Random Excerpts

• OCR should return to Trump Administration policies that initiated robust enforcement of these conscience laws. It should restore and fully fund the Office of the Deputy Director for the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division (CRFD) and ensure that it has the necessary delegations from the Secretary to enforce these laws. The Secretary should give adequate delegations to OCR to pursue enforcement of conscience laws, including RFRA, and require all HHS components that provide funding or grants to cooperate with OCR CRFD investigations.

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 whipping migrants and issue a formal apology on behalf of DHS and CBP.

In 1989, the NRC established alternative licensing processes that were meant to provide a more predictable and efficient regulatory pathway for new Light Water Reactors (LWRs) by combining construction and operating nuclear power plant licenses, allowing for Early Site Permits, and establishing a framework for preapproval of reactor designs. More recently, the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act directed the NRC to establish a technology-neutral licensing process for new, advanced reactor technologies.!*? Despite these efforts, the NRC remains a significant cost and regulatory barrier to new nuclear power. Especially

countries are mostly China’s neighbors in Asia. Like the TPP, it seeks to create an alliance to push China toward the rule of law, but the Biden Administration so far has left trade entirely out of the agreement. Instead, the IPEF negotiations are focusing entirely on non-trade issues like climate and labor policy—issues that give progressives opportunities to impose their policies on other countries and provide rent-seeking opportunities for labor unions and politically connected businesses in renewable energy and other favored industries.

Both the SEC and the CFTC have been irresponsible actors in the digital asset area. They have had more than a decade to promulgate rules governing digital assets, yet the SEC has utterly failed to do so, and the CFTC has provided only minimal guidance. Instead, both agencies have chosen regulation by enforcement—and have done it poorly. They neither adequately protect investors nor provide responsible market participants with the regulatory environment that they need to thrive.

This is especially problematic given that both of the assumptions behind Equity in IDEA are flawed. Special education services provide extra assistance to students; they do not harm them. And according to the most rigorous research on the subject, conducted by Penn State’s Paul Morgan, black students are actually underrepresented in special education once adequate statistical controls are made. That means that this regulation effectively further depresses the provision of valuable services to an already underserved group.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The preparation of this chapter was a collective enterprise of selfless individuals involved in the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. All contributors to this chapter are listed at the front of this volume and include former officials in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies, as well as academics, attorneys, and experts in the health care and insurance fields.

The majority of the political appointee team must be assembled, vetted, and ready to deploy before Day One. To the extent provided by the Federal Vacancies Reform Act,” appointees in consideration for Senate-confirmed positions (excluding the Administrator) should be prepared to serve as a Deputy or Principal Deputy to get into the agency on Day One while their nomination and affiliated confirmation processes proceeds. In addition to a deputy slated for the Assistant Administrator role, each office will need a political chief of staff, senior advisers designated to run suboffices, and energized assistants. Teams should be balanced with technical knowledge, legal expertise, and political exposure. Ideally, they should also be geographically diverse. Appointee positions should also extend to all the regional offices and specialty labs.

• Congress should clarify that the “regular rate” for overtime pay is based on the salary paid rather than all benefits provided. This would enable employers to offer additional benefits to employees without fear that those benefits would dramatically increase overtime pay.

The impact on Africa is especially acute. South Africa, for example, relies on coal-powered plants to generate 80 percent of its power needs. It would need $26 billion in foreign aid to make the full transition away from coal. Multiplying this amount by dozens of other countries on the continent, the financial resources needed to transition away from fossil fuels are unachievable. In Latin America, countries that are global leaders in oil and gas production have sharply curtailed their energy production in line with climate activists, upending the hemisphere’s major source of export revenues and condemning it to years of economic and political instability.