Ron DeSantis Said He Would Shut Down Four Federal Agencies If Elected President

Despite building a national brand as a far-right culture warrior, Ron DeSantis is still failing to chip away at the massive lead Donald Trump holds over him in the presidential primary. This appears to be why the Florida governor has now embraced a new game plan: to run to the right of Trump by taking on a pie-in-the-sky anti-government agenda.

Desperately in need of a momentum boost, DeSantis said Wednesday that he would quite literally eliminate four federal agencies if elected president: the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Education.

“If Congress would work with me on doing that, we’ll be able to reduce the size and scope of government,” the governor said in an appearance on Fox News. “If Congress won’t go that far, I’m going to use those agencies to push back against woke ideology and against the leftism that we see creeping into all institutions of American life.”

Of course, liquidating these agencies is not as simple as signing an executive order. He would need congressional authorization to do so––no doubt an improbable ask. Nonetheless, abolishing the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Education, and, most importantly, neutering the IRS, are changes that far-right activists have wanted for years, particularly during the Obama era. And by embracing such overhauls, DeSantis is sending a clear message to the more ideological––if not fanciful––elements of the GOP base at a time when his campaign is idling.

“We need to fundamentally re-constitutionalize the government,” added DeSantis, who, per a recent poll, hasn’t made up any ground on Trump since formalizing his candidacy five weeks ago. “We talked about draining the swamp in 2016; that didn’t happen. I think the better analogy is breaking the swamp.”

In place of the IRS, DeSantis has said he would support a flat tax, a system wherein every taxpayer pays the same percentage of their income. When compared to the progressive tax system currently utilized by the US, a flat tax would be far more advantageous to the ultra-wealthy. But of course, that isn’t how DeSantis sees it: “I would be welcoming to take this tax system, chuck it out the window and do something that’s more favorable to the average folks,” he told conservative radio host Dana Loesch last month, referring to a flat tax.

While Trump has never called for a flat tax, as president, he passed a tax overhaul that favored the rich and oversaw a more pragmatic assault on the IRS than what DeSantis is proposing. As a candidate in the 2016 race, Trump also called for eliminating the Department of Education and Environmental Protection Agency but did not pursue those goals once elected.

As for DeSantis’s current efforts to outflank Trump, the governor on Tuesday vetoed a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill that would have allowed adults in Florida—even if they had their juvenile record wiped clean—to expunge their criminal record, only applying to those who had their charges dropped, were found not guilty, or were arrested but not charged. And recently, DeSantis said that—if elected president—he would seek to repeal Trump’s First Step Act, a criminal justice reform law that has led to the release of thousands of federal prisoners and thousands of sentence reductions.

On Monday, DeSantis also released his “No Excuses” immigration platform, which calls for deploying the military to assist with border enforcement and allowing the use of “deadly force” against migrants suspected of drug trafficking. In an address detailing the plan, DeSantis specifically vowed to end birthright citizenship, exceed the Trump administration’s deportation numbers, detain migrants who are awaiting court dates, and build a complete border wall. To be sure, many of these promises are indistinguishable from those previously made by the former president. But they do play into the self-created image that DeSantis has sought to sell to Republican voters: He is a more focused, bureaucratic version of Trump who is capable of accomplishing more of the MAGA agenda.