Kerby Anderson

The Trump administration has been rolling back federal regulations at a significant rate. One report estimates that deregulation has removed more than 800 regulations. This would include 469 planned regulatory actions that were part of the Obama administration’s regulatory agenda and another 391 active regulatory proceedings actions that were reclassified as long-term or inactive. You may remember that Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for a regulatory freeze. He also signed an executive order that required an agency to identify two federal rules to eliminate for every new regulation proposed. It turns out that the administration has done much more than this. The “one in, two out” order was a nice goal but bureaucrats have exceeded that goal by eliminated 16 old rules for every new one introduced. Wayne Crews remarked that, “No one is surprised that the Trump administration would issue considerably fewer regulations than the Obama administration.” But what is a surprise is that the president is the least-regulatory president since Ronald Reagan. OMB Director Mick Mulvane told reporters, “I cannot express to you enough how much things have changed when it comes to the regulatory burden, the attitudes towards regulations, in this country, and you are just going to see more of that for the next eight years.” Of course there is opposition, especially in the courts. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the other day that Scott Pruitt and the EPA could not postpone an Obama administration rule concerning methane emission. Wall Street Journal editors warned that we should, “Look for a deluge of such lawsuits as progressives resort to the courts to compensate for their defeat in 2016.” And this latest decision highlights the stakes in future judicial nominations.