There’s a quietly brewing rift on the right between those who want to rein in administrative power and those who hope to wield it for conservative ends. Former presidential candidate and business entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy favors the former path and has delivered detailed plans for a radical rollback of regulatory power and shutting down several federal agencies. With the Supreme Court’s recent blows to Chevron deference and its embrace of the major questions doctrine, he sees a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to rein in the permanent bureaucracy. Ramaswamy argues that it is not controversial to hold that the people we elect to run the government should actually run the government.

Is the United States consigned to rule by an army of unelected and unaccountable federal bureaucrats? Are there any realistic paths to diminish the power of federal government bureaucracies?