At a Glance

The Mission for America is a comprehensive, detailed plan for a 10-year national mobilization to build a new, clean economy capable of providing prosperity, security, and freedom for all. We are writing this blueprint for the president who enters the White House in 2029, their administration, and the leadership of the 121st Congress.

They will inherit a historic double crisis:

• The AI and economic crisis: the mass replacement of workers by artificial intelligence, intensifying decades of wage stagnation, deindustrialization, and the systematic dismantling of America's means of making a living

• The climate and environmental crisis: the breaking of a 2.6 million-year climate cycle, threatening the conditions for life on Earth — even as climate has fallen off the political radar

Technology has been automating away jobs since long before AI, which is why real wages for the bottom half of U.S. workers stagnated for decades while GDP skyrocketed. Until now, lost jobs were replaced by low-wage service work, gig labor, or what anthropologist David Graeber called "bullshit jobs" — roles that are largely unnecessary and do not make the economy more productive. AI presents an unprecedented challenge. The new industries it makes possible will be staffed by AI, and they will not replenish the jobs they destroy.

In one of history's most unexpected twists, AI will rapidly displace professionals, managers, and knowledge workers before it replaces manual laborers. The physical infrastructure for this white-collar replacement is already in place — it is the same network of screens, keyboards, and enterprise systems that enable remote work. When an AI can perform tasks, make business decisions, and control those enterprise systems as well as a human, the marginal cost of making the switch is zero. While the replacement of manual laborers with robotics will also accelerate, it will proceed more slowly because building, installing, and maintaining physical robots still carries a tangible unit cost.

Imagine January 2029: a vast segment of the professional-managerial class is sitting at home without income, unable to make their house payments, and stripped of their imagined futures. Simultaneously, a huge portion of the working class is laid off as collateral damage from the ensuing collapse of consumer demand.

The Mission for America is a roadmap for what the president and our government must do in that moment. It includes sweeping, immediate programs to get people into meaningful, lucrative work while simultaneously laying the groundwork for a new, clean economy that guarantees shared prosperity forever with radically reduced working time.

Even after the great AI replacement, there will still be an enormous amount of vital work to do that requires humans:

• Building a replacement for the doomed fossil fuel economy, which continues to radically alter our atmosphere and heat the planet, even when the news media and policymakers look away
• Rebuilding and upgrading our homes and buildings for energy efficiency, health, safety, and quality of life
• Restoring our public infrastructure and hardening it to withstand severe climate impacts
• Establishing the care economy as a source of rewarding, well-paid jobs that ensure dignity for our elders and everyone who needs care
• Building the best health care and education systems the world has ever seen

Capitalism has no built-in mechanism to channel labor and resources into these essential missions, even with the incredible productivity gains brought by AI and robotics, and least of all when most potential customers have had their incomes cut off. If we want this work done, society must organize to make it happen. We need comprehensive plans and institutions with the power and resources to execute them.

To achieve this, the U.S. must switch from "decline mode" back into "mission mode" — a state of national action modeled on the exceptional U.S. industrial mobilization around World War II. The Mission for America calls for restoring our capacity for public investment and economic coordination, primarily through a revived Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). The RFC will operate as a massive public development bank and venture fund, financing the launch of entirely new industries, creating tens of millions of high-wage jobs, and supplying the world with the technology required to transition to a clean economy.

The plan is organized into a series of targeted, 10-year "national missions." Most are associated with a specific sector of the economy — such as clean power, electric vehicles, public transportation, or green steel. Others are designed around solving specific challenges, like drawing down atmospheric greenhouse gases or guaranteeing access to clean and safe water for all Americans. Each mission will require relentless "Mission Leadership" — a president willing to eliminate the filibuster, battle obstructionism, and use executive powers to push the mobilization forward.

The Mission for America is a blueprint for the total, sweeping upgrade of our economy needed to solve the defining crises of the 21st century, from AI to climate to jobs, and unleash an era of radical abundance.

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was created in 1932 to handle what no other institution could: a banking system in collapse, mass unemployment, and an economy that needed to be fundamentally restructured and rebuilt from the inside out. For more than a decade, the RFC was the largest enterprise in the world. It fixed systemic failures, created entire industries, built critical infrastructure, and financed the industrial mobilization that won World War II. It earned a profit for the U.S. treasury every year it operated.

AI is about to create disruption on that scale again. As automation eliminates whole categories of work, from factory jobs to professional, managerial, and creative work, the economy will need the same kind of deep restructuring the RFC was built to deliver. It will need an institution with the power, capital, and mandate to launch new industries, restructure failing ones, and put tens of millions of people to work building things the world actually needs.

The Mission for America calls for resurrecting the RFC to play exactly that role. The original RFC functioned as a bank, venture capital firm, private equity firm, and strategic coordinator — whatever the nation's biggest challenges required. It was a capitalist institution, run by leaders from the private sector serving a public mission. Its vast expenditures did not come at the expense of other national priorities. The RFC demonstrated that a national economy can be expanded in ways that benefit everyone.

Under the Mission for America, the new RFC will be financed by federal appropriation, bonds, and private capital. Structured as a publicly-owned independent corporation, it will be free to participate in any sector of the economy, in whatever way is necessary to build a prosperous and sustainable economy. The RFC will be organized into dedicated teams, each one responsible for leading a single national mission — clean power, EVs, steel, hydrogen, buildings, workforce, and so on. Each team will have the expertise, authority, and capital to drive its mission from planning through execution.

Our plan calls for the president-elect to begin assembling the RFC before Inauguration Day — recruiting top private-sector leaders, engineers, and operators to volunteer their expertise and start planning immediately. Think of it as DOGE in reverse, with private sector leaders serving in publicly accountable positions to build up our economy. By the time the president takes office, the RFC will already have teams in place, plans drafted, and deals in the pipeline. The mission starts on day one.

Converting to zero-emissions electricity while dramatically increasing output is an essential step in building a clean economy. Electricity generation is the second largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S., accounting for 25% of annual emissions. Converting to 100% clean power is necessary to eliminate those emissions; increasing overall production is needed to support the electrification of nearly the entire economy. The national mission for clean power will:

• Transition electricity production to 100% clean sources in 10 years by financing and coordinating investments in clean energy, instituting a Clean Energy Standard (CES), and radically reforming the siting and permitting process for power production and transmission projects.

• Increase total energy production by at least 100% to accommodate electrification of the general economy as well as power-hungry applications such as CO2 drawdown and hydrogen production.

• Build new high voltage, long-distance power lines to provide affordable power to population centers while eliminating bottlenecks and shortages during demand peaks.

• Make energy storage capacity ubiquitous at every level of the nation's electricity infrastructure from power plants to homes and consumer appliances.

• Expand distributed power generation solutions such as commercial and residential rooftop solar and ground-source heat pumps.

• Upgrade the nation's power grid and utilities to accommodate massively increased demand for electricity.

• Launch a D.O.D.-led nuclear program to massively increase electricity production. (Its own national mission.)

The United States is already in the midst of a clean energy boom. Billions of dollars have been invested in clean energy projects over just the last few years. Despite this progress, the United States is not on track to reach 100% clean power within the next decade — or even by 2050.

A range of obstacles is holding back America's transition to clean power despite the economic advantages of clean power. These include a prohibitive, slow, and redundant regulatory system, backwards incentives and inadequate planning and investment at utility companies, failed attempts to engineer electricity markets, and more. Our plan contains measures for addressing all of these.

The key mechanism for driving the country to 100% clean power is the Clean Energy Standard (CES), administered by the Department of Energy and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which requires that utilities replace all fossil-fuel power sources with clean power in 10 years.

The policies introduced in this national mission will build a clean energy grid and create high-paying jobs for workers across multiple industries including utilities, manufacturing, energy development, and R&D firms. The energy transition also gives America an opportunity to rectify some of the injustices the current energy system has placed on low income and marginalized communities.

The national mission for electric vehicles (EVs) is a comprehensive strategy to reposition the United States as a leader in the global EV market, accelerate the global transition to EVs, and provide millions of new high-paying jobs in the U.S. This mission will:

• Ramp up EV production to reach approximately 30 million units annually in 10 years, returning America to the position of top global auto exporter, and greatly accelerating the global transition to EVs.

• Ensure that 100% of new light-duty vehicle sales in America are EVs in 10 years.

• Provide generous subsidies and buy-back programs to encourage EV sales and to retire fossil-fuel vehicles.

• Construct the world's most efficient and user-friendly EV charging network to make EVs more convenient to own than gas-powered vehicles.

This mission aims to greatly accelerate the global shift to EVs by adding significantly to the total global EV supply. In doing so, it positions the U.S. to capture a significant portion of the burgeoning global EV market, creating millions of high-wage jobs for Americans. We have set a numeric target of 30 million EVs produced each year in America in 10 years.

The key to achieving such high production goals will be automation — which is also the key to ensuring EV jobs are high wage. Though EV production uses less labor per vehicle — especially when highly automated — the enormous overall increase in EV production means the auto workforce in America will grow significantly from today's levels.

The transition to EVs is a process already in motion, primarily driven by consumer preferences. However, production lags far behind demand. As the global auto industry stands on the brink of a complete shift to electric vehicles, the U.S. has a narrow window of opportunity to lead this transformation and reclaim its historical status as the world's foremost auto exporter.

More than with most other missions, success here depends primarily on leadership. The president and the RFC EV team must convince automakers and investors to bet on big investments in America.

After lack of supply, the inconvenience of charging is the most important blocker to EV adoption. Fast chargers must be available in abundance everywhere people park their cars. The EV mission will subsidize the building and operation of public fast chargers in every community to kickstart the EV economy.

By aligning federal resources, legislative action, and private sector innovation, this mission will revive the American auto industry and significantly contribute to reducing national and global carbon emissions over the next decade.

The national mission for a sustainable steel industry is central to the Mission for America because so many of the other national missions depend on large supplies of clean steel and because this is an industry that can provide many high paying, high quality jobs. This mission will:

• Revitalize and decarbonize the U.S. steel industry while increasing total U.S. steel production by approximately 50% — adding many high-wage jobs to the economy.
• Make all production of steel clean in 10 years by investing in electric arc furnace and green hydrogen reduction processes.
• End the shortage of electrical steel and other specialty products that threatens the American transition to EVs and a clean power grid.

The American steel industry was the largest and most advanced in the world for almost a century but has declined in relative and absolute terms since the 1970s. Though it retains the #4 position in the world, it produces less than 1/10th of China's output and 1/2 of India's. Japan, a high-wage country with less than half America's population produces slightly more than us. The decline of the American steel industry resulted in the loss of millions of good jobs, an increasing reliance on imports, and shortages of specialized steel that have burdened other industries in the U.S. Most major American steel companies have shown little to no interest in reversing this downward spiral.

The world stands at the precipice of a revolution in steel production. Electric arc furnaces powered by clean electricity and the green hydrogen direct reduction processes have given industry the means to replace dirty steel production with clean. Though clean steel still involves some CO2 emissions, they are a small fraction compared with the status quo.

The U.S. steel industry is cleaner than most countries' because it is mainly driven by electric arc furnaces which use recycled steel. The U.S. recycles a very high share of the steel it produces, but some new steel still must be fabricated. Making that process clean requires the building of hydrogen-powered "direct reduction" furnaces — this relatively new technology will require significant investment by the RFC to kickstart at a scale sufficient to meet America's present needs and the increased demand from the Mission for America.

So far, U.S. steel makers have been slow to invest in this new process. The national mission for steel calls for an end to the apathy of the American steel industry and a new focus on building the world's first clean steel industry.

The global steel industry accounts for 7% of total global emissions. Solving the climate crisis will require a significant increase in global steel production while at the same time converting all steel production to clean processes. The U.S. must step up to provide sufficient amounts of clean steel to ensure the global transition to a clean economy move as fast as possible.

This national mission will build the world's first clean steel industry by focusing on the following actions:

• The president will use all the tools of mission leadership to challenge the intransigence of steel industry leaders and pressure them to invest in new clean steel capacity — going so far as to use the RFC to kickstart new companies if necessary.
• The Reconstruction Finance Corporation will invest billions of dollars in both existing companies and start-ups to build new clean steel production capacity.
• The Reconstruction Finance Corporation will convene an emergency council to end the electrical steel shortage and to monitor other types of specialized steel to prevent future shortages.
• Congress will incentivize clean steel production through new subsidies as well as regulations that phase out the production of dirty steel in 10 years.
• Congress will create a Carbon Border Adjustment Tax that taxes the importation of dirty steel, thus supporting America's clean steel industry and encouraging other countries to invest in their own clean steel production.

For sectors of the economy that cannot be electrified, green hydrogen, produced by 100% clean electricity, is one potential alternative. Despite receiving billions in public subsidies and investments, hydrogen is still a controversial solution for greenhouse gas emissions reduction for several reasons: leaked hydrogen indirectly acts as a greenhouse gas (and is the leakiest gas on the periodic table), hydrogen requires large amounts of clean electricity to produce (though far less water than is often assumed), and it is difficult and expensive to safely store and transport. Despite these challenges, hydrogen stands as one of the most promising technologies for scalable replacements of fossil fuels for some applications.

It is important that hydrogen not be used in areas where it is clearly inferior to other technologies — such as large scale electricity production, heating, cooking, cars, and trucks.

This mission will build the infrastructure necessary to supply green hydrogen to every relevant application. The national mission for hydrogen will:

• Build a national green hydrogen industry with scalable capacity to replace all current dirty hydrogen production and to power applications where hydrogen turns out to be an appropriate fuel.
• Invest heavily in industries needed to build the hydrogen economy, such as electrolyzers.
• Require, assist, and finance producers of dirty hydrogen to convert to green hydrogen production facilities.
• Build green hydrogen production at the airports and ports the aviation and shipping missions will need, so the fuel supply is ready as those fleets scale. (See the national missions for aviation and shipping.)

Hydrogen has long been touted as a fuel of the future, but, until recently, was limited to only niche industrial uses. The falling price of clean electricity and other technologies will soon make unsubsidized green hydrogen competitive with dirty hydrogen. Recently initiated Biden administration subsidies make subsidized green hydrogen competitive now (against dirty hydrogen which is also subsidized via subsidies and support for fossil fuels).

With almost every application for hydrogen, a chicken-and-egg problem prevents the private sector from accomplishing a transition in the absence of public leadership and financing. Without an affordable and convenient supply of hydrogen, it doesn't make sense to invest in new hydrogen-powered planes, ships, industries, and infrastructure. Likewise, without large-scale demand for hydrogen, investing in hydrogen production and distributions is a non-starter.

The national mission for hydrogen calls for, among other projects, building green hydrogen production facilities at every airport and port to solve for the supply side of the chicken-and-egg problem. Other national missions, such as those for clean aviation and shipping, will solve the demand side of the problem. The specifics of hydrogen transport and clean hydrogen production make it most efficient to build production facilities very close to where hydrogen is needed. Unfortunately, conversion of long-distance gas lines to be used with hydrogen is not technically feasible.

Buildings and homes are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions and of energy waste. Much of our housing stock is old, unhealthy, or unsafe for residents. A housing shortage is driving prices beyond affordability for most Americans. Since the COVID pandemic, cities and towns face a glut of unoccupied office space, some of which must be refashioned for other purposes or replaced. All of this will require millions of new construction workers, creating as many good, high-paying jobs. The national mission for homes and buildings will:

• Organize millions of workers — many of whom will be new entrants into the workforce — to overhaul America's homes and buildings for CO2 emissions, energy efficiency, comfort, health, and safety.
• Require states to streamline permitting and approval processes for building projects — tying federal aid and funding of all types to compliance, in the same way the federal government does today to enforce national transportation rules.
• Establish a federal project to provide training and support for millions of new workers to enter or reenter the construction workforce.
• Finance and coordinate the upgrading of most homes and buildings in 10 years through long-term green bonds, issued by the RFC, that are paid by utility companies out of savings from efficiency.
• Compensate homeowners and tenants for the inconvenience of upgrading homes to ensure uptake.

The United States housing sector has two major problems: millions of homes are contributing to the climate crisis by using fossil fuel-powered heaters, stoves, and other appliances; and a national housing shortage has caused the costs of owning or renting a home to skyrocket. A comprehensive national housing policy must focus on both problems by retrofitting existing homes for sustainability, comfort, and safety — and building millions of new zero-emission, highly efficient homes.

Residential building emissions primarily arise from homes using fossil fuel for heating, cooking, and laundry. These processes contribute to the climate crisis and produce pollutants that harm the health of residents. Investing in home electrification and energy efficiency retrofits will decrease a home's carbon footprint and impact on the grid, lower monthly utility bills, and improve the health of those living there.

An important way to make housing affordable is to build more homes. The 2010s were the slowest decade for new home construction in modern American history, and since then, the total supply of homes has remained consistently below demand. Investing in sustainable housing will help lower costs and make housing affordable for all Americans.

America's stock of commercial buildings is another major source of carbon emissions. Building owners are nowhere near on track to decarbonize buildings. As with homes, public financing will be necessary, and will be provided by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. American cities are now filled with empty office buildings. Though it is difficult, many of these buildings can be converted to other purposes. Others will need to be dismantled, recycled, and replaced with apartment buildings or other kinds of buildings.

Homeowners, tenants, and landlords cannot be expected to pay the costs of upgrades. Requiring them to pay will render this mission, and likely the entire Mission for America, politically unpopular. Moreover, when the typical homeowner, renter, and landlord are all struggling with high costs, it makes no sense to add an additional burden on them.

The workforce required for this mission will be enormous. One of the Mission for America's goals is to build an economy that can provide prosperity for everyone. Home and building upgrade work has jobs of all skill levels and will be needed in every community. This is the perfect project to provide good jobs to people who have been out of the workforce for a long time or who have no work experience. It can provide good work for people reestablishing their lives after prison, drug addicts in recovery, and others who have difficulty getting into the workforce today. There will also be much work for high-skilled and specialized construction workers.

We recommend that the RFC finance this huge project by issuing long-term green bonds that will be paid back by energy savings paid out by utility companies. Rate payers will enjoy all the benefits of the upgrades for free, and the energy savings will go to repaying the bonds.

Air travel is one of the fastest-growing sources of CO₂ emissions, producing about 3% of global emissions. As global incomes rise, more people are flying, and this trend could lead to a fivefold increase in air travel by 2050. Banning or limiting aviation is unlikely, so we need to either develop zero-emissions aviation technology or find ways to remove all greenhouse gases released by aircraft. Greenhouse gas drawdown at that scale is still highly uncertain.

For clean aviation, we advocate trying every reasonable approach simultaneously until the best long-term solutions emerge. This might involve investing in technologies that don't ultimately succeed, but that's part of how progress works. Even unsuccessful technologies can teach us valuable lessons and be repurposed to meet other needs.

Our national mission for aviation will:

• Support truly clean and sustainable jet fuel approaches. Most current so-called sustainable jet fuels are more harmful than helpful when their total life cycle emissions are counted, and/or hold no hope of scaling beyond small, highly-subsidized demonstration projects. Nevertheless, technological developments often surprise, and many different kinds of sustainable jet fuel approaches are currently being developed.
• Invest in electric aircraft: Electric planes are already in commercial use for short flights. While it's unlikely that battery technology will ever power long-haul flights due to fundamental limitations, advancements in this area are still worth pursuing.
• Develop hydrogen-powered jets: We are aware of how controversial this proposal is, but after carefully evaluating their potential, we are compelled to call for a moonshot-style partnership between the federal government, military, RFC, and U.S. aerospace industry to develop hydrogen-powered long-haul jets. Hydrogen-powered jets have flown as early as the 1950s, and small piloted hydrogen aircraft are flying today. The main challenge is engineering safe, energy efficient, large-scale storage of liquid hydrogen. Redesigning aircraft to a more efficient "flying wing" design is also necessary to make room for the fuel storage systems. This innovation in commercial aviation is needed regardless of the future of hydrogen as a fuel, will rejuvenate the U.S. aerospace industry, and give it an edge globally.

Producing hydrogen in sufficient quantities will require vast amounts of electricity, but transitioning to a clean electricity system is already necessary. Our national mission for clean electricity is designed to make it possible to scale clean electricity production by orders of magnitude.

American trucking emits a large share of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution and must be transitioned from fossil-fuel powered vehicles to zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) powered by batteries. This mission will:

• Establish an industry producing electric semi-trucks in 10 years, capable of supplying America and the world for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.
• Build a national truck battery charging and swapping infrastructure that can support the entire electrified U.S. trucking fleet.
• Ramp up production of small and medium sized electric trucks (and all class 4-7 vehicles) to reach 100% ZEVs in 10 years.

Other goals which are necessary to make the above possible are found in the missions for EVs and clean power, such as improving the grid and providing assistance to utilities to accommodate the needs of truck charging facilities at truck stops, trucking companies, warehouses, and other sites.

The diverse range of vehicles included in this national mission — from small delivery trucks to large semis — requires policymakers to consider each vehicle type's needs and recent progress carefully. Some medium and heavy-duty vehicles, such as buses and delivery vans, already have ZEV options for sale and on the roads. For those vehicles, policymakers simply must accelerate a process already in motion. Other vehicles, particularly the largest ones like long-haul semi-trucks, are more challenging to decarbonize and will require more aggressive public investment and coordination.

We allow a longer timeline for the heaviest vehicles to transition because new battery technology will need to be developed, and the sheer quantity of materials for those large batteries may be difficult to acquire in a short timeframe.

This mission is imperative for two reasons. The first is that fossil fuel-powered trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles are an environmental disaster. Although they represent only about 5% of the total vehicles on the road, they account for approximately 23% of the transportation sector's emissions. Fossil fuel-powered MHDVs also contribute to local pollution that disproportionately harms marginalized communities. Second, the global market for ZEVs is young and undefined — providing America the opportunity to lead the world in manufacturing ZEVs should policymakers and industry leaders act quickly.

This national mission will accomplish its goals with the following and other strategies:

• The president will convene leaders from the vehicle manufacturing and fleet operations industries to win their support for the national mission.
• The Reconstruction Finance Corporation will invest in new ZEV manufacturing and provide financing to fleet managers to purchase American-made ZEVs.
• Incentivizing companies to purchase ZEVs through generous financial subsidies and a future ban on fossil fuel-powered MHDVs.

The global fleet of roughly 112,500 commercial ships burns close to 300 million tonnes of fuel oil a year and emits nearly 3 percent of the world's CO₂, about as much as all of Japan. The same fuel fills port neighborhoods with sulfur, nitrogen oxides, and soot, and an estimated 31 million Americans live within about five kilometers of a major port. Ships last 20 to 30 years, so most of today's fleet will have to be converted to cleaner fuels to meet tightening emissions rules. The world's retrofit capacity sits mostly in Chinese and Middle Eastern yards and falls far short of the more than 1,000 conversions a year the industry will need. The United States has almost no part in this market. In 2023 China delivered 972 commercial ships and the United States delivered seven. The Mission for Clean Shipping will rebuild American shipyards around converting the world's fleet, supply the clean fuel those ships need, and clear the air over the country's ports.

This mission will:

• Build the world's leading ship retrofit industry in American yards, starting with methanol conversions that take 80 to 90 days of yard time and adding ammonia as the engines mature, with guaranteed orders from the federal fleet and a Jones Act requirement that all new domestic vessels meet zero-emission fuel standards five years after the law passes.
• Produce green ammonia and green methanol at Gulf Coast ports and build fueling infrastructure at every major American port, with a price guarantee that keeps clean fuel close to the cost of today's bunker fuel for shipowners.
• Electrify all 50 major U.S. ports within a decade, with shore power at every dock so ships can shut off their engines, electric cranes and cargo equipment, the grid upgrades to power them, and public air-quality monitoring in every port community.
• Put battery-electric power on ferries, harbor craft, and short-sea routes, and help fishing fleets switch to cleaner boats.
• Work with allies at the International Maritime Organization to adopt and strengthen a global carbon price on shipping fuel, and build a network of clean refueling ports along the world's major trade routes.

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation will finance the rebuild with 30-year loans for shipyard retooling, advance purchase commitments that guarantee conversion orders before yards invest, financing for clean fuel plants, and coordinated grid upgrades at the ports. Retrofit work will train the welders, marine engineers, and electricians who will go on to build new clean ships from the keel up.

By the end of the decade, American yards will convert hundreds of ships a year for owners around the world, every major U.S. port will run on electricity, and more than 200,000 Americans will work in high-wage jobs across the yards, the fuel plants, and the modernized ports.

A handful of corporations decide what Americans eat and what farmers earn. Nineteen million Americans live with no supermarket within reach, more than a mile away in the cities and more than 10 miles out in the country. The farmers who feed everyone else carry the highest debt on record, much of it borrowed to build to the specifications of the processors who set the prices they are paid. Most of the country's meat, milk, and eggs come from factory farms whose routine antibiotic use breeds drug-resistant germs and whose waste fouls the water. And the fertilizer that grows the nation's food is made from natural gas, so every spike in the gas market becomes a spike at the grocery store. The Mission for American Farming will rebuild the food system end to end, with affordable, healthy food within every family's reach, buyers and fair prices for the farmers who grow it, and clean American fertilizer to replace the kind made from natural gas.

This mission will:

• Feed every American through the American Food Corporation, a publicly owned network of regional food companies that opens real grocery stores in the neighborhoods the supermarkets abandoned, cooks affordable ready-made meals from regional ingredients, delivers to anyone who cannot reach a store, accepts SNAP and WIC at every hub from the day it opens, restores the food assistance Congress cut in 2025, and holds a national food reserve that steadies prices in good years and lean ones.
• Break the monopolies that control meat, seeds, fertilizer, and grocery shelves, with antitrust enforcement across the food chain and a network of publicly owned processing plants that give independent farmers an alternative buyer for the first time in a generation.
• Buy out the farmers trapped in the predatory debt that ties them to a single processor, tie the subsidies farmers already receive to protecting their soil and water while paying for the work it takes, and pay any farmer who wants it a second income for hosting clean energy and water infrastructure on land they keep and still farm, and, in the West, buy water from farmers who choose to sell.
• End the worst forms of factory farming, and the routine antibiotic use that keeps them running, by changing the economics of land and feed. Corn-ethanol and stranded export acreage, plus the land freed by halving food waste, will go to pasture and regional food, trees will be planted on eroded ground, and the farm runoff that has fouled drinking water across farm country will be cleaned up.
• Build America's first green fertilizer industry at national scale, producing ammonia from clean power and water and breaking agriculture's dependence on natural gas and the fossil fuel market.
• Fund the next generation of American food and the public science behind it, including advanced proteins grown without animals, gene-edited crops and public seed banks released as open-source public goods that break the corporate seed monopoly, and a rebuilt agricultural research and extension service that carries better practices to every farm.

The food system stays rigged because it is monopolized at every layer at once, and because the Farm Bill pays farmers to keep polluting. When one administration writes rules to protect contract farmers, the next freezes them. The poultry payment rule finalized in early 2025 was shelved before it could take effect, and in 2026 the USDA moved to repeal it and two other farmer protections. Federal grants for independent processing were frozen mid-construction. A narrow fix at one layer just moves the extraction to the next.

The Mission's answer works on two fronts. Congress will keep the Farm Bill but tie the tens of billions in yearly subsidies and crop insurance to keeping soil and water clean, with public money covering the cost of every standard it sets. And the Reconstruction Finance Corporation will provide the patient public capital no single budget cycle can freeze, financing the debt buyouts, the processing plants, the clean-ammonia industry, the land transition, and the American Food Corporation. Farmland becomes a platform that pays several times over, with food, clean power, and water storage from the same working acres.

The payoff is a food economy that is competitive, independent, clean-powered, and abundant, with hundreds of thousands of jobs across processing, clean energy, distribution, and agricultural science; the next generation of farmers put on the land as the current one retires; drinking water in farm country made safe again; and nutritious food within every American's reach and every family's budget. The country already grows enough to feed everyone well. The Mission makes sure the food reaches them.

The Manhattan Projects are the Mission for America's research engine, the RFC Advanced Research Division. Its job is narrow and hard. It works only on the handful of breakthroughs the rest of the Mission genuinely cannot succeed without. Every program has to answer one question before it starts. Which mission fails if this is not solved? If the answer is none, the work belongs somewhere else.

The Division will run its programs the way the Manhattan Project, Bell Labs, and DARPA ran theirs, with brilliant people, real authority, multiple teams racing each problem in parallel, and a tolerance for the failures that come with taking real risks. What is different is that the public will own what it creates. When a Division-funded breakthrough reaches commercial scale, the taxpayer will get a share of the upside through equity and royalties. The gains from the transistor and the internet went to private shareholders.

The core portfolio is the short list of problems where a whole sector's plan stalls until the science lands:

• Carbon-free cement, the chemistry that makes concrete one of the largest sources of emissions on earth.
• A fossil-free feedstock for the chemical industry, and a clean source of the aromatic molecules behind plastics, fibers, and fully clean aviation fuel.
• Clean ways to make the materials carbon still makes, like silicon and the ferroalloys, plus clean industrial heat above 1,800 degrees.
• Storage that holds more and lasts longer, to run a clean grid around the clock and carry electric transport past short hops.
• Zero-carbon fuel for long-haul aviation, the flights that do not decarbonize at all without a breakthrough.
• Clean power for the hardest freight, the heaviest long-haul trucking and the ships that batteries cannot yet move.

Across all of it, the goal is to make the clean version work and to drive it down to the cost of the dirty version it replaces.

A second, smaller set of programs are honest hedges, funded because the payoff would be enormous but the Mission does not depend on them. Fusion is the clearest example. It would remake the energy system, but it will almost certainly arrive too late for the Mission's targets, so it is funded openly as a long-horizon bet.

The Division will be built to last and to stay honest, with competitive selection, conflict-of-interest rules, clawbacks, and a public dashboard of every award and outcome, so a permanent research institution stays focused on serving the country.

A clean grid needs power that runs around the clock, and nuclear is the proven source that does. But the United States has forgotten how to build it. Its two newest reactors, at Vogtle in Georgia, cost $35 billion and finished seven years late, while China has 36 reactors under construction. The number of certified American nuclear suppliers has fallen from roughly 500 to about 100 since the 1980s, the country still leans on Russia to enrich its reactor fuel, and 95,000 tons of spent fuel sit at more than 70 sites with nowhere to go. The Mission for Nuclear Power will prove that America can build reactors again, quickly, safely, and at a cost that falls with every unit.

This mission will:

• Build the first wave of reactors on military bases, with the Department of Defense building and operating them, and switch on at least one full-size reactor within the president's first term.
• Pick one proven design for full-size reactors, starting with the Westinghouse AP1000, and one for small modular reactors, and build each again and again in batches, the way France and South Korea drove their costs down. Several microreactor designs will compete on bases first, and the fleet will standardize on the ones that prove themselves.
• Hold every builder to a fixed price, with the reactor company putting up its own money so cost overruns come out of its own pocket.
• Keep the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the safety regulator for every reactor that sells power to the grid, with a faster review for certified designs on federal land.
• Rebuild the American nuclear industry, with new enrichment plants for standard fuel and the higher-enriched fuel small reactors need, a national heavy-forging plant for the largest reactor parts, and a revived base of component suppliers.
• Train hundreds of thousands of workers through an expanded Navy reactor-operator pipeline, a pipeline that moves welders, pipefitters, and electricians from declining fossil fuel industries into nuclear careers, and a new National Nuclear Academy.
• Get more power out of the 94 reactors already running through equipment upgrades and better fuel, the fastest clean power available.
• Solve the waste problem with an independent National Nuclear Waste Corporation that can finally spend the $51 billion Nuclear Waste Fund ratepayers have already paid in, and a consolidated storage site hosted by a community that volunteers and is well rewarded for it.

Every country that expanded nuclear power quickly did the same thing. It picked a design, standardized it, and built it over and over. The United States did the opposite, funding many designs, building one of each, and letting every utility customize, so costs never came down. Building on military bases answers the hardest questions about the first reactors. The land is federal, the security is already in place, and the military has run reactors safely for more than 70 years. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation will finance the fleet and the industrial base behind it.

The first reactors will be the most expensive, and the Department of Defense will absorb that early premium. As costs fall with each unit, utilities financed by the RFC will build their own on the same design, with the same trained workforce and supply chain, and proven small reactors will reach data centers, factories, and remote towns. The result is clean power that runs day and night, hundreds of thousands of good jobs, and a nuclear industry able to keep building for decades.

The United States loses 6.75 billion gallons of treated drinking water every day, pipes water through lead lines into millions of homes, and leaves more than a million people without running water or basic plumbing. Climate change is making it worse, drawing down the rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers the country depends on. In the West, the Colorado River is promised to more users than it can supply, and in 2026, when the states that share it could not agree on new rules, the federal government imposed cuts that are already being fought in court. The Mission for Water has two jobs: to make every tap in America safe to drink from, and to make sure the country always has enough water to go around.

This mission will:

• Guarantee safe, affordable water in every home: every lead service line replaced by 2037, the PFAS limits reinstated by statute, and a permanent assistance program so no household loses water service over a bill it cannot pay.
• Bring running water and plumbing to every home that still lacks them, from the Navajo Nation to Appalachia to the Texas colonias.
• Stop the leaks that waste a fifth of the country's treated water, with a national water loss standard and cheap 30-year financing for the pipe replacement that utilities have deferred for decades.
• Catch the rain: pay farmers to bank wet-year floodwater underground in the nation's aquifers as insurance against drought, while repairing the aging dams and levees that protect communities from floods.
• Recycle wastewater into new supply, build clean-energy desalination on the coasts, and require new data centers and factories to cool with recycled water wherever it is available, so they stop competing with families for drinking water.
• Build water markets in the over-promised Western basins, starting with the Colorado River: each river capped at what it actually carries, its water divided into shares that farms and cities can buy, sell, and lease, every large diversion and well metered and policed by an independent basin authority, disputes settled at the table, and willing farmers paid to free up what cities, rivers, and tribes need.

The country has 50,000 separate water systems, each with its own budget and backlog, most too small to finance major repairs on their own. As with the other missions, the Mission will set national standards and give utilities generous support to meet them. The systems will stay locally run wherever they can manage it, but each will be held to one National Water Standard for leaks, contaminants, and reuse, with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation providing the long-term, low-cost financing to get there. Alongside the standards comes a wave of new water infrastructure: new pipes, treatment that strips out the poisons, repaired dams and levees, stormwater capture, aquifer recharge, and recycling plants. Every piece is already working somewhere in America: Los Angeles catches its storms, Arizona banks its river water, Orange County turns wastewater back into drinking water.

The 10-year build runs on the order of $1.1 trillion, and roughly three-fifths of it is lending that repays itself from ordinary water bills over the life of the pipes and plants. It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, give rural communities new income from hosting water storage on their land, and end the quiet emergency of unsafe taps in the wealthiest country on earth. Every year the country waits, the pipes get older, the aquifers drop further, and the repair bill grows.

The national mission for eliminating toxins from the food and water supply is a crucial step towards ensuring the health and safety of all Americans. This mission will:

• Establish a new branch of the EPA that investigates where and how toxins are entering human bodies and find their ultimate sources in industrial and other processes.
• Implement federal regulations to ban — or make safe — processes in industry and elsewhere that are responsible for toxins ultimately entering human bodies.
• Offer grants and financial incentives to assist companies in transitioning to toxin-free production and packaging methods.
• Invest in research and development of alternative, safe materials for use in food and water processing industries.
• Launch national monitoring and compliance programs to ensure adherence to new standards and to track progress in toxin reduction.

The presence of toxins in our food and water supply poses a significant threat to public health. From pesticides in agriculture to chemicals in packaging, numerous harmful substances enter our food, water, air, and products we put on our skin. Reducing human exposure to toxins requires an approach that combines regulatory action with support for businesses and consumers.

By banning harmful toxins, the government sets a clear standard for food, water, air, and product safety. Understanding that such a transition can be challenging for producers, the mission includes financial and technical support to help industries adapt. This support is crucial for smaller businesses that might otherwise struggle to meet new requirements.

Investing in research and development is critically important. We must develop safe, sustainable alternatives to current practices, ensuring that eliminating one toxin does not lead to the introduction of another.

The success of this mission also hinges on robust monitoring and compliance mechanisms. These will ensure that the new standards are implemented and that they reduce toxins in our food and water supply.

Most Americans have no way to get around except an expensive car. Transit ridership per person is a fraction of what peer nations achieve, American roads are among the deadliest in the developed world, and transit agencies cut service and raise fares because Washington pays to build transit and leaves agencies to pay for running it. The Highway Trust Fund is set to run dry in 2028, and the country that built the transcontinental railroad has yet to connect its first two cities by high-speed rail. The Mission for Public Transport will build a network so cheap and complete that any American can get anywhere without owning a car.

This mission will:

• Put a cheap or free ride within reach of every American from the opening months, by subsidizing trips on the ride-hailing and robotaxi platforms already on the road in the towns and rural areas transit does not reach, then launching two or three competing public rideshare companies that offer the same ride for less.
• Roll out e-bikes, e-scooters, cargo bikes, small electric pods, and neighborhood electric vehicles in every city and suburb, built in American factories and covered by the same fare as the bus and the train.
• Build rail again, both kinds at once. Conventional intercity trains will open on dozens of corridors within five years on existing freight track, following the Mardi Gras line between New Orleans and Mobile, which carried more than double its expected riders in its first year. High-speed rail construction will begin on seven priority corridors under a new Federal Rail Authority with the power to acquire land and build directly.
• Make every public bus zero-emission within a decade, built to a few standard designs, bought in bulk through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and made in American factories, with a regional electric coach network as an alternative to short flights.
• Pay for transit operations in big cities again, with a permanent federal funding stream tied to good wages, training, and better bus networks, so agencies can fill their jobs and run frequent service.
• Replace the Highway Trust Fund with a National Transportation Fund that pays for transit in proportion to ridership, counts the real costs of every project, and requires dense housing and an end to parking minimums around every federally funded station.

Transit in America has starved because Washington funds only construction, lets every agency order its own custom buses, and leaves rail to fight for land state by state. The Mission changes each of those. The RFC will pool the country's demand for buses and light electric vehicles, finance the factories that build them, and fund the Federal Rail Authority's construction directly. The authority will keep design in-house with its own engineers, bid construction in competitive packages, and publish every cost line by line. A new Federal Infrastructure Court will hear challenges to major rail projects quickly.

The result is a country where owning a car is optional. Families save the cost of a second car or any car at all, streets get safer, the air gets cleaner, and hundreds of thousands of people get good jobs building and running the system.

The national mission for workforce development and integration is a comprehensive federal initiative designed to significantly expand and enhance the American workforce. This mission will:

• Attract up to 30 million additional workers into the workforce, targeting "discouraged workers" and unemployed young workers in part by providing paid training, healthcare, childcare, and special services and treatment for people struggling with addiction, untreated mental illness, and other problems that are preventing millions of Americans from joining the workforce.
• Pay every family a direct monthly benefit for each child they are raising, treating the work of raising the next generation as the essential labor it is, and giving parents steady income with no income test. This makes permanent the fully refundable, monthly child benefit the country ran in 2021, which cut child poverty by roughly a third in a single month.
• Implement a proactive international recruitment strategy to attract qualified immigrants, focusing on skills and qualities aligned with workforce needs.
• Establish a network of federal workforce training and support centers in every community that will provide a range of services including transportation, childcare, healthcare, career coaching, counseling, and more to support new workers in joining the workforce.
• Operate this federal program essentially as a staffing agency, offering competitive wages and benefits to workers while solving labor shortages for employers across various sectors, with a particular focus on supporting the national mission for homes and buildings.

This mission is inspired in part by the transformative impact of the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which mobilized millions of unemployed workers in beneficial projects all over the country. As with the CCC, the approach of this mission is holistic, recognizing that the barriers to employment often include childcare, health care, transportation, and addiction.

At the heart of this mission are community labor centers, envisioned as hubs of support and resources, addressing the diverse needs of workers and their families. By offering comprehensive services in one location — and transportation between home, the centers, and job sites — they will remove many of the logistical and practical obstacles that currently prevent individuals from entering or re-entering the workforce.

By actively engaging discouraged workers, young unemployed individuals, and immigrants, the initiative seeks to tap into a vast pool of potential that has been largely underutilized. This approach addresses current labor shortages and enriches the workforce with a diverse range of skills and perspectives.

The integration with other national missions, particularly the homes and buildings mission, ensures that the newly trained workforce has ample opportunities to apply their skills. This aids in the successful execution of other missions and guarantees steady employment and growth opportunities for the workers involved.

This mission is currently designed primarily to add millions of new workers to a labor force that is stretched thin. In America today, unemployment is low. The problems are that too many jobs are low quality and low pay, and that too many workers are employed in sectors that do not contribute to economic development and building real wealth. In this context, it will be necessary to bring a huge number of workers into the workforce — similarly to what happened in World War II. If, however, the Mission for America takes place in a context of high unemployment — e.g. due to advances in AI or an economic crisis — then the workforce mission will need to be reimagined to focus on retraining and reintegrating laid off workers back into the workforce in new roles and even totally different industries.

Though U.S. industrial and trade policies of the past several decades have caused domestic industries to atrophy, the U.S. is still one of the largest industrial economies in the world. From machine tools to chemicals and everything in between, we need to modernize and scale up domestic industries to supply the ambitious projects of the Mission for America. Simultaneously, we need to transition industry away from fossil-fuels and greenhouse gas emitting processes. The mission for industry will:

• Facilitate the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to make substantial investments in various industries, aiding them in transitioning to cleaner, more sustainable production processes.
• Implement a Clean Manufacturing Standard (CMS), establishing rigorous emission reduction targets for different industrial sectors based on their unique technical and physical capabilities.
• Make strategic investments to scale industries up to meet the demands of the Mission for America and the world transition to a clean economy.

This mission addresses the critical challenge of decarbonizing industries that are significant sources of CO2 emissions, such as cement, chemicals, and other manufacturing sectors. The approach recognizes that each industry has its own set of possibilities and constraints when it comes to reducing emissions.

The RFC's role is pivotal in providing the financial backing and coordination necessary for industries to overhaul their production methods. These investments are designed to support the adoption of existing clean technologies and to spur innovation in new, more efficient processes. The RFC will work closely with industry leaders, experts, and other stakeholders to identify the most effective paths for decarbonization, reduction of other greenhouse gases, and scaling to meet the needs and expected needs of the Mission for America's projects and world markets.

The Clean Manufacturing Standard (CMS) is another cornerstone of this mission. It will set clear, achievable targets for emission reductions, tailored to the specific circumstances of each industry. The CMS will be dynamic, evolving with technological advancements and increased understanding of what is feasible for each sector. This standard will encourage industries to strive for continuous improvement in their environmental performance.

Through this mission, the United States aims to lead by example in industrial decarbonization, demonstrating that economic growth and environmental stewardship can go hand in hand. This initiative will meet emission targets and transform industries into more sustainable, efficient, and competitive entities in the global market.

Ending fossil fuels, however fast it happens, will not be enough. The atmosphere already holds more carbon dioxide than at any point in at least 800,000 years, and much of the damage is locked in. Alongside cutting emissions, the world will have to take carbon back out of the air, measure the atmosphere honestly, and have the science ready on every option. This mission builds that capacity.

The Mission will:

• Build a domestic direct air capture industry. A growing fleet of plants that pull CO₂ from the air and store it deep underground, financed by the RFC and paid by the government for every verified ton removed. Each plant runs on its own dedicated clean power, and no plant or storage site goes anywhere a community objects. The goal is to turn a handful of subsidized pilots into a real American industry, remove well into the millions of tons a year by 2039, and drive the cost down from the high hundreds and low thousands a ton toward the mid-hundreds, with tens of thousands of jobs in former fossil fuel regions.
• Replant forests and verify the carbon nature stores. A reforestation program funded on a polluter-pays basis restores forests and degraded land, while the soil-carbon work on farms, paid for through the Farming and Water missions, is measured and verified so every ton counted is real.
• Build a Planetary Dashboard. Satellites, ocean buoys, stratospheric balloons, and ground stations that measure the atmosphere and oceans in real time, verify every ton of removal the government pays for, and publish every reading free to the world.

It will also fund open, international research into ocean-based carbon removal. That work will stay at the research stage, with no deployment, and is not a priority of the Manhattan Projects.

Carbon removal comes on top of the managed fossil fuel wind-down detailed in the Fossil Fuels chapter.

No country will build a clean economy alone. The minerals, the factories, the shipping lanes, and the financing all cross borders, so the transition depends on nations that can cooperate and keep their word. The system that cooperation runs through is in shambles, and the United States did most of the breaking, withdrawing from 66 international organizations, gutting its foreign assistance, and replacing a coherent trade policy with five contradictory tariff regimes in under two years. It has also walked away from the business of clean energy, and China now builds around three quarters of the world's clean energy equipment.

The Mission for America will rebuild the country's standing by putting money and coordination behind the global clean energy transition, with most of the work running through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. It has three parts.

• The Green Marshall Plan. The RFC will set up an international lending arm to lend to governments and companies in developing countries. The money will build solar and wind farms, power lines, water systems, and public transport, and it will be repaid over decades out of what those projects earn. Borrowers will be free to buy from any country, and American-made equipment will come with a lower interest rate, longer repayment, and training and maintenance built in. American products are required only where the world is short of them and America can rapidly supply them, like the large transformers every grid needs. The RFC will not lend new money into an old debt crisis, and the United States will push to cancel debts that are never going to be paid.
• Critical mineral security. China does roughly 70 percent of the world's mineral processing and more than 90 percent of rare earth separation. Any single point of failure in a supply chain the whole world depends on is one dispute away from stalling the transition everywhere. The RFC will finance domestic refining and separation, run a Strategic Mineral Reserve that buys low and sells high to blunt price shocks, and sign long-term agreements with the countries that hold the ore, on terms that leave them owning a real share of the business and financed to do more of the refining themselves.
• The Climate Club. The United States will rejoin the global movement to clean up the world economy and move it onto clean power, returning to the UN climate treaty, the IPCC, and the Green Climate Fund. It will also rejoin the Climate Club, a group of roughly 50 countries working together to clean up heavy industry such as steel and cement, and help build it into a trade alliance with common clean manufacturing and labor standards, a shared carbon fee on high-carbon imports from outside, an added charge on goods made cheap by mistreating the workers who produce them, and internal trade opened product by product on a published schedule tied to what member countries can actually make. The Trump tariffs will end, and tariffs will be used only to protect the new industries the Mission is building, each stepping down on a published schedule.

Much of this is about ending dependence on Chinese processing and Chinese financing, and giving other countries the same freedom to choose. Any nation would want that for itself, and China did the same, deliberately and well, over 30 years. There is no version of a livable climate in which China does not build an enormous share of the world's clean technology. So the Mission will work with China as an equal on the transition itself, on research, on standards, and on climate finance.

One of the hardest parts will be regaining trust. The United States has spent years showing that its commitments last about as long as an administration does. So the financing, the carbon standard, and the mineral partnerships will be written into law, so that only an act of Congress can undo them. Once the work is running in enough countries, walking away will become the expensive choice.

Millions of tons of plastic enter the world's oceans every year, and lost fishing gear makes up as much as 70 percent of the large debris floating in them. The Gulf of Mexico dead zone, fed by fertilizer running off Midwestern farms, covered 6,705 square miles in 2024. Coral reefs from Florida to Hawaii are bleaching, the oyster reefs, seagrass, and mangroves that shelter fish and buffer storms are disappearing, and more acidic water is killing young shellfish. Nearly half of American waters have never been mapped to modern standards, and the agencies that manage them are losing staff and freezing grants. The Mission for Oceans will make the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, the waters within 200 nautical miles of every American coast, the healthiest, best-monitored, and most economically productive large marine area on Earth within 10 years.

This mission will:

• Clean the sea by removing 90% of the large floating plastic in U.S. waters each year and retrieving all newly lost fishing gear. A per-ton fee on new plastic will pay for the cleanup contracts and robotic skimmers, and a domestic advanced recycling industry will turn the recovered plastic back into raw material for manufacturers.
• Rebuild the oyster reefs, kelp forests, salt marshes, seagrass, and mangroves along the coast, with a fund that adds two federal dollars to every dollar a state, tribe, or foundation puts in. Farmers upstream will be paid to cut the runoff that causes the Gulf dead zone, and shellfish growers will get early warning and equipment to protect their hatcheries from acidifying water.
• Map the entire EEZ and protect 30% of it as fully protected Marine Protected Areas, linked by corridors along the routes whales, turtles, and tuna travel. Offshore wind will be sited using the map, away from sensitive habitat.
• Halt commercial deep-sea mining in U.S. waters until independent science shows whether it can be done without lasting harm.
• Rebuild the fisheries by funding the science behind catch limits, ending overfishing, setting a deadline to rebuild every depleted stock, and paying fishers affected by the changes through voluntary buyouts and income support.

Most of the work will run through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which will make 30-year, low-interest loans to recycling plants, restoration operators, kelp farms, and aquaculture, and will pay companies to build the cleanup and mapping fleets only when they deliver results. The public will pay directly for the work that earns no revenue, including the survey of the EEZ, enforcement of the protected areas, and the science behind catch limits. Anyone who damages habitat in federal waters, from offshore wind foundations to dredging, will have to pay to restore an equal area elsewhere, the same rule that has protected wetlands on land for 50 years.

The mission will cost on the order of tens of billions of dollars a year, and most of it will be repaid by the industries it finances. It will create tens of thousands of jobs in coastal communities, and by the end of the decade American fishing will land more fish, from healthier stocks, than it does today.

The "Mission for America" is a plan for a decisive transition away from fossil fuels over a period of 10 years. According to some estimates, up to one in 10 jobs in the U.S. are directly or indirectly attached to the fossil fuel industry. The transition away from fossil fuels is coming whether the U.S. achieves the Mission for America or clings to climate denial. We believe that a decisive and coordinated transition will deliver the best results for fossil fuel workers and communities. A slow process would let communities atrophy without the rest of the country even noticing.

As with all the other national missions, the fossil fuel industry phase out will be the responsibility of a team at the RFC. The RFC will employ various mechanisms such as negotiated buyouts, or utilization of government stakes to assume control over significant fossil fuel assets. This can be financed by treasury bonds that will be repaid from industry revenues and the sale of repurposed assets.

For this transition to work, the president must make a good case to the American people that a carefully managed transition is necessary to avoid sudden overwhelming job losses, economic distress, and dangerous health consequences from a chaotic decline of the fossil fuel industry.

The RFC will ensure a stable fossil fuel supply during its demand decline to prevent market disruptions and price spikes. Profits from these operations will be used for several critical activities:

• Environmental remediation: Plugging wells, decommissioning rigs, and other forms of environmental cleanup to minimize long-term ecological damage.
• Worker transition: Supporting workers displaced by industry changes with retraining and financial aid to facilitate movement into sustainable energy sectors.
• Community resilience: Directing investments toward infrastructure enhancement, economic diversification, and social programs to aid communities transitioning from fossil fuel dependency.
• Innovative repurposing and asset management: Reusing fossil fuel assets for renewable energy and other sectors — for example, the same companies that build and service offshore oil rigs can work on offshore wind.

Strategically, the RFC will either sell off assets to the private sector under favorable market conditions or retain them to continue generating revenue. This approach fosters market stability and ensures ongoing financial support for the transition.

The managed decline orchestrated by the RFC will stabilize markets, secure jobs, and ensure community and environmental health. This strategy mitigates the immediate impacts of the industry's contraction and catalyzes a broader shift toward a fully clean and sustainable economy.