Daren Bakst
Daren Bakst’s conservative credentials include roles at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the John Locke Foundation, and the Federalist Society. According to the Heritage Foundation, he “has appeared in or been quoted by a wide range of media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Times, CNN, Fox Business News, Al-Jazeera America, and U.S. News and World Report.” In keeping with the conservative complaint that conservative views are being censored, the oft-cited, well-published Bakst complained before Congress that “the chilling of speech is too often a reality. There are regular ad hominem attacks, such as the inappropriate label, ‘climate deniers,’ for those who do not follow the climate narrative.”
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Kent Lassman
Kent Lassman has made a career of promoting free-trade, anti-regulatory policy advocacy at various think tanks. According to Wikipedia, as of this writing, he “is the president and CEO of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an American free market think tank.”
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William Perry Pendley
William Perry Pendley is an attorney, commentator, and author who has served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. He was also the president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), a nonprofit litigation firm. The MSLF describes itself, in part, as “focused on protecting property rights and economic liberty.” The foundation’s named donors’ bios recount examples of the government using a heavy hand to deprive people of their rights—for example levying a large fine for altering the course of a river and executing a fruitless search to find evidence of a crime.
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Lindsey M. Burke
In the Mandate for Leadership, Lindsey M. Burke is the author of the chapter devoted to the Department of Education. The chapter begins with the assertion that the Department of Education should be eliminated.
In her bio in the book, Burke is listed as the director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation. She is also credited with serving Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s team on education. Youngkin made school choice (i.e. measures to pull funding from public schools and put it toward private schools) a centerpiece of his campaign. He also vowed to eliminate critical race theory from the classroom (which should not be too hard, given that CRT is taught very rarely if at all in K-12 schools, despite the claims of conservatives to the contrary. What conservatives mean by eliminating CRT in public schools is eliminating discussion of racism, racial inequality, and especially systemic racism in the United States). Burke’s bio also lists her association with the Educational Freedom Institute, which exists to support school choice initiatives.
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Robert Bowes
ProPublica lists Robert Bowes as having served as field director for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Trump administration. He is the author of the chapter in the Mandate for Leadership concerning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
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Rick Dearborn
According to the bio provided in the Mandate for Leadership, Dearborn “served as Deputy Chief of Staff for President Donald Trump….He also served as Executive Director of the 2016 President-elect Donald Trump transition team.” The Bipartisan Policy Center’s website lists him as a senior fellow and states that he was deputy chief of staff “From January of 2017 until mid-March of 2018.” Previously, Dearborn worked as “Chief of Staff for then-U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions.” Sessions would later serve as Trump’s attorney general. An online search did not reveal any stated reason why Dearborn, like Sessions and many others, left the Trump administration before its term ended.
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Bernard McNamee
Bernard L. McNamee is an attorney and former commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). His chapter in the Mandate for Leadership concerns the Department of Energy and related commissions. Those related commissions are FERC and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
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Brendan Carr
Brendan Carr is the author of the chapter in the Mandate for Leadership concerning the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He is described on the FCC’s website as the senior Republican commissioner of the FCC and as “having served previously as the FCC’s General Counsel.” Further, he has been “nominated by both President Trump and President Biden” and “has been confirmed unanimously by the Senate three times.” He has previously worked as an attorney.
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Kevin D. Roberts
Kevin D. Roberts is president of The Heritage Foundation and the author of the foreword to the Mandate for Leadership. According to his bio on the foundation’s web site, his PhD is in American history. The bio goes on to list Roberts’s conservative credentials. In Heritage usage, “conservative” equals what those outside its sphere might call “far-right,” as Roberts’s foreword implicitly makes a distinction between “conservative” and “the Washington establishment,” which includes Republicans.
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Mandy M. Gunasekara
Mandy M. Gunasekara has had roles at the Independent Women’s Forum and the Heritage Foundation, two conservative organizations. The Independent Women’s Forum is known for couching anti-trans goals in feminist language and for otherwise opposing women’s rights. The Heritage Foundation, the lead group behind Project 2025, is known for climate denialism and a strong rightward shift since Jim DeMint became president in 2013. She also served as the chief of staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Trump administration. Previously, she worked for Senator Jim Inhofe and handed him the snowball he used as a prop on the Senate floor when mocking climate change.
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