By Harold Hutchison
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy unveiled a plan during a Thursday forum to shut down the “deep state,” which included shuttering the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Department of Education in addition to the FBI.
Ramaswamy billed the event, which streamed live on YouTube, as a means to explain how he would “shut down the deep state.” Ramaswamy previously expressed support for shutting down the FBI following the release of a report by Special Counsel John Durham on the origins of the FBI investigation of allegations that former President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia.
“This is the head of the snake when it comes to the spread of wokeism, transgenderism, indoctrination of our kids,” Ramaswamy said during the event, before referencing parental protests at school board meetings, which became a hot-button political issue in 2021 over the use of critical race theory, which holds that America is fundamentally racist, and teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Parents across the country also raised objections to books with sexually explicit content in recent years, prompting some states to act to remove them from schools.
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“The hard truth is that those school boards are actually responding to economic incentives created by this department,” Ramaswamy said, noting that the funds from the Department of Education are often conditioned on the adoption of critical race theory, race-based quotas and “gender ideology.”
“I do not believe we can reform this agency,” Ramaswamy said.
Ramaswamy also unveiled his plan to shut down the NRC, saying it was hampering the ability of the United States to become energy independent.
“This is an agency that quietly is the single wet blanket, the damper on the revival of nuclear energy in the United States,” Ramaswamy said, noting that developing a new nuclear power plant takes 32 steps over as many as 40 years, when prior to the NRC’s creation it took three to four years.
“That’s why there has not been a single new nuclear power plant built in this country in the last 30 years,” Ramaswamy said. “There has not been a new nuclear power plant’s plan that has made it through this 32-step process since this organization ever came to exist.”
