Former President Donald Trump is reportedly planning a sweeping expansion of presidential powers over the machinery of government if he wins his White House bid.
The New York Times, citing campaign policy proposals and interviews with those close to the former president, reported that Trump intends to bring independent agencies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission under direct presidential control.
Also, the news outlet reported, Trump wants to revive the practice of "impounding" funds — refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs — that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.
The Times reported Trump also intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, and clean out intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to boot officials Trump has labeled as "the sick political class that hates our country."
"The president's plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn't been done since FDR's New Deal," John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief involved in putting together the new approach, told The Times.
"Our current executive branch was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies," he told The Times. "There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It's not enough to get the personnel right. What's necessary is a complete system overhaul."
Trump has already underlined the broad plan at rallies and on his campaign website, the news outlet noted.
"What we're trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them," Russell Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America, told The Times.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump's campaign, said in a statement to The Times that the former president has "laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done."
"Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all," the statement said.
Elements of the plans had been floated when Trump was in office but were blocked by internal concerns, The Times reported.
"It would be chaotic," John Kelly, Trump's second White House chief of staff, told The Times. "It just simply would be chaotic, because he'd continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts."