Project 2025 publishes Mandate for Leadership

On 21 April 2023 the Heritage Foundation published Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, the 920-page policy book of Project 2025, edited by Project Director Paul Dans and Senior Research Fellow Steven Groves under Heritage President Kevin D. Roberts.¹² The book is the latest in a Heritage Mandate for Leadership series begun in November 1980 ahead of the Reagan transition; Project 2025 itself was launched in April 2022 and is structured around four pillars: the policy book; an applicant database collecting vetted conservative personnel for political-appointee positions; the Presidential Administration Academy training programme; and a 180-day post-inauguration playbook sequencing Day-1 and first-six-month executive actions.³ An advisory board listed on the Project 2025 website at publication identified a coalition of dozens of conservative organisations.⁴

1. The plan calls for reinstating the framework of Executive Order 13957 of 21 October 2020, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service” — revoked by Executive Order 14003 of 22 January 2021 — reclassifying federal employees in positions of “a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character” (EO 13957 § 1(a)) from the competitive service to the Excepted Service.⁵⁶ The mechanism is the definition of “employee” at 5 U.S.C. § 7511(a)(1)(B), which excludes excepted-service appointees in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions from coverage by the adverse-action procedures of subchapter II of chapter 75 — including the 30-day written-notice, answer, representation and written-decision rights of § 7513(b) and the analogous procedures of § 7503(b) for shorter suspensions.⁷⁸ The section is authored by Russell Vought, president of the Center for Renewing America and former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Trump (first term); contemporaneous press reporting in 2020 placed the candidate- position count in a range of tens of thousands, with some figures up to roughly 50,000 cited as the upper bound, though OPM did not publish an official tally.⁹

2. The plan directs the next administration to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement and to rescind the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan of September 2021; the Department of Health and Human Services chapter recommends withdrawal from the World Health Organization under the reservation attached by the United States in the 1948 Joint Resolution of accession.¹⁰¹¹ Paris withdrawal is permitted under Article 28(1) only “at any time after three years from the date on which this Agreement has entered into force for that Party” (4 November 2016 for the United States); Article 28(2) provides that withdrawal “shall take effect upon expiry of one year from the date of receipt by the Depositary [the Secretary-General of the United Nations] of the notification of withdrawal, or on such later date as may be specified in the notification of withdrawal.”¹² The WHO Constitution itself contains no withdrawal clause; the United States’ right of withdrawal derives from the reservation in Pub. L. 80-643 permitting withdrawal “on a one-year notice, provided that the financial obligations of the United States to the Organization for the current fiscal year shall have been met in full.”¹³

3. One department is to be abolished outright. The Department of Education would go, its statutory functions transferring to other departments and to the states.¹⁴ Statutory abolition requires an act of Congress; absent legislation, the executive cannot eliminate the Department, but can reduce headcount through reductions in force under 5 C.F.R. Part 351, alter rulemaking priorities, and reorganise internal sub-agencies.¹⁵ The Reorganization Act of 1977, Pub. L. 95-17, which authorised expedited presidential reorganisation plans subject to congressional disapproval, was last extended through 31 December 1984 and has not since been renewed; the expiration is codified at 5 U.S.C. § 905.¹⁶ The chapter is authored by Lindsey M. Burke, Director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation.¹⁴

4. Two nineteenth- and eighteenth-century statutes are put forward as military authorities. The plan endorses use of the Insurrection Act of 1807, codified as amended at 10 U.S.C. §§ 251-255, and the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, codified at 50 U.S.C. §§ 21-24, as tools for federal military participation in immigration enforcement and for mass interior removal of unauthorised migrants.¹⁷¹⁸¹⁹ The Insurrection Act’s operative chain runs through § 251 (federal aid on a State governor’s request), § 252 (federal use of armed forces against obstruction of federal law) and § 253 (interference with constitutional rights); § 254 requires the President to first issue a proclamation calling on insurgents to “disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time,” and § 255 extends coverage to National Guard and Reserve components.¹⁸ The Alien Enemies Act applies only “[w]henever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government.”¹⁹ The chapter is authored by Ken Cuccinelli, formerly Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security under President Trump (first term).¹⁷