Trump Lays Out Vision for Bending the Federal Government to His Will

Former President Donald J. Trump vowed to vastly reshape the federal bureaucracy on Saturday in a wide-ranging, often unfocused speech at a rally in Wisconsin.

He pledged to ultimately eliminate the Department of Education, redirect the efforts of the Justice Department and fire civil servants charged with carrying out Biden administration policies that he disagreed with.

And he told his supporters that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading vaccine skeptic who recently endorsed him, would be “very much involved” in a panel on “chronic health problems and childhood diseases.” Mr. Kennedy rose to prominence as a vaccine skeptic who promoted a disproved link between vaccines and autism.

At one point Mr. Trump got in a dig at Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he has frequently accused without evidence of covering up signs that Mr. Biden was not fit to be president, by saying that he would support modifying the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to make it an impeachable offense for a vice president to cover up the incapacity of the president. It was a long-shot proposal at best, which would entail a difficult process that he does not control.

Mr. Trump — who spent four years overseeing the federal bureaucracy — stood at an airport in front of hundreds of people holding “Drain the Swamp” signs distributed by his campaign and promised to “cut the fat out of our government for the first time meaningfully in 60 years,” a period that includes his presidency.

Many of the proposals in Mr. Trump’s speech align with plans reported by The New York Times to conduct a broad expansion of presidential power over government, and to effectively concentrate more authority within the White House, if he wins in November.