

use these authorities to enforce policy and message consistency aggressively and

promote the eective engagement of the executive branch in legislative processes.

NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL (NSC)

The National Security Council (NSC) was established by statute to support the

President in developing and implementing national security policy by coordinating

across relevant departments and agencies, integrating authorities and resources

toward common ends, and objectively assessing progress toward established

goals. Led by the National Security Advisor (NSA), the NSC sta will be success-

ful in implementing the President’s national security goals only if it is made up

— 51 —

Executive Oce of the President of the United States

of personnel with technical expertise and experience as well as an alignment to

the President’s declared national security policy priorities. The NSC must then

chart a course that articulates and achieves the President’s national security goals

and objectives. The President should empower a strong NSC that not only has the

power to convene the policy process, but also is entrusted with the full power of

the presidency to drive the bureaucracy.

In organizing (by means of Presidential Directive

) an NSC sta that is more

responsive and aligned with the President’s goals and empowered to implement

them, the NSA should immediately evaluate and eliminate directorates that are

not aligned with the President’s agenda and replace them with new directorates as

appropriate that can drive implementation of the President’s signature national

security priorities. In addition to realigning the sta organization to the President’s

priorities, the NSA should assign responsibility for implementation of speciﬁc

policy initiatives to senior NSC ocials from across the NSC sta structure. These

ocials should develop, direct, and execute tangible action plans in coordination

with multiple agencies to achieve measurable, time-deﬁned milestones.

Aligning NSC sta to the President’s national security goals will provide clearer

direction, a mandate for action, and a baseline of accountability that can be used

to evaluate sta performance and the NSC’s overall progress. Accountable senior

ocials, themselves either political appointees or a minimum number of career

detailees, who are selected and vetted politically and report directly to political

sta should be the main day-to-day managers for interagency coordination and

implementation of their assigned national security policy objectives. They should

provide policy analysis for consideration by the broader NSC and relevant agencies

and ensure timely responses to decisions made by the President. The accountable

senior ocials should be established at the direction of the NSA and draw on per-

sonnel and expertise from beyond the NSC, including OMB, the National Economic

Council, and relevant federal agencies.

The NSC sta and principals should work in tandem with the National Eco-

nomic Council and OMB at all levels, presenting a united eort to achieve the

President’s goals and drawing on the latter’s statutory authorities to guide the

bureaucracy. To accomplish national objectives eectively, foreign policy should

fully incorporate the economic instruments of national power. National security

policy must also include the prioritized allocation of resources. When policies are

divorced from the resources required to implement them, they are stillborn—aca-

demic exercises that undermine our national security and leave departments and

agencies to their own devices.

The accountable senior ocials should be empowered to identify, recruit, clear,

and hire sta who are aligned with and willing to shepherd the President’s national

security priorities. NSC sta leads, under the direction of the NSA, should have

the discretion to reduce the number of positions that need high-level clearances,

— 52 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

and the NSC should be adequately resourced and authorized to adjudicate and

hold security clearances internally with investigators who work directly for the

NSC and whose sole task is to clear NSC ocials. If certain sta are determined

not to need high-level clearances, the question becomes whether they should be

part of the NSC at all.

The NSC should take a leading role in directing the drafting and thorough review

of all formal strategies: the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strat-

egy, the Nuclear Posture Review, the Missile Defense Strategy, etc. In particular,

the National Defense Strategy, which by tradition has evaded signiﬁcant review,

should be prioritized for White House review by the NSC and OMB. Both should

also conduct reviews of operational war plans and global force planning and allo-

cations with the Secretary of Defense to align them with presidential priorities and

review all key policy and guidance intended for implementation by the heads of the

Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the Intelligence Community

before they are authorized for distribution. The NSC should rigorously review all

general and ﬂag ocer promotions to prioritize the core roles and responsibilities

of the military over social engineering and non-defense matters, including climate

change, critical race theory, manufactured extremism, and other polarizing policies

that weaken our armed forces and discourage our nation’s ﬁnest men and women

from enlisting to serve in defense of our liberty.

The NSC sta will need to consolidate the functions of both the NSC and the

Homeland Security Council (HSC), incorporate the recently established Oce of

the National Cyber Director, and evaluate the required regional and functional

directorates. Given the aforementioned prerequisites, the NSC should be prop-

erly resourced with sucient policy professionals, and the NSA should prioritize

stang the vast majority of NSC directorates with aligned political appointees

and trusted career ocials. For instance, the NSA should return all nonessen-

tial detailees to their home agencies on their ﬁrst day in oce so that the new

Administration can proceed eciently without the personnel land mines left by

the previous stewards and as soon as possible should replace all essential detailees

with sta aligned to the new President’s priorities. The HSC has overseen pandemic

response, and its incorporation is important.

In the end, change requires intervention, and the NSC sta should be appro-

priately recruited, manned, and empowered to achieve the President’s national

security and foreign policy objectives and maintain robust policy analysis and

discussion while minimizing resistance from those who have an agenda or who

jealously guard their resources and autonomy at the expense of national security

and sound policy development. This resistance and inertia can be inadvertently

enabled by a small and unempowered NSC.

Additionally, the White House Chief of Sta and NSA must ensure that the NSC

is functioning in tandem with the rest of the White House sta to beneﬁt from

— 53 —

Executive Oce of the President of the United States

the best strategic thinking of the President’s top advisers. History shows that an

unsupervised NSC sta can stray from its statutory role and adversely aect a Pres-

ident and his policies. Moreover, while the NSC should be fully incorporated into

the White House, it should also be allowed to do its job without the impediment

of dually hatted sta that report to other oces. For instance, the NSC needs its

own counsel to inform what legal options can be provided to the President. The

White House Counsel should be part of that policy process as the President’s top

legal adviser. These recommendations provide a clear road map for rapidly sizing

and solidifying the NSC sta to support and achieve the President’s objectives

beginning on Inauguration Day.

NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL (NEC)

The National Economic Council is one of the policy councils serving the Pres-

ident along with the NSC and the Domestic Policy Council (DPC). The Director

serves as principal adviser to the President on domestic and international eco

nomic policy and communicates the President’s economic message to the media.

The Deputy Director is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the council,

which includes chairing the committee that coordinates economic policy devel

opment at the Deputy Secretary level. In eect, the Director and Deputy Director

are the ocials who are primarily responsible for the development of economic

policymaking for the Administration. Once a policy is adopted, it is the appropri-

ate agency’s responsibility to implement it. The NEC’s policy process is also used

to determine whether the President should support or oppose legislation passed

by Congress.

In addition to its leadership, the NEC has policy experts (for example, Special

Assistants to the President or SAPs) who are responsible for developing and coor-

dinating, as well as advising the President, on speciﬁc issues. It is essential that

the policy expertise of the NEC reﬂect the current environment’s most pressing

issues. Today, this would include (among other topics) taxes, energy and envi-

ronment, technology, infrastructure, health care, ﬁnancial services, workforce,

agriculture, antitrust and competition policy, and retirement programs. NEC’s

SAPs should have a working knowledge of how the Administration can implement

policy through the rulemaking process, although it is not necessary that they be

experts on regulation themselves, particularly given OMB’s role. This will facilitate

the NEC’s eectiveness in coordinating Administration policy.

The NEC needs to work closely with other oces within the Executive Oce

of the President to promote innovation by the private sector and create an envi-

ronment that will stimulate economic activity while reducing federal spending

and debt. This includes working with the DPC, NSC, OMB, Council of Economic

Advisers, Oce of Intergovernmental Aairs, Oce of Cabinet Aairs, White

House Counsel, Council on Environmental Quality, Oce of Legislative Aairs,

— 54 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

and Oce of Science and Technology Policy. To this end, the NEC Director should

chair a standing meeting with the principals from each of the other EOP oces to

enhance coordination from within the White House.

In the past, there has been tension among the DPC, NEC, and NSC over juris-

diction. It is important to set clear jurisdictions at the start of an Administration

to prevent needless and counterproductive turf ﬁghts. In addition, the Principal

Deputy for international economic policy is jointly appointed at NEC and NSC and

could end up serving two dierent interests. To avoid such problems, international

economic policy should be entirely coordinated from NEC.

It will be especially important for the NEC to work seamlessly with the Council

of Economic Advisers (CEA), which provides the President and the White House

oces with the latest economic data and forecasts, as well as estimates of the eco-

nomic impact of proposed policies, and prepares the annual Economic Report of

the President. The CEA is not a policy council and therefore does not run policy

processes, which is the responsibility of the NEC, DPC, and NSC. However, the

CEA does play a key role in ensuring that any policy considered by the councils is

rigorously evaluated for its economic impacts.

The NEC works closely with the White House Oce of Communications and

Oce of Speechwriting to ensure that the White House’s messaging and media

engagement communicate the President’s economic policy eectively.

The NEC also plays a key role in advancing the President’s economic agenda

by advising the Oce of Presidential Personnel on appointments to key economic

posts, including positions in ﬁnancial regulatory agencies. The NEC helps to ensure

that each economic post is held by a person who shares the President’s policy pri-

orities and works well with the rest of the Administration’s economic team. The

ﬁnancial regulators are run partly by civil servants (some of whom were politi-

cal appointees in prior liberal Administrations) who often resist a conservative

Administration’s policies. It is therefore critical that an Administration not only

appoints capable individuals to lead these agencies, but also has personnel who

can be hired into senior sta positions within the agencies.

A few areas will be especially important if the NEC is to develop a well-deﬁned

economic policy agenda. One is the promotion of innovation as a foundation for

economic growth and opportunity. Another is the creation of an environment that

fosters economic growth through tax reform and the elimination of regulatory and

procedural barriers.

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

The Oce of the U.S. Trade Representative provides the President with the

internal White House resources necessary to formulate and execute a uniﬁed,

whole-of-government approach to trade policy. The President should ensure

that the USTR is empowered to serve in that leadership role, much as other

— 55 —

Executive Oce of the President of the United States

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

the President.

The People’s Republic of China’s predatory trade practices have disrupted the

open-market trading system that has provided mutual beneﬁt to all participating

countries—including China—for decades. The failure of the World Trade Organi-

zation (WTO) to discipline China for abrogation of its trading commitments has

seriously undermined its credibility and made it a largely ineective institution.

The United States, through an empowered USTR, must act to rebalance and refocus

international trading relationships in favor of democratic nations that embrace

free, fair, and open trade principles built on market-driven economies.

Chapter 26 of this book outlines recommended trade policy priorities for the

incoming President. However, regardless of the approach, successful implemen-

tation of that trade agenda will require the President to articulate a clear policy

direction and instructions for the executive branch to operate in a coordinated

fashion under the leadership of an empowered USTR.

To address these and other challenges, protect the American worker, and secure

free and open markets for our communities and businesses, the next President

must leverage the institutional resources and strength of the USTR and neither

allow institutional interests to drive a fragmented trade policy that is developed

from the ground up nor cater to parochial interests across government and Wash-

ington’s broader industry of inﬂuence.

The USTR’s mission is vitally important in reorienting the global trading system

in a direction that is open, fair, and prosperous. In order to achieve the President’s

policy goals, a strong USTR must be empowered to set trade policy from the White

House with the authority and resources to represent the interests of the Presi-

dent’s trade agenda with adequate budget, sta, analysis, and expertise to engage

meaningfully in internal and interagency policy deliberations. The USTR should

organize and harness existing interagency trade committees to serve the Presi-

dent’s trade agenda and drive a consensus among federal stakeholders, dispose

of legacy advisory committees with members who serve special interests, direct

action to implement policy priorities, measure progress toward implementing the

President’s agenda, and hold agencies and ocials accountable for delivering the

President’s agenda. The USTR’s leadership should not only coordinate and enforce

the President’s agenda across the federal community, but also set and enforce the

President’s trade agenda internally.

Trade policy and priorities should be set by the President and implemented by

the U.S. Trade Representative in cooperation with the other economic and national

security ocials, not by the range of governmental and nongovernmental interests

that attempt to force their policy preferences on the USTR. A strong USTR empow-

ered with the necessary resources, authorities, and interagency cooperation will

protect U.S. interests in the global marketplace more eectively.

— 56 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS (CEA)

Congress established the Council of Economic Advisers in 1946 to advise the

President on economic policy based on data, research, and evidence. The CEA is

one of the oldest congressionally created oces within the White House complex

and plays a broad role in bringing economic expertise to Administration policy

across a large range of policy areas. The CEA has one presidentially appointed

and Senate-conﬁrmed chair, two presidentially appointed members who assist

and often have expertise that complements the chair, and approximately 40

sta employees.

Statutorily, the CEA is charged with being the President’s principal source of

economic advice. However, this role has diminished over time as its policy appraisal

and especially formulation and recommendation functions have been taken over or

diluted by other economic policy bodies within the White House. By law, the CEA

is required to publish an annual Economic Report of the President within 10 days

after submission of the budget. This report is not just a messaging document; it is

an opportunity to provide greater rigor in support of policy areas that the White

House is prioritizing and to build up the external credibility of those ideas.

A future conservative Administration should utilize the CEA as the senior inter

nal White House economists much as the White House Counsel’s oce functions

as the senior internal White House lawyers. This does not mean that there are no

economists in other oces. There are, just as there often are lawyers in the policy

councils and other White House oces, but the CEA’s role, like the White House

Counsel’s, is to employ its unique expertise (particularly on the technical side) to

ensure that sound analysis is contributing to and shaping the policy discussion.

In practice, this means that CEA sta do not “coordinate” the policy process in

the way that the DPC or NEC would, but they should be integral to the EOP’s policy

development processes. CEA sta should support sound policy development and

execution by actively contributing to running policy dialogues, proactively raising

issues that need to be addressed, consulting on questions that arise, and guiding

EOP and agency ocials on the analytical foundations of policy. Structurally, the

White House Chief of Sta should ensure that the CEA has a seat at the policymak-

ing table on all relevant policy.

Senior economists traditionally have not gone through the Oce of Presidential

Personnel process and more often than not are hired on an academic-year cycle. As

a result, senior economists hired in the summer of a presidential election year tend

to remain on sta until the next summer even if a President from the opposite party

takes power and installs a new slate of CEA political appointees for chair, members,

etc. Although these hiring practices create some continuity, the presence of senior

economists who were never fully vetted for their alignment with White House

policy objectives or who were holdovers from a recently departed Administra-

tion can breed skepticism and distrust of the CEA by other units within the White

— 57 —

Executive Oce of the President of the United States

House, creating the risk that the CEA’s role in the policymaking process will be

diminished. A future Administration should consider hiring that reﬂects the White

House calendar (mid-January) and involves the Oce of Presidential Personnel.

NATIONAL SPACE COUNCIL (NSPC)

The National Space Council is responsible for providing advice and recommen-

dations to the President on the formulation and implementation of space policy

and strategy. It is charged with conducting a whole-of-government approach to

the nation’s space interests: civil, military, intelligence, commercial, or diplomatic.

Historically, it has been chaired by the Vice President at the President’s direction,

and its members consist of members of the Cabinet and other senior executive

branch ocials as speciﬁed by the President in Executive Order 13803.

The

NSpC’s purpose is to ensure that the President’s priorities relative to space are

carried out and, as necessary, to resolve policy conﬂicts among departments and

agencies that are related to space.

Space projects and programs are risky, complex, expensive, and time consum-

ing—although commercial space innovations are lowering costs and accelerating

schedules. Nevertheless, while ﬁscal discipline should not be ignored, long-term

policy stability is crucial to investors, innovators, industry, and agencies. Policy

stability is easier when policies and programs are aligned with long-term national

interests as opposed to those of particular advocacy groups or political factions.

The Trump Administration’s major space policies—including the U.S. Space Force,

the Artemis program to land the next Americans on the moon, and support for a

strong commercial space sector—have endured under the Biden Administration.

Major challenges remain in implementation and regulatory reform to keep up

with rapidly evolving space markets and competitors. These include the long-term

sustainability of space activities in light of increasing orbital debris; creation of

space situational awareness services for civil and commercial uses; management

of mega-constellations; licensing of new commercial remote sensing capabilities;

keeping up with licensing demands due to high launch rates; transitioning Inter

national Space Station operations to multiple, privately owned space platforms;

and (most important) accelerating the acquisition and ﬁelding of national security

space capabilities in response to an increasingly aggressive China.

The Vice President should have a clear understanding with the National Secu-

rity Advisor and the White House Counsel that they and their respective stas

will work within the White House to determine the scope and leadership of policy

reviews that can overlap multiple areas of responsibility. A similar understanding

is necessary with the heads of other policy councils such as the NEC, DPC, and

National Science and Technology Council (NSTC).

As a result of the President’s direction and the Vice President’s leadership, the

NSpC under the Trump Administration was able to coordinate a wide range of

— 58 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

space policy reviews, legislative proposals, and regulatory reforms smoothly. The

NSpC generally led on space issues within the EOP, but other White House oces

also took on space topics.

As a member of the NSpC, and in coordination with other members, the

Oce of Science and Technology Policy developed a national space weather

strategy, research and development (R&D) plans to mitigate the eects of

orbital debris, and protocols for planetary protection to avoid biological

contamination of celestial bodies.

The Council of Economic Advisers did research on the economic beneﬁts of

space property rights.

OMB’s Oce of Information and Regulatory Reform updated and

streamlined commercial launch licensing and commercial remote sensing

satellite rules.

During the Trump Administration, if a topic was purely military, such as stand-

ing up the U.S. Space Command, the NSC took the lead. If a topic cut across military,

civil, and commercial sectors, as was the case with cybersecurity in space, the NSpC

and NSC would cochair the policy review groups.

Trusted, collegial relationships across the White House complex are critical to

successful space policy development, implementation, and oversight. Nowhere

is this more important than in the relationship between the NSpC sta and OMB

sta who oversee civil and national security–related space spending. Teamwork

between the NSpC and OMB sta can communicate clear presidential priorities

to departments and agencies, facilitating smooth development of the President’s

budget request. The NSpC and OMB have many opportunities to collaborate in

promoting presidential priorities while ﬁnding osets in lower-priority programs

and funding lines.

OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY (OSTP)

The White House Oce of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was created

by the National Science and Technology Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act

of 1976.

Before its creation, Presidents received their advice and counsel on such

matters through advisers and boards that had no statutory authority. The Director

of OSTP is one of the few Senate-conﬁrmed positions within the Executive Oce

of the President. Consistent with other laws, the President may delegate to the

Director of OSTP directive authority over other elements of the executive branch.

Other EOP policy ocials and organizations such as the NSC and NEC are formally

only advisory with relevant agency directives issued by the President.

— 59 —

Executive Oce of the President of the United States

The OSTP’s functions, as contained in the law, are to advise the President of

scientiﬁc and technological considerations, evaluate the eectiveness of the federal

eort, and generally lead and coordinate the federal government’s R&D programs.

If science is being manipulated at the agencies to support separate political and

institutional agendas, the President should increase the prominence of the OSTP’s

Director either formally or informally. This would elevate the role of science in

policy discussions and subsequent outcomes and theoretically help to balance

out agencies like the Departments of Energy, State, and Commerce and the Envi-

ronmental Protection Agency and Council on Environmental Quality. The OSTP

can also help to bring technical expertise to regulatory matters in support of OMB.

The OSTP should continue to play a lead role in coordinating federal R&D pro-

grams. Recent legislation, especially the CHIPS and Science Act,

has expanded

federal policy and funding across the enterprise, and there is a need for more sig-

niﬁcant leadership in this area both to ensure eectiveness and to avoid duplication

of eort. As beﬁtting its location in the White House, the OSTP must be concerned

with advancing national interests and not merely the parochial concerns of depart-

ments, agencies, or parts of the scientiﬁc community.

During the Trump and Biden Administrations, there has been a bipartisan focus

on prioritizing R&D funding around the so-called Industries of the Future (IOTF).

Under President Trump, IOTF priorities were artiﬁcial intelligence (AI), quantum

information science (QIS), advanced communications/5G, advanced manufacturing,

and biotechnology. Under President Biden, this list has been expanded to include

advanced materials, robotics, battery technology, cybersecurity, green products and

clean technology, plant genetics and agricultural technologies, nanotechnology, and

semiconductor and microelectronics technologies. These priorities should be eval-

uated and narrowed to ensure consistency with the next Administration’s priorities.

Given a long list of priorities, coordinating eorts across agencies and mea-

suring success are extremely challenging. The OSTP and OMB are required to

work together on an annual basis to prioritize the funding requests and whatever

Congress adds on top of them, but there continues to be concern about mission

creep and funds expended on nonscientiﬁc R&D.

The President should also issue an executive order to reshape the U.S. Global

Change Research Program (USGCRP) and related climate change research pro-

grams. The USGCRP produces strategic plans and research (for example, the

National Climate Assessment) that reduce the scope of legally proper options in

presidential decision-making and in agency rulemakings and adjudications. Also,

since much environmental policymaking must run the gauntlet of judicial review,

USGCRP actions can frustrate successful litigation defense in ways that the career

bureaucracy should not be permitted to control. The process for producing assess-

ments should include diverse viewpoints. The OSTP and OMB should jointly assess

the independence of the contractors used to conduct much of this outsourced

— 60 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

government research that serves as the basis for policymaking. The next President

should critically analyze and, if required, refuse to accept any USGCRP assessment

prepared under the Biden Administration.

The President should also restore related EOP research components to their

purely informational and advisory roles. Consistent with the Global Change

Research Act of 1990,

USGCRP-related EOP components should be conﬁned to

a more limited advisory role. These components should include but not necessarily

be limited to the OSTP; the NSTC’s Committee on Environment; the USGCRP’s

Interagency Groups (for example, the Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group);

and the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology.

As a general matter, the new Administration should separate the scientiﬁc risk

assessment function from the risk management function, which is the exclusive

domain of elected policymakers and the public.

Finally, the next Administration will face a signiﬁcant challenge in unwinding

policies and procedures that are used to advance radical gender, racial, and equity

initiatives under the banner of science. Similarly, the Biden Administration’s

climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding. As with other

federal departments and agencies, the Biden Administration’s leveraging of the

federal government’s resources to further the woke agenda should be reversed and

scrubbed from all policy manuals, guidance documents, and agendas, and scientiﬁc

excellence and innovation should be restored as the OSTP’s top priority.

COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY (CEQ)

The Council on Environmental Quality is the EOP component with the prin-

cipal task of administering the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)

issuing regulations and interpretive documents and by overseeing the processes

of individual permitting agencies’ own NEPA regulations, including categorical

exclusions. The CEQ also coordinates environmental policy across the federal

government, and its inﬂuence has waxed and waned across Administrations.

The President should instruct the CEQ to rewrite its regulations implementing

NEPA along the lines of the historic 2020 eort and restoring its key provisions

such as banning the use of cumulative impact analysis. This eort should incor-

porate new learning and more aggressive reform options that were not included

in the 2020 reform package with the overall goal of streamlining the process to

build on the Supreme Court ruling that “CEQ’s interpretation of NEPA is entitled

to substantial deference.”

It should frame the new regulations to limit the scope

for judicial review of agency NEPA analysis and judicial remedies, as well as to

vindicate the strong public interest in eective and timely agency action.

The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC), of which the

CEQ is a part, has been empowered by Congress through signiﬁcant new funding

and amendments to FAST-41.

The President should build on this foundation to

— 61 —

Executive Oce of the President of the United States

further empower the FPISC by making its Executive Director an EOP appointee

with delegated presidential directive authority over executive branch permitting

agencies. For instance, the implementation of Executive Order 13807’s One Federal

Decision

revealed many ways that the systems established by EO 13807 can be

improved. The new President should seek to issue a new executive order to create

a uniﬁed process for major infrastructure projects that includes giving project

proponents more control of any regulatory clocks.

The President should issue an executive order establishing a Senior Advisor to

coordinate the policy development and implementation of relevant energy and

environment policy by ocials across the EOP (for example, the policy sta of the

NSC, NEC, DPC, CEQ, and OSTP) and abolishing the existing Oce of Domestic Cli

mate Policy. The Senior Advisor would report directly to the Chief of Sta. The role

would be similar to the role that Brian Deese and John Podesta had in the Obama

White House. This energy/environment coordinator would help to lead the ﬁght

for sound energy and environment policies both domestically and internationally.

The President should eliminate the Interagency Working Group on the Social

Cost of Carbon (SCC), which is cochaired by the OSTP, OMB, and CEA, and by

executive order should end the use of SCC analysis.

Finally, the President should work with Congress to establish a sweeping mod-

ernization of the entire permitting system across all departments and agencies that

is aimed at reducing litigation risk and giving agencies the authority to establish

programmatic, general, and provisional permits.

OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY (ONDCP)

Congress created the Oce of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) through

the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988

to serve as a coordinative auxiliary for the Pres-

ident on all matters related to drug policy. The next President’s top drug policy

priority must be to address the current fentanyl crisis and reduce the number of

overdoses and fatalities. This crisis resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000

Americans in 2021.

The next Administration must rearm a commitment to preventing drug use

before it starts, providing treatment that leads to long-term recovery, and reducing

the availability of illicit drugs in the United States. The drug tracking environ-

ment is exponentially more dynamic and dangerous today than it was just ﬁve

years ago as powerful synthetic opioids (fentanyl and its analogues) are mixed

into other drugs of abuse. Drug tracking organizations are extremely nimble and

able to adapt quickly to federal government actions and changes in user behavior.

Disrupting the ﬂow of drugs across our borders and into our communities is of

paramount importance, both to save lives and to bolster our public health eorts.

For these reasons, the Director of ONDCP should make it a point to consult with

federal border enforcement ocials.

— 62 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

The National Drug Control Program agencies represented a total of $41 billion

in ﬁscal year 2022. Whereas the position for overseeing budget activities is tradi-

tionally held by a career ocial, it is imperative that a political appointee lead the

ONDCP budget oce to ensure coordination between the OMB Program Associate

Director and the ONDCP budgetary appointee.

ONDCP grant-making activities have been controversial over the years, par-

ticularly within conservative Administrations concerned that the White House

lacks the expertise to oversee such programs directly. The ONDCP administers

two grant programs: the Drug-Free Communities Support Program and the High

Intensity Drug Tracking Areas Program. While it makes sense to transfer these

programs eventually to the Department of Justice and Department of Health and

Human Services, respectively, it is vital that the ONDCP Director ensure in the

immediate term that these grant programs are funding the President’s drug control

priorities and not woke nonproﬁts with leftist policy agendas. Thus, the President

must insure that the ONDCP is managed by political appointees who are commit-

ted to the Administration’s agenda and not acquiesce to management by political

or career military personnel who oversaw the prior Administration’s ONDCP.

GENDER POLICY COUNCIL (GPC)

The President should immediately revoke Executive Order 14020

and every

policy, including subregulatory guidance documents, produced on behalf of or

related to the establishment or promotion of the Gender Policy Council and its

subsidiary issues. Abolishing the Gender Policy Council would eliminate central

promotion of abortion (“health services”); comprehensive sexuality education

(“education”); and the new woke gender ideology, which has as a principal tenet

“gender arming care” and “sex-change” surgeries on minors. In addition to elim-

inating the council, developing new structures and positions will have the dual

eect of demonstrating that promoting life and strengthening the family is a pri-

ority while also facilitating more seamless coordination and consistency across

the U.S. government.

Speciﬁcally, the President should appoint a position/point of contact with the

rank of Special Assistant to the President or higher to coordinate and lead the Pres-

ident’s domestic priorities on issues related to life and family in cooperation with

the Domestic Policy Council. This position would be responsible for facilitating

meetings, discussions, and agreements among personnel; coordinating Adminis-

tration policy; and ensuring agency support for implementation of policies related

to the promotion of life and family in the United States.

OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT (OVP)

The Vice President is elected to the second highest oce in the nation and plays

a constitutionally vital role as President-in-waiting. The Vice President is also

— 63 —

Executive Oce of the President of the United States

the President of the Senate and is charged with breaking tie votes in that body. In

recent years, the Vice President has been granted oce space in the West Wing

and the Eisenhower Executive Oce Building.

The OVP is another one of the levers that the President should use to execute his

agenda. This is particularly true because there is signiﬁcant and unique leverage

that the Vice President’s leadership of the OVP can evoke to shape policy discus-

sions and outcomes. Every other appointed White House ocial serves at the

pleasure of the President, whereas the Vice President is elected, and the process

for ﬁlling vacancies in that Article II constitutional oce, which includes conﬁr-

mation of a replacement Vice President by a majority of both Houses of Congress,

is governed by the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

The Vice President has his or her own economic advisers, domestic policy and

national security sta, and daily intelligence brieﬁngs. The Vice President should

ﬁll his or her oce with strong and sound policy minds to eectively assist the

President in fulﬁlling his agenda.

The Vice President is also a statutory member of the National Security Council.

In theory, in light of the fact that the Vice President is a member of the Smithso-

nian Institution’s Board of Regents,

there is nothing to prevent Congress from

assigning the Vice President additional statutory duties.

All of the component councils and oces discussed in this chapter include real

policy development and implementation authority, and a robust OVP should be

fully integrated into all policy-formation procedures. Only a Vice President who

is deeply steeped in the interworking of the interagency and policy councils can

oer useful advice and prove helpful in accomplishing the President’s agenda. It

is also obvious, in view of the fact that many former Vice Presidents have gone on

to be elected President in their own right,

that the Vice Presidency can act as a

training ground for presidential oce.

In the past, the Vice President has been tasked with leading certain initiatives or

issues. For example, Mike Pence was tasked with coordinating the federal response

to COVID-19, and both Pence and Kamala Harris have chaired the National Space

Council. Vice Presidents Richard Cheney and Dan Quayle were also active on the

deregulatory front and in imposing regulatory moratoria. However, OVP o-

cials should be fully integrated into each and every process from the start of a

new Administration and not have to wait to be invited to join various meetings or

working groups on an ad hoc basis. For example, the budget and regulatory review

processes are linchpins in the execution of policy, and the OVP should have a seat

at the table through every phase of policy development.

Past Vice Presidents have also spent signiﬁcant time abroad serving as a type of

brand ambassador for the White House and, more broadly, for the United States,

announcing Administration priorities and coordinating with heads of state and

other top ocials of foreign governments. The Vice President, as President of the

— 64 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Senate, often serves as a presidential emissary to the Senate and thus can be espe-

cially helpful in securing passage of the President’s legislative agenda.

To the extent that he or she desires, a Vice President can have a direct role in

shaping Administration policy. A Vice President who regularly attends meetings

and disperses sta across the interagency and policy councils is a Vice President

whose voice will be heard.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Special thanks to those who contributed to this chapter: Stephen Billy, Scott Pace, Casey

Mulligan, Edie Heipel, Mike Duey, Vance Ginn, Iain Murray, Laura Cunlie, Mario Loyola, Anthony Campau, Paige

Agostin, Molly Sikes, Paul Ray, Kenneth A. Klukowski, Michael Anton, Robert Greenway, Valerie Huber, James Rockas,

Paul Winfree, Aaron Hedlund, Brian McCormack, David Legates, Art Kleinschmidt, Paul Larkin, Kayla Tonnessen,

Jerey B. Clark, Jonathan Wolfson, and Bob Burkett.

— 65 —

Executive Oce of the President of the United States

ENDNOTES

 U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii#section1 (accessed

January 30, 2023).

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

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

 31 U.S.C. §§ 1341(a)(1)(A) and 1341(a)(1)(B), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/1341 (accessed

January 30, 2023); § 1342, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/1342 (accessed January 30, 2023); and

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

 President William J. Clinton, Executive Order 12866, “Regulatory Planning and Review,” September 30, 1993,

in Federal Register, Vol. 58, No. 190 (October 4, 1993), pp. 51735–51744, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/

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

 Brent J. McIntosh, General Counsel, Department of the Treasury, and Neomi Rao, Administrator, Oce of

Information and Regulatory Aairs, Memorandum of Agreement, “The Department of the Treasury and the

Oce of Management and Budget Review of Tax Regulations Under Executive Order 12866,” April 11, 2018,

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

(accessed January 31, 2023).

 See Steven A. Engel, Assistant Attorney General, Oce of Legal Counsel, “Extending Regulatory Review

Under Executive Order 12866 to Independent Regulatory Agencies,” 43 Op. O.L.C. __ (Oct. 8, 2019), https://

www.justice.gov/sites/default/ﬁles/opinions/attachments/2020/12/30/2019-10-08-extend-reg-review.pdf

(accessed January 31, 2023).

 Oce of Management and Budget, Circular A-4, “Regulatory Analysis,” September 17, 2003, https://

www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/legacy_drupal_ﬁles/omb/circulars/A4/a-4.pdf (accessed

January 31, 2023).

 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13891, “Promoting the Rule of Law Through Improved Agency

Guidance Documents,” October 9, 2019, in Federal Register, Vol. 84, No. 199 (October 15, 2019), pp. 55235–

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

pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13771, “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs,”

January 30, 2017, in Federal Register, Vol. 82, No. 22 (February 3, 20170, pp. 9339–9341, https://www.govinfo.

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

 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13777, “Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda,” February 24,

2017, in Federal Register, Vol. 82, No. 39 (March 1, 2017), pp. 12285–12287, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/

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

 See note 8, supra.

 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13892, “Promoting the Rule of Law Through Transparency and

Fairness in Civil Administrative Enforcement and Adjudication,” in Federal Register, Vol. 84, No. 199 (October

15, 2019), pp. 55239–55243, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-10-15/pdf/2019-22624.pdf

(accessed January 31, 2023).

 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13893, “Increasing Government Accountability for Administrative

Actions by Reinvigorating Administrative PAYGO,” October 10, 2019, in Federal Register, Vol. 84, No. 200

(October 16, 2019), pp. 55487–55488, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-10-16/pdf/2019-22749.

pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13924, “Regulatory Relief to Support Economic Recovery,” May 19,

2020, in Federal Register, Vol. 85, No. 100 (May 22, 2020), pp. 31353–31356, esp. 31355, https://www.govinfo.

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

 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13979, “Ensuring Democratic Accountability in Agency

Rulemaking,” January 18, 2021, in Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 13 (January 22, 2021), pp. 6813–6815, https://

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

 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13980, “Protecting Americans from Overcriminalization

Through Regulatory Reform,” January 18, 2021, in Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 13 (January 22, 2021),

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

January 31, 2023).

— 66 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

 President William J. Clinton, Executive Order 13132, “Federalism,” August 4, 1999, in Federal Register, Vol. 64,

No. 153 (August 10, 1999), pp. 43255–43259, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1999-08-10/pdf/99-

20729.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).

 President Ronald Reagan, Executive Order 12630, “Governmental Actions and Interference with

Constitutionally Protected Property Rights,” March 15, 1988, in Federal Register, Vol. 53, No. 53 (March 18,

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

(accessed January 31, 2023).

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

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

January 31, 2023).

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

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

 S. 3418, An Act to Amend Title 5, United States Code, by Adding a Section 552a, to Safeguard Individual

Privacy from the Misuse of Federal Records, to Provide that Individuals Be Granted Access to Records

Concerning Them Which Are Maintained by Federal Agencies, to Establish a Privacy Protection Study

Commission, and for Other Purposes (Privacy Act of 1974), Public Law No. 93-579, 93rd Congress,

December 31, 1974, https://www.congress.gov/93/statute/STATUTE-88/STATUTE-88-Pg1896.pdf (accessed

January 31, 2023).

 Oce of Management and Budget, “Guidance for Grants and Agreements,” Final Guidance, Federal Register,

Vol. 85, No. 157 (August 13, 2020), pp. 49506–49582, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-08-13/

pdf/2020-17468.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023), and “Guidance for Grants and Agreements,” Correcting

Amendments, Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 33 (February 22, 2021), pp. 10439–10440, https://www.govinfo.

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

 H.R. 5, Regulatory Accountability Act of 2017, 115th Congress, introduced January 3, 2017, https://www.

congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5 (accessed January 31, 20/23), and S. 951, Regulatory

Accountability Act of 2017, 115th Congress, introduced April 26, 2017, https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-

congress/senate-bill/951 (accessed January 31, 2023).

 S. 2314, Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act (SMART Act), 116th Congress, introduced July 30,

2019, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2314/text (accessed January 31, 2023).

 H.R. 1605, Guidance Out of Darkness Act (GOOD Act), 117th Congress, introduced March 8, 2021, https://www.

congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1605 (accessed January 31, 2023).

 S. 2804, Early Participation in Regulations Act of 2021, 117th Congress, introduced September 22, 2021, https://

www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2804 (accessed January 31, 2023).

 S. 170, Unfunded Mandates Accountability and Transparency Act, 117th Congress, introduced February 2, 2021,

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/170 (accessed January 31, 2023).

 H.R. 277, Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2023 (REINS Act), 118th Congress,

introduced January 11, 2023, https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/277/all-info?r=217

(accessed January 31, 2023).

 Subtitle E, “Congressional Review,” in H.R. 3136, Contract with America Advancement Act of 1996, Public Law

No. 104-121, 104th Congress, March 29, 1996, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-104publ121/pdf/

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

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

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

 See Federation of American Scientists, Intelligence Resource Program, “Presidential Directives and Executive

Orders,” https://irp.fas.org/odocs/direct.htm (accessed February 1, 2023), and Library of Congress,

Researchers, Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room, “Presidential Directives and Where to Find

Them,” March 30, 2022, https://www.loc.gov/rr/news/directives.html (accessed February 1, 2023).

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

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

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

— 67 —

Executive Oce of the President of the United States

 H.R. 10230, National Science and Technology Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act of 1976, Public Law No.

94-282, 94th Congress, May 11, 1976, https://www.congress.gov/94/statute/STATUTE-90/STATUTE-90-Pg459.

pdf (accessed February 1, 2023).

 H.R. 4346, CHIPS [Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors] and Science Act, Public Law No.

117-167, 117th Congress, August 9, 2022, https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ167/PLAW-117publ167.pdf

(accessed February 1, 2023).

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Title XLI (41) in H.R. 22, Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act), Public Law No. 114-94, 114th

Congress, December 4, 2015, https://www.congress.gov/114/statute/STATUTE-129/STATUTE-129-Pg1312.pdf

(accessed February 1, 2023).

 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13807, “Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the

Environmental Review and Permitting Process for Infrastructure Projects,” August 15, 2017, in Federal Register,

Vol. 82, No. 163 (August 24, 2017), pp. 40463–40469, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2017-08-24/

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

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

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

 President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Executive Order 14020, “Establishment of the White House Gender Policy

Council,” March 8, 2021, in Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 46 (March 11, 2021), pp. 13797–13801, https://www.

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

 U.S. Constitution, Amendment XXV, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxv (accessed

March 9, 2023).

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

 20 U.S.C. § 20(a), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/42#:~:text=The%20business%20of%20the%20

Institution%20shall%20be%20conducted,no%20two%20of%20them%20of%20the%20same%20State

(accessed March 9, 2023).

 Vice Presidents Gerald Ford and Lyndon Johnson assumed (Ford) or initially assumed (Johnson) the oce of

the presidency by a process of succession.

— 69 —

CENTRAL PERSONNEL AGENCIES:

MANAGING THE BUREAUCRACY

Donald Devine,

Dennis Dean Kirk,

and Paul Dans

OVERVIEW

From the very ﬁrst Mandate for Leadership, the “personnel is policy” theme has been

the fundamental principle guiding the government’s personnel management. As the U.S.

Constitution makes clear, the President’s appointment, direction, and removal author-

ities are the central elements of his executive power.

In implementing that power, the

people and the President deserve the most talented and responsible workforce possible.

Who the President assigns to design and implement his political policy agenda

will determine whether he can carry out the responsibility given to him by the

American people. The President must recognize that whoever holds a government

position sets its policy. To fulﬁll an electoral mandate, he must therefore give per-

sonnel management his highest priority, including Cabinet-level precedence.

The federal government’s immense bureaucracy spreads into hundreds of agen-

cies and thousands of units and is centered and overseen at the top by key central

personnel agencies and their governing laws and regulations. The major separate

personnel agencies in the national government today are:

The Oce of Personnel Management (OPM);

The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB);

The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA); and

The Oce of Special Counsel (OSC).

— 70 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Title 5 of the U.S. Code charges the OPM with executing, administering, and

enforcing the rules, regulations, and laws governing the civil service.

It grants the

OPM direct responsibility for activities like retirement, pay, health, training, federal

unionization, suitability, and classiﬁcation functions not speciﬁcally granted to other

agencies by statute. The agency’s Director is charged with aiding the President, as

the President may request, in preparing such civil service rules as the President pre-

scribes and otherwise advising the President on actions that may be taken to promote

an ecient civil service and a systematic application of the merit system principles,

including recommending policies relating to the selection, promotion, transfer, per-

formance, pay, conditions of service, tenure, and separation of employees.

The MSPB is the lead adjudicator for hearing and resolving cases and contro

versies for 2.2 million federal employees.

It is required to conduct fair and neutral

case adjudications, regulatory reviews, and actions and studies to improve the

workforce. Its court-like adjudications investigate and hear appeals from agency

actions such as furloughs, suspensions, demotions, and terminations and are

appealable to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The FLRA hears appeals of agency personnel cases involving federal labor griev-

ance procedures to provide judicial review with binding decisions appealable to

appeals courts.

It interprets the rights and duties of agencies and employee labor

organizations—on management rights, OPM interpretations, recognition of labor

organizations, and unfair labor practices—under the general principle of bargain-

ing in good faith and compelling need.

The OSC serves as the investigator, mediator, publisher, and prosecutor before

the MSPB with respect to agency and employees regarding prohibited person-

nel practices, Hatch Act

politicization, Uniformed Services Employment and

Reemployment Rights Act

issues, and whistleblower complaints.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has general respon-

sibility for reviewing charges of employee discrimination against all civil rights

breaches. However, it also administers a government employee section that investi-

gates and adjudicates federal employee complaints concerning equal employment

violations as with the private sector.

This makes the agency an additional de facto

factor in government personnel management.

While not a personnel agency per se, the General Services Administration (GSA)

is charged with general supervision of contracting.

Today, there are many more

contractors in government than there are civil service employees. The GSA must

therefore be a part of any personnel management discussion.

ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

OPM: Managing the Federal Bureaucracy. At the very pinnacle of the

modern progressive program to make government competent stands the ideal

of professionalized, career civil service. Since the turn of the 20th century,

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Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy

progressives have sought a system that could eectively select, train, reward,

and guard from partisan inﬂuence the neutral scientiﬁc experts they believe are

required to sta the national government and run the administrative state. Their

U.S. system was initiated by the Pendleton Act of 1883

and institutionalized by

the 1930s New Deal to set principles and practices that were meant to ensure that

expert merit rather than partisan favors or personal favoritism ruled within the

federal bureaucracy. Yet, as public frustration with the civil service has grown,

generating calls to “drain the swamp,” it has become clear that their project has

had serious unintended consequences.

The civil service was devised to replace the amateurism and presumed corrup-

tion of the old spoils system, wherein government jobs rewarded loyal partisans

who might or might not have professional backgrounds. Although the system

appeared to be sucient for the nation’s ﬁrst century, progressive intellectuals

and activists demanded a more professionalized, scientiﬁc, and politically neutral

Administration. Progressives designed a merit system to promote expertise and

shield bureaucrats from partisan political pressure, but it soon began to insulate

civil servants from accountability. The modern merit system increasingly made it

almost impossible to ﬁre all but the most incompetent civil servants. Complying

with arcane rules regarding recruiting, rating, hiring, and ﬁring simply replaced

the goal of cultivating competence and expertise.

In the 1970s, Georgia Democratic Governor Jimmy Carter, then a political

unknown, ran for President supporting New Deal programs and their Great Soci-

ety expansion but opposing the way they were being administered. The policies

were not actually reducing poverty, increasing prosperity, or improving the envi-

ronment, he argued, and to make them work required fundamental bureaucratic

reform. He correctly charged that almost all government employees were rated

as “successful,” all received the same pay regardless of performance, and even the

worst were impossible to ﬁre—and he won the presidency.

President Carter fulﬁlled his campaign promise by hiring Syracuse University

Dean Alan Campbell, who served ﬁrst as Chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Com-

mission and then as Director of the OPM and helped him devise and pass the Civil

Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA)

to reset the basic structure of today’s bureau-

cracy. A new performance appraisal system was devised with a ﬁve rather than

three distribution of rating categories and individual goals more related to agency

missions and more related to employee promotion for all. Pay and beneﬁts were

based directly on improved performance appraisals (including sizable bonuses) for

mid-level managers and senior executives. But time ran out on President Carter

before the act could be fully executed, so it was left to President Ronald Reagan

and his new OPM and agency leadership to implement.

Overall, the new law seemed to work for a few years under Reagan, but the Carter–

Reagan reforms were dissipated within a decade. Today, employee evaluation is back

— 72 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

to pre-reform levels with almost all rated successful or above, frustrating any rela-

tion between pay and performance. An “outstanding” rating should be required for

Senior Executive Service (SES) chiefs to win big bonuses, but a few years ago, when

it was disclosed that the Veterans Administration executives who encouraged false

reporting of waiting lists for hospital admission were rated outstanding, the Senior

Executive Association justiﬁed it, telling Congress that only outstanding performers

would be promoted to the SES in the ﬁrst place and that precise ratings were unnec-

essary.

The Government Accountability Oce (GAO), however, has reported that

pay raises, within-grade pay increases, and locality pay for regular employees and

executives have become automatic rather than based on performance—as a result

of most employees being rated at similar appraisal levels.

OPM: Merit Hiring in a Merit System. It should not be impossible even

for a large national government to hire good people through merit selection. The

government did so for years, but it has proven dicult in recent times to select

personnel based on their knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) as the law dictates.

Yet for the past 34 years, the U.S. civil service has been unable to distinguish con-

sistently between strong and unqualiﬁed applicants for employment.

As the Carter presidency was winding down, the U.S. Department of Justice

and top lawyers at the OPM contrived with plaintis to end civil service IQ exam-

inations because of concern about their possible impact on minorities. The OPM

had used the Professional and Administrative Career Examination (PACE) gen-

eral intelligence exam to select college graduates for top agency employment, but

Carter Administration ocials—probably without the President’s informed con

currence—abolished the PACE through a legal consent court decree capitulating

to demands by civil rights petitioners who contended that it was discriminatory.

The judicial decree was to last only ﬁve years but still controls federal hiring and

is applied to all KSA tests even today.

General ability tests like the PACE have been used successfully to assess the use-

fulness and cost-eectiveness of broad intellectual qualities across many separate

occupations. Courts have ruled that even without evidence of overt, intentional

discrimination, such results might suggest discrimination. This doctrine of dispa-

rate impact could be ended legislatively or at least narrowed through the regulatory

process by a future Administration. In any event, the federal government has been

denied the use of a rigorous entry examination for three decades, relying instead

on self-evaluations that have forced managers to resort to subterfuge such as

preselecting friends or associates that they believe are competent to obtain qual-

iﬁed employees.

In 2015, President Barack Obama’s OPM began to introduce an improved merit

examination called USAHire, which it had been testing quietly since 2012 in a few

agencies for a dozen job descriptions. The tests had multiple-choice questions with

only one correct answer. Some questions even required essay replies: questions

— 73 —

Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy

that would change regularly to depress cheating. President Donald Trump’s OPM

planned to implement such changes but was delayed because of legal concerns

over possible disparate impact.

Courts have agreed to review the consent decree if the Uniform Guidelines

on Employee Selection Procedures setting the technical requirements for sound

exams are reformed. A government that is unable to select employees based on

KSA-like test qualiﬁcations cannot work, and the OPM must move forward on this

very basic personnel management obligation.

The Centrality of Performance Appraisal. In the meantime, the OPM must

manage the workforce it has. Before they can reward or discipline federal employees,

managers must ﬁrst identify who their top performers are and who is performing

less than adequately. In fact, as Ludwig von Mises proved in his classic Bureaucracy,

unlike the proﬁt-and-loss evaluation tool used in the private sector, government

performance measurement depends totally on a functioning appraisal system. If

they cannot be identiﬁed in the ﬁrst place within a functioning appraisal system, it is

impossible to reward good performance or correct poor performance. The problem

is that the collegial atmosphere of a bureaucracy in a multifaceted appraisal system

that is open to appeals makes this a very challenging ideal to implement successfully.

The GAO reported more recently that overly high and widely spread perfor-

mance ratings were again plaguing the government, with more than 99 percent of

employees rated fully successful or above by their managers, a mere 0.3 percent

rated as minimally successful, and 0.1 percent actually rated unacceptable.

Why?

It is human nature that no one appreciates being told that he or she is less than

outstanding in every way. Informing subordinates in a closely knit bureaucracy

that they are not performing well is dicult. Rating compatriots is even consid-

ered rude and unprofessional. Moreover, managers can be and often are accused

of racial or sexual discrimination for a poor rating, and this discourages honesty.

In 2018, President Trump issued Executive Order 13839

requiring agen-

cies to reduce the time for employees to improve performance before corrective

action could be taken; to initiate disciplinary actions against poorly performing

employees more expeditiously; to reiterate that agencies are obligated to make

employees improve; to reduce the time for employees to respond to allegations

of poor performance; to mandate that agencies remind supervisors of expiring

employee probationary periods; to prohibit agencies from entering into settlement

agreements that modify an employee’s personnel record; and to reevaluate proce-

dures for agencies to discipline supervisors who retaliate against whistleblowers.

Unfortunately, the order was overturned by the Biden Administration,

so it will

need to be reintroduced in 2025.

The fact remains that meaningfully evaluating employees’ performance is a

critical part of a manager’s job. In the Reagan appraisal process, managers were

evaluated on how they themselves rated their subordinates. This is critical to

— 74 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

responsibility and improved management. It is essential that political executives

build policy goals directly into employee appraisals both for mission success and

for employees to know what is expected. Indistinguishable from their coworkers

on paper, hard-working federal employees often go unrewarded for their eorts

and are often the system’s greatest critics. Federal workers who are performing

inadequately get neither the beneﬁt of an honest appraisal nor clear guidance on

how to improve. Political executives should take an active role in supervising per-

formance appraisals of career sta, not unduly delegate this responsibility to senior

career managers, and be willing to reward and support good performers.

Merit Pay. Performance appraisal means little to daily operations if it is not tied

directly to real consequences for success as well as failure. According to a survey of

major U.S. private companies—which, unlike the federal government, also have a

proﬁt-and-loss evaluation—90 percent use a system of merit pay for performance

based on some type of appraisal system. Despite early eorts to institute merit pay

throughout the federal government, however, compensation is still based primarily

on seniority rather than merit.

Merit pay for executives and managers was part of the Carter reforms and was

implemented early in the Reagan presidency. Beginning in the summer of 1982,

the Reagan OPM entered 18 months of negotiations with House and Senate sta

on extending merit pay to the entire workforce. Long and detailed talks between

the OPM and both Democrats and Republicans in Congress ensued, and a ﬁnal

agreement was reached in 1983 that supposedly ensured the passage of legislation

creating a new Performance Management and Recognition System (PMRS) for all,

(not just management) GS-13 through GS-15 employees.

Meanwhile, the OPM issued regulations to expand the role of performance

related to pay throughout the entire workforce, but congressional allies of the

employee unions, led by Representative Steny Hoyer (D) of government employee–

rich Maryland, stoutly resisted this extension of pay-for-performance and, with

strong union support, used the congressional appropriations process to block OPM

administrative pay reforms. Bonuses for SES career employees survived, but per-

formance appraisals became so high and widely distributed that there was little

relationship between performance and remuneration.

Ever since the original merit pay system for federal managers (GM-13 through

GM-15 grade levels, just below the SES) was allowed to expire in September 1993,

little to nothing has been done either to reinstate the federal merit pay program for

managers or to distribute performance rating evaluations for the SES, much less to

extend the program to the remainder of the workforce. A reform-friendly President

and Congress might just provide the opportunity to create a more comprehensive

performance plan; in the meantime, however, political executives should use exist-

ing pay and especially ﬁscal awards strategically to reward good performance to

the degree allowed by law.

— 75 —

Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy

Making the Appeals Process Work. The nonmilitary government dismissal

rate is well below 1 percent, and no private-sector industry employee enjoys the

job security that a federal employee enjoys. Both safety and justice demand that

managers learn to act strategically to hire good and ﬁre poor performers legally.

The initial paperwork required to separate poor or abusive performers (when they

are infrequently identiﬁed) is not overwhelming, and managers might be motivated

to act if it were not for the appeals and enforcement processes. Formal appeal in the

private sector is mostly a rather simple two-step process, but government unions

and associations have been able to convince politicians to support a multiple and

extensive appeals and enforcement process.

As noted, there are multiple administrative appeals bodies. The FLRA, OSC,

and EEOC have relatively narrow jurisdictions. Claims that an employee’s removal

or disciplinary actions violate the terms of a collective bargaining agreement

between an agency and a union are handled by the FLRA, employees who claim

their removal was the result of discrimination can appeal to the EEOC, and employ-

ees who believe their ﬁring was retribution for being a whistleblower can go to the

OSC. While the MSPB specializes in abuses of direct merit system issues, it can

and does hear and review almost any of the matters heard by the other agencies.

Cases involving race, gender, religion, age, pregnancy, disability, or national

origin can be appealed to the EEOC or the MSPB—and in some cases to both—and

to the OSC. This gives employees multiple opportunities to prove their cases, and

while the EEOC, MSPB, FLRA, and OSC may all apply essentially the same burden

of proof, the odds of success may be substantially dierent in each forum. In fact,

forum shopping among them for a friendlier venue is a common practice, but fre-

quent ﬁlers face no consequences for frivolous complaints. As a result, meritorious

cases are frequently delayed, denying relief and justice to truly aggrieved individuals.

The MSPB can and does handle all such matters, but it faces a backlog of an

estimated 3,000 cases of people who were potentially wrongfully terminated or

disciplined as far back as 2013. From 2017–2022 the MSPB lacked the quorum

required to decide appeals. On the other hand, as of January 2023, the EEOC had

a backlog of 42,000 cases.

While federal employees win appeals relatively infrequently—MSPB adminis-

trative judges have upheld agency decisions as much as 80 percent of the time—the

real problem is the time and paperwork involved in the elaborate process that

managers must undergo during appeals. This keeps even the best managers from

bringing cases in all but the most egregious cases of poor performance or mis-

conduct. As a result, the MSPB, EEOC, FLRA, and OSC likely see very few cases

compared to the number of occurrences, and nonperformers continue to be paid

and often are placed in nonwork positions.

Having a choice of appeals is especially unique to the government. If lower-pri-

ority issues were addressed in-house, serious adverse actions would be less subject

— 76 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

to delay. With the proper limitation of labor union actions, the FLRA should

have limited reason for appeals. The EEOC’s federal employee section should be

transferred to the MSPB, and many of the OCS’s investigatory functions should be

returned to the OPM. The MSPB could then become the main reviewer of adverse

actions, greatly simplifying the burdensome appeal process.

Making Civil Service Beneﬁts Economically and Administratively Ratio-

nal. In recent years, the combined wages and beneﬁts of the executive branch

civilian workforce totaled $300 billion according to ocial data. But even that

amount does not properly account for billions in unfunded liability for retirement

and other government reporting distortions. Ocial data also report employment

as approximately 2 million, but this ignores approximately 20 million contractors

who, while not eligible for government pay and beneﬁts, do receive them indirectly

through contracting (even if they are less generous). Ocial data also claim that

national government employees are paid less than private-sector employees are

paid for similar work, but several more neutral sources demonstrate that pub-

lic-sector workers make more on average than their private-sector counterparts.

All of this extravagance deserves close scrutiny.

Market-Based Pay and Beneﬁts. According to current law, federal workers

are to be paid wages comparable to equivalent private-sector workers rather than

compared to all private-sector employees. While the ocial studies claim that

federal employees are underpaid relative to the private sector by 20 percent or

more,

a 2016 Heritage Foundation study found that federal employees received

wages that were 22 percent higher than wages for similar private-sector workers;

if the value of employee beneﬁts was included, the total compensation premium

for federal employees over their private-sector equivalents increased to between

30 percent and 40 percent.

The American Enterprise Institute found a 14 percent

pay premium and a 61 percent total compensation premium.

Base salary is only one component of a federal employee’s total compensation.

In addition to high starting wages, federal employees normally receive an annual

cost-of-living adjustment (available to all employees) and generous scheduled

raises known as step increases. Moreover, a large proportion of federal employ-

ees are stationed in the Washington, D.C., area and other large cities and are

entitled to steep locality pay enhancement to account for the high cost of living

in these areas.

A federal employee with ﬁve years’ experience receives 20 vacation days, 13 paid

sick days, and all 10 federal holidays compared to an employee at a large private

company who receives 13 days of vacation and eight paid sick days. Federal health

beneﬁts are more comparable to those provided by Fortune 500 employers with

the government paying 72 percent of the weighted average premiums, but this is

much higher than for most private plans. Almost half of private ﬁrms do not oer

any employer contributions at all.

— 77 —

Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy

The obvious solution to these discrepancies is to move closer to a market model

for federal pay and beneﬁts. One need is for a neutral agency to oversee pay hiring

decisions, especially for high-demand occupations. The OPM is independent of

agency operations, so it can assess requirements more neutrally. For many years,

with its Special Pay Rates program, the OPM evaluated claims that federal rates

in an area were too low to attract competent employees and allowed agencies to

oer higher pay when needed rather than increased rates for all. Ideally, the OPM

should establish an initial pay schedule for every occupation and region, monitor

turnover rates and applicant-to-position ratios, and adjust pay and recruitment

on that basis. Most of this requires legislation, but the OPM should be an advocate

for a true equality of beneﬁts between the public and private sectors.

Reforming Federal Retirement Beneﬁts. Career civil servants enjoy retire-

ment beneﬁts that are nearly unheard of in the private sector. Federal employees

retire earlier (normally at age 55 after 30 years), enjoy richer pension annuities,

and receive automatic cost-of-living adjustments based on the areas in which they

retire. Deﬁned-beneﬁt federal pensions are fully indexed for inﬂation—a practice

that is extremely rare in the private sector. A federal employee with a preretire-

ment income of $25,000 under the older of the two federal retirement plans will

receive at least $200,000 more over a 20-year period than will private-sector work-

ers with the same preretirement salary under historic inﬂation levels.

During the early Reagan years, the OPM reformed many speciﬁc provisions of

the federal pension program to save billions administratively. Under OPM pres-

sure, Reagan and Congress ultimately ended the old Civil Service Retirement

System (CSRS) entirely for new employees, which (counting disbursements for

the unfunded liability) accounted for 51.3 percent of the federal government's

total payroll. The retirement system that replaced it—the Federal Employees

Retirement System (FERS)—reduced the cost of federal employee retirement dis-

bursements to 28.5 percent of payroll (including contributions to Social Security

and the employer match to the Thrift Savings Plan). More of the pension cost was

shifted to the employee, but the new system was much more equitable for the 40

percent who received few or no beneﬁts under the old system.

By 1999, more than half of the federal workforce was covered by the new system,

and the government’s per capita share of the cost (as the employer) was less than

half the cost of the old system: 20.2 percent of FERS payroll vs. 44.3 percent of

CSRS payroll, representing one of the largest examples of government savings

anywhere. Although the government pension system has become more like private

pension systems, it still remains much more generous, and other means might be

considered in the future to move it even closer to private plans.

GSA: Landlord and Contractor Management. The General Services

Administration is best known as the federal government’s landlord—designing,

constructing, managing, and preserving government buildings and leasing and

— 78 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

managing outside commercial real estate contracting with 376.9 million square feet

of space. Obviously, as its prime function, real estate expertise is key to the GSA’s

success. However, the GSA is also the government’s purchasing agent, connecting

federal purchasers with commercial products and services in the private sector

and their personnel management functions. With contractors performing so many

functions today, the GSA therefore becomes a de facto part of governmentwide

personnel management. The GSA also manages the Presidential Transition Act

(PTA) process, which also directly involves the OPM. A recent proposal would

have incorporated the OPM and GSA (and OMB). Fortunately, this did not take

place in that form, but it would make sense for GSA and OPM leadership and sta

to hold regular meetings to work through matters of common interest such as

moderating PTA personnel restrictions and the relationships between contract

and civil service employees.

Reductions-in-Force. Reducing the number of federal employees seems an

obvious way to reduce the overall expense of the civil service, and many prior

Administrations have attempted to do just this. Presidents Bill Clinton and

Barack Obama began their terms, as did Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, by

mandating a freeze on the hiring of new federal employees, but these eorts did

not lead to permanent and substantive reductions in the number of nondefense

federal employees.

First, it is a challenge even to know which workers to cut. As mentioned, there

are 2 million federal employees, but since budgets have exploded, so has the

total number of personnel with nearly 10 times more federal contractors than

federal employees. Contractors are less expensive because they are not entitled

to high government pensions or beneﬁts and are easier to ﬁre and discipline. In

addition, millions of state government employees work under federal grants, in

eect administering federal programs; these cannot be cut directly. Cutting federal

employment can be helpful and can provide a simple story to average citizens, but

cutting functions, levels, funds, and grants is much more important than setting

simple employment size.

Simply reducing numbers can actually increase costs. OMB instructions fol-

lowing President Trump’s employment freeze told agencies to consider buyout

programs, encouraging early retirements in order to shift costs from current bud-

gets in agencies to the retirement system and minimize the number of personnel

ﬁred. The Environmental Protection Agency immediately implemented such a

program, and OMB urged the passage of legislation to increase payout maximums

from $25,000 to $40,000 to further increase spending under the “cuts.” President

Clinton’s OMB had introduced a similar buyout that cost the Treasury $2.8 billion,

mostly for those who were going to retire anyway. Moreover, when a new employee

is hired to ﬁll a job recently vacated in a buyout, the government for a time is paying

two people to ﬁll one job.

— 79 —

Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy

What is needed at the beginning is a freeze on all top career-position hiring

to prevent “burrowing-in” by outgoing political appointees. Moreover, four fac-

tors determine the order in which employees are protected during layos: tenure,

veterans’ preference, seniority, and performance in that order of importance.

Despite several attempts in the House of Representatives during the Trump years

to enact legislation that would modestly increase the weight given to performance

over time-of-service, the ﬁerce opposition by federal managers associations and

unions representing long-serving but not necessarily well-performing constituents

explains why the bills failed to advance. A determined President should insist that

performance be ﬁrst and be wary of costly types of reductions-in-force.

Impenetrable Bureaucracy. The GAO has identiﬁed almost a hundred actions

that the executive branch or Congress could take to improve eciency and eec-

tiveness across 37 areas that span a broad range of government missions and

functions. It identiﬁed 33 actions to address mission fragmentation, overlap, and

duplication in the 12 areas of defense, economic development, health, homeland

security, and information technology. It also identiﬁed 59 other opportunities for

executive agencies or Congress to reduce the cost of government operations or

enhance revenue collection across 25 areas of government.

A logical place to begin would be to identify and eliminate functions and pro-

grams that are duplicated across Cabinet departments or spread across multiple

agencies. Congress hoped to help this eort by passing the Government Perfor-

mance and Results Act of 1993,

which required all federal agencies to deﬁne

their missions, establish goals and objectives, and measure and report their per-

formance to Congress. Three decades of endless time-consuming reports later,

the government continues to grow but with more paper and little change either

in performance or in the number of levels between government and the people.

The Brookings Institution’s Paul Light emphasizes the importance of the

increasing number of levels between the top heads of departments and the people

at the bottom who receive the products of government decision-making. He esti-

mates that there are perhaps 50 or more levels of impenetrable bureaucracy and no

way other than imperfect performance appraisals to communicate between them.

The Trump Administration proposed some possible consolidations, but these

were not received favorably in Congress, whose approval is necessary for most such

proposals. The best solution is to cut functions and budgets and devolve respon-

sibilities. That is a challenge primarily for Presidents, Congress, and the entire

government, but the OPM still needs to lead the way governmentwide in managing

personnel properly even in any future smaller government.

Creating a Responsible Career Management Service. The people elect a

President who is charged by Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution

with seeing

that the laws are “faithfully executed” with his political appointees democratically

linked to that legitimizing responsibility. An autonomous bureaucracy has neither

— 80 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

independent constitutional status nor separate moral legitimacy. Therefore, career

civil servants by themselves should not lead major policy changes and reforms.

The creation of the Senior Executive Service was the top career change intro-

duced by the 1978 Carter–Campbell Civil Service Reform Act. Its aim was to

professionalize the career service and make it more responsible to the democrat-

ically elected commander in chief and his political appointees while respecting the

rights due to career employees, very much including those in the top positions. The

new SES would allow management to be more ﬂexible in ﬁlling and reassigning

executive positions and locations beyond narrow specialties for more ecient

mission accomplishment and would provide pay and large bonuses to motivate

career performance.

The desire to inﬁltrate political appointees improperly into the high career

civil service has been widespread in every Administration, whether Democrat or

Republican. Democratic Administrations, however, are typically more successful

because they require the cooperation of careerists, who generally lean heavily to

the Left. Such burrowing-in requires career job descriptions for new positions that

closely mirror the functions of a political appointee; a special hiring authority that

allows the bypassing of veterans’ preference as well as other preference categories;

and the ability to frustrate career candidates from taking the desired position.

President Reagan’s OPM began by limiting such SES burrowing-in, arguing

that the proper course was to create and ﬁll political positions. This simultane-

ously promotes the CSRA principle of political leadership of the bureaucracy and

respects the professional autonomy of the career service. But this requires that

career SES employees should respect political rights too. Actions such as career

sta reserving excessive numbers of key policy positions as “career reserved” to

deny them to noncareer SES employees frustrate CSRA intent. Another evasion

is the general domination by career sta on SES personnel evaluation boards, the

opposite of noncareer executives dominating these critical meeting discussions

as expected in the SES. Career training also often underplays the political role in

leadership and inculcates career-ﬁrst policy and value viewpoints.

Frustrated with these activities by top career executives, the Trump Adminis-

tration issued Executive Order 13957

to make career professionals in positions

that are not normally subject to change as a result of a presidential transition but

who discharge signiﬁcant duties and exercise signiﬁcant discretion in formulating

and implementing executive branch policy and programs an exception to the com-

petitive hiring rules and examinations for career positions under a new Schedule

F. It ordered the Director of OPM and agency heads to set procedures to prepare

lists of such conﬁdential, policy-determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating

positions and prepare procedures to create exceptions from civil service rules when

careerists hold such positions, from which they can relocate back to the regular

civil service after such service. The order was subsequently reversed by President

— 81 —

Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy

Biden

at the demand of the civil service associations and unions. It should be

reinstated, but SES responsibility should come ﬁrst.

Managing Personnel in a Union Environment. Historically, unions were

thought to be incompatible with government management. There is a natural limit

to the bargaining power of private-sector unions, but the ﬁnancial bottom line of

public-sector unions is not similarly constrained. If private-sector unions push

too hard a bargain, they can so harm a company or so reduce eciency that their

employer is forced to go out of business and eliminate union jobs altogether. There

is no such limit in government, which cannot go out of business, so demands can

be excessive without negatively aecting employee and union bottom lines.

Even Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt considered union representa-

tion in the federal government to be incompatible with democracy. Striking and

even threats of bargaining and delay were considered acts against the people and

thus improper. It was not until President John Kennedy that union representation

in the federal government was recognized—and then merely by executive order.

Labor bargaining was not set in statute until the Carter Administration was forced

by Congress to do so in order to pass the CSRA, although all bargaining was placed

under OPM review.

The CSRA was able to maintain strong management rights for the OPM and

agencies and forbade collective bargaining on pay and beneﬁts as well as manage-

ment prerogatives. Over time, OPM, FLRA, and agencies’ personnel oces and

courts, especially in Democratic Administrations, narrowed management rights

so that labor bargaining expanded as management rights contracted. But the man-

agement rights are still in statute, have been enforced by some Administrations,

and should be enforced again by any future OPM and agency managements, which

should not be intimidated by union power.

Rather than being daunted, President Trump issued three executive orders:

Executive Order 13836, encouraging agencies to renegotiate all union

collective bargaining agreements to ensure consistency with the law and

respect for management rights;

Executive Order 13837, encouraging agencies to prevent union

representatives from using ocial time preparing or pursuing grievances or

from engaging in other union activity on government time;

and

Executive Order 13839, encouraging agencies both to limit labor grievances

on removals from service or on challenging performance appraisals and to

prioritize performance over seniority when deciding who should be retained

following reductions-in-force.

— 82 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

All were revoked by the Biden Administration

and should be reinstated by the

next Administration, to include the immediate appointment of the FLRA General

Counsel and reactivation of the Impasses Panel.

Congress should also consider whether public-sector unions are appropriate

in the ﬁrst place. The bipartisan consensus up until the middle of the 20th cen-

tury held that these unions were not compatible with constitutional government.

After more than half a century of experience with public-sector union frustrations

of good government management, it is hard to avoid reaching the same conclusion.

Fully Stang the Ranks of Political Appointees. The President must rely

legally on his top department and agency ocials to run the government and on top

White House sta employees to coordinate operations through regular Cabinet and

other meetings and communications. Without this political leadership, the career

civil service becomes empowered to lead the executive branch without democratic

legitimacy. While many obstacles stand in his way, a President is constitutionally

and statutorily required to ﬁll the top political positions in the executive branch

both to assist him and to provide overall legitimacy.

Most Presidents have had some diculty obtaining congressional approval of

their appointees, but this has worsened recently. After the 2016 election, President

Trump faced special hostility from the opposition party and the media in getting

his appointees conﬁrmed or even considered by the Senate. His early Oce of

Presidential Personnel (PPO) did not generally remove political appointees from

the previous Administration but instead relied mostly on prior political appoin

tees and career civil servants to run the government. Such a reliance on holdovers

and bureaucrats led to a lack of agency control and the absolute refusal of the

Acting Attorney General from the Obama Administration to obey a direct order

from the President.

Under the early PPO, the Trump Administration appointed fewer political

appointees in its ﬁrst few months in oce than had been appointed in any recent

presidency, partly because of historically high partisan congressional obstructions

but also because several ocials announced that they preferred fewer political

appointees in the agencies as a way to cut federal spending. Whatever the reasoning,

this had the eect of permanently hampering the rollout of the new President’s

agenda. Thus, in those critical early years, much of the government relied on senior

careerists and holdover Obama appointees to carry out the sensitive responsibili-

ties that would otherwise belong to the new President’s appointees.

Fortunately, the later PPO, OPM, and Senate leadership began to cooperate to

build a strong team to implement the President’s personnel appointment agenda.

Any new Administration would be wise to learn that it will need a full cadre of

sound political appointees from the beginning if it expects to direct this enormous

federal bureaucracy. A close relationship between the PPO at the White House

and the OPM, coordinating with agency assistant secretaries of administration

— 83 —

Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy

and PPO’s chosen White House Liaisons and their sta at each agency, is essential

to the management of this large, multilevel, resistant, and bureaucratic challenge.

If “personnel is policy” is to be our general guide, it would make sense to give the

President direct supervision of the bureaucracy with the OPM Director available

in his Cabinet.

A REFORMED BUREAUCRACY

Today, the federal government’s bureaucracy cannot even meet its own civil

service ideals. The merit criteria of ability, knowledge, and skills are no longer the

basis for recruitment, selection, or advancement, while pay and beneﬁts for com-

parable work are substantially above those in the private sector. Retention is not

based primarily on performance, and for the most part, inadequate performance

is not appraised, corrected, or punished.

The authors have made many suggestions here that, if implemented, could

bring that bureaucracy more under control and enable it to work more eciently

and responsibly, which is especially required for the half of civilian government

that administers its undeniable responsibilities for defense and foreign aairs.

While a better administered central bureaucracy is crucial for both those and

domestic responsibilities, the problem of properly running the government goes

beyond simple bureaucratic administration. The speciﬁc deﬁciencies of the fed-

eral bureaucracy—size, levels of organization, ineciency, expense, and lack of

responsiveness to political leadership—are rooted in the progressive ideology that

unelected experts can and should be trusted to promote the general welfare in just

about every area of social life.

The Constitution, however, reserved a few enumerated powers to the federal

government while leaving the great majority of domestic activities to state, local,

and private governance. As James Madison explained: “The powers reserved to

the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of

aairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal

order, improvement and prosperity of the state.”

Modern progressive politics

has simply given the national government more to do than the complex separa-

tion-of-powers Constitution allows.

That progressive system has broken down in our time, and the only real solution

is for the national government to do less: to decentralize and privatize as much as

possible and then ensure that the remaining bureaucracy is managed eectively

along the lines of the enduring principles set out in detail here.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: The authors are grateful for the collaborative work of the individuals listed as contributors to

this chapter for the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. The authors alone assume responsibility for the content of

this chapter, and no views expressed herein should be attributed to any other individual.

— 84 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

ENDNOTES

 U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii#section1 (accessed

February 1, 2023).

 5 U.S. Code §§ 1101 et seq. and 1103(a)(5), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/part-II/chapter-11

(accessed February 1, 2023).

 5 U.S. Code § 1201, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/1201 (accessed February 1, 2023).

 5 U.S. Code § 7101, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7101 (accessed February 1, 2023), and § 7117,

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7117 (accessed February 1, 2023).

 S. 1871, An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, Public Law No. 76-252, August 2, 1939, https://

govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/53/STATUTE-53-Pg1147.pdf (accessed February 1, 2023).

 H.R. 995, Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994, Public Law No. 103-353,

101st Congress, October 13, 1994, https://www.congress.gov/103/statute/STATUTE-108/STATUTE-108-Pg3149.

pdf (accessed February 1, 2023).

 5 U.S. Code § 1206, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/1206 (accessed February 1, 2023).

 42 U.S. Code § 2000e, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e (accessed February 1, 2023).

 40 U.S. Code § 581, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/40/581 (accessed February 1, 2023).

 U.S. National Archives, “Milestone Documents: Pendleton Act (1883),” last reviewed February 8, 2022, https://

www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/pendleton-act (accessed February 2, 2023).

 S. 2640, Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, Public Law No. 95-454, 95th Congress, October 13, 1978, https://

www.congress.gov/95/statute/STATUTE-92/STATUTE-92-Pg1111.pdf (accessed February 2, 2023).

 Donovan Sack and Bill Theobald, “Veterans Aairs Pays $140 Million in Bonuses Amid Scandals,” USA Today,

November 11, 2015, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/11/11/veterans-aairs-pays-142-

million-bonuses-amid-scandals/75537586/ (accessed March 15, 2023).

 U.S. Government Accountability Oce, “Federal Workforce: Distribution of Performance Ratings Across

the Federal Government, 2013,” GAO-16-520R, May 9, 2016, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-16-520r.pdf

(accessed March 15, 2023); U.S. Government Accountability Oce, Results-Oriented Management: OPM Needs

to Do More to Ensure Meaningful Distinctions Are Made in SES Ratings and Performance Awards, GAO-15-

189, January 2015, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-15-189.pdf (accessed March 15, 2023); U.S. Government

Accountability Oce, “Measuring Federal Employee Performance,” WatchBlog, posted October 18, 2016,

https://www.gao.gov/blog/2016/10/18/measuring-federal-employee-performance (accessed March 15, 2023);

Lisa Rein, “The Federal Workforce, Where Everyone’s Performance Gets Rave Reviews,” The Washington Post,

June 13, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/06/13/heres-the-news-from-the-

federal-government-where-everyone-is-above-average-way-above/ (accessed March 15, 2023).

 Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1944), https://ia902300.us.archive.

org/17/items/mises-pdfs/1944-01-01_LudwigVonMises_Bureaucracy.pdf (accessed February 2, 2023).

 Figure 1, “Permanent, Non-Senior Executive Service Employee Performance Rating Outcomes (All Rating

Systems, Calendar Year 2013),” in U.S. Government Accountability Oce, “Federal Workforce: Distribution of

Performance Ratings Across the Federal Government, 2013,” p. 6.

 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13839, “Promoting Accountability and Streamlining Removal

Procedures Consistent with Merit System Principles,” May 25, 2018, in Federal Register, Vol. 83, No. 106 (June 1,

2018), pp. 25343–25347, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-06-01/pdf/2018-11939.pdf (accessed

February 2, 2023).

 President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Executive Order 14003, “Protecting the Federal Workforce,” January 22, 2021, in

Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 16 (January 27, 2021), pp. 7231–7233, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-

2021-01-27/pdf/2021-01924.pdf (accessed February 2, 2023).

 Rachel Greszler and James Sherk, “Why It Is Time to Reform Compensation for Federal Employees,” The

Heritage Foundation, July 27, 2016, https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/why-it-time-reform-

compensation-federal-employees.

 Andrew G. Biggs and Jason Richwine, “Comparing Federal and Private Sector Compensation,” American

Enterprise Institute Working Paper No. 2011-02, revised June 2011, https://www.aei.org/wp-content/

uploads/2011/10/AEI-Working-Paper-on-Federal-Pay-May-2011.pdf?x91208 (accessed February 2, 2023).

— 85 —

Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy

 See Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States, “Government Eciency and Eectiveness:

Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Billions in Financial Beneﬁts,”

testimony before the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight, Committee on Homeland

Security and Governmental Aairs, U.S. Senate, GAO-21-544T, May 12, 2021, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-

21-544t.pdf (accessed February 2, 2023).

 S. 20, Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, Public Law No. 103-62, 103rd Congress, August

3, 1993, https://www.congress.gov/103/statute/STATUTE-107/STATUTE-107-Pg285.pdf (accessed

February 2, 2023).

 Paul Light, “The Real Crisis in Government,” The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin), January 22, 2010, https://

captimes.com/news/opinion/column/paul-c-light-the-real-crisis-in-government/article_9e139318-3d00-

5898-908d-4c7aee1e105d.html (accessed March 15, 2023).

 U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 3, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii#section3 (accessed

February 2, 2023).

 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13957, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” October 21,

2020, in Federal Register, Vol. 85, No. 207 (October 26, 2020), pp. 67631–67635, https://www.govinfo.gov/

content/pkg/FR-2020-10-26/pdf/2020-23780.pdf (accessed February 2, 2023).

 See note 17, supra.

 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13836, “Developing Ecient, Eective, and Cost-Reducing

Approaches to Federal Sector Collective Bargaining,” May 25, 2018, in Federal Register, Vol. 83, No. 106 (June 1,

2018), pp. 25329–25334, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-06-01/pdf/2018-11913.pdf (accessed

February 2, 2023).

 President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13837, “Ensuring Transparency, Accountability, and Eciency

in Taxpayer-Funded Union Time Use,” May 25, 2018, in Federal Register, Vol. 83, No. 106 (June 1, 2018),

pp. 25335–25340, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-06-01/pdf/2018-11916.pdf (accessed

February 2, 2023).

 See note 16, supra.

 See note 17, supra.

 Philip K. Howard, Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions (Garden City,

NY: Rodin Books, 2023).

 James Madison, The Federalist Papers No. 45, January 26, 1788, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/

Madison/01-10-02-0254 (accessed February 1, 2023).

— 87 —

Section Two

hile the lives of Americans are aected in noteworthy ways, for better or

worse, by each part of the executive branch, the inherent importance of

national defense and foreign aairs makes the Departments of Defense

and State ﬁrst among equals. Originating in the George Washington Administra-

tion, the War Department (as it was then known) was headed by Henry Knox,

America’s chief artillery ocer in the Revolutionary War; Thomas Jeerson, the

primary author of the Declaration of Independence, was the ﬁrst Secretary of State.

Despite such long and storied histories, neither department is currently living up

to its standards, and the success of the next presidency will be determined in part

by whether they can be signiﬁcantly improved in short order.

“Ever since our Founding,” former acting secretary of defense Christopher Miller

writes in Chapter 4, “Americans have understood that the surest way to avoid war is

to be prepared for it in peace.” Yet the Department of Defense “is a deeply troubled

institution.” It has emphasized leftist politics over military readiness, “Recruiting

was the worst in 2022 that it has been in two generations,” and “the Biden Admin-

istration’s profoundly unserious equity agenda and vaccine mandates have taken a

serious toll.” Additionally, Miller writes that “the atrophy of our defense industrial

base, the impact of sequestration, and eective disarmament by many U.S. allies

have exacted a high toll on America’s military.” Moreover, our military has adopted

a risk-averse culture—think of masked soldiers, sailors, and airmen—rather than

instilling and rewarding courage in thought and action.

The good news is that most enlisted personnel, and most ocers, especially

below the rank of general or admiral, continue to be patriotic defenders of liberty.

THE COMMON DEFENSE

— 88 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

But this is now Barack Obama’s general ocer corps. That is why Russ Vought

argues in Chapter 2 that the National Security Council “should rigorously review

all general and ﬂag ocer promotions to prioritize the core roles and responsi-

bilities of the military over social engineering and non-defense related matters,

including climate change, critical race theory, manufactured extremism, and other

polarizing policies that weaken our armed forces and discourage our nation’s ﬁnest

men and women from enlisting.” Ensuring that many of America’s best and bright-

est continue to choose military service is essential.

“By far the most signiﬁcant danger” to America from abroad, Miller writes, “is

China.” That communist regime “is undertaking a historic military buildup,” which

“could result in a nuclear force that matches or exceeds America’s own nuclear

arsenal.” Resisting Chinese expansionist aims “requires a denial defense” whereby

we make “the subordination of Taiwan or other U.S. allies in Asia prohibitively

dicult.” However, Miller adds that “[c]ritically, the United States must be able

to do this at a level of cost and risk that Americans are willing to bear.”

The best gauge of such willingness is congressional approval. Accordingly, we

must rediscover and adhere to the Founders’ wise division of war powers, whereby

Congress, the most representative and deliberative branch, decides whether to

go to war; and the executive, the most energetic and decisive branch, decides how

to carry it out once begun. As the past 75 years have repeatedly demonstrated in

dierent ways—from Korea, to Vietnam, to Iraq, to Afghanistan—we depart from

our constitutional design at our peril.

Miller writes that we “must treat missile defense as a top priority,” ensure that

more of our weapons are made in America, reform the budgeting process, and

sustain “an ecient and eective counterterrorism enterprise.” Across all of our

eorts, we must keep in mind that part of peace through strength is knowing when

to ﬁght. As George Washington warned nearly two centuries ago, we must con-

tinue to be on guard against being drawn into conﬂicts that do not justify great

loss of American treasure or signiﬁcant shedding of American blood. At the same

time, we must be prepared to defend our interests and meet challenges where and

when they arise.

An eective diplomatic corps is central to defending our interests and inﬂu-

encing world events. Whereas most military personnel have had leftist priorities

imposed from above, the problem at State comes largely from within. Former

State Department director of policy planning Kiron Skinner writes in Chapter

6, “[L]arge swaths of the State Department’s workforce are left-wing and predis-

posed to disagree with a conservative President’s policy agenda and vision.” She

adds that the department possesses a “belief that it is an independent institution

that knows what is best for the United States, sets its own foreign policy, and

does not need direction from an elected President”—a view that does not align

with the Constitution.

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Section 2: The Common Defense

The solution to this problem is strong political leadership. Skinner writes, “The

next Administration must take swift and decisive steps to reforge the department

into a lean and functional diplomatic machine that serves the President and, thereby,

the American people.” Because the Senate has been extraordinarily lax in fulﬁlling

its constitutional obligation to conﬁrm presidential appointees, she recommends

putting appointees into acting roles until such time as the Senate conﬁrms them.

Skinner writes that State should also stop skirting the Constitution’s trea-

ty-making requirements and stop enforcing “agreements” as treaties. It should

encourage more trade with allies, particularly with Great Britain, and less with

adversaries. And it should implement a “sovereign Mexico” policy, as our neighbor

“has functionally lost its sovereignty to muscular criminal cartels that eectively

run the country.” In Africa, Skinner writes, the U.S. “should focus on core security,

economic, and human rights” rather than impose radical abortion and pro-LGBT

initiatives. Divisive symbols such as the rainbow ﬂag or the Black Lives Matter ﬂag

have no place next to the Stars and Stripes at our embassies.

When it comes to China, Skinner writes that “a policy of ‘compete where we

must, but cooperate where we can’…has demonstrably failed.” The People’s Repub-

lic of China’s (PRC) “aggressive behavior,” she writes, “can only be curbed through

external pressure.” Eorts to protect or excuse China must stop. She observes,

“[M]any were quick to dismiss even the possibility that COVID escaped from a

Chinese research laboratory.” Meanwhile, Skinner writes, “[g]lobal leaders includ-

ing President Joe Biden…have tried to normalize or even laud Chinese behavior.”

She adds, “In some cases, these voices, like global corporate giants BlackRock and

Disney”—or the National Basketball Association (NBA)—“directly beneﬁt from

doing business with Beijing.”

Former vice president of the U.S. Agency for Global Media Mora Namdar writes

in Chapter 8 that we need to have people working for USAGM who actually believe

in America, rather than allowing the agencies to function as anti-American, tax-

payer-funded entities that parrot our adversaries’ propaganda and talking points.

Former acting deputy secretary of homeland security Ken Cuccinelli says in Chap-

ter 5 that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a creation of the George

W. Bush era, should be closed, as it has added needless additional bureaucracy and

expense without corresponding beneﬁt. He recommends that it be replaced with

a new “stand-alone border and immigration agency at the Cabinet level” and that

the remaining parts of DHS be distributed among other departments.

Former chief of sta for the director of National Intelligence Dustin Carmack

writes in Chapter 7 that the U.S. Intelligence Community is too inclined to look

in the rearview mirror, engage in “groupthink,” and employ an “overly cautious”

approach aimed at personal approval rather than at oering the most accurate,

unvarnished intelligence for the beneﬁt of the country. And in Chapter 9, former

acting deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development Max

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Primorac asserts that the United States Agency for International Development

(USAID) must be reformed, writing, “The Biden Administration has deformed the

agency by treating it as a global platform to pursue overseas a divisive political and

cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism,

and interventions against perceived systematic racism.”

If the recommendations in the following chapters are adopted, what Skinner

says about the State Department could be true for other parts of the federal gov-

ernment’s national security and foreign policy apparatus: The next conservative

President has the opportunity to restructure the making and execution of U.S.

defense and foreign policy and reset the nation’s role in the world. The recom-

mendations outlined in this section provide guidance on how the next President

should use the federal government’s vast resources to do just that.

— 91 —

he Constitution requires the federal government to “provide for the

common defence.”

It assigns to Congress the authority to “raise and

support Armies” and to “provide and maintain a Navy”

and speci-

ﬁes that the President is “commander in Chief” of America’s armed forces.

Ever since our Founding, Americans have understood that the surest way to

avoid war is to be prepared for it in peace—but when deterrence fails, we must

ﬁght and win.

The Department of Defense (DOD) is the largest part of our federal government.

It has almost 3 million people serving in uniform or a civilian capacity throughout

the world and consumes approximately $850 billion annually—more than 50 per-

cent of our government’s discretionary spending.

The DOD is also a deeply troubled institution. Historically, the military has

been one of America’s most trusted institutions, but years of sustained misuse, a

two-tiered culture of accountability that shields senior ocers and ocials while

exposing junior ocers and soldiers in the ﬁeld, wasteful spending, wildly shifting

security policies, exceedingly poor discipline in program execution, and (most

recently) the Biden Administration’s profoundly unserious equity agenda and

vaccine mandates have taken a serious toll.

Our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, our impossibly muddled China

strategy, the growing involvement of senior military ocers in the political arena,

and deep confusion about the purpose of our military are clear signals of a disturb-

ing decay and markers of a dangerous decline in our nation’s capabilities and will.

Additionally, more than 100,000 Americans die annually in large measure because

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Christopher Miller

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

of illicit narcotics ﬂows—more than four times as many people in one year as we

lost in our 20-year war against al-Qaeda.

We also are witnessing a transformation in the character of war. The democ

ratization of technology and the collapse of time and space require dramatic,

thoughtful changes in how we defend, deter, and ﬁght. As with any huge bureau-

cracy—and the DOD is one of the world’s largest—breaking the status quo requires

leadership and endurance. Technology is critical to maintaining our warﬁghting

primacy, but we must be leery of the siren song that technology alone can protect

us. More important is how new technologies are developed, tested, procured, and

used, and that relies on the true competitive advantages of our people: ingenuity,

common sense, and thoughtfulness grounded in a free society. Because war will

continue to be the most stressful and consequential human endeavor, the most

powerful weapon systems will remain the six inches between the ears of our citi-

zens and the strength of their hearts and content of their souls.

Military service is the most dicult task we ask of our citizens, and our nation is

enormously blessed that so many young, patriotic Americans eagerly volunteer to

carry such a heavy burden. We owe them everything, and we must do better. To do

better, however, means recognizing and implementing four overriding priorities:

Priority No. 1: Reestablish a culture of command accountability,

nonpoliticization, and warﬁghting focus.

Priority No. 2: Transform our armed forces for maximum eectiveness in

an era of great-power competition.

Priority No. 3: Provide necessary support to Department of Homeland

Security (DHS) border protection operations. Border protection is a

national security issue that requires sustained attention and eort by all

elements of the executive branch.

Priority No. 4: Demand ﬁnancial transparency and accountability.

This chapter oers recommendations for improving our armed forces and the

civilian organizations that support and oversee them.

DOD POLICY

By far the most signiﬁcant danger to Americans’ security, freedoms, and pros-

perity is China. China is by any measure the most powerful state in the world other

than the United States itself. It apparently aspires to dominate Asia and then, from

that position, become globally preeminent. If Beijing could achieve this goal, it

could dramatically undermine America’s core interests, including by restricting

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Department of Defense

U.S. access to the world’s most important market. Preventing this from happening

must be the top priority for American foreign and defense policy.

Beijing presents a challenge to American interests across the domains of

national power, but the military threat that it poses is especially acute and signif-

icant. China is undertaking a historic military buildup that includes increasing

capability for power projection not only in its own region, but also far beyond as

well as a dramatic expansion of its nuclear forces that could result in a nuclear

force that matches or exceeds America’s own nuclear arsenal.

The most severe immediate threat that Beijing’s military poses, however, is to

Taiwan and other U.S. allies along the ﬁrst island chain in the Western Paciﬁc. If

China could subordinate Taiwan or allies like the Philippines, South Korea, and

Japan, it could break apart any balancing coalition that is designed to prevent Bei-

jing’s hegemony over Asia. Accordingly, the United States must ensure that China

does not succeed. This requires a denial defense: the ability to make the subordi-

nation of Taiwan or other U.S. allies in Asia prohibitively dicult. Critically, the

United States must be able to do this at a level of cost and risk that Americans are

willing to bear given the relative importance of Taiwan to China and to the U.S.

The United States and its allies also face real threats from Russia, as evidenced

by Vladimir Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine, as well as from Iran, North Korea, and

transnational terrorism at a time when decades of ill-advised military operations

in the Greater Middle East, the atrophy of our defense industrial base, the impact

of sequestration, and eective disarmament by many U.S. allies have exacted a

high toll on America’s military.

This is a grim landscape. The United States needs to deal with these threats

forthrightly and with strength, but it also needs to be realistic. It cannot wish away

these problems. Rather, it must confront them with a clear-eyed recognition of the

need for choice, discipline, and adequate resources for defense.

In this light, U.S. defense strategy must identify China unequivocally as the

top priority for U.S. defense planning while modernizing and expanding the

U.S. nuclear arsenal and sustaining an ecient and eective counterterrorism

enterprise. U.S. allies must also step up, with some joining the United States in

taking on China in Asia while others take more of a lead in dealing with threats

from Russia in Europe, Iran, the Middle East, and North Korea. The reality is

that achieving these goals will require more spending on defense, both by the

United States and by its allies, as well as active support for reindustrialization

and more support for allies’ productive capacity so that we can scale our free-

world eorts together.

Needed Reforms

Prioritize a denial defense against China. U.S. defense planning should

focus on China and, in particular, the eective denial defense of Taiwan.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

This focus and priority for U.S. defense activities will deny China the ﬁrst

island chain.

1. Require that all U.S. defense eorts, from force planning to employment

and posture, focus on ensuring the ability of American forces to prevail

in the pacing scenario and deny China a fait accompli against Taiwan.

2. Prioritize the U.S. conventional force planning construct to defeat

a Chinese invasion of Taiwan before allocating resources to other

missions, such as simultaneously ﬁghting another conﬂict.

Increase allied conventional defense burden-sharing. U.S. allies must

take far greater responsibility for their conventional defense. U.S. allies

must play their part not only in dealing with China, but also in dealing with

threats from Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

1. Make burden-sharing a central part of U.S. defense strategy with the

United States not just helping allies to step up, but strongly encouraging

them to do so.

2. Support greater spending and collaboration by Taiwan and allies

in the Asia–Paciﬁc like Japan and Australia to create a collective

defense model.

3. Transform NATO so that U.S. allies are capable of ﬁelding the great

majority of the conventional forces required to deter Russia while

relying on the United States primarily for our nuclear deterrent, and

select other capabilities while reducing the U.S. force posture in Europe.

4. Sustain support for Israel even as America empowers Gulf partners to

take responsibility for their own coastal, air, and missile defenses both

individually and working collectively.

5. Enable South Korea to take the lead in its conventional defense against

North Korea.

Implement nuclear modernization and expansion. The United States

manifestly needs to modernize, adapt, and expand its nuclear arsenal.

Russia maintains and is actively brandishing a very large nuclear arsenal,

but China is also undertaking a historic nuclear breakout.

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Department of Defense

1. Expand and modernize the U.S. nuclear force so that it has the size,

sophistication, and tailoring to deter Russia and China simultaneously.

2. Develop a nuclear arsenal with the size, sophistication, and tailoring—

including new capabilities at the theater level—to ensure that

there is no circumstance in which America is exposed to serious

nuclear coercion.

Increase allied counterterrorist burden-sharing. Transnational

terrorism remains a threat to Americans even as we pivot toward Asia.

1. Sustain the military forces needed to deter, prevent, and combat

terrorism, but at a sustainable cost in concert with other elements of

national power and partner eorts.

2. Prioritize enhancing the capability of allies and partners to take the lead

in combating terrorism in their regions.

DOD ACQUISITION AND SUSTAINMENT (A&S)

The DOD’s ability to acquire and ﬁeld new and existing technologies is essential

to the ability of America’s military personnel to ﬁght and win our nation’s wars.

To succeed in this endeavor, we must optimize the systems and personnel that

the department uses, but the inﬂexible bureaucratic structure and risk-adverse

culture that have developed over the decades make it dicult to provide the tools

that warﬁghters need at the speed of relevance.

The number one problem is the DOD budgeting process (instituted in 1961)

that requires acquisition spending to be locked years in advance. Because tech-

nologies change so rapidly and requirements can change overnight, this creates

situations in which military personnel not only go to war with outdated technol-

ogy, but also may be ﬁghting with equipment that is less capable than that of their

competitors. America owes its military many things, and the most important is

the resources they need to survive on the battleﬁeld and carry out the tasks we

ask of them.

Needed Reforms

Reform the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution

(PPBE) process.

1. Enhance funding and authority for DOD mission-focused innovation

organizations and away from program-speciﬁc stovepipes that,

planned for and designed two or three years earlier, may no longer be

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

relevant. This allows the acquisition community to focus on portfolio

management and move money around more easily instead of being

locked into inﬂexible, multiyear procurement cycles.

2. The President should examine the recommendations of the

congressionally mandated Commission on Planning, Programming,

Budgeting, and Execution Reform

and develop a strategy for

implementing those that the Administration considers to be in the best

interests of the American people. The commission’s ﬁnal report is due

on September 1, 2023.

3. Develop legislation or other means of providing funding outside the

traditional PPBE process for the prototyping and experimentation of

emerging technologies that are deemed essential to modernization and

future conﬂict. Consider creating a “fast track” for projects that satisfy

the most pressing national security needs.

4. Require the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and

Sustainment, the Under Secretary for Research and Engineering,

and all service secretaries to conduct “Night Court” and use existing

authorities to terminate outdated or underperforming programs

so that money can be used for what works and will work. Require

the Under Secretaries and service secretaries to brief the Secretary

annually on the results.

5. Require the Oce of the Secretary of Defense to research and report

on the acquisition processes used by America’s adversaries to improve

our understanding of how they are often able to innovate and ﬁeld new

technologies on a faster timeline.

Strengthen America’s defense industrial base.

1. Replenish and maintain U.S. stockpiles of ammunition and other

equipment that have been depleted as a result of U.S. support to Ukraine.

This will strengthen the defense industry supply chain and ensure that

adequate inventory exists if it is needed for a future conﬂict.

2. Collaborate with industry to develop a prioritized list of reforms that

the DOD and Congress can enact and implement to incentivize industry

to help America’s military innovate and ﬁeld needed capabilities.

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Department of Defense

3. Strengthen the ability of acquisition authorities to engage in multiyear

procurements and block buys. This will improve private-sector rates of

return, thereby incentivizing defense contractors to partner with the

government. It will also reduce government overhead by reducing the

number of procurement competitions.

4. Prioritize the U.S. and allies under the “domestic end product”

and “domestic components” requirements of the Build America,

Buy America Act.

Currently, defense companies are required to

manufacture defense items for the U.S. government that are 100

percent domestically produced and at least 50 percent composed of

domestically produced components. However, there are loopholes that

allow companies to manufacture these items overseas. This can create

supply chain and other issues, especially in wartime. Manufacturing

components and end products domestically and with allies spurs

factory development, increases American jobs, and builds resilience in

America’s defense industrial base.

5. Review the sectors currently prioritized for onshoring or

“friendshoring” of manufacturing (kinetic capabilities, castings and

forgings, critical materials, microelectronics, space, and electric vehicle

batteries); evaluate them according to the strategic landscape; and

expand or reprioritize the list as appropriate.

6. Help small businesses to become medium-size and large vendors, which

encourages a more resilient industrial base and fosters competition.

Encourage and plan for durable supply chains for small businesses

so they also have commercial/private-sector customers and are not

solely dependent on defense orders, which can be highly specialized,

expensive, and irregular.

7. Increase external engagement among small businesses to inform them

of DOD’s needs and how they could work with DOD to meet national

security priorities.

Optimize the DOD acquisition community.

1. Create incentives to emphasize speed and agility in decision-making

for prototyping and program-of-record starts and terminations.

Most bureaucrats would rather follow a checklist and fail than go

outside the procedures and win because failure means negative

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

career repercussions. Senior acquisition leaders should design a

system that allows decision-makers to stay within the law but bypass

unnecessary departmental regulations that are not in the best interest

of the government and hamper the acquisition of capabilities that

warﬁghters require.

2. The Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment,

Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, and all service

secretaries should assess their acquisition workforces; determine what

additional personnel, resources, and training they need; and develop

implementation plans. The goal is to develop, prototype, acquire, and

ﬁeld required capabilities at the speed of relevance to meet America’s

pacing threats and maintain a warﬁghting advantage.

3. Decentralize Defense Acquisition University (DAU) oerings and

expand the DAU mission to include accreditation of non-DOD

institutions. The critical shortage of trained and certiﬁed acquisition

personnel must be addressed with urgency in order to support DOD

mission objectives and goals. With the rapid evolution of training and

educational technologies, including remote and virtual practices, there

is no reason for DAU to maintain a monopoly on the knowledge and

certiﬁcation that are required to perform as acquisition professionals.

Further, the cost to private contractors and non-DOD civilians who

aspire to such a role limits the supply of trained and certiﬁed candidates.

DAU has become an unnecessary barrier to entry in a career ﬁeld that is

vital to the DOD mission.

DOD RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, TEST, AND EVALUATION (RDT&E)

The FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act established the position of

Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and assigned broad

responsibility for “all defense research and engineering, technology develop-

ment, technology transition, prototyping, experimentation, and developmental

testing activities and programs, including the allocation of resources for defense

research and engineering, and unifying defense research and engineering eorts

across the Department,” to the new Under Secretary, who also was tasked with

“serving as the principal advisor to the Secretary on all research, engineering,

and technology development activities and programs in the Department.”

This

led to the single largest DOD structural change since the Goldwater–Nichols

act of 1986

and was organized eectively during President Donald Trump’s

Administration.

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Department of Defense

Needed Reforms

Champion, engage, and focus the American innovation ecosystem.

To maintain leadership in the era of great-power competition and

succeed against our adversaries, a key DOD eort must be the creation

of mechanisms and processes to embrace America’s most signiﬁcant

competitive advantage: innovation.

1. Engage and leverage all of America’s scientiﬁc, engineering, and high-

tech production communities to research, develop, prototype, and

rapidly deploy advanced technology capabilities on a continuing basis to

preserve our warﬁghting advantage.

2. Increase integration and collaboration among the DOD, government labs,

and private companies to solve the department’s most dicult problems.

3. Reduce the number of critical technology areas from 14 to a more

manageable number to concentrate eort and resources on those that

bear directly on great-power competition.

4. Rebuild RDT&E infrastructure that resides in Cold War–era facilities

and is not well-suited to the current era of rapid development and

testing of advanced technology and concepts to the maturity level

necessary for acquisition and operational ﬁelding.

5. Move toward a much more comprehensive independent risk-reduction

approach to increase understanding of the technical risks by drawing

on the expertise in DOD laboratories and agencies to help acquisition

programs succeed.

Improve the rapid deployment of technology to the battleﬁeld.

America’s military advantage has derived from the professionalism of our

servicemembers and our ability to manifest our technological advantage

in battleﬁeld capability. The current era of great-power competition will

continue for the foreseeable future, and technology will be the currency of

competition. Our ability to prevail will rest on our ability to develop new

technologies and move them onto the battleﬁeld more rapidly than our

adversaries can.

1. Accelerate the prototyping cycle to meet immediate battleﬁeld needs.

2. Require tighter integration with user communities to provide value.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

3. Establish a pipeline of near-term, mid-term, and long-term technology

that is aimed at great-power competition (China) and can be matured,

prototyped, and evaluated to support major acquisitions (the ability to

produce at scale) to break the cycle of schedule delays and cost overruns

from underdeveloped and poorly understood technologies.

Develop a framework to protect the RDT&E enterprise from foreign

exploitation. Strategic competition and adaptive adversaries require new

thinking about how to protect technology. China has been relentless in

stealing U.S. technology, using the full range of measures from inﬂuence

operations to outright theft. This has been a major factor in its ability to

close the gap and in some cases to exceed U.S. capabilities.

1. Implement a comprehensive approach to preserving U.S. technological

leadership that is based on outpacing our adversaries; clear about what we

need to protect; tailored to various speciﬁc sectors (for example, academia,

the defense industrial base, and laboratories); and underpinned with a full

range of consequences for attempted or actual theft.

DOD FOREIGN MILITARY SALES

The United States must regain its role as the “Arsenal of Democracy.” In ﬁscal

year (FY) 2021, U.S. government foreign military sales (FMS) nosedived to a low of

$34.8 billion from a record high of $55.7 billion in FY 2018.

This decrease hinders

interoperability with partners and allies, decreases defense industrial base capac-

ity, and increases the taxpayer burden on the U.S. military’s own procurements.

Under previous Administrations, the United States built its reputation as a reliable

partner with a strong defense industrial base that could supply military articles

and goods in a timely manner. Today’s FMS process is encumbered by byzantine

bureaucracy, long contracting times, high costs, and mundane technology.

The United States can change this downward trajectory by improving inter-

nal processes that incentivize partners and allies to procure U.S. defense systems,

thereby expanding our “defense ecosystem.” We must reverse the recent dip in

FMS to ensure both that our partners remain interoperable with the United States

and that our defense industrial base regains much-needed capacity in preparation

for future challenges.

Needed Reforms

Emphasize exportability with U.S. procurements. The record-low

FMS sales in 2021 were driven partly by the high costs of converting

weapon systems on the back end of production rather than emphasizing

exportability in initial capability planning.

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Department of Defense

1. Ensure that senior U.S. military leadership emphasizes exportability in

the initial development of defense systems that are both available and

interoperable with our partners and allies.

2. Create a funding mechanism to incentivize exportability in initial

planning, which can be recouped after future FMS transactions.

End informal congressional notiﬁcation. Informal congressional

notiﬁcation or “tiered review” is a hinderance to ensuring timely sales to

our global partners. The tiered review process is not codiﬁed in law; it is

merely a practice by which the Department of State provides a preview of

prospective arms transfers before Congress is formally notiﬁed.

1. End the tiered review process to eliminate at least 20 days from the

FMS process.

2. Use the tiered review process only when unanimous congressional

support is guaranteed in order to eliminate the “weaponization” by

select Members of Congress that has prevented billions of dollars of

arms sales from moving into formal congressional notiﬁcation.

Minimize barriers to collaboration. The high cost of developing

advanced defense platforms requires the United States to collaborate with

key allies to minimize waste, complement strengths, and supplement our

defense industrial base to create a system that is greater than that of the

United States alone.

1. Enhance defense industrial base planning with partners to allow

them to focus on niche areas where there are cost advantages for the

United States.

2. Decrease International Trac in Arms Regulations (ITAR) to facilitate

trade with such allies as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

3. Create opportunities to improve the health of the defense supply chain

with added opportunities for partners and allies to contribute.

Reform the FMS contracting process. The contracting timeline for the

FMS process is shockingly slow. On average, the DOD contracting timeline

takes approximately 18 months because of slow bureaucratic processes and

chronic understang.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

1. Immediately fund more contracting capacity in all services to decrease

the contracting timeline and improve the delivery of defense articles to

our global partners.

2. Rationalize and speed arms sales decision-making to preclude our

enemies from exploiting bureaucratic slothfulness and allow us to

manage the development of indigenous defense industrial bases.

DOD PERSONNEL

The men and women of America’s armed forces are the most critical component

of our national defense strategy, but in recent years, they have been overextended,

undervalued, and insuciently resourced. Their families help them to carry the

burden of service, but the assistance they receive is disproportionately less than

the sacriﬁces they make. Young civilians who would thrive in a military environ-

ment are disenfranchised when educators and inﬂuencers discourage them from

learning about military service and preparing for the honor of wearing Ameri-

ca’s uniform.

The United States military is an extraordinary institution, staed by exceptional

people who have defended our nation and changed the course of history, but the

Biden Administration, through word and deed, has treated the armed forces as just

another place to work. We must restore our military to a place of honor and respect

and recruit and retain the individuals who will meet the rigorous standards of

excellence that are required for membership in the world’s greatest ﬁghting force.

Needed Reforms

Rescue recruiting and retention. Recruiting was the worst in 2022 that it

has been in two generations and is expected to be even worse in 2023. Some

of the problems are self-inﬂicted and ongoing. The recruiting problem is not

service-speciﬁc: It aects the entire Joint Force.

1. Appoint a Special Assistant to the President who will maintain liaison

with Congress, DOD, and all other interested parties on the issue of

recruiting and retention.

2. Improve recruiting by suspending the use of the recently introduced

MHS Genesis system that uses private medical records of potential

recruits at Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS), creating

unnecessary delays and unwarranted rejections.

3. Improve military recruiters’ access to secondary schools and require

completion of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery

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Department of Defense

(ASVAB)—the military entrance examination—by all students in schools

that receive federal funding.

4. Encourage Members of Congress to provide time to military recruiters

during each townhall session in their congressional districts.

5. Increase the number of Junior ROTC programs in secondary schools.

Restore standards of lethality and excellence. Entrance criteria for

military service and speciﬁc occupational career ﬁelds should be based on

the needs of those positions. Exceptions for individuals who are already

predisposed to require medical treatment (for example, HIV positive

or suering from gender dysphoria) should be removed, and those with

gender dysphoria should be expelled from military service. Physical

ﬁtness requirements should be based on the occupational ﬁeld without

consideration of gender, race, ethnicity, or orientation.

Eliminate politicization, reestablish trust and accountability, and

restore faith to the force. In 2021, the Reagan National Defense Survey

found that only 45 percent of Americans have “a great deal of trust and

conﬁdence in the military”—down from 70 percent in 2018.

1. Strengthen protections for chaplains to carry out their ministry

according to the tenets of their faith.

2. Codify language to instruct senior military officers (three and four

stars) to make certain that they understand their primary duty

to be ensuring the readiness of the armed forces, not pursuing a

social engineering agenda. This direction should be reinforced

during the Senate confirmation process. Orders and direction

motivated by purely partisan motives should be identified as

threats to readiness.

3. Reinstate servicemembers to active duty who were discharged for

not receiving the COVID vaccine, restore their appropriate rank, and

provide back pay.

4. Eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory

programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion

oces and sta.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

5. Restrict the use of social media solely for purposes of recruitment and

discipline any armed services personnel who use an ocial command

channel to engage with civilian critics on social media.

6. Audit the course oerings at military academies to remove Marxist

indoctrination, eliminate tenure for academic professionals, and

apply the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DOD

contracting personnel.

7. Reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the

military. Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military

service, and the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to

facilitate abortion for servicemembers should be ended.

Value the military family. Military service requires extreme sacriﬁces

by families.

1. Support legislation to increase wages and family allowances for active-

duty enlisted personnel. No uniformed personnel should ever have to

rely on social beneﬁts like as food stamps or public housing assistance.

2. Improve base housing and consider the military family holistically when

considering change-of-station moves.

3. Improve spouse employment opportunities and protections, including

licensing reform,

and expand childcare.

4. Audit all curricula and health policies in DOD schools for

military families, remove all inappropriate materials, and reverse

inappropriate policies.

5. Support legislation giving education savings account options to

military families.

Reduce the number of generals. Rank creep is pervasive. The number

of 0-6 to 0-9 ocers is at an all-time high across the armed services

(above World War II levels), and the actual battleﬁeld experience of this

ocer corps is at an all-time low. The next President should limit the

continued advancement of many of the existing cadre, many of whom

have been advanced by prior Administrations for reasons other than their

warﬁghting prowess.

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Department of Defense

DOD INTELLIGENCE

Our national defense establishment must evolve to meet the rapid, pro-

found, and dynamic change in the global landscape, but absent signiﬁcant eort

to evaluate and retool in critical areas—including our intelligence and security

portfolios—America’s competitive advantage against rivals and adversaries is at

serious risk. However, for any structural changes to succeed, the crisis in our Intel-

ligence Community (IC)/Defense Intelligence Enterprise (DIE) leadership must

be addressed.

The DIE accounts for the bulk of the Intelligence Community’s personnel and a

signiﬁcant portion of its budget. Of the IC’s 17 elements, eight are within DOD,

two

are independent,

and seven belong to various other departments and agencies.

Overall, “[t]he DoD provides 86 percent of the personnel who conduct intelligence

activities, both military and civilian.”

The Defense Intelligence Enterprise must deliver accurate, unbiased, and

timely insights consistently and with clarity, objectivity, and independence. If they

continue on their current path, however, both the DIE and the Intelligence Com-

munity writ large will continue to provide inaccurate and politicized intelligence

assessments that mislead policymakers.

Needed Reforms

Improve the intelligence process. Defense intelligence assets have been

committed to the prosecution of operational campaigns since September 11,

2001, at the expense of our strategic objectives, and this has led to increased

risk.

Further, the DIE has evolved into a “customer-based” model with

the DIE/IC trying to be supportive of policy direction at the expense

of analytical integrity. The result has been a signiﬁcant politicization of

intelligence.

1. Establish unbiased intelligence reporting from DIE/IC senior leaders.

As the leader of the DIE, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence

and Security should provide a top-line, dissenting, or clarifying view of

DIE and IC assessments as needed.

2. Align collection and analysis with vital national interests (countering

China and Russia).

3. Establish an eective global federated intelligence framework

with allies and partners and our Combatant Commands. Avoid the

temptation to neglect areas that appear less pertinent but that support

a convergence of threats and the critical requirements to sustain

those threats.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

4. Establish and sustain feedback loops to provide insight and direction

for continuous improvement and accountability.

We must revisit

our assessments and understand where we got it right and where we

got it wrong.

5. Better exploit publicly available information (PAI) data and foster

innovation to improve collection and analysis. We must end the practice

of multiple DIE organizations paying to acquire the same PAI data and

invest more in machine learning (ML) and artiﬁcial intelligence (AI) to

exploit open-source and classiﬁed intelligence data.

6. Remove policy obstacles that impede available technical solutions

and tailored approaches in order to preclude corruption at the point

of collection.

7. Develop statistical discrimination techniques based on relative value

to deal with the volume and velocity of available data and information,

which are rapidly exceeding our ability to exploit and analyze available

data and information eciently.

Expand the integration of intelligence activities. The prevalence of

asymmetric warfare requires Defense Intelligence to leverage the unique

authorities and capabilities of U.S. departments and agencies, as well as our

partners and allies, to competitive advantage.

1. Create an improved cyber defense and capability. We must reevaluate

the dual-hat structure between the National Security Agency (NSA) and

U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM).

2. Resurrect economic analysis capability to improve our ability to counter

Chinese whole-of-government strategies that combine security with

predatory economic objectives.

3. Resurrect critical thinking to provide true strategic intelligence that will

enable the U.S. to counter global adversaries and emerging technologies

(such as adversary advances in hypersonics, Unmanned Aerial Systems

(UAS), cyber domain, advanced ﬁghter aircraft, and advanced undersea

capabilities) more eectively.

4. Rebuild human intelligence (HUMINT) and counterintelligence (CI) and

improve their integration with defensive and oensive cyber operations.

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Department of Defense

5. Establish true alignment between DOD and DHS both to improve the

defense of critical U.S. infrastructure and national border integrity

and to develop vital information that enables defense against foreign

targeted disruptions.

Restore accountability and public trust. In recent years, public trust in

Defense Intelligence has been eroded by, for example, ﬂawed assumptions

leading up to our Afghanistan withdrawal, ﬂawed Russia–Ukraine

assessments, divergences in relations with key Gulf allies, and voids being

ﬁlled by Russia and China around the world. For trust to be restored and

sustained, ocials must be held accountable.

1. Restore DIE critical thinking. Establish mechanisms to restore analytic

integrity and return to true intelligence-driven operations. The next

Administration should eliminate the conﬂict of interest in the current

customer-based model (in which the customer is always right) by

enforcing time-tested procedures that guarantee independent analysis,

even if it means challenging policymakers’ assumptions. The Under

Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security’s leadership role

should be expanded to include providing analytic top-line views and

improve DIE transparency by highlighting diverging views.

2. Elevate the DIE’s voice in national policy discussions, commensurate

with the DIE’s 75 percent share of the IC budget. Present defense

intelligence to senior policymakers, either independently to

avoid all-source bias or in consensus products like the National

Intelligence Estimates.

Eliminate peripheral intelligence obligations that do not advance

military readiness. In 2019, following the catastrophic 2015 data

breach at the U.S. Oce of Personnel Management (OPM), the Defense

Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) accepted transfer of the

responsibility to conduct security clearance and suitability investigations

for 95 percent of the U.S. government’s civilian workforce. This decision,

which grew out of an intention to deconstruct OPM, was wrongheaded on

many levels and made the federal bureaucracy dependent on a new overlay

of DOD bureaucracy, in a sense instilling DOD control of civilian managers.

This function should be returned to OPM except for military security

clearance investigations.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

U.S. ARMY

The U.S. Army’s mission is “[t]o deploy, ﬁght and win our nation’s wars by pro-

viding ready, prompt and sustained land dominance by Army forces across the full

spectrum of conﬂict as part of the joint force.”

Today, however, the Army cannot

execute its land dominance mission.

The U.S. Army is at an inﬂection point that

is marked by more than a decade of steadily eroding budgets and diluted buying

power, an appreciable degradation in readiness and training capacity, a near crisis

in the recruiting and retention of critical personnel, and a bevy of aging weapons

systems that no longer provide a qualitative edge over peer and near-peer com-

petitors but will not be replaced in the near term.

All of these challenges are set against the backdrop of a complex and dynamic

global geopolitical environment that is exempliﬁed and exacerbated by the triumph

of our adversaries in Afghanistan after a 20-year struggle there as well as recent

Russian outrages in the Ukraine and China’s bellicosity both on its borders and in

surrounding disputed regions. In spite of these ever-increasing operational pulls, our

Army is consistently being asked to do more with fewer resources. The status quo

is further marked by a pervasive politically driven top-down focus on progressive

social policies that emphasize matters like so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion

and climate change, often to the detriment of the Army’s core warﬁghting mission.

Needed Reforms

Rebuild the Army. The total Army budget has decreased by roughly 11

percent since 2018, perilously aecting the service’s readiness and ability to

train and to procure new personnel and equipment. Declining budgets and

decreased buying power have forced the Army to lower training standards

and opportunities to train, propose reductions in end strength, slash

military construction programs to historically low levels, and scale back

essential modernization programs.

1. Increase the Army budget to remain the world’s preeminent land power.

2. Accelerate the development and procurement of the six current

Army modernization priorities (long-range precision ﬁres, the Next-

Generation Combat Vehicle, Future Vertical Lift, the Army network,

air and missile defense, and soldier lethality) to replace worn out and

outdated combat systems and ensure ground combat dominance.

3. Increase funding to improve Army training and operational readiness.

4. Increase the Army force structure by 50,000 to handle two major

regional contingencies simultaneously.

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Department of Defense

5. Reform recruiting eorts. The Army missed its 2022 recruitment goal

by 25 percent, or 15,000 soldiers.

Focus on deployability and sustained operations. The U.S. Army’s

very lethal ground force capability is irrelevant if it cannot quickly deploy

to locations for employment in decisive operations to secure our global

security interests. Additionally, Army logisticians provide the ground

transportation (of both personnel and equipment); fuel, food, and water;

munitions (bombs and bullets); medical supplies and services; and

veterinary services (food safety) that are critical to sustainment of the

other services.

1. Immediately increase the production and stockpiling of critical

munitions and repair parts.

2. Prioritize expeditionary logistics in all force design and operational

planning to guarantee entry into a contested theater of war.

3. Increase the level of Joint Force training, synchronization, and

coordination focused on logistics.

4. Prepare to deploy forces from degraded U.S.-based transportation

infrastructure that is compromised by opposing forces.

Transform Army culture and training. The Army can no longer serve

as the nation’s social testing ground. A rebuilt Army that is focused again

on its core warﬁghting mission and empowered it with the tools, resources,

and authorities it needs to accomplish that mission must be the next

Administration’s highest defense priority.

1. Stop using the Army as a test bed for social evolution. Misusing the

Army in this way detracts from its core purpose while doing little to

reshape the American social structure. The Army no longer reﬂects

national demographics to the degree that it did before 1974 when the

draft was eliminated.

2. Demand accountability in senior leaders to reverse the decline in public

support for military service.

3. Reestablish the experiential base for the planning, execution, and

leadership of Army formations in large-scale operations. Currently,

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

there are no general or ﬁeld-grade ocers who served as planners or

commanders against a near-peer adversary in combat.

4. Examine the logic of emerging Army concepts about employing massed

long-range ﬁres and eects without considering how to gain advantage

by closing with and dominating an adversary on land.

5. Recognize that high-intensity land combat operations cannot be

sustained through short-term individual or unit rotations in the style of

the sustained low-intensity campaigns conducted over the past 20 years.

6. Transform how the National Guard is employed during extended

operations short of declared war to preclude back-to-back federal and

state deployments of National Guard soldiers in order to stabilize and

preserve military volunteerism in our communities.

7. Revamp Army school curricula to concentrate on preparation for large-

scale land operations that focus on defeating a peer threat.

8. Address the underlying causal issues driving increasing Army suicide

rates, which have surpassed pre–World War II rates and are now

eclipsing the rate among civilians.

U.S. NAVY

As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the U.S. Constitution gives Congress

the power to “provide and maintain a Navy.” Inherent in this phrase is a recognition

that there is a vital national interest in the maritime environment and that this

national interest requires sustained planning and investment. This is as true today

as it was almost 250 years ago and will remain true into the future.

The U.S. Navy (USN) exists for two primary reasons: to project prompt, sus-

tained, and eective combat power globally, both at sea and ashore, and to deter

aggression by potential adversaries by maintaining a forward operating presence

in conjunction with allies and partners. Today, the People’s Republic of China Peo-

ple’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) can challenge the USN’s ability to accomplish

its mission in the Paciﬁc and Indian Oceans.

In the production, employment, and control of maritime forces, the USN must

consider the scope and rate of technological change and, where appropriate, adapt

its processes and workforce development. In balancing the necessary long-term

industrial model of naval platforms against emerging short-term opportunities,

the USN must take account of advances that may present vulnerabilities and risks

as well as what is assured and secure.

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Department of Defense

Needed Reforms

Invest in and expand force structure. The USN’s organizing principle

remains platform-centered: vessels manned by sailors. The manned surface

and subsurface forces act in concert with land-based, air-based, and space-

based forces to project power outside sovereign territory, principally by

operating in international waters. Investments must be closely coordinated

with these other elements of military power.

1. Build a ﬂeet of more than 355 ships.

2. Develop and ﬁeld unmanned systems to augment the manned forces.

3. Require that range and lethality be the key factors in all procurement

and sustainment decisions for ships, aircraft, and munitions.

Reestablish the General Board. In contrast with the Navy General

Board that served ship development so well during the interwar period,

the current joint process

for defining the requirements for major

defense acquisitions is not well-suited to long-term planning of the

sort that is needed for USN fleet architecture and shipbuilding. The

interwar General Board should serve as a model, empowered with

final decision authority over all requirements documents concerning

ships and the major defense systems fielded on ships. The individual

board members would ensure a broad base of knowledge as well as

independent thinking.

Establish a Rapid Capabilities Oce. The USN must transition

technology into warﬁghting capability more rapidly. It must foster a culture

of innovation that includes connecting theoretical and intangible ideas with

real production environments that produce tangible and practical outcomes

and adapting proven processes to advance material solutions.

1. Harness innovation and willingness to tolerate risk so that “good

enough” systems can be ﬁelded rapidly.

2. Use the Space Development Agency as a model.

3. Establish an oversight Board of Directors made up of the service chief,

service secretary, and Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and

Sustainment.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Accelerate the purchase of key munitions. It takes years to build and

maintain navies but only hours to expend their ordnance in combat. The

USN must be prepared to expend large quantities of air-launched and

sea-launched stealthy, precision, cruise missiles against targets both at

sea and ashore. Additionally, modern air defense requires the use of high-

performance surface-to-air missiles.

1. Produce key munitions at the maximum rate with signiﬁcant capacity.

2. Working with the Congress, employ the widest possible range of

techniques to enhance the munitions supply chains and workforce.

Enhance warﬁghter development. The USN requires a variety of

documented qualiﬁcations for personnel to advance in their careers and

assume leadership positions. It also requires individual professional

qualiﬁcations that are focused on warﬁghting.

1. Mandate qualiﬁcations that demonstrate an understanding of core

competence in collective, integrated warﬁghting, especially based on

current plans and technologies.

2. Elevate the Headquarters Sta focused on Warﬁghter Development

(N7) within the Oce of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) and

empower it to develop such requirements.

3. Require that war games be utilized as experiential learning environments

for the participants as a prerequisite for achieving career milestones

(department heads, commanding ocers, and major commanders).

4. Highlight in training and leader development that USN forces can and

must maintain the ability to operate from and/or defend sovereign

territory to include our allies and partners.

5. Train to balance eects from kinetic to nonkinetic and from lethal to

nonlethal through eective command and control.

U.S. AIR FORCE

The U.S. Air Force today lacks a force structure with the lethality, survivabil-

ity, and capacity to ﬁght a major conﬂict with a great power like China, deter

nuclear threats, and meet its other operational requirements under the National

Defense Strategy.

For 30 years, the Air Force has received less annual funding

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Department of Defense

(if pass-through funding, deﬁned as money in the Air Force budget that does not

go to the Air Force, is removed from the equation) than the Army and Navy have

received. This underfunding has forced the Air Force to cut its forces and forgo

modernizing aging weapons systems that were never designed to operate in current

threat environments and are structurally and mechanically exhausted. The result

is an Air Force that is the oldest, smallest, and least ready in its history.

The decline in Air Force capacity and capability is occurring at the same time

the security environment demands the very options that the Air Force uniquely

provides. Combatant commanders routinely request more Air Force capabilities

than the service has the capacity to provide. The Air Force today simply cannot

accomplish all of the missions it is required to perform.

The Air Force has consistently stated on the ocial record that it is not sized to

meet the mission demands placed on it by the various U.S. Combatant Commands.

A 2018 study, “The Air Force We Need,”

showed a 24 percent deﬁcit in Air Force

capacity to meet the needs of the National Defense Strategy. Those conclusions

remain valid and are more pronounced today because of subsequent aircraft retire-

ments. The demand is also higher because of world events. To understand these

trends, one needs only to consider that the Air Force’s future ﬁve-year budget plan

retires 1,463 aircraft while buying just 467. This makes for a reduction of 996 air-

craft by 2027. The net result is a force that is smaller, older, and less ready at a time

when demand is burgeoning.

Needed Reforms

Increase spending and budget accuracy in line with a threat-based

strategy. Returning the U.S. military to a force that can achieve deterrence

or win in a ﬁght if necessary requires returning to a threat-based defense

strategy. Real budget growth combined with a more equitable distribution

of resources across the armed services is the only realistic way to create a

modernized Air Force with the capacity to meet the needs of the National

Defense Strategy. Additionally, as noted above, pass-through funding causes

numbers cited in current DOD budget documents to be higher than the

dollar amounts actually received by the Air Force.

1. Adopt a two-war force defense strategy with scenarios for each service

that will allow the Air Force to attain the resources it requires by

developing a force-sizing construct that reﬂects what is required to

accomplish strategic objectives.

2. Eliminate pass-through funding, which has grown to more than

$40 billion per year and has caused the Air Force to be chronically

underfunded for decades.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

3. Increase the Air Force budget by 5 percent annually (after adjusting for

inﬂation) to reverse the decline in size, age, and readiness and facilitate

the transition to a more modern, lethal, and survivable force.

Reduce near-term and mid-term risk. Increasing the Air Force’s

acquisition of next-generation capabilities that either are or soon will be in

production will increase the ability of the United States to deter or defeat

near-term to mid-term threats.

1. Increase F-35A procurement to 60–80 per year.

2. Build the capacity for a B-21 production rate of 15–18 aircraft per year along

with applicable elements of the B-21 long-range strike family of systems.

3. Increase Air Force airlift and aerial refueling capacity to support agile

combat employment operations that generate combat sorties from a

highly dispersed posture in both Europe and the Paciﬁc.

4. Develop and buy larger quantities of advanced mid-range weapons (50

nm to 200 nm) that are sized to maximize targets per sortie for stealth

aircraft ﬂying in contested environments against target sets that could

exceed 100,000 aimpoints.

5. Accelerate the development and production of the Sentinel

intercontinental ballistic missile to reduce the risk inherent in an aging

Minuteman III force in light of China’s nuclear modernization breakout.

6. Increase the number of EC-37B electronic warfare aircraft from 10 to 20

in order to achieve a minimum capacity to engage growing threats from

China across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Invest in future Air Force programs and eorts. Increasingly capable

adversaries require new capabilities to enable victory against those adversaries.

1. Attain an operationally optimized advanced battle management system

as the Air Force element of the DOD Joint All Domain Command and

Control enterprise.

2. Produce the next-generation air dominance system of systems (air

moving target indication, other sensors, communications, command

and control, weapons, and uninhabited aerial vehicles).

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Department of Defense

3. Achieve moving target engagement capability and capacity against sea,

surface, and ground mobile targets at the scale necessary to meet the

needs of the National Defense Strategy.

4. Build resilient basing, sustainment, and communications for

survivability in a contested environment.

5. Establish a vigorous and suciently funded electromagnetic spectrum

operations recovery plan to make up for more than 20 years of neglect of

this mission area.

U.S. MARINE CORPS

The U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) is the maritime land force of the Department

of Defense and Department of the Navy. It serves a critical role as an expedition-

ary amphibious force that can project power from sea to shore and beyond while

performing other specialized missions like securing America’s diplomatic out-

posts abroad.

Between the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the conclusion of U.S.

military operations in Afghanistan in August 2022, the Marine Corps engaged

in extended operations ashore as directed by the Secretary of Defense, leaving it

with little opportunity or ability to train for and execute the naval and amphibious

operations for which it is uniquely suited and directed by law. This lengthy diver-

gence from its primary mission led to deep concern that the Corps had become a

“second land army,” prompting senior Marine Corps leaders to push for the service

to return to the sea. In addition, the USMC spent nearly two decades ﬁghting coun-

terinsurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and developed capabilities that were

speciﬁcally geared to those ﬁghts but have limited utility in scenarios involving

evenly matched and advanced enemies or amphibious operations that are neces-

sary for the projection of naval power.

As a result, Marine Corps Commandant General David H. Berger developed

and began to implement Force Design 2030,

a plan that, if completed, would be

the most radical transformation of the Marine Corps since World War II. The suc-

cessful implementation of this force redesign, coupled with reforms in the Marine

Corps’ personnel system and the Navy’s amphibious shipbuilding plans, will be

critical to ensuring the Corps’ future combat eectiveness.

Needed Reforms

Divest systems to implement the Force Design 2030 transformation.

Divesting equipment that is less relevant to distributed, low-signature

operations in a contested maritime environment will make funds available

for modernization.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

1. Transform USMC force structure.

a. Eliminate all USMC law enforcement battalions.

b. Transform at least one Marine Infantry Regiment into a Marine

Littoral Regiment.

c. Reduce the size of remaining infantry battalions.

2. Divest systems or equipment that are better suited to heavier

U.S. Army units.

a. Maintain divestment of M1 Abrams tanks.

b. Eliminate the majority of tube artillery (M777) batteries.

c. Reduce the number of Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicles and

the number of their replacements.

3. Use funds made available by divestment of systems to support new

systems that are geared to the likely needs of future conﬂicts.

a. Increase the number of rocket artillery batteries (HIMARS).

b. Increase the number of upgraded Light Armored Vehicle

(LAV) companies.

c. Increase the number of Unmanned Aerial Systems and anti-air

systems (including counter-UAS systems).

d. Develop long-range strike missiles and anti-ship missiles for the Corps.

e. Modernize USMC infantry equipment.

Transform the USMC personnel paradigm. More than other services,

the USMC relies heavily on junior noncommissioned ocers (NCOs) to sta

key positions across the force but especially in combat arms. For example,

E-4s routinely hold squad leader billets when the Army normally has E-6s in

those billets. The nature of more distributed operations and the increasingly

complex responsibilities of a Marine Corps riﬂe squad and platoon under

Force Design 2030 will only put more responsibility on the backs of squad

leaders and platoon sergeants, increasing the need for more senior Marines

in those critical positions. Additionally, the Corps needs to improve its

retention of junior NCOs after their ﬁrst enlistments (the Marines have

much lower rates of reenlistment than other branches).

1. Align the USMC’s combat arms rank structure with the U.S. Army’s (squad

leader billets are for E-6s, and platoon sergeant billets are for E-7s).

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Department of Defense

2. Create better incentives to retain talented junior NCOs, especially in

infantry and other critical military occupational specialties.

3. Reduce unnecessary deployments to increase dwell time in order to

enable more robust primary military education.

Align Navy amphibious shipbuilding with Force Design 2030. The U.S.

Navy has struggled for decades to maintain an amphibious ﬂeet that could

support USMC war plans around large-scale amphibious operations. In

addition, amphibious shipbuilding has often had to compete against other

priorities within a constrained budget and limited shipbuilding capacity.

1. Develop and produce light amphibious warships (LAWs) to support

more distributed amphibious operations, especially in the Paciﬁc.

2. Maintain between 28 and 31 larger amphibious warships as opposed to

the 25 speciﬁed in current Navy shipbuilding plans and the 38 speciﬁed

before 2020.

U.S. SPACE FORCE

U.S. space forces conduct global space operations to sustain and enhance air,

land, and sea eectiveness, lethality, and superiority by providing secure broad-

band global communications (precision position, navigation, and timing accuracy);

attack warning and threat tracking and targeting capability (real-time intelligence,

surveillance, and reconnaissance information); and their assured continuity of

operations both by defending U.S. assets and by conducting oensive operations

that are capable of imposing unacceptable losses on adversaries that might seek

to attack them.

The U.S. Space Force (USSF) was established to assure continuous global and

theater combat support from space, to deter attacks against U.S. space assets, and

to prevail in space should deterrence fail. The USSF posture was conceived as a

balance of oensive and defensive deterrent capabilities designed for maximum

eectiveness.

Needed Reforms

Reverse the Biden Administration’s defensive posture. The Biden

Administration has eliminated almost all oensive deterrence capabilities

and instead will rely solely on defensive capabilities of disaggregation,

maneuver, and reconstitution—the most costly, the slowest, and ultimately

the most fragile architecture selection.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

1. Reestablish oensive capabilities to guarantee a favorable balance of

forces, eciently manage the full deterrence spectrum, and seriously

complicate enemy calculations of a successful ﬁrst strike against U.S.

space assets.

2. Restore architectural balance in U.S. space forces, both oensive and

defensive, to restore deterrence dominance eciently and quickly.

3. Rapidly expand space control capability, to include cis-lunar space (the

region beginning at geosynchronous altitude and encompassing the

moon), to provide early warning of an enemy attack.

4. Seek arms control and “rules of the road” understandings only when

they are unambiguously in the interests of the U.S. and its allies, and

prohibit their unilateral implementation.

Reduce overclassiﬁcation. The USSF must move beyond the Cold War–

era culture of secrecy and overclassiﬁcation that surrounded military space

to facilitate greater coordination and synchronization of eorts across the

government and commercial sectors.

Declassify appropriate information about terrestrial and on-orbit space

capabilities that threaten the U.S. space constellation, as well as those

being pursued by our competitors, to secure the principled right to

counter them oensively.

Implement policies suited to a mature USSF. No longer a “newborn,” the

USSF has entered its fourth year of existence, and the lessons learned can be

incorporated across all facets of the force to increase its eectiveness.

1. Restructure from the current “unity of eort” structure to “unity

of command.”

2. Lead the U.S. government’s development of a clear and unambiguous

declaratory policy that the United States will operate at will in space

and enforce these operations with capabilities that ensure eective

deterrence and the ability to impose our will if necessary.

3. End the current study phase of concept development and issue

necessary guidance for the development and ﬁelding of oensive

capabilities.

— 119 —

Department of Defense

4. Alter the Space Development Agency’s current “fail-early” approach

and transition to a methodology that maintains aggressive timelines but

with signiﬁcantly greater engineering rigor, with special attention to

sustainment, support, and fully integrated space operations.

5. Increase the number of general ocer positions to ensure the Space

Force’s ability to compete for resources on a common basis with the

other services.

6. Explore creation of a Space Force Academy to attract top aero–astro

students, engineers, and scientists and develop astronauts. The academy

could be attached initially to a large existing research university like

the California Institute of Technology or MIT, share faculty and

funding, and eventually be built separately to be on par with the other

service academies.

U.S. CYBER COMMAND

USCYBERCOM was established in 2010 by the Department of Defense to unify

the direction of cyberspace operations, strengthen DOD cyberspace capabilities,

and integrate and enhance U.S. cyber expertise. Cyber capabilities and threats are

evolving rapidly. Accordingly, a conservative Administration should be especially

sensitive to and prepared to meet the challenges presented by bureaucratic silos,

inappropriately rigid tactical doctrine, and strategic thinking’s historic tendency

to lag behind technological capability.

The preliminary evidence from the war in Ukraine suggests that existing cyber

doctrine and certain capability and target assumptions may be incorrect or mis-

placed. The following recommendations therefore presuppose that there will be

a rigorous “lessons learned” analysis and review of existing U.S. doctrine in light

of the battleﬁeld evidence.

Needed Reforms

Ensure that USCYBERCOM is properly focused. Mission creep

is leading to wasteful overlap with the Department of Homeland

Security, National Security Agency, Department of Defense, and Central

Intelligence Agency.

1. Separate USCYBERCOM from the National Security Agency per

congressional direction.

2. Conduct eective oensive cyber-eects operations at the tactical and

strategic levels.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

3. Expand defensive cyber-eects operations authorized by President

Trump's classiﬁed National Security Presidential Memorandum 13,

“United States Cyber Operations Policy.”

4. End USCYBERCOM’s participation in federal eorts to “fortify”

U.S. elections to eliminate the perception that DOD is engaging in

partisan politics.

Increase USCYBERCOM’s eectiveness.

1. Accelerate the integration of cyber and electronic warfare (EW)

doctrine and capabilities, abiding by the time-tested norms of

combined-arms warfare.

2. Mandate that development teams will include both coders and soldiers,

aircrew, and sailors with kinetic experience at the platoon level.

3. Break the paradigm of cyber authorities held at the strategic level.

4. Increase cyber resilience by, for example, protecting the Nuclear

Command, Control, and Communications Network and the Air Force’s

Cyber Resiliency Oce for Weapons Systems (CROWS).

5. Expand coordination of joint operations with allies.

6. Implement the Government Accountability Oce’s recommendation

that the DOD Chief Information Ocer, Commander of USCYBERCOM,

and Commander of Joint Force Headquarters–DOD Information

Network “align policy and system requirements to enable DOD to have

enterprise-wide visibility of cyber incident reporting to support tactical,

strategic, and military strategies for response.”

Rationalize strategy and doctrine.

1. Update the October 2022 National Security Strategy to deﬁne DOD

roles and responsibilities beyond existing platitudes.

2. Apply traditional deterrence strategies and principles for using cyber/

EW in retaliation for foreign cyberattacks and/or EW actions against

U.S. infrastructure and citizens.

— 121 —

Department of Defense

SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES

Even though America’s conventional war in Afghanistan was a failure, Special

Operations Forces of the United States Special Operation Command (USSOCOM)

executed an extremely eective counterterrorism campaign: There has not been

another major attack on the homeland, global terrorist threats are reduced and

managed, collaboration with international partners is eective, and units under

USSOCOM are the most capable and experienced warﬁghters in two generations.

There is a movement to reduce the scope and scale of USSOCOM’s mission in

favor of other service priorities in great-power competition. This would be a mis-

take because USSOCOM can be employed eectively in great-power competition.

It makes sense to capitalize on USSOCOM’s experience and repurpose its mis-

sion to include irregular warfare within the context of great-power competition,

thereby providing a robust organization that is capable of achieving strategic

eects that are critical both to our national defense and to the defense of our

allies and partners around the globe. Irregular warfare should be used proactively

to prevent state and nonstate actors from negatively aecting U.S. policies and

objectives while simultaneously strengthening our regional partnerships. If we

maintain irregular warfare’s traditional focus on nonstate actors, we limit ourselves

to addressing only the symptoms (nonstate actors), not the problems themselves

(China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran).

Needed Reforms

Make irregular warfare a cornerstone of security strategy. The U.S.

can project strength through uniﬁed action with our Interagency,

allies,

and partners by utilizing irregular warfare capabilities synchronized

with elements of national power. Broadly redeﬁning irregular warfare to

address current state and nonstate actors is critical to countering irregular

threats that range from the Chinese use of economic warfare to Russian

disinformation and Islamist terrorism. A broad deﬁnition of irregular

warfare in the National Security Strategy would allow for a whole-of-

government approach, thereby providing resources and capabilities to

counter threats and ultimately serve as credible deterrence at the strategic

and tactical levels.

1. Deﬁne irregular warfare as “a means by which the United States uses all

elements of national power to project inﬂuence abroad to counter state

adversaries, defeat hostile nonstate actors, deter wider conﬂict, and

maintain peace in great-power competition.”

2. Characterize the state and nonstate irregular threats facing the U.S. by

region in the National Security Strategy.

— 122 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

3. Direct that irregular warfare resources, capabilities, and strategies be

incorporated directly into the overall National Defense Strategy instead

of being relegated to a supporting document.

4. Establish an Irregular Warfare Center of Excellence to help DOD train,

equip, and organize to conduct irregular warfare as a core competency

across the spectrum of competition, crisis, and conﬂict.

Counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) globally. DOD, in

conjunction with the Interagency, allies, and partner nations, must work

proactively to counter China’s BRI around the globe.

1. Task USSOCOM and corresponding organizations in the Pentagon

with conceptualizing, resourcing, and executing regionally based

operations to counter the BRI with a focus on nations that are key

to our energy policy, international supply chains, and our defense

industrial base.

2. Use regional and global information operations to highlight Chinese

violations of Exclusive Economic Zones, violations of human rights, and

coercion along Chinese fault lines in Xinjiang Province, Hong Kong, and

Taiwan in addition to China’s weaponization of sovereign debt.

3. Directly counter Chinese economic power with all elements of national

power in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean to

maintain maritime freedom of movement and protect the digital

infrastructure of nations in the region.

Establish credible deterrence through irregular warfare to protect

the homeland. A whole-of-government approach and willingness to

employ cyber, information, economic, and counterterrorist irregular

warfare capabilities should be utilized to protect the homeland.

1. Include the designation of USSOCOM as lead for the execution of

irregular warfare against hostile state and nonstate actors in the

National Defense Strategy.

2. Demonstrate a willingness to employ oensive cyber capabilities against

adversaries who conduct cyberattacks against U.S. infrastructure,

businesses, personnel, and governments.

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Department of Defense

3. Employ a “name and shame” approach by making information regarding

the names of entities that target democratic processes and international

norms available in a transparent manner.

4. Work with the Interagency to employ economic warfare, lawfare, and

diplomatic pressure against hostile state and nonstate actors.

5. Maintain the authorities necessary for an aggressive counterterrorism

posture against threats to the homeland.

NUCLEAR DETERRENCE

Nuclear deterrence is one of the most critical elements of U.S. national security,

as it forms a backstop to U.S. military forces. Every operational plan relies on the

assumption that nuclear deterrence holds. Ever since the U.S. ﬁrst acquired nuclear

weapons, Administrations of both parties have pursued a strategy designed to deter

nuclear and non-nuclear attack; assure allies; and, in the event of nuclear employ-

ment, restore deterrence at the lowest possible cost to the U.S. Today, however,

America’s ability to meet these goals is increasingly challenged by the growing

nuclear threats posed by our adversaries.

China is pursuing a strategic breakout of its nuclear forces, signiﬁcantly

shifting the nuclear balance and forcing the U.S. to learn how to deter two

nuclear peer competitors (China and Russia) simultaneously for the ﬁrst

time in its history.

Russia is expanding its nuclear arsenal and using the threat of nuclear

employment as a coercive tactic in its war on Ukraine.

North Korea is advancing its nuclear capabilities.

Iran is inching closer to nuclear capability.

Meanwhile, all U.S. nuclear capabilities and the infrastructure on which they

rely date from the Cold War and are in dire need of replacement. The next Admin-

istration will need to focus on continuing the eort to modernize the nuclear triad

while updating our strategy and capabilities to meet the challenges presented by

a more threatening nuclear environment.

Needed Reforms

Prioritize nuclear modernization. All components of the nuclear triad are

far beyond their intended lifetimes and will need to be replaced over the next

— 124 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

decade. This eort is required for the U.S. to maintain its nuclear triad—and

will be the bare minimum needed to maintain U.S. strategic nuclear deterrence.

1. Accelerate the timelines of critical modernization programs including the

Sentinel missile, Long Range Stando Weapon (LRSO), Columbia-class

ballistic missile submarine, B-21 bomber, and F-35 Dual Capable Aircraft.

2. Reject any congressional proposals that would further extend the

service lives of U.S. capabilities such as the Minuteman III ICBM.

3. Ensure sucient funding for warhead life extension programs (LEP),

including the B61-12, W80-4, W87-1 Mod, and W88 Alt 370.

Develop the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile-Nuclear (SLCM-N). In 2018,

the Trump Administration proposed restoring the SLCM-N to help ﬁll a

growing gap in U.S. nonstrategic capabilities and improve deterrence against

limited nuclear attack.

The Biden Administration canceled this program

in its 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).

The next President should

support and accelerate funding for development of the SLCM-N with the

goal of deployment by the end of the decade.

Account for China’s nuclear expansion. To ensure its ability to deter

both Russia and the growing Chinese nuclear threat, the U.S. will need more

than the bare minimum of nuclear modernization. President Biden’s 2022

NPR described the problem but proposed no recommendations to restore or

maintain nuclear deterrence.

1. Consider procuring more modernized nuclear systems (such as the

Sentinel missile or LRSO) than currently planned.

2. Improve the ability of the U.S. to utilize the triad’s upload capacity in

case of a crisis.

3. Review what capabilities in addition to the SLCM-N (for example,

nonstrategic weapons or new warhead designs) are needed to deter the

unique Chinese threat.

Restore the nuclear infrastructure. The United States must restore

its necessary nuclear infrastructure so that it is capable of producing and

maintaining nuclear weapons.

— 125 —

Department of Defense

1. Accelerate the eort to restore plutonium pit production, which is essential

both for modern warhead programs and for recapitalizing the stockpile.

2. Continue to invest in rebuilding infrastructure, including facilities at

the National Laboratories that support nuclear weapons development.

3. Restore readiness to test nuclear weapons at the Nevada National

Security Site to ensure the ability of the U.S. to respond quickly to

asymmetric technology surprises.

Correctly orient arms control. The U.S. should agree to arms control

agreements only if they help to advance the interests of the U.S. and its allies.

1. Reject proposals for nuclear disarmament that are contrary to the goal

of bolstering deterrence.

2. Pursue arms control as a way to secure the national security interests of

the U.S. and its allies rather than as an end in itself.

3. Prepare to compete in order to secure U.S. interests should arms control

eorts continue to fail.

MISSILE DEFENSE

Missile defense is a critical component of the U.S. national security architecture.

It can help to deter attack by instilling doubt that an attack will work as intended,

take adversary “cheap shots” o the table, and limit the perceived value of mis-

siles as tools of coercion. It also allows space for diplomacy during a crisis and can

protect U.S. and allied forces, critical assets, and populations if deterrence fails.

Adversaries are relying increasingly on missiles to achieve their aims.

China and Russia, in addition to their vast and growing ballistic missile

inventories, are deploying new hypersonic glide vehicles and investing in

new ground-launched, air-launched, and sea-launched cruise missiles that

uniquely challenge the United States in dierent domains.

North Korea has pursued an aggressive missile testing program and is

becoming increasingly belligerent toward South Korea and Japan.

Iran continues to maintain a missile arsenal that is capable of striking U.S.

and allied assets in the Middle East and Europe, and its rocket launches

demonstrate that it either has or is developing the ability to build ICBMs.

— 126 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Missile defense has been underprioritized and underfunded in recent years. In

light of these growing threats, the incoming Administration should treat missile

defense as a top priority.

Needed Reforms

Champion the beneﬁts of missile defense. Despite its deterrence and

damage-limitation beneﬁts, opponents argue incorrectly that U.S. missile

defense is destabilizing because it threatens Russian and Chinese second-

strike capabilities.

1. Reject claims made by the Left that missile defense is destabilizing

while acknowledging that Russia and China are developing their own

advanced missile defense systems.

2. Commit to keeping homeland missile defense o the table in any arms

control negotiations with Russia and China.

Strengthen homeland ballistic missile defense. The United States

currently deploys 44 Ground-Based Interceptors (GBIs) as part of its

Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system to defend the homeland

against North Korea, but as North Korea improves its missile program, this

system is at risk of falling behind the threat.

1. Buy at least 64 of the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI), which is more

advanced than the GBI, for an eventual uniform ﬂeet of interceptors.

The Biden Administration currently plans to buy only 20.

2. Consider additional steps to strengthen the GMD system such as a

layered missile defense or a third interceptor site on the East Coast.

Increase the development of regional missile defense. As the Ukraine

conﬂict amply demonstrates, U.S. regional missile defense capabilities are

very limited. The United States has been unable to supply our partners

reliably with any capabilities, and the number and types of regional missile

defense platforms are less than the U.S. needs for its own defense. The U.S.

should prioritize procurement of more regional defense systems such as

Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), Standard Missile-3, and

Patriot missiles.

Change U.S. missile defense policy. Historically, the U.S. has chosen

to rely solely on deterrence to address the Russian and Chinese ballistic

— 127 —

Department of Defense

missile threat to the homeland and to use homeland missile defense only

against rogue nations.

1. Abandon the existing policy of not defending the homeland against

Russian and Chinese ballistic missiles and focus on how to improve

defense as the Russian and Chinese missile threats increase at an

unprecedented rate.

2. Invest in future advanced missile defense technologies like directed

energy or space-based missile defense that could defend against more

numerous missile threats.

Invest in new track-and-intercept capabilities. The advent of

hypersonic missiles and increased numbers of cruise missile arsenals by

threat actors poses new challenges to our missile defense capabilities.

1. Invest in cruise missile defense of the homeland.

2. Accelerate the program to deploy space-based sensors that can detect

and track missiles ﬂying on nonballistic trajectories.

3. Accelerate the Glide Phase Interceptor, which is intended to counter

hypersonic weapons.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The mission of the Department of Defense is to provide the military forces needed to deter

war and ensure our nation’s security. This chapter provides a blueprint to ensure that the Department can meet our

national security needs. Its preparation was a collective enterprise of individuals involved in the 2025 Presidential

Transition Project. All contributors to this chapter are listed at the front of this volume, but Sergio de la Pena and

Chuck DeVore deserve special mention. The author alone assumes responsibility for the content of this chapter, and

no views expressed herein should be attributed to any other individual.

— 128 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

ENDNOTES

 U.S. Constitution, Preamble, https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/preamble/ (accessed

February 16, 2023).

 U.S. Constitution, Article I, § 8, https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/ (accessed

February 16, 2023).

 U.S. Constitution, Article II, § 2, https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/ (accessed

February 16, 2023).

 Established pursuant to S. 1605, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, Public Law No. 117-81,

117th Congress, December 27, 2021, Division A, Title X, § 1004, https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ81/

PLAW-117publ81.pdf (accessed February 16, 2023).

 H.R. 3684, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Public Law No. 117-58, 117th Congress, November 15, 2021,

Division G, Title IX, §§ 70901–70953, https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ58/PLAW-117publ58.pdf

(accessed February 16, 2023).

 S. 2943, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, Public Law 114-328, 114th Congress, December

23, 2016, Division A, Title IX, § 901, https://www.congress.gov/114/statute/STATUTE-130/STATUTE-130-Pg2000.

pdf (accessed February 16, 2023).

 H.R. 3622, Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, Public Law No. 99-433,

99th Congress, October 1, 1986, https://www.congress.gov/99/statute/STATUTE-100/STATUTE-100-Pg992.pdf

(accessed February 16, 2023).

 U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Security Cooperation Agency, Historical Sales Book, Fiscal Years

1950–2021, p. 7, https://www.dsca.mil/sites/default/ﬁles/dsca_historical_sales_book_FY21.pdf (accessed

February 15, 2023).

 Paul K. Kerr, “Arms Sales: Congressional Review Process,” Congressional Research Service Report for Members

and Committees of Congress No. RL31675, updated June 10, 2022, p. 1, https://sgp.fas.org/crs/weapons/

RL31675.pdf (accessed February 15, 2023).

 Keith Webster, “How to Reform America’s Military Sales Process,” The Hill Congress Blog, October 6, 2022,

https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/3675933-how-to-reform-americas-military-sales-process/

(accessed February 15, 2023).

 See Thomas W. Spoehr, “The Administration and Congress Must Act Now to Counter the Worsening Military

Recruiting Crisis, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief No. 5283, July 28, 2022, https://www.heritage.org/sites/

default/ﬁles/2022-07/IB5283.pdf.

 Ibid.

 Ronald Reagan Institute, “Reagan National Defense Survey,” conducted November 2021, p. 4, https://www.

reaganfoundation.org/media/358085/rndf_survey_booklet.pdf (accessed February 16, 2023).

 See Paul J. Larkin, “Protecting the Nation by Employing Military Spouses,” Heritage Foundation Commentary,

June 6, 2019, https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/commentary/protecting-the-nation-employing-

military-spouses.

 See Jude Schwalbach, “Military Families Deserve Flexible Education Options,” Heritage Foundation

Commentary, April 14, 2021, https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/military-families-deserve-

ﬂexible-education-options.

 See Chapter 7, “The Intelligence Community,” infra.

 The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); the National Security Agency (NSA); the National Geospatial-

Intelligence Agency (NGA); the National Reconnaissance Oce (NRO); and the intelligence and

counterintelligence elements of the military services: U.S. Air Force Intelligence, U.S. Navy Intelligence, U.S.

Army Intelligence, and U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, which also receive guidance and oversight from the

Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USDI).

 The Oce of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

 The Department of Energy’s Oce of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; the Department of Homeland

Security’s Oce of Intelligence and Analysis and the intelligence and counterintelligence elements of the

U.S. Coast Guard; the Department of Justice’s Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement

Administration’s Oce of National Security Intelligence; the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and

Research; and the Department of the Treasury’s Oce of Intelligence and Analysis.

— 129 —

Department of Defense

 Sta Study, IC21: Intelligence Community in the 21st Century, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,

U.S. House of Representatives, 104th Congress, 1996, p. 71, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA315088.pdf

(accessed February 15, 2023).

 Ronald O’Rourke, “Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress,” Congressional

Research Service Report for Members and Committees of Congress No. R43838, updated November 8, 2022,

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R43838/93 (accessed February 15, 2023).

 U.S. Government Accountability Oce, Defense Intelligence and Security: DOD Needs to Establish Oversight

Expectations and to Develop Tools That Enhance Accountability, GAO-21-295, May 2021, https://www.gao.gov/

assets/gao-21-295.pdf (accessed February 15, 2023).

 The U.S. military has a long history of providing support to civil authorities, particularly in response to

disasters but for other purposes as well. The Defense Department currently deﬁnes defense support of civil

authorities (DSCA) as “Support provided by U.S. Federal military forces, DoD civilians, DoD contract personnel,

DoD Component assets, and National Guard forces (when the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the

Governors of the aected States, elects and requests to use those forces in Title 32, U.S.C., status) in response

to requests for assistance from civil authorities for domestic emergencies, law enforcement support, and

other domestic activities, or from qualifying entities for special events. Also known as civil support.” U.S.

Department of Defense, Directive No. 3025.18, “Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA),” December 29,

2010, p. 16, https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/CG-5R/nsarc/DoDD%203025.18%20Defense%20Support%20

of%20Civil%20Authorities.pdf (accessed February 15, 2023).

 U.S. Army, “Who We Are: The Army’s Vision and Strategy,” https://www.army.mil/about/ (accessed

February 17, 2023).

 “[T]he Army’s internal assessment must be balanced against its own statements that unit training is focused

on company-level operations [reﬂective of counterintelligence requirements] rather than battalion or brigade

operations [much less division or corps to meet large-scale ground combat operations against a peer

competitor such as Russia or China]. Consequently, how these ‘ready’ brigade combat teams would perform

in combat operations is an open question.” “Executive Summary” in 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength,

ed. Dakota L. Wood (Washington: The Heritage Foundation, 2023), p. 16, http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.

com/2022/Military_Index/2023_IndexOfUSMilitaryStrength.pdf (accessed February 15, 2023).

 For background on the USN’s ﬂeet size, see Brent D. Sadler, “Rebuilding America’s Military: The United States

Navy,” Heritage Foundation Special Report No. 242, February 18, 2021, https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/

ﬁles/2021-02/SR242.pdf, and Ronald O’Rourke, “Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background

and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service Report for Members and Committees of Congress

No. RL32665, December 21, 2022, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL32665 (accessed

February 15, 2023).

 The Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) is the process by which the services

develop and the Joint Sta approves the requirements for major defense acquisitions. See Defense

Acquisition University, “Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDA),” https://www.dau.

edu/acquipedia/pages/articledetails.aspx#!371 (accessed February 15, 2023).

 The board would seek to balance a mix of active military and civilians with expertise in and responsibility

for major acquisitions and former military and civilians with experience in strategy and acquisitions. The

proposed composition would include the Vice Chief of Naval Operations as Chairman, with three-star level

membership from the Joint Sta, the Navy and Defense Acquisition Executives, and the Naval Sea Systems

Command. In addition, there would be four-star retired naval ocers/Navy civil servants as members, one

each named by the Chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, the Secretary of the

Navy, and the Secretary of Defense. Finally, there would be a member appointed by the Secretary of the Navy

who had previous senior experience in the defense industry.

 See James Mattis, Secretary of Defense, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States

of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge, U.S. Department of Defense, https://

dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf (accessed

February 17, 2023), and U.S. Department of Defense, 2022 National Defense Strategy of the United States of

America Including the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review and the 2022 Missile Defense Review, https://oldcc.gov/

resource/2022-national-defense-strategy (accessed February 17, 2023).

— 130 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

 U.S. Air Force, “The Air Force We Need: 386 Operational Squadrons,” September 17, 2018, https://www.

af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1635070/the-air-force-we-need-386-operational-squadrons/ (accessed

February 17, 2023).

 General David H. Berger, Commandant of the Marine Corps, “Force Design 2030,” U.S. Department of the

Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, March 2020, https://www.hqmc.marines.mil/Portals/142/Docs/CMC38%20Force%20

Design%202030%20Report%20Phase%20I%20and%20II.pdf?ver=2020-03-26-121328-460 (accessed

February 17, 2023).

 Department of the Navy, United States Marine Corps, “Force Design 2030,” March 2020, https://www.hqmc.

marines.mil/Portals/142/Docs/CMC38%20Force%20Design%202030%20Report%20Phase%20I%20and%20II.

pdf?ver=2020-03-26-121328-460 (accessed February 15, 2023).

 Philip Athey, “Here Are Some of the Ways the Marines Are Trying to Improve Retention,” Marine Corps Times,

November 15, 2021, https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2021/11/15/treat-people-

like-human-beings-here-are-some-of-the-ways-the-marines-are-trying-to-improve-retention/ (accessed

February 15, 2023).

 Megan Eckstein, “Marines, Navy Near Agreement on Light Amphibious Warship Features,” Defense News,

October 5, 2022, https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2022/10/05/marines-navy-near-agreement-on-light-

amphibious-warship-features/ (accessed February 16, 2023).

 Megan Eckstein, “Marines Explain Vision for Fewer Traditional Amphibious Warships,” Defense News, June

21, 2021, https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2021/06/21/marines-explain-vision-for-fewer-traditional-

amphibious-warships-supplemented-by-new-light-amphib/ (accessed February 16, 2023).

 See Sidney J. Freedberg Jr., “Trump Eases Cyber Ops, but Safeguards Remain: Joint Sta,” Breaking Defense,

September 17, 2018, https://breakingdefense.com/2018/09/trump-eases-cyber-ops-but-safeguards-remain-

joint-sta/ (accessed March 7, 2023); Dustin Volz, “White House Conﬁrms It Has Relaxed Rules on U.S. Use

of Cyberweapons,” The Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-

conﬁrms-it-has-relaxed-rules-on-u-s-use-of-cyber-weapons-1537476729 (accessed March 7, 2023); and

Federation of American Scientists, Intelligence Resource Program, “National Security Presidential Memoranda

[NSPMs]: Donald J. Trump Administration,” updated March 7, 2022, https://irp.fas.org/odocs/nspm/index.

html (accessed March 7, 2023).

 U.S. Government Accountability Oce, DOD Cybersecurity: Enhanced Attention Needed to Ensure Cyber

Incidents Are Appropriately Reported and Shared, GAO-23-105084, November 2022, p. 36, https://www.gao.

gov/assets/gao-23-105084.pdf (accessed February 17, 2023).

 See Paul Evancoe, “Special Operations and the Interagency Team,” U.S.Military.com, https://usmilitary.

com/special-operations-and-the-interagency-team/#:~:text=Seldom%20considered%20are%20those%20

other%20government%20agency%20%28OGA%29,response%20and%20consequence%20management%20

to%20name%20a%20few (accessed February 17, 2023).

 U.S. Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review, February 2018, pp. 54–55, https://media.defense.

gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF (accessed

February 17, 2023).

 U.S. Department of Defense, 2022 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America Including the

2022 Nuclear Posture Review and the 2022 Missile Defense Review, pp. 3 and 20.

 Patty-Jane Geller, “Missile Defense,” in 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength, ed. Dakota L. Wood (Washington:

The Heritage Foundation, 2023), pp. 507–508, http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2022/Military_

Index/2023_IndexOfUSMilitaryStrength.pdf.

 Matthew R. Costlow, “The Folly of Limiting U.S. Missile Defenses for Nuclear Arms Control,” National

Institute for Public Policy Information Series, Issue No. 505, October 18, 2021, https://nipp.org/wp-content/

uploads/2021/10/IS-505.pdf (accessed February 16, 2023).

 Forum for American Leadership, “Don’t Hand North Korea a Win in the Missile Defense Review,” January 4,

2022, https://forumforamericanleadership.org/dprk-missile-threat (accessed February 16, 2023).

 Patty-Jane Geller, “It’s Time to Get Homeland Missile Defense Right,” Defense News, January 4, 2021, https://

www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/01/04/its-time-to-get-homeland-missile-defense-

right/#:~:text=Restoring%20our%20eroding%20edge%20when,advanced%20technology%20and%20

new%20capabilities.%E2%80%9D (accessed February 16, 2023).

— 131 —

Department of Defense

 Forum for American Leadership, “How Biden's Missile Defense Review Can Succeed,” October 21, 2021, https://

forumforamericanleadership.org/missile-defense-review (accessed February 16, 2023).

 Tom Karako, Matt Strohmeyer, Ian Williams, Wes Rumbaugh, and Ken Harmon, North America Is a Region,

Too: An Integrated, Phased, and Aordable Approach to Air and Missile Defense for the Homeland, Center

for Strategic and International Studies, Missile Defense Project, July 2022, https://csis-website-prod.

s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/220714_Karako_North_America.pdf?VersionId=BhIKa8jHHF_

kV94NXRMx6D4m2o6LQqUf (accessed February 16, 2023).

 Rebeccah Heinrichs, “Why America Needs the Ability to Track Enemy Missiles from Space,” The Hill, April 16,

2019, https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/438939-why-america-needs-the-ability-to-track-enemy-

missiles-from-space/ (accessed February 16, 2023).

— 133 —

DEPARTMENT OF

HOMELAND SECURITY

Ken Cuccinelli

PRIMARY RECOMMENDATION

Our primary recommendation is that the President pursue legislation to dis-

mantle the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). After 20 years, it has not

gelled into “One DHS.” Instead, its various components’ dierent missions have

outweighed its decades-long attempt to function as one department, rendering

the whole disjointed rather than cohesive. Breaking up the department along its

mission lines would facilitate mission focus and provide opportunities to reduce

overhead and achieve more limited government. In lieu of a status quo DHS, we

recommend that:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) be combined with

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); U.S. Citizenship

and Immigration Services (USCIS); the Department of Health and

Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR); and

the Department of Justice (DOJ) Executive Office for Immigration

Review (EOIR) and Office of Immigration Litigation (OIL) into a stand-

alone border and immigration agency at the Cabinet level (more than

100,000 employees, making it the third largest department measured

by manpower).

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) be moved to

the Department of Transportation.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) be moved to the

Department of the Interior or, if combined with CISA, to the Department of

Transportation.

The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) be moved to DOJ and, in time of full-scale

war (i.e., threatening the homeland), to the Department of Defense (DOD).

Alternatively, USCG should be moved to DOD for all purposes.

The U.S. Secret Service (USSS) be divided in two, with the protective

element moved to DOJ and the ﬁnancial enforcement element moved to the

Department of the Treasury.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) be privatized.

The Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) be moved to DOD and the

Oce of Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction be moved to the FBI.

All of the remaining supporting components could be dismantled because

their functions already exist in the moving components as well as the receiv-

ing departments. Cutting these costs would save the American taxpayers

significant sums.

Unless and until this dismantling recommendation is pursued and achieved,

however, DHS will statutorily continue to exist, and it needs many reforms. Accord-

ingly, we now turn to recommended changes in DHS as it exists now.

MISSION STATEMENT

The Department of Homeland Security protects the American homeland from

and prepares for terrorism and other hazards in both the physical and cyber realms,

provides for secure and free movement of trade and travel, and enforces U.S. immi-

gration laws impartially.

OVERVIEW

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in the aftermath of

the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and subsequent mailings of anthrax

spores. The Homeland Security Act of 2002,

which created the department, states

that DHS’s primary mission is to prevent terrorist attacks within the U.S.; reduce

the nation’s vulnerability to terrorism; minimize the damage from and assist in the

recovery from any terrorist attacks; prepare and respond to natural and manmade

crises and emergencies; and monitor connections between illegal drug tracking

and terrorism, coordinate eorts to sever such connections, and interdict illegal

drug tracking.

— 135 —

Department of Homeland Security

Unfortunately for our nation, the federal government’s newest department

became like every other federal agency: bloated, bureaucratic, and expensive. It also

lost sight of its mission priorities. DHS has also suered from the Left’s wokeness and

weaponization against Americans whom the Left perceives as its political opponents.

To truly secure the homeland, a conservative Administration needs to return

the department to the right mission, the right size, and the right budget. This would

include reorganizing the department and shifting signiﬁcant resources away from

several supporting components to the essential operational components. Prior-

itizing border security and immigration enforcement, including detention and

deportation, is critical if we are to regain control of the border, repair the historic

damage done by the Biden Administration, return to a lawful and orderly immi-

gration system, and protect the homeland from terrorism and public safety threats.

This also includes consolidating the pieces of the fragmented immigration system

into one agency to fulﬁll the mission more eciently.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is a DHS com-

ponent that the Left has weaponized to censor speech and aect elections at the

expense of securing the cyber domain and critical infrastructure, which are threat-

ened daily.

A conservative Administration should return CISA to its statutory and

important but narrow mission.

The bloated DHS bureaucracy and budget, along with the wrong priorities,

provide real opportunities for a conservative Administration to cut billions in

spending and limit government’s role in Americans’ lives. These opportunities

include privatizing TSA screening and the Federal Emergency Management

Agency (FEMA) National Flood Insurance Program, reforming FEMA emergency

spending to shift the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and

localities instead of the federal government, eliminating most of DHS’s grant pro-

grams, and removing all unions in the department for national security purposes.

A successful DHS would:

Secure and control the border;

Thoroughly enforce immigration laws;

Correctly and eciently adjudicate immigration beneﬁt applications while

rejecting fraudulent claims;

Secure the cyber domain and collaborate with critical infrastructure sectors

to maintain their security;

Provide states and localities with a limited federal emergency response and

preparedness;

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Secure our coasts and economic zones;

Protect political leaders, their families, and visiting heads of state or

government; and

Oversee transportation security.

OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY (SEC)

In the next Administration, the Oce of the Secretary should take on the fol-

lowing key issues and challenges to ensure the eective operation of DHS.

Expansion of Dedicated Political Personnel. The Secretary of Homeland

Security is a presidentially appointed and Senate-conﬁrmed political appointee,

but for budgetary reasons, he or she has historically been unable to fund a dedi-

cated team of political appointees. A key ﬁrst step for the Secretary to improve

front-oce functions is to have his or her own dedicated team of political appoin-

tees selected and vetted by the Oce of Presidential Personnel, which is not reliant

on detailees from other parts of the department, to help ensure the completion of

the next President’s agenda.

An Aggressive Approach to Senate-Conﬁrmed Leadership Positions.

While Senate confirmation is a constitutionally necessary requirement for

appointing agency leadership, the next Administration may need to take a novel

approach to the conﬁrmations process to ensure an adequate and rapid transition.

For example, the next Administration arguably should place its nominees for key

positions into similar positions as “actings” (for example, putting in a person to

serve as the Senior Ocial Performing the Duties of the Commissioner of CBP

while that person is going through the conﬁrmation process to direct ICE or

become the Secretary). This approach would both guarantee implementation of

the Day One agenda and equip the department for potential emergency situations

while still honoring the conﬁrmation requirement. The department should also

look to remove lower-level but nevertheless important positions that currently

require Senate conﬁrmation from the conﬁrmation requirement, although this

eort would require legislation (and might also be mooted in the event of legisla-

tion that closes portions of the department that currently have Senate-conﬁrmed

leadership).

Clearer, More Durable, and Political-Only Line of Succession. Based on

previous experience, the department needs legislation to establish a more durable

but politically oriented line of succession for agency decision-making purposes.

The ideal sequence for line of succession is certainly debatable, except that in cir-

cumstances where a career employee holds a leadership position in the department,

that position should be deemed vacant for line-of-succession purposes and the next

eligible political appointee in the sequence should assume acting authority. Further,

— 137 —

Department of Homeland Security

individuals wielding acting Secretary authority should have explicit authority to

ﬁnalize agency actions, including regulations, to ensure that the department’s

homeland security mission is fulﬁlled.

Soft Closure of Unnecessary Oces. Pending a possible presidential deci-

sion to shrink or eliminate DHS itself, the next Administration will still have the

obligation to protect the homeland as required by law. The Secretary therefore

can and should use his or her inherent, discretionary leadership authority to “soft

close” ineective and problematic corners of the department. While those corners

are to be determined, the Secretary could shift personnel, funding, and opera-

tional responsibility to mission-essential components of the department, including

the Oce of the Secretary itself. This eort not only would make the department

more ecient, but also would support a legislative move to shrink or dismantle

the department by showing that the agency can fulﬁll national security–critical

functions without its current bloated bureaucracy.

Restructuring and Redistribution of Career Personnel. To strengthen

political decision-making and ensure that taxpayer dollars are being used legally

and eciently, the Secretary should make major changes in the distribution of

career personnel throughout the department. For example, personnel from parts

of the department undergoing soft closure could be redistributed to what will be

workload-intensive corners of the department, including national security–critical

and transparency functions. All personnel with law enforcement capacity should

be removed immediately from oce billets and deployed to ﬁeld billets to maxi-

mize law enforcement capacity.

Compliance for Grants and Other Federal Funding. The next Adminis-

tration should take steps to restore lawfulness and integrity to the department’s

massive regimen of federal grant programs, most of which are managed and dis-

tributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Secretary should

direct FEMA to ensure that all FEMA-issued grant funding for states, localities,

and private organizations is going to recipients who are lawful actors, can demon-

strate that they are in compliance with federal law, and can show that their mission

and actions support the broader homeland security mission. All applicants and

potential recipients of such grant funding should be required to meet certain pre-

conditions for eligibility (except for receipt of post-disaster or nonhumanitarian

funding) or should simply be considered ineligible for funding. Such preconditions

should include at least the following:

Certiﬁcation by applicants that they comply with all aspects of federal

immigration laws, including the honoring of all immigration detainers.

Certiﬁcation by applicants that they are both registered with E-Verify

and using E-Verify in a transparent and nonevasive manner. For states

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

and localities, that would include certiﬁcation that all components of that

government, and not just the applicant agency, are registered with and

use E-Verify.

If the applicant is a state or locality, commitment by that state or locality to

total information-sharing in the context of both federal law enforcement

and immigration enforcement. This would include access to department of

motor vehicles and voter registration databases.

Non-Use of Discretionary Guest Worker Visa Authorities. To stop facili-

tating the availability of cheap foreign labor in order to support American workers

(particularly poor and middle-class American workers) and follow congressional

intent, the Secretary should explicitly cease using at least two discretionary author-

ities as part of his or her broader eort to support American workers.

The Secretary should make it clear that he or she will not use the Secretary’s

existing discretionary authority to increase the number of H-2B (seasonal

non-agricultural) visas above the statutorily set cap.

The Secretary should not issue any regulations in support of the “H-2

eligible” country list, the eect of which would prevent favoring certain

foreign nationals seeking an H-2 guest worker visa based simply on their

nationality.

Restoration of Honesty and Transparency. The Secretary should use his or

her inherent authority as leader of the department to follow up with congressional

and other partners to disclose information and provide the transparency that has

been obstructed during the Biden Administration. The Secretary should proceed

from the assumption that congressional inquiries and public information requests

were unfulﬁlled and then seek to fulﬁll them.

Replacement of the Entire Homeland Security Advisory Committee. The

Secretary should plan to quickly remove all current members of the Homeland

Security Advisory Committee and replace them as quickly as is feasible.

U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION (CBP)

If all immigration agencies are not merged, including USCIS and ORR, then

an appropriate third alternative would be to consolidate ICE and CBP to form

a combined Border Security and Immigration Agency (BSIA). This would inte-

grate critical interdiction, enforcement, and investigative resources, enhancing

coordination and refocusing collective eorts on the vast and complex cross-bor-

der threats impacting our nation’s health, safety, and national security. It would

— 139 —

Department of Homeland Security

also simultaneously add eciencies to our nation’s capacity to facilitate lawful

trade and travel.

The BSIA should establish clear mission requirements, responsibilities, and

mandates under existing law regarding the persistent need for and utilization of

U.S. military personnel and resources to assist BSIA with increasing whole-of-gov-

ernment eorts and long-term strategy to secure our nation’s borders eectively.

In addition, appropriate elements within the newly created BSIA should be desig-

nated as part of the U.S. National Security and Intelligence Community.

A conservative Administration should eliminate any prohibitive guidance,

direction, or mandate from DHS or the Administration that curtails or limits CBP

from publishing detailed border security and enforcement data not impacting

intelligence, interdiction, and investigative operations, methods, or sources. DHS

should issue a regulation mandating that CBP publish accurate and timely border

security data, readily available to the public, on a regular basis that avoid White

House and DHS leadership review and approval.

The White House should grant the authority for CBP and DHS executives to

utilize component aviation assets under the Oce of Air and Marine (OAM). CBP

and DHS have worldwide missions with personnel and facilities that are deployed

across the globe and in every state in the U.S. With a CBP workforce alone of more

than 60,000 people (240,000-plus for DHS) encompassing more than a thousand

sea, land, and airports, it is essential that the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner,

Secretary, and Deputy Secretary can travel eciently to facilities to maintain

appropriate situational awareness across the department’s vast mission set and

interact with the expansive workforce. Although CBP operates one of the largest

aviation components of any domestic U.S. law enforcement agency, executives are

prohibited from utilizing the agency’s aviation assets to facilitate ocial travel.

Executives are required to ﬂy on commercial airlines, and this requirement sig-

niﬁcantly limits their ability to have classiﬁed communications and takes them

oine for extended periods of time.

Border Patrol (BP) and OAM should be combined within CBP. BP has more than

20,000 personnel, and OAM has approximately 1,800. OAM’s assets are dedicated

in support of BP operations the vast majority of the time, yet redundant approv-

als, strategies, and independent hierarchal commands serve as impediments to

ecient and practical resource deployments.

CBP should restart and expand use of the horseback-mounted Border Patrol. As

part of this announcement, the Secretary should clear the records and personnel

ﬁles of those who were falsely accused by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of whip-

ping migrants and issue a formal apology on behalf of DHS and CBP.

The Secretary should combine the Oce of Trade (OT) and Trade Relations

with the Oce of Field Operations (OFO). The OT is the smallest of CBP’s compo-

nents, and its operational counterpart, OFO, has a workforce of more than 30,000.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

OT’s function is interwoven with that of its OFO operational counterpart. Combin-

ing OT with OFO would achieve streamlined operations and increase OT’s capacity

and capability by leveraging OFO’s expansive resources.

CBP, ICE, and USCIS all have authority to issue Notices to Appear (NTA) to

removable aliens in their presence, which begins removal proceedings. In most

instances, CBP should turn illegal aliens over to ICE for detention, and ICE can

then issue any needed NTA. CBP should issue NTAs only in limited situations

for humanitarian reasons, such as medical emergencies. In addition, CBP should

eliminate use of Notices to Report (NTR) altogether.

CBP’s established national standards of Transport, Escort, Detention, and

Search (TEDS) have been widely interpreted and expanded by lower courts. This

has resulted in unrealistic and diering detention standards for CBP facilities based

on the jurisdiction within which they fall, negatively impacting operations. ICE has

suered similarly. A single nationwide detention standard should be codiﬁed that

prevents individual states from mandating that federal government agencies adhere

to widely expansive and ever-changing sets of standards. Such standards should allow

the ﬂexibility to use large numbers of temporary facilities such as tents.

The annual costs associated with establishing and maintaining temporary facil-

ities to address the ﬂow of illegal migration and associated care, transportation,

and processing are prohibitive, and CBP’s budget is inadequate. CBP is forced to

forgo critical mission-essential endeavors to fund the additional associated costs.

Often, this requires the reprogramming of funding at the DHS level, which has a

negative impact on other DHS components’ operations. This predictable cost that

has to be paid from existing CBP and DHS funding levels reduces CBP’s operational

readiness and ability to accomplish its diverse and critical missions to protect the

American people. The next President should request a realistic budget that fully

pays for these costs.

Increased funding is needed for BP to hire additional support personnel, which

would relieve uniformed BP agents from administrative duties associated with

processing aliens and allow them to return to their national security mission.

Congress should increase funding for facility upgrades at strategic land Ports of

Entry (POEs), including expanding state-of-the-art technology such as Non-Intru-

sive Inspection equipment. Today, the cartels exploit the aging facilities and lack

of adequate technology to smuggle illicit drugs, contraband, and more successfully

through our nation’s POEs.

U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (ICE)

Needed Reforms

Since the formation of DHS, ICE has increasingly been tasked with auxiliary

missions that have little or nothing to do with either immigration or customs

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Department of Homeland Security

enforcement. To return ICE to its primary mission, any new Administration that

wishes to restore the rule of law to our immigration enforcement eorts should:

Order ICE to stop closing out pending immigration cases and apply

the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) as written by Congress.

The Biden Administration closed out tens of thousands of immigration

cases that had already been prepared and were slated for expedited removal

processing or hearings before the U.S. Immigration Court. This misguided

action constituted an egregious example of lawlessness that allowed

thousands of illegal aliens and other immigration violators to go free in the

United States.

Direct ICE to stop ignoring criminal aliens identiﬁed through the

287(g) program.

Ultimately, Congress should prevent ICE from ignoring

criminal aliens identiﬁed by local law enforcement agencies that are partners

in the 287(g) program. However, before congressional action, ICE should

be directed to take custody of all aliens with records for felonies, crimes of

violence, DUIs, previous removals, and any other crime that is considered a

national security or public safety threat as deﬁned under current laws.

Eliminate T and U visas. Victimization should not be a basis for an

immigration beneﬁt. If an alien who was a tracking or crime victim is

actively and signiﬁcantly cooperating with law enforcement as a witness,

the S visa is already available and should be used. Pending elimination of the

T and U visas, the Secretary should signiﬁcantly restrict eligibility for each

visa to prevent fraud.

Issue clear guidance regarding detention and bond for aliens.

Thousands of illegal aliens are allowed to bond out of immigration detention

only to disappear into the interior of the United States where many commit

crimes and many others disappear, never to be heard from again. This

occurs primarily because of poorly worded bond regulations, contradictory

bond policy memoranda, and poor practices for managing released

aliens and the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) Program, which requires

signiﬁcant reform.

Prioritize national security in the Student and Exchange Visitor

Program (SEVP). ICE should end its current cozy deference to educational

institutions and remove security risks from the program. This requires

working with the Department of State to eliminate or signiﬁcantly reduce

the number of visas issued to foreign students from enemy nations.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Most of the foregoing can be accomplished rapidly and eectively through exec-

utive action that is both lawful and appropriate. Additionally, ICE should clarify

who is responsible for enforcing its criminal and civil authorities. It should also

remove self-imposed limitations on its nationwide jurisdiction.

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Special Agents in the 1811

series should enforce Title 8 and 18 crimes as the biggest part of their

portfolio. Alien smuggling, tracking, and cross-border crime as deﬁned

under Title 8

and Title 18

should be the focus of ICE operations.

The role of ICE Deportation Ocers should be clariﬁed. ICE

Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) should be identiﬁed as being

primarily responsible for enforcing civil immigration regulations, including

the civil arrest, detention, and removal of immigration violators anywhere

in the United States, without warrant where appropriate, subject only to the

civil warrant requirements of the INA where appropriate.

All ICE memoranda identifying “sensitive zones” where

ICE personnel are prohibited from operating should be

rescinded. Rely on the good judgment of ocers in the ﬁeld to avoid

inappropriate situations.

To maximize the ecient use of its resources, ICE should make full

use of existing Expedited Removal (ER) authorities. The agency has

limited the use of ER to eligible aliens apprehended within 100 miles of the

border. This is not a statutory requirement.

New Policies

U.S. national security and public safety interests would be well-served if ICE

were to be combined with CBP and USCIS, as mentioned above. Additionally, ICE/

HSI, along with CBP, should be full participants in the Intelligence Community.

The use of Blackies Warrants should be operationalized within ICE. These civil

search warrants are commonly used for worksite enforcement when agents have

probable cause that illegal aliens are employed at a business. This would stream-

line investigations.

Safeguarding Americans will require not just securing the border, but con-

tinuous vetting and investigations of many aliens who exploited President

Biden’s open border for potentially nefarious purposes, including some Afghan

evacuees sent directly to the U.S. during America’s disastrous withdrawal from

Afghanistan.

— 143 —

Department of Homeland Security

Budget

Congress should mandate and fund additional bed space for alien

detainees. ICE should be funded for a signiﬁcant increase in detention

space, raising the daily available number of beds to 100,000.

Congress should fund ICE for at least 20,000 ERO ocers and 5,000

Oce of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA) attorneys.

U.S. CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES (USCIS)

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is the agency tasked with

administering the legal immigration and certain temporary visa programs.

Needed Reforms

Since January 2021, USCIS’s priorities have been misaligned, and this has trans-

formed it into an open-borders agency, ignoring the critical role that it plays in

national security, public safety, and safeguarding the integrity of our immigration

system. USCIS should be returned to operating as a screening and vetting agency.

Regulatory eorts have focused on easing asylum eligibility in a manner that is

guaranteed to exacerbate asylum fraud as people surge at the border. Emphasis

also has been placed on removing legal barriers to immigration, such as the use

of public beneﬁts. These actions violate statutes, erode congressional intent, and

provide a signiﬁcant magnet for continued illegal immigration.

Additionally, USCIS resources have been misappropriated to focus more on

creating and expanding large-scale parole and temporary status programs that

violate the law and are otherwise contrary to congressional intent instead of focus-

ing on a more secure and ecient process for those who are seeking beneﬁts. The

ever-increasing number of applications ﬁled has made it dicult to vet applica-

tions adequately for eligibility, fraud, and speciﬁc national security and public

safety problems.

The Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) is currently a

small directorate with assigned ocers reporting through the chain of command in

the ﬁeld, and this has led to stovepiping, lack of coordination in national policy, and

inconsistencies throughout the agency. To prioritize vetting and fraud detection,

FDNS should undergo a structural shift focused on direct reporting from the ﬁeld

to headquarters, reclassiﬁcation of leadership, and FDNS directives taking prece-

dence over those of other component entities. Correcting the current misalignment

of agency priorities and resources should begin with this primary shift in focus to

vetting and fraud detection. These actions would reform the agency, returning it

to its screening and vetting mission in protecting the homeland.

Other structural changes should include reimplementation of the USCIS denat-

uralization unit—an eort to maintain integrity in the system by identifying and

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

prosecuting criminal and civil denaturalization cases, in combination with the

Department of Justice, for aliens who obtained citizenship through fraud or other

illicit means. Additionally, USCIS should create a criminal enforcement compo-

nent within the agency to investigate immigration beneﬁts fraud under Title 8

(perhaps requiring additional legislative and regulatory authorities for the o-

cers themselves) and to prosecute cases through Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys

(SAUSAs) with substantive knowledge in the ﬁeld. Particular attention should be

given to addressing increasing incidents of forced labor tracking in temporary

work visa programs.

While the Biden regulatory agenda has focused on at least two major rules—the

credible fear rule and the public charge rule—USCIS has utilized other policy and

internal procedural mechanisms to extend employment authorization to large

groups of people who are in the country without legal status. The agency has

taken quiet steps to cut corners and lessen adjudicatory standards. During a tran-

sition period, a complete audit of agency policies, memoranda, and management

directives issued during the Biden Administration should be completed, and rescis-

sion documents should be prepared for issuance within the ﬁrst few days of the

incoming Administration. Additionally, regulatory documents should be drafted

to review or reverse all regulations promulgated during the Biden Administration.

New Policies

To advance the national interest, the three core immigration agencies—USCIS,

ICE, and CBP—should remerge and have immigration elements outside of DHS

(such as ORR of HHS) included. The fragmented immigration enforcement frame-

work that developed in the wake of the Homeland Security Act has weakened

each agency and should be remediated. Combining these critical agencies would

strengthen their capabilities, ensure cooperation, and promote information-shar-

ing. Agency responsibilities and the delineation of authorities, such as inconsistent

use of deferred action and issuance of NTAs by each agency, have long been a point

of contention that would be addressed much more easily if they were recombined

into a single entity.

Alternatively, new policies for USCIS as it currently exists should focus on mat-

ters that can be addressed through administrative action.

The workforce should be realigned and, as necessary, retrained on base

eligibility and fraud detection rather than speed in processing.

Training should be returned to Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers

(FLETC), which would underscore the enforcement role of USCIS as a

vetting agency, and be rebranded accordingly.

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Department of Homeland Security

Management Directives and policies should realign to ensure that the

workforce, while adaptable and able to handle the bulk of the USCIS mission,

is not allowed to be pulled o mission work to focus on unlawful programs

(DACA, mass parole for Afghans, Ukrainians, Venezuelans, etc.), which

divert resources away from nuclear family and employment programs.

The regulatory agenda should include the immediate submission of notices of

proposed rulemaking for the Trump Administration’s public charge rule (includ-

ing aspects from its original notice of proposed rulemaking), temporary work

visa reform, employment authorization reform rules, asylum bars rule, and a

third-country transit rule. At a minimum, an enhanced regulatory agenda should

include rules strengthening the integrity of the asylum system, parole reform, and

U visa reform that prioritizes relief for victims of heinous crimes and ensures that

we protect the truest and most deserving victims of crime.

Not all policy changes require formal rulemaking, however, as internal guidance

documents are generally exempt under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

In this subregulatory space, USCIS policy memos and operational guidance should

reduce the validity of employment authorization documents and end the COVID

ﬂexibilities, including the reliance on biometrics reuse. USCIS should also enforce

existing regulations by rejecting incomplete applications and petitions, ensuring

both that they are completed before accepted for ﬁling and that FDNS signs o on

all approved applications and petitions before approval notices are sent to the alien

or petitioner. Other eorts should be focused on adjudication standards returning

to nearly 100 percent interview requirements for all appropriate cases.

The incoming Administration should spearhead an immigration legislative

agenda focused on creating a merit-based immigration system that rewards high-

skilled aliens instead of the current system that favors extended family–based and

luck-of-the-draw immigration. To that end, the diversity visa lottery should be

repealed, chain migration should be ended while focusing on the nuclear family,

and the existing employment visa program should be replaced with a system to

award visas only to the “best and brightest.”

Internal eorts to limit employment authorization should be matched by con-

gressional action to narrow statutory eligibility to work in the United States and

mitigate unfair employment competition for U.S. citizens. The oft-abused H-1B

program should be transformed into an elite program through which employers

are vying to bring in only the top foreign workers at the highest wages so as not to

depress American opportunities. Additionally, Congress should:

Improve the integrity of the temporary work visa programs;

Repeal Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations;

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Permanently authorize and make mandatory E-Verify; and

End parole abuse by legislating speciﬁc parole standards.

USCIS should make it clear that where no court jurisdiction exists, it will not

honor court decisions that seek to undermine regulatory and subregulatory eorts.

Finally, USCIS still requires access to all relevant national security and law enforce-

ment databases in the same vein as any other agency in the intelligence space. This

is a key concept that should be addressed as USCIS is returned to functioning

primarily as a vetting agency.

Budget

USCIS is primarily fee-funded, operating on revenue derived by those who are

seeking immigration beneﬁts, work permits, and naturalization. The total agency

budget requested for ﬁscal year (FY) 2023, including both fees and a small appropri-

ation, is slightly less than $6 billion.

The bulk of funds are derived from application

fees through the Immigrant Examinations Fee Account. As a general principle, adju-

dication of applications and petitions should be paid by applicants, not American

taxpayers. It is critical that any changes in the budget, even in the wake of a realigned

agency combined with ICE and CBP, should retain a fee-funded model.

Given the Obama and Biden Administrations’ lack of will, fees should be

increased agencywide to keep in step with inﬂation and the true cost of the adju-

dications. The incoming Administration should immediately submit a fee rule

that reﬂects such an increase. Aside from an increase in all fees, the rule should

drastically limit the availability for fee waivers and should implement a fee for

asylum applications. Additionally, Congress should allow for a 10 percent across-

the-board increase in all fees for all fee rules to account for the fact that new fee

rules always lag behind budget requirements.

USCIS should strive to increase opportunities for premium processing, a ben-

eﬁt by which applicants can expedite their processing times. While this places

time burdens on adjudicators, it provides an opportunity for a signiﬁcant inﬂux

of money into the agency, which is not currently available. While simply raising

fees to the necessary levels to make the agency run eciently would be prefera-

ble, without the need for expanded premium processing, this short-term measure

should be utilized, particularly if longer-term fee rules are unsuccessful.

At least until USCIS is caught up on all case backlogs, all applicants rejected for

any beneﬁt or status adjudication should be required to leave the U.S. immediately.

Ordinary process can resume once all case backlogs have been adjudicated.

Finally, USCIS should pause the intake of applications in a beneﬁt category

when backlogs in that category become excessive. Once USCIS adjudicators can

decrease that caseload to a manageable number, application intake should resume.

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Department of Homeland Security

Personnel

USCIS should be classiﬁed as a national security–sensitive agency, and all of

its employees should be classiﬁed as holding national security–sensitive posi-

tions. Leaks must be investigated and punished as they would be in a national

security agency, and the union should be decertiﬁed. Any employees who cannot

accept that change and cannot conform their behavior to the standards required

by such an agency should be separated. USCIS’s D.C. personnel presence should

be skeletal, and agency employees with operational or security roles should be

rotated out to oces throughout the United States. These USCIS employees

should live and work in the communities that are most aected by their daily

duties and decisions.

NECESSARY BORDER AND IMMIGRATION STATUTORY,

REGULATORY, AND ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGES

The current border security crisis was made possible by glaring loopholes

in our immigration system. The result was a preventable and predictable his-

toric increase in illegal and inadmissible encounters along our southern border.

This pulled limited resources from the front lines of our nation’s borders and

away from their national security mission, releasing a vast and complex set

of threats into our country. To regain our sovereignty, integrity, and security,

Congress must pass meaningful legislation to close the current loopholes and

prevent future Administrations from exploiting them for political gain or per-

sonal ideology.

Legislative Proposals

Title 42 authority in Title 8. Create an authority akin to the Title 42

Public Health authority that has been used during the COVID-19 pandemic

to expel illegal aliens across the border immediately when certain non-

health conditions are met, such as loss of operational control of the border.

Mandatory appropriation for border wall system infrastructure. The

monies appropriated would be used to fund the construction of additional

border wall systems, technology, and personnel in strategic locations in

accordance with the Border Security Improvement Plan (BSIP).

Appropriation for Port of Entry infrastructure. Border security is not

addressed solely by systems in between the ports of entry. POEs require

technology and physical upgrades as well as an inﬂux of personnel to meet

capacity demands and act as the literal gatekeepers for the country. This is

the ﬁrst line of defense against drug and human smuggling operations.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Unaccompanied minors

1. Congress should repeal Section 235 of the William Wilberforce

Tracking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA),

which provides numerous immigration beneﬁts to unaccompanied

alien children and only encourages more parents to send their children

across the border illegally and unaccompanied. These children too often

become tracking victims, which means that the TVPRA has failed.

2. If an alternative to repealing Section 235 of the TVPRA is necessary,

the section should be amended so that all unaccompanied children,

regardless of nationality, may be returned to their home countries in a

safe and ecient manner. Currently, the TVPRA allows only children

from contiguous countries (Canada and Mexico) to be returned while

every other unaccompanied minor must be placed into a lengthy

process that usually results in the minor’s landing in the custody of an

illegal alien family member.

3. Congress must end the Flores Settlement Agreement by explicitly

setting nationwide terms and standards for family and unaccompanied

detention and housing. Such standards should focus on meeting human

needs and should allow for large-scale use of temporary facilities (for

example, tents).

4. Congress should amend the Homeland Security Act and portions of

the TVPRA to move detention of alien children expressly from the

Department of Health and Human Services to DHS.

Asylum reform

1. The standard for a credible fear of persecution should be raised and

aligned to the standard for asylum. It should also account speciﬁcally for

credibility determinations that are a key element of the asylum claim.

2. Codify former asylum bars and third-country transit rules.

3. Congress should eliminate the particular social group protected ground

as vague and overbroad or, in the alternative, provide a clear deﬁnition

with parameters that at a minimum codify the holding in Matter of A-B-

that gang violence and domestic violence are not grounds for asylum.

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Department of Homeland Security

Parole reform. Congress should end the widespread abuse of parole in

contravention of statute and return it to its origins as an extraordinary

remedy for very limited purposes.

NGOs and processing. Congress should halt funds given to

nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to process and transport

illegal aliens into and throughout the United States. Such funds and

infrastructure, including the DHS joint processing centers, should be

redirected to secure the border, detain aliens, and provide space for

immigration court proceedings.

Other pathways for border crossers. While Congress should use its

oversight authority to ensure that Expedited Removal is used to the fullest

extent and followed to the letter of the law, other paths for border crossers

should be included in a legislative package.

1. Migrant protection protocols. Update the statutory language

providing the basis for the Remain in Mexico program as needed to

withstand judicial scrutiny and executive inaction.

2. Asylum Cooperative Agreements. While the agreements themselves

must be negotiated, Congress should mandate that the executive branch

work faithfully to negotiate and execute ACAs and set parameters

to ensure that an unwilling executive cannot renege on an existing

agreement or abandon the eort.

3. Other expedited pathways. Congress should explicitly permit

programs akin to the Prompt Asylum Claim Review (PACR) and

Humanitarian Asylum Review Process (HARP) programs.

Employment authorization

1. Congress should reassert control of employment authorization, which is

subject to rampant regulatory abuse, and limit it to certain categories of

legal immigrants and non-immigrants.

2. Congress should also permanently authorize E-Verify and make

it mandatory.

State and local law enforcement

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

1. Congress should unequivocally authorize state and local law

enforcement to participate in immigration and border security actions

in compliance with Arizona v. United States.

2. Congress should require compliance with immigration detainers to

the maximum extent consistent with the Tenth Amendment and set

ﬁnancial disincentives for jurisdictions that implement either ocial or

unocial sanctuary policies.

Prosecutorial discretion. Congress should restrict the authority for

prosecutorial discretion to eliminate it as a “catch-all” excuse for limiting

immigration enforcement.

Mandatory detention. Congress should eliminate ambiguous

discretionary language in Title 8 that aliens “may” be detained and clarify

that aliens “shall” be detained. This language, which contrasts with other

“shall detain” language in statute, creates unhelpful ambiguity and allows the

executive branch to ignore the will of Congress.

Regulations

Withdraw Biden Administration regulations and reissue new

regulations in the following areas:

1. Credible Fear/Asylum Jurisdiction for Border Crossers.

2. Public Charge.

T-Visa and U-Visa reform. Unless and until T and U visas are repealed,

each program needs to be reformed to ensure that only legitimate victims

of tracking and crimes who are actively providing signiﬁcant material

assistance to law enforcement are eligible for spots in the queue.

Repeal TPS designations.

H-1B reform. Transform the program into an elite mechanism

exclusively to bring in the “best and brightest” at the highest wages while

simultaneously ensuring that U.S. workers are not being disadvantaged by

the program. H-1B is a means only to supplement the U.S. economy and to

keep companies competitive, not to depress U.S. labor markets artiﬁcially in

certain industries.

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Department of Homeland Security

Employment authorization. Along with the legislative proposal, take

regulatory action to limit the classes of aliens eligible for work authorization.

Executive Orders

Pathways for border crossers

1. Direct the Department of State and the Department of Homeland

Security to reinstate Asylum Cooperative Agreements with Northern

Triangle Countries immediately.

2. Recommence negotiations with Mexico to fully implement the Remain

in Mexico Protocols.

3. Reinstate, to the extent possible, expedited pathways with full credible

fear/immigration court process (PACR and HARP).

4. Prohibit the use of Notices to Report, the use of any funds for travel

into the interior of the United States, and government ﬂights or

transportation for aliens.

5. Mandate that ICE use all detention space in full compliance with

Section 235 of the INA, issue weekly reports on detention capacity, and

provide authority for low-level temporary capacity (for example, tents)

once permanent space is full.

6. Eliminate the use of ATD for border crossers except in rare cases and

only with the explicit authority of the Secretary.

7. Prohibit the use of parole except in matters that are certiﬁed by the

Secretary of Homeland Security as requiring action for humanitarian or

signiﬁcant public beneﬁt reasons, and prohibit the use of parole in any

categorical circumstance.

Enforcement

1. Restrict prosecutorial discretion to eliminate it as a “catch-all” excuse

for limiting immigration enforcement.

2. Mandate the use of E-Verify for anyone doing business with

the government.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

3. Designate USCIS as Intelligence Community–adjacent, ensuring that it

has access to national security and law enforcement databases.

4. Rescind all memoranda limiting enforcement of immigration laws

including those identifying sensitive zones.

5. End ICE’s widespread use of termination and administrative closure of

cases in immigration court.

Averting or curtailing a mass migration event

1. Provide that whenever the Secretary of Homeland Security determines

that an actual or anticipated mass migration of aliens en route to or

arriving o the coast of the U.S. presents urgent circumstances requiring

an immediate federal response, the Secretary may make, subject to the

approval of the President, rules and regulations prohibiting in whole or

in part the introduction of persons from such countries or places as he

or she shall designate in order to avert or curtail such mass migration

and for such period of time as is deemed necessary, including through

the expulsion of such aliens. Such rule and regulation making shall not

be subject to the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act.

2. Provide that notwithstanding any other provision of law, when the

Secretary makes such a determination and then promulgates, subject to

the approval of the President, such rules and regulations, the Secretary

shall have the authority to waive all legal requirements of Title 8 that

the Secretary, in his or her sole discretion, determines are necessary to

avert or curtail the mass migration.

Subregulatory Matters

USCIS priorities/structural changes

1. Ensure that focus is returned to vetting, base eligibility of applicants,

and fraud detection.

2. Realign the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS)

to ensure agencywide consistency on implementation of fraud detection

and vetting policies.

3. Review and repeal any internal agency memo that is inconsistent with

the priorities described in this chapter.

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Department of Homeland Security

287(g) program. Issue a memo prohibiting any jurisdiction that applies

from being denied access to the program unless good cause is shown.

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) priorities. Issue Department

Management Directive (and ICE companion Directive) to refocus HSI

on immigration oenses and criminal oenses typically associated with

immigration (for example, human tracking). All criminal investigative

work without a clear nexus to the border or otherwise to Title 8 should be

turned over to the appropriate federal agency.

Blackie’s Warrants. ICE OPLA, ERO, and HSI should issue a joint internal

memo on operationalizing Blackie’s Warrants for immediate use on

worksite enforcement and other appropriate investigations and operations.

FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY (FEMA)

Needed Reforms

FEMA is the lead federal agency in preparing for and responding to disasters,

but it is overtasked, overcompensates for the lack of state and local preparedness

and response, and is regularly in deep debt. After passage of the 1988 Staord Act,

the number of declared federal disasters rose dramatically as most disaster costs

were shifted from states and local governments to the federal government. In

addition, state-friendly FEMA regulations, such as a “per capita indicator,” failed

to maintain the pace of inﬂation and made it easy to meet disaster declaration

thresholds. This combination has left FEMA unprepared in both readiness and

funding for the truly catastrophic disasters in which its services are most needed.

Reform of FEMA requires a greater emphasis on federalism and state and local

preparedness, leaving FEMA to focus on large, widespread disasters.

Under the Staord Act, FEMA has the authority to adjust the per capita indi-

cator for damages, which creates a threshold under which states and localities are

not eligible for public assistance. FEMA should raise the threshold because the per

capita indicator has not kept pace with inﬂation, and this over time has eectively

lowered the threshold for public assistance and caused FEMA’s resources to be

stretched perilously thin. Alternatively, applying a deductible could accomplish

a similar outcome while also incentivizing states to take a more proactive role in

their own preparedness and response capabilities. In addition, Congress should

change the cost-share arrangement so that the federal government covers 25 per-

cent of the costs for small disasters with the cost share reaching a maximum of 75

percent for truly catastrophic disasters.

FEMA is also responsible for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP),

nearly all of which is issued by the federal government. Washington provides

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

insurance at prices lower than the actuarially fair rate, thereby subsidizing ﬂood

insurance. Then, when ﬂood costs exceed NFIP’s revenue, FEMA seeks taxpay-

er-funded bailouts. Current NFIP debt is $20.5 billion, and in 2017, Congress

canceled $16 billion in debt when FEMA reached its borrowing authority limit.

These subsidies and bailouts only encourage more development in ﬂood zones,

increasing the potential losses to both NFIP and the taxpayer. The NFIP should

be wound down and replaced with private insurance starting with the least risky

areas currently identiﬁed by the program.

Budget Issues

FEMA manages all grants for DHS, and these grants have become pork for states,

localities, and special-interest groups. Since 2002, DHS/FEMA have provided

more than $56 billion in preparedness grants for state, local, tribal, and territorial

governments. For FY 2023, President Biden requested more than $3.5 billion for

federal assistance grants.

Funds provided under these programs do not provide

measurable gains for preparedness or resiliency. Rather, more than any objective

needs, political interests appear to direct the ﬂow of nondisaster funds.

The principles of federalism should be upheld; these indicate that states better

understand their unique needs and should bear the costs of their particularized

programs. FEMA employees in Washington, D.C., should not determine how bil-

lions of federal tax dollars should be awarded to train local law enforcement ocers

in Texas, harden cybersecurity infrastructure in Utah, or supplement migrant

shelters in Arizona. DHS should not be in the business of handing out federal tax

dollars: These grants should be terminated. Accomplishing this, however, will

require action by Members of Congress who repeatedly vote to fund grants for

political reasons. The transition should focus on building resilience and return

on investment in line with real threats.

Personnel

FEMA currently has four Senate-conﬁrmed positions. Only the Administrator

should be conﬁrmed by the Senate; other political leadership need not be con-

ﬁrmed by the Senate. Additionally, FEMA’s “springing Cabinet position” should be

eliminated, as this creates signiﬁcant unnecessary challenges to the functioning of

the whole of DHS at points in time when coordinated responses are most needed.

CYBERSECURITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY (CISA)

Needed Reforms

CISA is supposed to have two key roles: (1) protection of the federal civilian

government networks (.gov) while coordinating the execution of national cyber

defense and sharing information with non-federal and private-sector partners

— 155 —

Department of Homeland Security

and (2) national coordination of critical infrastructure security and resilience. Yet

CISA has rapidly expanded its scope into lanes where it does not belong, the most

recent and most glaring example being censorship of so-called misinformation

and disinformation.

CISA’s funding and resources should align narrowly with the foregoing two

mission requirements. The component’s emergency communications and Chem-

ical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) roles should be moved to FEMA;

its school security functions should be transferred to state homeland security

oces; and CISA should refrain from duplicating cybersecurity functions done

elsewhere at the Department of Defense, FBI, National Security Agency, and U.S.

Secret Service.

Of the utmost urgency is immediately ending CISA’s counter-mis/disinforma-

tion eorts. The federal government cannot be the arbiter of truth. CISA began

this work because of alleged Russian misinformation in the 2016 election, which

in fact turned out to be a Clinton campaign “dirty trick.” The Intelligence Commu

nity, including the NSA or DOD, should counter foreign actors. At the time of this

writing, release of the Twitter Files has demonstrated that CISA has devolved into

an unconstitutional censoring and election engineering apparatus of the political

Left. In any event, the entirety of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee

should be dismissed on Day One.

For election security, CISA should help states and localities assess whether

they have good cyber hygiene in their hardware and software in preparation for

an election—but nothing more. This is of value to smaller localities, particularly by

ﬂagging who is attacking their websites. CISA should not be signiﬁcantly involved

closer to an election. Nor should it participate in messaging or propaganda.

U.S. COAST GUARD (USCG)

Needed Reforms

The U.S. Coast Guard ﬂeet should be sized to the needs of great-power compe-

tition, speciﬁcally focusing eorts and investment on protecting U.S. waters, all

while seeking to ﬁnd (where feasible) more economical ways to perform USCG

missions. The scope of the Coast Guard’s mission needs to be focused on protecting

U.S. resources and interests in its home waters, speciﬁcally its Exclusive Economic

Zone (200 miles from shore). USCG’s budget should address the growing demand

for it to address the increasing threat from the Chinese ﬁshing ﬂeet in home waters

as well as narcotics and migrant ﬂows in the Caribbean and Eastern Paciﬁc. Doing

this will require reversing years of shortfalls in shipbuilding, maintenance, and

upgrades of shore facilities as well as seeking more cost-eective ship and facility

designs. In wartime, the USCG supports the Navy, but it has limited capability and

capacity to support wartime missions outside home waters.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

New Policies

The Coast Guard’s mission set should be scaled down to match congressio-

nal budgeting in the long term, with any increased funding going to acquisitions

based on an updated Fleet Mix Analysis. The current shipbuilding plan is insuf-

ﬁcient based on USCG analysis, and the necessary numbers of planned Oshore

Patrol Cutters and National Security Cutters are not supported by congressional

budgets. The Coast Guard should be required to submit to Congress a long-range

shipbuilding plan modeled on the Navy’s 30-Year Shipbuilding Plan. Ideally this

should become part of the Navy plan in a new comprehensive naval long-range

shipbuilding plan to ensure better coherency in the services’ requirements.

Outside of home waters, and following the Caribbean and Eastern Paciﬁc, the

Coast Guard should prioritize limited resources to the nation’s expansive Paciﬁc

waters to counter growing Chinese inﬂuence and encroachment. Expansion of

facilities in American Samoa and basing of cutters there is one clear step in this

direction and should be accelerated; looking to free association states (Palau, the

Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands) for

enhanced and persistent presence, assuming adequate congressional funding, is

another such step.

The Secretary of the Navy should convene a naval board to review and reset

requirements for Coast Guard wartime mission support. To inform and validate

these updated requirements, the Chief of Naval Operations and the Coast Guard

Commandant should execute dedicated annual joint wartime drills focused on

USCG’s wartime missions in the Paciﬁc (the money for these activities should be

allocated from DOD). An interagency maritime coordination oce focused on

developing and overseeing comprehensive eorts to advance the nation’s mari-

time interests and increase its military and commercial competitiveness should

be established.

Given the USCG’s history of underfunded missions, if the Coast Guard is to con-

tinue to maintain the Arctic mission, money to do so adequately will be required

over and above current funding levels. Consideration should be given to shifting

the Arctic mission to the Navy. Either way, the Arctic mission should be closely

coordinated with our Canadian, Danish, and other allies.

Personnel

USCG is facing recruitment challenges similar to those faced by the military

services. The Administration should stop the messaging on wokeness and diversity

and focus instead on attracting the best talent for USCG. Simultaneously, consis-

tent with the Department of Defense, USCG should also make a serious eort to

re-vet any promotions and hiring that occurred on the Biden Administration’s

watch while also re-onboarding any USCG personnel who were dismissed from

service for refusing to take the COVID-19 “vaccine,” with time in service credited

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Department of Homeland Security

to such returnees. These two steps could be foundational for any improvements

in the recruiting process.

U.S. SECRET SERVICE (USSS)

Needed Reforms

The U.S. Secret Service must be the world’s best protective agency. Currently, the

agency is distracted by its dual mission of protection and ﬁnancial investigations.

The result has been a long series of high-proﬁle embarrassments and security fail-

ures, perhaps most notably its allowing of then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris

to be inside the Democratic National Committee oce on January 6, 2021, while

a pipe bomb was outside. Despite the great size and scope of the January 6 inves-

tigation, this high-proﬁle incident of danger to a protectee remains unresolved.

The failures of the USSS protective mission are too numerous to list here. A

December 2015 bipartisan report from the House Oversight Committee listed

dozens of such incidents as well as needed recommendations for reform.

This

chapter adopts those ﬁndings and recommendations in whole, especially the

ﬁnding that USSS’s dual-mission structure detracts from the agency’s protective

capabilities.

At the time of that report, USSS agents spent only one-third of their work hours

on protection-related activities as opposed to investigative activities. USSS was

established initially to investigate counterfeit currency, but its mission has evolved

over the decades to prioritize electronic ﬁnancial crimes. For example, as this chap-

ter was being written, all 15 of the USSS’s most wanted individuals were wanted

for ﬁnancial crimes, many of them international in nature.

Notably, the last head of the agency left not for a protection-related job, but to be

the Chief Security Ocer of social media company SnapChat. This is a pattern that

has developed over the years, with agents seeking to burnish their online ﬁnancial

crimes credentials to secure corporate security jobs. Coupled with some of the

lowest morale in the federal government, the agency has completely lost sight of

the primacy of its protective mission.

New Policies

USSS should transfer to the Department of Justice and Department of the

Treasury all investigations that are not related to its protective function. It should

begin the logistical operation of closing all ﬁeld oces throughout the country and

internationally to the extent they are not taken over by Treasury or Justice. USSS

agents stationed outside of Washington, D.C., should be transferred to work in

Immigration and Customs Enforcement ﬁeld oces where they would continue to

be the “boots on the ground” to follow up on threat reports throughout the country

and liaise with local law enforcement for visits by protectees.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

The only investigations not related to USSS’s protective function that agents

should pursue would be directed by HSI and relate to tracking the ﬁnancial crimes

associated with illegal immigration. This should include tracing remittances, any

funds that are used to pay coyotes or the cartels, and payments by businesses to

illegal aliens and all other crimes associated with illegal immigration.

USSS should keep visitor logs for all facilities where the President works or

resides. The Biden Administration has evaded such transparency with President

Biden spending a historic amount of time for a President at his Delaware residence.

This has left the American people in the dark as to who is inﬂuencing the highest

levels of their own government.

Budget

The suggested reforms would result in a signiﬁcant USSS budget reduction,

primarily because the agency would relinquish dozens of physical oces through-

out the U.S. and internationally. Some amount of savings should be used to ﬁx the

personnel problems and for recruitment initiatives aimed at individuals who are

inclined to join a protection-focused agency.

Personnel

As documented extensively in the above-referenced 2015 bipartisan congressio-

nal report, low morale and high turnover are key drivers of USSS problems. With

their mission focused on protection, agents would no longer spend the bulk of

their time developing unrelated skillsets. Instead, USSS agents could hone their

protection skills and pursue a protection career path in the agency rather than

quickly leaving USSS for high-paying corporate security jobs.

The Uniform Division (UD) of USSS requires a signiﬁcant stang increase.

As documented in the bipartisan report, understang results in unpredictable

and long hours, which in turn result in high turnover, which only compounds

the problem.

Another key issue is that UD ocers lack the ability to enforce criminal laws

outside the immediate vicinity of the White House. As the District of Columbia

is a federal jurisdiction and currently is beholden to the trend of progressive pro-

crime policies, UD ocers should enforce all applicable laws. The result would

be to allow UD ocers to gain more law enforcement experience—an attractive

credential that would improve morale.

TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (TSA)

The TSA model is costly and unwisely makes TSA both the regulator and the

regulated organization responsible for screening operations. As part of an eort

to shrink federal bureaucracies and bring private-sector know-how to govern-

ment programs, TSA is ripe for reform. The U.S. should look to the Canadian and

— 159 —

Department of Homeland Security

European private models of providing aviation screening manpower to lower TSA

costs while maintaining security. Until it is privatized, TSA should be treated as a

national security provider, and its workforce should be deunionized immediately.

TSA could privatize the screening function by expanding the current Screening

Partnership Program (SPP) to all airports. TSA would turn screening operations

over to airports that would choose security contractors that meet TSA regulations

and would oversee and test airports for compliance. Alternatively, it could adopt

a Canadian-style system, turning over screening operations to a new government

corporation that contracts screening service to private contractors. Contractors

would bid to provide their services to a set of airports in a particular region, likely

with around 10 regions nationally. TSA would continue to set security regulations

and test airports for compliance, and the new corporation would establish any oper-

ating procedures or customer service standards. With either model, the intelligence

function for domestic travel patterns should remain with the U.S. government.

The federal government could expect to save 15 percent–20 percent from the

existing aviation screening budget, but savings could be signiﬁcantly larger. Service

to travelers should also improve.

MANAGEMENT DIRECTORATE (MGMT)

The Management Directorate is unnecessarily large because each individual

component also maintains its own respective management oce. Too much over-

lap and red tape exist between headquarters (HQ) and components with regard

to such functions as hiring, information technology, and procurement. Finance

is unique given that HQ needs to address reprogramming, and component bud-

gets need to roll up into all-department budgets. The Directorate requires intense

reform, the speciﬁcs of which should be further assessed given its expansive nature.

Front Oce (FO). Immediately place a small team of advisers with a deep

understanding of operational management—but who have some experience in

government because they will need to understand the nuance of Reduction in Force

(RIF), appropriations hurdles when dealing with U.S. government reorganization,

etc.—to sit in the MGMT FO (reporting to the Secretary, ultimately either S1 or S2).

One of these advisers should understand U.S. government employment law and

be prepared to relocate personnel and downsize oces accordingly. This includes

reverting to the original understanding of the function of individuals appointed

to the Senior Executive Service: competent managers who can work capably with

any subject matter and in any location.

Over the ﬁrst few months of the Administration, the advisers’ role should be

to assess what structural and procedural changes are appropriate. They should

dissect the current standing Management Directives and the approval processes

in place to implement and/or change them; Oce of the Chief Human Capital

Ocer’s processes and procedures; hurdles to the Oce of Chief Procurement

— 160 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Ocer’s procurement of innovative technology; and the facilities plan, including

the consolidation into the St. Elizabeth’s campus. They should also be prepared

to help implement any end to unionization of DHS components in response to an

executive order pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 7103.

Oce of the Chief Financial Ocer (OCFO). DHS responsibilities to work with

Congress have been split between the Oce of Legislative Aairs (OLA) and OCFO.

OLA deals with the authorizing committees on policy issues, and OCFO works with

the appropriations committees on budget planning, execution, and reprogramming.

This split creates communication and visibility issues within DHS and inconsistency in

answers to Congress. This is an issue not only within the HQ model, but also through-

out the components. Either appropriations personnel should be moved to OLA and

there should be a “dotted line” reporting structure to OCFO, or a policy that OLA per-

sonnel must be included on communications to Congress should be implemented.

To avoid “answer shopping” by congressional sta, particularly appropriations

sta, all budget communications from the OCFO, including from the CFO him/

herself, should ﬁrst be provided to the Director of OLA to ensure consistency of

information, messaging, and answers. This may be deemed awkward given that the

OCFO is a Senate-conﬁrmed position, but it is necessary to avoid inaccuracies and

inconsistencies in messaging.

Federal Protective Service (FPS). FPS needs federal agents to develop, share,

and receive operational information and maintain direct contact with the Secretary

in the midst of heightened threats. Before the summer 2020 civil unrest, position-

ing FPS under MGMT was justiﬁed, but given the current climate, they should not

be reporting through MGMT. This may be especially problematic if a Management

Directorate Under Secretary lacking law enforcement or military experience is in place

when a situation like summer 2020 arises. FPS should report to the Secretary as other

components (e.g., FLETC) do. This would add little to the Secretary’s current burden

unless or until civil unrest arises, at which point reporting to the Secretary creates a

direct line between the primary DHS decision-maker (S1 or S2) and the FPS Director.

Regarding operational communication, there should be information-sharing

mandates (MOAs)—which are applicable under speciﬁc circumstances where fed-

eral facilities are involved—between FPS and the U.S. Marshals, U.S. Park Police,

and FBI. Agreements with U.S. Capitol Police and Supreme Court Police should

also be considered, but it is noteworthy that those entities are jurisdictionally out-

side of the executive branch.

OFFICE OF STRATEGY, POLICY, AND PLANS (PLCY)

Department-Level Reforms. PLCY should perform a complete inventory,

analysis, and reevaluation of the department’s domestic terrorism lines of eort

to ensure that they are consistent with the President’s priorities, congressional

authorization, and Americans’ constitutional rights.

— 161 —

Department of Homeland Security

PLCY should likewise do a complete inventory, analysis, and evaluation of any

of the department’s work, in coordination with social media outlets, to censor or

otherwise change or aect Americans’ speech. PLCY should comprehensively

report on and publish this history in full so that the American people can know

the facts. The department should remove all personnel who participated in any

of this activity.

The department has signiﬁcant authority and budget to provide grants for var-

ious purposes. This eort is diused across components and lacks central policy

thought and coordination. PLCY should set a departmentwide policy that estab-

lishes how granting choices are to be made and is consistent with the President’s

priorities. PLCY should clear all granting decisions to ensure that they are con-

sistent with the new policy.

PLCY-Wide Reforms. PLCY should work with Congress to streamline the

department’s reporting requirements. Because there has not been a departmen-

tal reauthorization bill and these requirements have been added piecemeal over

two decades, they signiﬁcantly overlap and even conﬂict—wasting resources and

distracting from the department’s mission. PLCY should seek the elimination of

the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review.

Issue-Area Reforms. PLCY should bolster its Immigration Statistics program

and make it the one-stop shop for the timely production of all department immi-

gration statistics and analysis.

OFFICE OF INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYSIS (I&A)

The Oce of Intelligence and Analysis should be eliminated both because

it has not added value and because it has been weaponized for domestic politi-

cal purposes.

The Intelligence Community (IC) already provides raw intelligence to DHS

components. In addition, the FBI, National Counter Terrorism Center, and other

agencies where necessary already provide holistic threat assessment products to

federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as to private-sector

entities at both the classiﬁed and unclassiﬁed levels where appropriate. I&A’s work

as an interlocuter between the IC and DHS components’ individual intelligence

operations on the one hand and government and the private sector on the other,

as well as between the IC and the components, is at best duplicative. At worst, it

is used and discussed in the media as a political tool, resulting in more harm than

good to the U.S. government and IC writ large.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is not a member

of the IC, should create cyber intelligence products in a collaborative fashion with

the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command. Such eorts would lead

to timelier usable classiﬁed and unclassiﬁed products for stakeholders that exceed

the quality and capability of I&A’s eorts. This same principle applies to other

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

components as well: CBP, TSA, etc. all have their own intelligence operations and

are better situated with their subject-matter experts to make their own assessments.

The National Operations Center (NOC) within the Oce of Operations Coor-

dination (OPS) should absorb those select I&A functions and tactically proﬁcient

personnel that need to be maintained (for example, technical support to the

National Vetting Center). The remainder of I&A should be eliminated. The OPS

entity should maintain IC status, and the only intelligence mission set should be

to provide situational awareness and the dissemination of operational information

or raw intelligence (no analysis or products) at classiﬁed and unclassiﬁed levels to

executive leadership across the department, not outside of DHS.

OFFICE OF THE GENERAL COUNSEL (OGC)

Needed Reforms

OGC should advise principals as to how DHS can execute its missions within

the law instead of advising principals as to why they cannot execute regulations,

policies, and programs.

Instead of each component’s chief counsel reporting to the Headquarters Gen-

eral Counsel (with a solid line) and indirectly to his or her component head (with

a dotted line), the accountability should be reversed. Due to the dierent missions

throughout the department, the components can better manage the legal issues

of their speciﬁc mission than headquarters can. Thus, the chief counsel (or equiv-

alent) of each component should report directly to the component head, report

indirectly to the DHS General Counsel, and be accountable to the component head.

The report to the General Counsel is to ensure consistency of advice across DHS.

OGC should hire signiﬁcantly more Schedule C/political appointees who in

turn supervise career sta and manage their output. DHS’s mission is politically

charged, and the legal function cannot be allowed to thwart the Administration’s

agenda by providing stilted or erroneous legal positions and decision-making.

OGC should serve as the center of the response to the legal challenges facing the

department to ensure a streamlined, consistent response to a litany of issues facing

the department. It is important to ensure consistency across all potential legal

positions taken by the department, including those arising in litigation, congressio-

nal oversight, and inquiries received from the Inspector General, U.S. Government

Accountability Oce (GAO), and Congressional Research Service and pursuant to

the Freedom of Information Act.

OGC should invest in e-discovery software and contract with a vendor to manage

the department’s e-discovery. This would be beneﬁcial both in litigation and in

responding to congressional oversight. Removing delays in e-discovery processing

would also reduce the issuance of subpoenas to the department and the generation

of negative press for the Administration that comes from delayed responses.

— 163 —

Department of Homeland Security

The old practice of relying on Executive Secretary taskings to pull documents for

congressional requests does not work: It is slow, the metrics for what documents

are gathered and how are unclear, and the components do not gather responsive

material in an ecient manner. Document gathering should come from the Oce

of the Chief Information Ocer or a relevant technological element within the

department that can pull responsive communications quickly.

OFFICE OF LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS (OLA); OFFICE

OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS (OPA); AND OFFICE OF

PARTNERSHIP AND ENGAGEMENT (OPE)

DHS’s external communications function should be consolidated and reformed

so that the President’s agenda can be implemented more eectively. The Oce of

Partnership and Engagement should be merged into the Oce of Public Aairs.

In many Cabinet agencies, outreach to companies and partner organizations is

similarly performed by the Oce of Public Aairs. This would also accomplish a

needed DHS organizational and management reform to decrease the number of

direct reports to the Secretary.

Both public and legislative aairs sta in the components should report directly

to their respective headquarters equivalent. This would help to avoid a failure by

the department to speak with one voice. It would also allow the component sta to

perform more eciently, overseen by expert managers in their trade. This would

also allow DHS to respond to crises eectively by shifting sta as needed to the

most pressing issues and better use underutilized sta at less active components.

Only political appointees in OLA should interact directly with congressional sta

on all inquiries, including budget and appropriations matters. To prevent congres-

sional sta from answer shopping among HQ OLA, the DHS OCFO, and components,

DHS legislative aairs appropriations sta should be moved from MGMT OCFO

into OLA. Regarding components, budget/appropriations sta should move from

component budget oces into component legislative aairs oces.

Because dozens of congressional committees and subcommittees either have or

claim to have jurisdiction over some DHS function, DHS sta from the Secretary

on down spend so much time responding to congressional hearing and brieﬁng

requests, letters, and questions for the record that they are left with little time

to do their assigned job of protecting the homeland. The next President should

reach an agreement with congressional leadership to limit committee jurisdiction

to one authorizing committee and one appropriations committee in each cham

ber. If congressional leadership will not limit their committees’ jurisdiction over

DHS, DHS should identify one authorizing and appropriations committee in each

chamber and answer only to it.

To focus more precisely on the DHS mission, OLA sta should also identify

outdated and needless congressional reporting requirements and notify Congress

— 164 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

that DHS will cease reporting on such matters. For other congressional reports,

OLA should implement a sunset date so that Congress must regularly demonstrate

the need for speciﬁc data.

In both OPA and OLA, a change in mission and culture is needed. The clients

of both components are the President and the Secretary, not the media, external

organizations, or Congress. OPA and OLA should change from being compliance

correspondents for outside entities airing grievances to serving as messengers and

advocates for the President and the Secretary.

OFFICE OF OPERATIONS COORDINATION (OPS)

OPS was originally conceived by then-Secretary Jeh Johnson as an entity tasked

with coordinating cross-DHS assets on an as-needed basis using a joint operations

approach. This role is particularly challenging because of the disparate nature of

mission sets across DHS.

OPS should absorb a very small number of tactical intelligence professionals from

I&A as the rest of I&A is shut down. Such intelligence ocers would be a subordinate

element within OPS placed within the National Operations Center. The intelligence

ocers would provide tactical intelligence support for upcoming or ongoing opera-

tions in addition to liaising with their agency/component counterparts. There would

be no strategic intelligence analysis done as part of OPS or its new I&A sub-element.

In addition to facilitating all-of-DHS coordination on a task-by-task basis, OPS

would be responsible for ongoing situational awareness for the Secretary and

Deputy Secretary.

In addition to long-term stang, OPS would have cycling billets from each of

the major agencies and components to facilitate its most eective working rela-

tionships across DHS.

OFFICE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

(CRCL) AND PRIVACY OFFICE (PRIV)

The Homeland Security Act established only an Ocer of CRCL, not an oce.

The only substantive function Congress then assigned to the ocer was to review

and assess information alleging abuses of civil rights. Since then, Congress and

CRCL itself have signiﬁcantly expanded CRCL’s scope and size well beyond its

original intent or helpful purpose. CRCL now operates and views itself as a quasi-

DHS Oce of Inspector General. This results in a considerable waste of limited

component resources, which are routinely tasked to address redundant, overly

burdensome, and uninformed demands from CRCL. It is therefore important to

recalibrate CRCL’s scope and reach.

The organizational structure of both CRCL and the Privacy Oce should be

changed to ensure proper alignment with the department’s mission. The Oce

of General Counsel should absorb both CRCL’s and PRIV’s necessary functions

— 165 —

Department of Homeland Security

and sta. Although the CRCL Ocer and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)

Ocer/Privacy Ocer are statutory, their oces are not mandatory. CRCL and

PRIV Ocers and employees should report to a Deputy General Counsel, who

would be a political appointee.

The CRCL Ocer should focus on equal employment opportunity (EEO)

compliance and the civil liberties function and investigate matters only within

Headquarters or support components. Operational components’ civil liberties o-

cers should investigate incidents regarding their own agencies. The CRCL Ocer

should ensure that all civil liberties or civil rights complaints are sent to the Oce

of Inspector General (OIG) for review. If the OIG chooses not to investigate, the

CRCL Ocer should only provide supportive information on possible courses of

action for complainants.

The PRIV Ocer and FOIA Ocer should focus on FOIA, Privacy Compliance

Policy, and Privacy Incident Response. The Deputy General Counsel should provide

guidance to DHS leadership regarding Privacy Compliance and Privacy Incident

Response. To ensure that only U.S. persons and Lawful Permanent Residents are

provided protections as required by the Privacy Act, all DHS issuances should be

updated to reﬂect that DHS protects the privacy of individuals as required by the

Privacy Act (U.S. persons and lawful permanent residents);

the Judicial Redress

Act of 2015;

and any U.S.–European Union Data Protection and Privacy Agreement.

Because of the lack of public trust in the Oce of Intelligence and Analysis,

CRCL and PRIV sta should no longer review intelligence products or provide

guidance on any intelligence products or reports.

A consistent, clear, and singular message is necessary for DHS’s mission.

Therefore, all communications and/or meetings with any federal, state, local, or

nongovernment groups should be limited to the Deputy General Counsel. In addi-

tion, given the narrower scope of work, OGC should disband the outside advisory

boards and the more than 50 working groups in which CRCL and PRIV currently

participate. Finally, CRCL and PRIV should no longer issue bulletins or periodicals.

OFFICE OF THE IMMIGRATION DETENTION OMBUDSMAN

(OIDO) AND OFFICE OF THE CITIZENSHIP AND

IMMIGRATION SERVICES OMBUDSMAN (CISOMB)

OIDO. The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman should be

eliminated. This requires a statutory change in Section 106 of the Consolidated

Appropriations Act of 2020.

OIDO was designed to create another impediment to detention through an

additional layer of so-called oversight. Several agencies already perform detention

oversight. ICE conducts internal audits of facilities and investigates complaints

against ICE agents through the Oce of Professional Responsibility. Similarly, CBP

accepts individual complaints regarding facilities through the Joint Intake Center

— 166 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

and manages complaints against agents through the OPR. In addition, CRCL, OIG,

GAO, and Congress all perform detention oversight. These multiple bodies place

unmanageable and unreasonable burdens on ICE to manage several sometimes

inconsistent audits/inspections at the same time.

If OIDO remains a DHS component, the Secretary should immediately issue a direc-

tive stripping CRCL of its immigration portfolio. OIDO is in a better position with

dedicated resources and immigration experts to perform this function than CRCL is.

Allowing both oces to conduct detention oversight is duplicative and wasteful.

The Secretary should conduct a thorough review of the eectiveness of Direc-

tive 0810.1,

which is widely interpreted as requiring a wholesale referral of cases

to OIG. In reality, OIG investigates only a small fraction of them and often sits on

cases for longer than the ﬁve-day window speciﬁed in the directive. Meanwhile,

the other agencies wait in limbo to execute their duties.

CISOMB. The Oce of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman

should be eliminated. The DHS bureaucracy is too large, and the Secretary has too

many direct reports. CISOMB’s policy functions can be performed (and sometimes

already are) by OIG and GAO. The specialized case work can be moved into USCIS

as a special unit, much like the IRS Taxpayer Advocate. This would require a stat-

utory change to Section 452 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

If CISOMB continues as a DHS component, a policy should be issued that

prohibits CISOMB from assisting illegal aliens to obtain beneﬁts. Currently,

approximately 15 percent–20 percent of CISOMB’s workload consists of helping

DACA applicants obtain and renew beneﬁts, including work authorization. This

is not the role of an ombudsman. In addition, the government should be a neutral

adjudicator, not an advocate for illegal aliens.

AGENCY RELATIONSHIPS

It is critical to the achievement of the President’s policy objectives that all agen-

cies and departments touching immigration policy work in sync with one another.

While there are numerous areas in which such cooperation is critical, immigration

has proven to be the most dicult. Accordingly, several objectives will be necessary

for each of the following departments.

Department of Health and Human Services: Agree to move the Oce

of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to DHS or, alternatively, implement an

aggressive and regular eort by the Secretary of HHS to ensure that ORR is

fully pursuing presidential objectives in support of DHS.

Department of Defense: Assist in aggressively building the border wall

system on America’s southern border. Additionally, explicitly acknowledge

and adjust personnel and priorities to participate actively in the defense

— 167 —

Department of Homeland Security

of America’s borders, including using military personnel and hardware to

prevent illegal crossings between ports of entry and channel all cross-border

trac to legal ports of entry.

Department of Justice: Agree to move the Executive Oce for

Immigration Review and the Oce of Immigration Litigation to DHS

and/or, alternatively, to treat the administrative law judges (immigration

judges and Board of Immigration Appeals) as national security personnel,

decertify their union, and move to increase hiring signiﬁcantly to enable the

processing of more immigration cases.

Department of State: Allow DHS to lead international engagement in

the Western Hemisphere on issues of security and migration. Additionally,

quickly and aggressively address recalcitrant countries’ failure to accept

deportees by imposing sti sanctions until deportees are in fact accepted for

return (not just promised to be taken).

Department of Housing and Urban Development: Ensure that only

U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents utilize or occupy federally

subsidized housing.

Department of Education: Deny loan access to those who are not U.S.

citizens or lawful permanent residents, and deny loan access to students at

schools that provide in-state tuition to illegal aliens.

Department of Labor: Eliminate the two (of four) lowest wage levels for

foreign workers.

Department of the Treasury: Implement all necessary regulations both to

equalize taxes between American citizens and working visa holders and to

provide DHS with all tax information of illegal aliens as expeditiously as possible.

Intelligence Community: Cooperate in the shrinking or elimination

of the I&A role in the IC while replacing it with CBP and HSI

representation to the IC.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I had the honor of coordinating the eorts of the experts listed as contributors to this

book, nearly all of whom have spent more time inside or interacting with the Department of Homeland Security

than myself. I wrote only a small portion of the chapter and relied on the contributors’ experience and expertise

to give the chapter both its depth and policy impact. No views expressed herein should be attributed to any

single contributor.

— 168 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

ENDNOTES

 H.R. 5005, Homeland Security Act of 2002, Public Law No. 107-296, 107th Congress, November 25, 2002, §

101(b)(1), https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ296/PLAW-107publ296.pdf (accessed March 14, 2023).

 See, for example, “Elon Musk Slams CISA Censorship Network as ‘Propaganda Platform,’” Kanekoa News,

December 28, 2022, https://kanekoa.substack.com/p/elon-musk-slams-cisa-censorship-network (accessed

March 14, 2023).

 H.R. 2680, An Act to Amend the Immigration and Nationality Act, and for Other Purposes, Public Law No.

89-236, 89th Congress, October 3, 1965, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-79/pdf/STATUTE-79-

Pg911.pdf (accessed March 14, 2023).

 Added to the Immigration and Nationality Act by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant

Responsibility Act of 1996. See H.R. 3610, Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 1997, Public Law No.

104-208, 104th Congress, September 30, 1996, Division C, https://www.congress.gov/104/plaws/publ208/

PLAW-104publ208.pdf (accessed March 14, 2023).

 8 U.S. Code, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8 (accessed March 14, 2023).

 18 U.S. Code, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18 (accessed March 14, 2023).

 5 U.S. Code §§ 551–559, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/part-I/chapter-5/subchapter-II (accessed

March 14, 2023).

 Table, “United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Budget Comparison and Adjustments

Appropriation and PPA Summary,” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, United States Citizenship

and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security, United States Citizenship and Immigration

Services, Budget Overview, Fiscal Year 2023 Congressional Justiﬁcation, p. CIS-4, https://www.uscis.gov/

sites/default/ﬁles/document/reports/U.S._Citizenship_and_Immigration_Services%E2%80%99_Budget_

Overview_Document_for%20Fiscal_Year_2023.pdf#:~:text=The%20FY%202023%20Budget%20includes%20

%24913.6M%2C%204%2C001%20positions%3B,of%20%24444.1M%20above%20the%20FY%202022%20

President%E2%80%99s%20Budget (accessed March 14, 2023), and Table, “United States Citizenship and

Immigration Services Comparison of Budget Authority and Request,” in ibid., p. CIS-5.

 H.R. 7311, William Wilberforce Tracking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, Public Law No.

110-457, 110th Congress, December 23, 2008, § 235, https://www.congress.gov/110/plaws/publ457/PLAW-

110publ457.pdf (accessed March 15, 2023).

 Matter of A-B-, Respondent, 27 I&N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018), https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/ﬁle/1070866/

download (accessed January 18, 2023).

 Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387 (2012), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/567/387/ (accessed

January 18, 2023).

 Robert T. Staord Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act [Public Law 93–288; Approved May 22, 1974]

[As Amended Through P.L. 117–328, Enacted December 29, 2022], https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/

COMPS-2977/pdf/COMPS-2977.pdf (accessed March 15, 2023).

 U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland

Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Budget Overview, Fiscal Year 2023 Congressional

Justiﬁcation, p. FEMA-24, https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/ﬁles/2022-03/Federal%20Emergency%20

Management%20Agency_Remediated.pdf (accessed March 15, 2023).

 Report, United States Secret Service: An Agency in Crisis, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,

U.S. House of Representatives, 114th Congress, December 9, 2015, https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/

wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Oversight-USSS-Report.pdf (accessed January 18, 2023).

 5 U.S. Code § 7103, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7103 (accessed March 15, 2023).

 S. 3418, Privacy Act of 1974, Public Law No. 93-579, 93rd Congress, December 31, 1974, https://www.govinfo.

gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-88/pdf/STATUTE-88-Pg1896.pdf (accessed March 15, 2023).

 H.R. 1428, Judicial Redress Act of 2015, Public Law No. 114-126, 114th Congress, February 24, 2016, https://www.

congress.gov/114/plaws/publ126/PLAW-114publ126.pdf (accessed March 15, 2023).

 H.R. 1158, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020, Public Law No. 116-93, 116th Congress, December 20, 2019,

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1158 (accessed January 18, 2023).

— 169 —

Department of Homeland Security

 U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Oce of Inspector General, Management Directive No. 0810.1, June 10,

2004, https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/foia/mgmt_directive_0810_1_the_oce_of_inspector_general.

pdf (accessed March 15, 2023).

 H.R. 5005, Homeland Security Act of 2002, Public Law No. 107-296, 107th Congress, November 25, 2002,

https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-bill/5005 (accessed January 18, 2023).

— 171 —

DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Kiron K. Skinner

he U.S. Department of State’s mission is to bilaterally, multilaterally, and

regionally implement the President’s foreign policy priorities; to serve U.S.

citizens abroad; and to advance the economic, foreign policy, and national

security interests of the United States.

Since the U.S. Founding, the Department of State has been the American gov-

ernment’s designated tool of engagement with foreign governments and peoples

throughout the world. Country names, borders, leaders, technology, and people

have changed in the more than two centuries since the Founding, but the basics of

diplomacy remain the same. Although the Department has also evolved throughout

the years, at least in the modern era, there is one signiﬁcant problem that the next

President must address to be successful.

There are scores of ﬁne diplomats who serve the President’s agenda, often

helping to shape and interpret that agenda. At the same time, however, in all

Administrations, there is a tug-of-war between Presidents and bureaucracies—

and that resistance is much starker under conservative Presidents, due

largely to the fact that large swaths of the State Department’s workforce are

left-wing and predisposed to disagree with a conservative President’s policy

agenda and vision.

It should not and cannot be this way: The American people need and deserve

a diplomatic machine fully focused on the national interest as deﬁned through

the election of a President who sets the domestic and international agenda for

the nation. The next Administration must take swift and decisive steps to reforge

the department into a lean and functional diplomatic machine that serves the

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

President and, thereby, the American people. Below is the basic but essential road-

map for achieving these repairs.

HISTORY AND CONTEXT

Founded in 1789, the Department of State was one of the ﬁrst Cabinet-level

agencies in the new American government. The ﬁrst Secretary of State, Thomas

Jeerson, oversaw a small sta, diplomatic posts in London and Paris, and 10 con-

sular posts.

Today, the Department of State has almost 80,000 total employees

(including 13,517 foreign service employees and 11,683 civil service employees) in

275 embassies, consulates, and other posts around the world.

In theory, the State Department is the principal agency responsible for carrying

out the President’s foreign policy and representing the United States in other nations

and international organizations. To the extent consistent with presidential policy and

federal law, the department also supports U.S. citizens and businesses in other nations

and vets foreign nationals seeking temporary or permanent entrance to the United

States. The State Department also provides humanitarian, security, and other assistance

to non-U.S. populations in need, and otherwise advances and supports U.S. national

interests abroad. Properly led, the State Department can be instrumental for commu-

nicating and implementing a foreign policy vision that best serves American citizens.

As the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (the Hart–Rudman

Commission) observed more than 20 years ago, the State Department is a “crip-

pled institution” suering from “an ineective organizational structure in which

regional and functional policies do not serve integrated goals, and in which sound

management, accountability, and leadership are lacking.”

Unfortunately, this

critique remains accurate.

The State Department’s failures are not due to a lack of resources. As one

expert has observed, the department “has signiﬁcantly more at its disposal than

was the case at the end of the Cold War, in the mid-1990s, and at the height of the

Iraq and Afghanistan wars.”

A major source, if not the major source, of the State

Department’s ineectiveness lies in its institutional belief that it is an independent

institution that knows what is best for the United States, sets its own foreign policy,

and does not need direction from an elected President.

The next President can make the State Department more eective by providing

a clear foreign policy vision, selecting political ocials and career diplomats that

will enthusiastically turn that vision into a policy agenda, and ﬁrmly supporting

the State Department as it makes the necessary institutional adjustments.

POLITICAL LEADERSHIP AND BUREAUCRATIC

LEADERSHIP AND SUPPORT

Focusing the State Department on the needs and goals of the next President

will require the President’s handpicked political leadership—as well as foreign

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Department of State

service and civil service personnel who share the President’s vision and policy

agendas—to run the department. This can be done by taking these steps at the

outset of the next Administration.

Exert Leverage During the Conﬁrmation Process. Notwithstanding the

challenges and slowness of the modern U.S. Senate conﬁrmation process, the next

President can exert leverage on the Senate if he or she is willing to place State

Department appointees directly into those roles, pending conﬁrmation. Doing so

would both ensure that the department has immediate senior political leadership

and would force the Senate to act on nominees’ appointments instead of being

allowed to engage in dilatory tactics that cripple the State Department’s function-

ality for weeks, months, or even years.

Assert Leadership in the Appointment Process. The next Administration

should assert leadership over, and guidance to, the State Department by placing

political appointees in positions that do not require Senate conﬁrmation, including

senior advisors, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretaries, and Deputy Assistant Sec-

retaries. Given the department’s size, the next Administration should also increase

the number of political appointees to manage it.

To the extent possible, all non-conﬁrmed senior appointees should be selected

by the President-elect’s transition team or the new President’s Oce of Presiden-

tial Personnel (depending on the timing of selection) and be in place the ﬁrst day

of the Administration. No one in a leadership position on the morning of January

20 should hold that position at the end of the day. These recommendations do not

imply that foreign service and civil service ocials should be excluded from key

roles: It is hard to imagine a scenario in which they are not immediately relevant to

the transition of power. The main suggestion here is that as many political appoin-

tees as possible should be in place at the start of a new Administration.

Support and Train Political Appointees. The Secretary of State should use

his or her oce and its resources to ensure regular coordination among all political

appointees, which should take the form of strategy meetings, trainings, and other

events. The secretary should also take reasonable steps to ensure that the State

Department’s political appointees are connected to other departments’ political

appointees, which is critical for cross-agency eectiveness and morale. The sec-

retary should capitalize on the more experienced political appointees by using

them as the foundation for a mentorship program for less experienced political

appointees. The interaction of political appointees must be routine and operational

rather than incidental or occasional, and it must be treated as a crucial dimension

for the next Administration’s success.

Maximize the Value of Career Ocials. Career foreign service and civil

service personnel can and must be leveraged for their expertise and commit-

ment to the President’s mission. Indeed, the State Department has thousands of

employees with unparalleled linguistic, cultural, policy, and administrative skills,

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

and large numbers of them have been an enormous resource to the Secretaries of

State under which they have served. The secretary must ﬁnd a way to make clear

to career ocials that despite prior history and modes of operation, they need

not be adversaries of a conservative President, Secretary of State, or the team of

political appointees.

Reboot Ambassadors Worldwide. All ambassadors are required to submit

letters of resignation at the start of a new Administration. Previous Republican

Administrations have accepted the resignations of only the political ambassadors

and allowed the foreign service ambassadors to retain their posts, sometimes for

months or years into a new Administration.

The next Administration must go

further: It should both accept the resignations of all political ambassadors and

quickly review and reassess all career ambassadors. This review should commence

well before the new Administration’s ﬁrst day.

Ambassadors in countries where U.S. policy or posture would substantially

change under the new Administration, as well as any who have evinced hostility

toward the incoming Administration or its agenda, should be recalled immediately.

The priority should be to put in place new ambassadors who support the Presi-

dent’s agenda among political appointees, foreign service ocers, and civil service

personnel, with no predetermined percentage among these categories. Political

ambassadors with strong personal relationships with the President should be pri-

oritized for key strategic posts such as Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the

United Nations, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

RIGHTING THE SHIP

Ensuring the State Department is accountable for serving American citi-

zens ﬁrst will require—at a minimum—that the following steps be implemented

immediately:

Review Retroactively. Before inauguration, the President-elect’s department

transition team should assess every aspect of State Department negotiations and

funding commitments. Upon inauguration, the Secretary of State should order an

immediate freeze on all eorts to implement unratiﬁed treaties and international

agreements, allocation of resources, foreign assistance disbursements, domestic

and international contracts and payments, hiring and recruiting decisions, etc.,

pending a political appointee-driven review to ensure that such eorts comport

with the new Administration’s policies. The quality of this review is more import-

ant than speed. The posture of the department during this review should be an

unwavering desire to prioritize the American people—including a recognition that

the federal government must be a diligent steward of taxpayer dollars.

Implement Repair. The State Department must change its handling of

international agreements to restore constitutional governance. Under prior

Administrations, unnecessary institutional factors in the department caused

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Department of State

numerous logistical challenges in negotiating, approving, and implementing trea-

ties and agreements. This is particularly true under the Biden Administration. For

example, under the Biden Administration, the State Department was considered

suciently unreliable in terms of alignment and eectiveness such that its political

leadership invoked its Circular 175 (C-175) authority to delegate its diplomatic

capacity to other agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security.

At time of publication, the State Department is negotiating (or seeking to nego

tiate) large-scale, sovereignty-eroding agreements that could come at considerable

economic and other costs to the American people. Although such agreements

should be evaluated and approved as are treaties, the Biden Administration is

likely to simply call them “agreements.” The Biden State Department not only

approves but also enforces treaties that have not been ratiﬁed by the U.S. Senate.

This practice must be thoroughly reviewed—and most likely jettisoned.

The next President should recalibrate how the State Department handles trea-

ties and agreements, primarily by restoring constitutionality to these processes.

He or she should direct the Secretary of State to freeze any ongoing treaty or inter-

national agreement negotiations and assess whether those eorts align with the

new President’s foreign policy direction. The next Administration should also

direct the secretary to order an immediate stand-down on enforcement of any

treaties that have not been ratiﬁed by the Senate, and order a thorough review of

the degree to which such enforcement has impacted the department’s functions,

policies, and use of resources.

The Secretary of State, in cooperation with the Oce of the Attorney General

and the White House Counsel’s Oce, should also conduct a review to identify

“agreements” that are really treaty commitments within the ordinary public mean-

ing of the Constitution,

and suspend compliance pending presidential transmittal

of those agreements to the Senate for advice and consent. The next Administration

should also move to withdraw from treaties that have been under Senate consider-

ation for 20 years or more, with the understanding that those treaties are unlikely

to be ratiﬁed. Under circumstances in which ratiﬁcation of a stale treaty before

the Senate still serves national interests, the treaty letter of transmittal and sub-

mission should be updated for current circumstances. The Secretary of State must

revoke most outstanding C-175 authorities that have been granted to other agen-

cies during previous Administrations, although such revocations should be closely

coordinated with the White House for logistical reasons.

Coordinate with Other Agencies. Interagency engagement in this new

environment must be similarly adjusted to mirror presidential direction. Indeed,

coordination among federal agencies is challenging even in the most well-oiled

Administrations. Although such coordination is inescapable and sometimes produc-

tive, agencies tend to leverage each other’s resources in ways that occasionally have

o-mission consequences for the agency or agencies with the resources. Ideally, the

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

Secretary of State should work as part of an agile foreign policy team along with the

National Security Advisor, the Secretary of Defense, and other agency heads to ﬂesh

out and advance the President’s foreign policy. Bureaucratic stovepipes of the past

should be less important than commitment to, and achievement of, the President’s

foreign policy agenda. The State Department’s role in these interagency discussions

must reﬂect the President’s clear direction and disallow resources and tools to be

used in any way that detracts from the presidentially directed mission.

Coordinate with Congress. Congress has both the statutory and appropri-

ations authority to impact the State Department’s operations and has a strong

interest in key aspects of American foreign policy. The department must therefore

take particular care in its interaction with Congress, since poor interactions with

Congress, regardless of intentions, could trigger congressional pushback or have

other negative impacts on the President’s agenda.

This will require particularly strong leadership of the Department of State’s

Bureau of Legislative Aairs. The Secretary of State and political leadership should

ensure full coordination with the White House regarding congressional engage-

ment on any State Department responsibility. This may lead to, for example, the

President authorizing the State Department to engage with Members of Congress

and relevant committees on certain issues (including statutorily designated con-

gressional consultations), but to remain “radio silent” on volatile or designated

issues on which the White House wants to be the primary or only voice. All such

authorized department engagements with Congress must be driven and handled

by political appointees in conjunction with career ocials who have the relevant

expertise and are willing to work in concert with the President’s political appoin-

tees on particularly sensitive matters.

Respond Vigorously to the Chinese Threat. The State Department recently

opened the Oce of China Coordination, or “China House.” This oce is intended

to bring together experts inside and outside the State Department to coordinate

U.S. government relations with China “and advance our vision for an open, inclu-

sive international system.”

Whether China House will streamline U.S. government

communication, consensus, and action on China policy—given the presence of

other agencies with strong competing or adverse interests—remains to be seen.

The unit is dependent on adequate and competent sta being assigned by other

bureaus within the State Department.

Nonetheless, the concept is one a Republican Administration should support

mutatis mutandis. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been “at war” with

the U.S. for decades. Now that this reality has been accepted throughout the gov-

ernment, the State Department must be prepared to lead the U.S. diplomatic eort

accordingly. The centralization of eorts in one place is critical to this end.

Review Immigration and Domestic Security Requirements. Arguably, the

department’s most noteworthy challenge on the global stage has been its handling

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Department of State

of immigration and domestic security issues, which are inextricably related. The

State Department’s apparent posture toward these two issues, which are of para-

mount importance to the American people, has historically been that they are of

lesser importance than other issues and that they can be treated as concessions in

broader diplomatic engagements. In other instances in which access to the U.S. in

the form of immigrant (permanent) and nonimmigrant (temporary) visas could

potentially serve as diplomatic leverage, it is almost never used. To some degree,

the State Department and many of its personnel appear to view the U.S. immigra-

tion system less as a tool for strengthening the United States and more as a global

welfare program.

To ensure the safety, security, and prosperity of all Americans, this must change.

Below are several key areas in which the department’s formal and informal postures

must adjust to reﬂect the current immigration and domestic security environment:

Visa reciprocity. The United States should strictly enforce the doctrine

of reciprocity when issuing visas to all foreign nationals. For too long, the

U.S. has provided virtually unfettered access to foreign nationals from

countries that do not respond in kind—including countries that are actively

hostile to U.S. interests and nationals. Mandatory reciprocity will convey

the necessary reality that other countries do not have an unfettered right

to U.S. access and must reciprocally oer favorable visa-based access to U.S.

nationals. The State Department’s reaction time to other countries’ changes

in visa policies with respect to the U.S. must be streamlined to ensure it can

be updated in real time.

Section 243(d) visa sanctions. Visa sanctions under section 243(d) of

the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA),

enacted into law to motivate

countries to accept the return of any nationals who have been ordered

removed from the U.S., should be quickly and fully enforced. Recalcitrant

countries that do not accept receipt of their returned nationals will risk the

suspension of issuance of all immigrant visas, all nonimmigrant visas, or

all visas. These country-speciﬁc sanctions should remain in place until the

sanctioned country accepts the return of all its removal-pending nationals

and formally commits to future, regular acceptance of its nationals. Black-

letter implementation of this law will demonstrate a heretofore lacking

seriousness to the international community that other nations must respect

U.S. immigration laws and work with federal authorities to accept returning

nationals—or lose access to the United States.

Rightsizing refugee admissions. The Biden Administration has

engineered what is nothing short of a collapse of U.S. border security and

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

interior immigration enforcement. This Administration’s humanitarian

crisis—which is arguably the greatest humanitarian crisis in the modern

era, one which has harmed Americans and foreign nationals alike—will

take many years and billions of dollars to fully address. One casualty of the

Biden Administration’s behavior will be the current form of the U.S. Refugee

Admission Program (USRAP).

The federal government’s obligation to shift national security–essential

screening and vetting resources to the forged border crisis will necessitate

an indeﬁnite curtailment of the number of USRAP refugee admissions. The

State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, which

administers USRAP, must shift its resources to challenges stemming from

the current immigration situation until the crisis can be contained and

refugee-focused screening and vetting capacity can reasonably be restored.

Strengthening bilateral and multilateral immigration-focused

agreements. Restoration of both domestic security and the integrity of

the U.S. immigration system should start with rapid reactivation of several

key initiatives in eect at the conclusion of the Trump Administration.

Reimplementation of the Remain in Mexico policy, safe third-country

agreements, and other measures to address the inﬂux of non-Mexican

asylum applicants at the United States–Mexico border must be Day

One priorities. Although the State Department must rein in the C-175

authorities of other agencies, the Department of Homeland Security should

retain (or regain) C-175 authorities for negotiating bilateral and multilateral

security agreements.

Evaluation of national security–vulnerable visa programs. To protect

the American people, the State Department, in coordination with the White

House and other security-focused agencies, should evaluate several key

security-sensitive visa programs that it manages. Key programs include, but

should not be limited to, the Diversity Visa program, the F (student) visa

program, and J (exchange visitor) visa program. The State Department’s

evaluation must ensure that these programs are not only consistent with

White House immigration policy, but also align with its national security

obligations and resource limitations.

PIVOTING ABROAD

Personnel and management adjustments are crucial preludes to refocus the

State Department’s mission, which is implementing the President’s foreign policy

agenda and, in so doing, ensuring that the interests of American citizens are given

— 179 —

Department of State

priority. That said, the next President must signiﬁcantly reorient the U.S. govern-

ment’s posture toward friends and adversaries alike—which will include much

more honest assessments about who are friends and who are not. This reorien

tation could represent the most signiﬁcant shift in core foreign policy principles

and corresponding action since the end of the Cold War.

Although not every country or issue area can be discussed in this chapter, below

are examples of several areas in which a shift in U. S. foreign policy is not only import

ant, but arguably existential. The point is not to assert that everyone in the evolving

conservative movement, or, in some cases, the growing bipartisan consensus, will

agree with the details of this assessment. Rather, what is presented below demon-

strates the urgency of these issues and provides a general roadmap for analysis.

In a world on ﬁre, a handful of nations require heightened attention. Some rep-

resent existential threats to the safety and security of the American people; others

threaten to hurt the U.S. economy; and others are wild cards, whose full threat

scope is unknown but nevertheless unsettling. The ﬁve countries on which the next

Administration should focus its attention and energy are China, Iran, Venezuela,

Russia, and North Korea.

The People’s Republic of China

The designs of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese Com-

munist Party, which runs the PRC, are serious and dangerous.

This tyrannical

country with a population of more than 1 billion people has the vision, resources,

and patience to achieve its objectives. Protecting the United States from the PRC’s

designs requires an unambiguous oensive-defensive mix, including protecting

American citizens and their interests, as well as U.S. allies, from PRC attacks and

abuse that undermine U.S. competitiveness, security, and prosperity.

The United States must have a cost-imposing strategic response to make Bei-

jing’s aggression unaordable, even as the American economy and U.S. power grow.

This stance will require real, sustained, near-unprecedented U.S. growth; stronger

partnerships; synchronized economic and security policies; and American energy

independence—but above all, it will require a very honest perspective about the

nature and designs of the PRC as more of a threat than a competitor.

The next

President should use the State Department and its array of resources to reassess

and lead this eort, just as it did during the Cold War. The U.S. government needs

an Article X for China,

and it should be a presidential mandate. Along with the

National Security Council, the State Department should draft an Article X, which

should be a deeply philosophical look at the China challenge.

Many foreign policy professionals and national leaders, both in government and

the private sector, are reluctant to take decisive action regarding China. Many are

vested in an unshakable faith in the international system and global norms. They

are so enamored with them they cannot brook any criticisms or reforms, let alone

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

acknowledge their potential for being abused by the PRC. Others refuse to acknowl-

edge Beijing’s malign activities and often pass o criticism as conspiracy theories.

For instance, many were quick to dismiss even the possibility that COVID-19

escaped from a Chinese research laboratory. The reality, however, is that the PRC’s

actions often do sound like conspiracy theories—because they are conspiracies. In

addition, some knowingly or not parrot the Communist line: Global leaders includ-

ing President Joe Biden, have tried to normalize or even laud Chinese behavior.

In some cases, these voices, like the global corporate giants BlackRock and Disney,

directly beneﬁt from doing business with Beijing.

On the other hand, others acknowledge the dangers posed by the PRC, but

believe in a moderating approach to accommodate its rise, a policy of “compete

where we must, but cooperate where we can,” including on issues like climate

change. This strategy has demonstrably failed.

As with all global struggles with Communist and other tyrannical regimes, the

issue should never be with the Chinese people but with the Communist dictator-

ship that oppresses them and threatens the well-being of nations across the globe.

That said, the nature of Chinese power today is the product of history, ideology,

and the institutions that have governed China during the course of ﬁve millennia,

inherited by the present Chinese leaders from the preceding generations of the

CCP.

In short, the PRC challenge is rooted in China’s strategic culture and not

just the Marxism–Leninism of the CCP, meaning that internal culture and civil

society will never deliver a more normative nation. The PRC’s aggressive behavior

can only be curbed through external pressure.

The Islamic Republic of Iran

The ongoing protests in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran), which are widely

viewed as a new revolution, have shown that the Islamic regime, which has been

in power since 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini became the leader, is at its weakest

state in its history and is at odds not only with its own people but also its regional

neighbors. Iran is home to a proud and ancient culture, yet its people have strug-

gled to achieve democracy and have had to endure a hostile theocratic regime that

vehemently opposes freedom. The time may be right to press harder on the Iranian

theocracy, support the Iranian people, and take other steps to draw Iran into the

community of free and modern nations.

Unfortunately, the Obama and Biden Administrations have propped up the

brutal Islamist theocracy that has hurt the Iranian people and threatened nuclear

war. For example, the Obama Administration’s 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of

Action, commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal, gave the Islamic regime a

crucial monetary lifeline after the Green Movement protests in 2009, which, while

ultimately unsuccessful, did succeed in weakening the regime and showing the

world that younger Iranians want freedom.

— 181 —

Department of State

Instead of pressuring the Iranian theocracy to move toward democracy, the

Obama Administration threw the brutal regime an economic lifeline by giving

hundreds of billions of dollars to the Iranian government and providing other sanc-

tions relief. This economic relief did not moderate the regime, but emboldened its

brutality, its eorts to expand its nuclear weapons programs, and its support for

global terrorism. Former President Obama has admitted his lack of support for the

Green Movement during his Administration was an error and blamed it on poor

advisors—yet those same advisors are involved with the Biden Administration’s

insistence on reducing pressure on the theocracy and resurrecting a nuclear deal.

The next Administration should neither preserve nor repeat the mistakes of

the Obama and Biden Administrations. The correct future policy for Iran is one

that acknowledges that it is in U.S. national security interests, the Iranian people’s

human rights interests, and a broader global interest in peace and stability for the

Iranian people to have the democratic government they demand. This decision

to be free of the country’s abusive leaders must of course be made by the Iranian

people, but the United States can utilize its own and others’ economic and diplo-

matic tools to ease the path toward a free Iran and a renewed relationship with

the Iranian people.

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

Once a model of democracy and a true U.S. ally, the Bolivarian Republic of Ven-

ezuela (Venezuela) has all but collapsed under the Communist regimes of the late

Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. In the 24 years since Hugo Chavez was ﬁrst

elected Venezuelan president in 1999, the country has violently cracked down on

pro-democracy citizens and organizations, shattered its once oil-rich economy,

empowered domestic criminal cartels, and helped fuel a hemispheric refugee crisis.

Venezuela has swung from being one of the most prosperous, if not the most

prosperous, country in South America to being one of the poorest. Its Communist

leadership has also drawn closer to some of the United States’ greatest interna-

tional foes, including the PRC and Iran, which have long sought a foothold in the

Americas. Indeed, Venezuela serves as a reminder of just how fragile democratic

institutions that are not maintained can be. To contain Venezuela’s Communism

and aid international partners, the next Administration must take important steps

to put Venezuela’s Communist abusers on notice while making strides to help the

Venezuelan people. The next Administration must work to unite the hemisphere

against this signiﬁcant but underestimated threat in the Southern Hemisphere.

Russia

One issue today that starkly divides conservatives is the Russia–Ukraine con-

ﬂict. The common ground seems to be recognition that presidential leadership

in 2025 must chart the course.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

One school of conservative thought holds that as Moscow’s illegal war of

aggression against Ukraine drags on, Russia presents major challenges to

U.S. interests, as well as to peace, stability, and the post-Cold War security

order in Europe. This viewpoint argues for continued U.S. involvement

including military aid, economic aid, and the presence of NATO and U.S.

troops if necessary. The end goal of the conﬂict must be the defeat of

Russian President Vladimir Putin and a return to pre-invasion border lines.

Another school of conservative thought denies that U.S. Ukrainian support

is in the national security interest of America at all. Ukraine is not a member

of the NATO alliance and is one of the most corrupt nations in the region.

European nations directly aected by the conﬂict should aid in the defense

of Ukraine, but the U.S. should not continue its involvement. This viewpoint

desires a swift end to the conﬂict through a negotiated settlement between

Ukraine and Russia.

The tension between these competing positions has given rise to a third

approach. This conservative viewpoint eschews both isolationism and

interventionism. Rather, each foreign policy decision must ﬁrst ask the

question: What is in the interest of the American people? U.S. military

engagement must clearly fall within U.S. interests; be ﬁscally responsible;

and protect American freedom, liberty, and sovereignty, all while recognizing

Communist China as the greatest threat to U.S. interests. Thus, with respect to

Ukraine, continued U.S. involvement must be fully paid for; limited to military

aid (while European allies address Ukraine’s economic needs); and have a

clearly deﬁned national security strategy that does not risk American lives.

Regardless of viewpoints, all sides agree that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

is unjust and that the Ukrainian people have a right to defend their homeland.

Furthermore, the conﬂict has severely weakened Putin’s military strength and

provided a boost to NATO unity and its importance to European nations.

The next conservative President has a generational opportunity to bring res-

olution to the foreign policy tensions within the movement and chart a new path

forward that recognizes Communist China as the deﬁning threat to U.S. interests

in the 21st century.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Peace and stability in Northeast Asia are vital interests of the United States. The

Republic of Korea (South Korea) and Japan are critical allies for ensuring a free

and open Indo–Paciﬁc. They are indispensable military, economic, diplomatic, and

technology partners. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North

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Department of State

Korea) must be deterred from military conﬂict. The United States cannot permit

the DPRK to remain a de facto nuclear power with the capacity to threaten the

United States or its allies. This interest is both critical to the defense of the Amer-

ican homeland and the future of global nonproliferation. The DPRK must not be

permitted to proﬁt from its blatant violations of international commitments or to

threaten other nations with nuclear blackmail. Both interests can only be served

if the U.S. disallows the DPRK’s rogue regime behavior.

OTHER INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS

Western Hemisphere

The United States has a vested interest in a relatively united and economically

prosperous Western Hemisphere. Nonetheless, the region now has an overwhelm-

ing number of socialist or progressive regimes, which are at odds with the freedom

and growth-oriented policies of the U.S. and other neighbors and who increasingly

pose hemispheric security threats. A new approach is therefore needed, one that

simultaneously allows the U.S. to re-posture in its best interests and helps regional

partners enter a new century of growth and opportunity.

The following core policies must be part of this new direction:

A “sovereign Mexico” policy. Mexico is currently a national security

disaster. Bluntly stated, Mexico can no longer qualify as a ﬁrst-world nation;

it has functionally lost its sovereignty to muscular criminal cartels that

eectively run the country. The current dynamic is not good for either

U.S. citizens or Mexicans, and the perfect storm created by this cartel state

has negative eects that are damaging the entire hemisphere. The next

Administration must both adopt a posture that calls for a fully sovereign

Mexico and take all steps at its disposal to support that result in as rapid a