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    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.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How Christian Conservatives Are Planning for the Next Battle, on I.V.F.

    Republicans may be backing away from abortion, but these activists have a strategy, with or without Trump.The pivot seems clear. The Republican Party of the post-Roe era is sidelining anti-abortion activists. Project 2025, the conservative blueprint with innovative abortion bans, has been disavowed by Donald Trump. And the new G.O.P. party platform even promises to advance access to in vitro fertilization.But as Mr. Trump distances himself from the anti-abortion revolution his own administration ushered in, a powerful battalion of conservative Christians has pushed ahead. In recent months, they have quietly laid the groundwork for their fight to restrict not only access to abortion but also to I.V.F.They are planting seeds for their ultimate goal of ending abortion from conception, both within the Republican Party and beyond it. They face a tough political battle since their positions are largely unpopular and do not reflect majority opinion, particularly on I.V.F.As they see it, their challenge spans generations, not simply a single political cycle. And their approach — including controlling regulatory language, state party platforms and the definition of when life begins — reflects an incremental strategy similar to the one activists used for decades to eventually overturn Roe v. Wade.“I expect there will be steps backwards as well as what we are working toward, which are long strikes forward,” said R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., who has been newly mobilizing evangelicals against I.V.F.The fall of Roe itself was far from linear, he noted. “It was nearly a half century of work, a half century of frustration, a half century of setbacks as well as advances,” Mr. Mohler said. “It will be a hard uphill climb, but that’s what we are called to.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More