Many longtime conservatives will know that for more than 40 years The Heritage Foundation has published Mandate for Leadership, a book of conservative policy recommendations for incoming presidential administrations. The Washington Post correctly noted that it “became a bible of sorts for many in the Reagan White House.” Below is a photo of Heritage chairman emeritus (and OCPA founder) David Brown shaking hands with President Ronald Reagan as Heritage president Ed Feulner looks on.

Mandate for Leadership has continued to inform presidential administrations through the years, with Heritage noting that the Trump administration embraced fully 64 percent of the book’s policy recommendations.

Building on the book’s success, Heritage has now organized a full-blown presidential transition project, Project 2025, involving a coalition of dozens of conservative organizations, including OCPA. The project includes not only Mandate for Leadership (a 900-page tome that is available for free online), but also involves assembling thousands of properly vetted and trained personnel from across the country who will be ready on January 20, 2025, to begin dismantling our unaccountable fourth branch of government, the administrative state.

Left-Wing Activists Are Alarmed

Journalists and left-wing activists (to the extent those can be distinguished) are reacting as one would expect. This one-minute video clip gives you a taste. And this 15-minute segment on MSNBC, which warns darkly of “a radical, far-right plan to purge and restructure the U.S. government,” prompted a gleeful Project 2025 director Paul Dans to observe: “We could not produce this kind of advertisement if we tried.”

People’s World, an online news platform featuring “Marxist analysis and opinion developed by the Communist Party as well as voices from other currents of the labor and people’s movements,” published this news story about Project 2025 from (chef’s kiss) the Associated Press.

Here in Oklahoma, an activist mom in Stillwater—worried about things like PragerU and the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms—co-chairs a local chapter of a New York-based nonprofit “whose mission is to advocate for inclusive public education.” She says her organization is also “a counter to Project 2025.” As she put it memorably on Facebook: “This 900 page document states all the crazy sh*t they want to do and it’s horrifying y’all. Vote blue like your clean water, porn hub, and public education depends on it because it does.”

Mandate for Leadership, of course, is neither crazy nor horrifying. Just ask one of its contributing authors, Oklahoma native Rick Dearborn, who will be at OCPA on Friday, Nov. 10 to discuss Project 2025. Now a Heritage Foundation visiting fellow, Dearborn was the executive director of the 2016 Presidential Transition Team and was responsible for the direction and management of the transition team’s 600-plus members. He then served as White House deputy chief of staff to President Donald Trump.

Make no mistake, says Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez, “The Left is right to fear our plan to gut the federal bureaucracy.” So come join us on Nov. 10—and bring someone you know who might consider spending four to eight years in the imperial city to help undo the damage the Left has inflicted on our constitutional republic. As one Project 2025 leader put it, “If you’re ready to fight the Deep State on behalf of the next conservative president, now’s your chance.”

Seating is limited. To learn more, contact Rick Farmer at rick@ocpathink.org.