Ron DeSantis floats axing federal agencies

Ron DeSantis is ready to shrink the federal government by eliminating a number of its functions and Departments.

“We would do (The Department of) Education, we would do Commerce, we do Energy and we would do (the) IRS. And so if Congress will work with me on doing that, we’ll be able to reduce the size and scope of government,” DeSantis said on Fox News.

The Governor and 2024 presidential candidate quickly allowed that the legislative branch may not be open to those cuts.

“But what I’m also going to do,” he told host Martha MacCallum, “is be prepared if Congress won’t go that far.”

The Governor suggested that those parts of the government could be weaponized in the culture war.

“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,” DeSantis said.

“So for example, with the Department of Education, we reverse all the transgender sports stuff. Women’s sports should be protected.”

If that came to pass, federal law would look like Florida, which banned the participation of transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s amateur sports in 2021.

“We reverse policies trying to inject the curriculum into our schools,” DeSantis said. “That will all be gone. We will make sure we have an accreditation system for higher ed, which is not trying to foment more things like (diversity, equity and inclusion) and (critical race theory).”

Florida is offering challenges to federal control on this front also. Attorney General Ashley Moody filed suit last week challenging what DeSantis calls an “accreditation cartel,” as the state seeks alternatives to the “unappointed, unelected accrediting agency (that could) trump what the state of Florida is doing.”

“So we’ll be prepared to do both,” DeSantis said Wednesday. “Either way it will be a win for conservatives.”

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