America needs a new frontier. It already faces outward, boldly advancing onto the oceans and into space. It now needs to look inward, toward the empty federal lands that occupy nearly a third of the country. There, American pioneers can create places where innovation flourishes, business thrive, and growing families find comfortable homes: Freedom Cities.

President Trump proposed Freedom Cities in a campaign video released March 3, 2023, back when he was still campaigning for the job that he now holds. “We should hold a contest to charter up to 10 new cities and award them to the best proposals for development,” he claimed. Trump promised that the project would “reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and … hard-working families a new shot at home ownership.”

Beyond painting Freedom Cities as an opportunity for America to take the lead in developing vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, Trump did not offer much by way of details. Others quickly picked up on the idea, though. The Frontier Foundation appears to have moved first, followed by the Freedom City Coalition. Both have been educating the public about the benefits of Freedom Cities and working with lawmakers to pass necessary legislation.

What kind of legal foundations do Freedom Cities require? The Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and Property Clause already give federal lawmakers exclusive authority to regulate land owned by the United States, thereby preempting state or local laws. Examples set by the National Emergencies Act, Public Health Act, Internal Revenue Code and other federal statutes demonstrate how Congress can delegate to the executive branch the power to waive or modify federal regulations. The Foreign Trade Zone Act demonstrates how Congress can authorize a board of directors from various federal agencies to approve and oversee zones exempt from select federal laws and regulations.

Combine all these components in one law and you get the draft Freedom City Act. It authorizes the creation of a Freedom City Board of three members, the secretary or delegate of the Department of Commerce, the Department of Treasury and the Department of the Interior. This board will have the power to invite, evaluate and approve proposals to develop Freedom Cities located either on land that the federal government already owns or that its private owners place in federal trust. That ensures that federal rules will preempt state ones in the cities.

The act further modifies the usually applicable rules by specifying that select federal laws do not apply in a Freedom City. It also authorizes the board to waive or modify the effect of other regulations. In all such cases, the board must aim to satisfy a number of criteria, including: putting federal land to productive use; creating jobs and housing for American workers and families; driving technological innovation in fields critical to the national economy and defense; protecting the environment; experiment with new regulatory paradigms; and contributing to federal and state budgets.

Freedom Cites are not about deregulation per se. The aim is not to have no rules, but to encourage the discovery of better rules. Just as states serve as laboratories for democracy, Freedom Cities will serve as laboratories trying to get the good effects of regulation without the bad effects of inefficiency, waste, and delay. These experiments in governance will happen within small, geographically contained areas and involve only willing participants, mitigating concerns about safety or ethics. By putting freedom into practice, Freedom Cities can help all of us figure out how to govern ourselves better.

Consider how Freedom Cities would handle taxes, for instance. Everyone agrees that government operations require funding. The question is how to raise those funds. The draft Freedom Cities Act requires the board to favor developers’ applications that achieve the same outcomes as applicable federal regulations through alternative and more efficient enforcement regimes. It also requires the board to favor applications that contribute to the federal and state government budgets. This, Freedom Cities will do not through the usual taxes, but through application, lease and concession fees that developers will have to pay up-front and on a continuing basis. In this way, Freedom Cities can research and develop new and better ways to fund government operations.

Creating new cities is not without its risks. The draft Freedom Cities Act thus not only keeps these experiments in governance within geographic and legal limits, but also limits them in time. It specifies that each city will operate under a 99-year lease and regulatory concession. At the expiration of that period, ordinary federal and state laws and regulations will again apply in the location.

Interested in seeing Freedom Cities put into effect? Connect with the Frontier Foundation, the Freedom City Coalition, and others eager to have Trump follow through on his campaign promise. Contact federal lawmakers to urge action on the matter. The first step: getting the draft Freedom City Act introduced in Congress.

Tom W. Bell is a professor at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law and president of Archimediate LLC.