Half of 2025’s public laws are Biden rule killers

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In a notable twist, Congress has spent half of 2025’s lawmaking undoing Biden regulations.

So far in the 119th Congress, 31 public laws have been enacted. As I document in a column at Forbes, more than half of them (16) are Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions of disapproval reversing late-term Biden rules.

The CRA, enacted in 1996, lets Congress and a new president overturn certain rules and regulations issued in the final 60 legislative days of the previous administration (a period of time that can amount to months).

Before Trump’s first term, it had only been used successfully once. Trump 1.0 changed that with 16 Obama rule reversals in 2017–2018. Biden later used it to scrap three Trump rules.

Dozens of Biden rules were vulnerable, and the Trump administration and Congress have turned the tables again by dismantling some of the more prominent ones, particularly in energy and environmental policy.

I provide the full list of rules overturned and the corresponding public law number at Forbes, but here’s the basic breakdown:

Environmental Protection Agency

  • California vehicle emissions and zero-emission mandates
  • Rubber tire manufacturing emission standards
  • Pollutant reclassification changes
  • Methane waste emissions charge on oil and gas

Department of Energy

  • Conservation standards for commercial refrigeration, walk-in coolers/freezers, gas-fired water heaters
  • Appliance standards enforcement and certification rules

Financial Regulation

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

  • Overdraft limits for large financial institutions
  • Rules defining “larger participants” in digital payment markets

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

  • Restrictions on bank mergers

Internal Revenue Service

  • Reporting rules for digital asset transactions

Other overturns include an Interior Department rule on motor vehicle limits at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management rule on marine archaeological resources.

These high-profile actions matter a lot. Yet they amount to a pinprick against the size of the modern regulatory state. Since 1976, federal agencies have issued more than 222,000 rules. Additions far outpace the few subtractions we occasionally see. Equally important are the Trump agencies’ own revocations, which are unique in their own right–whether taken by notice-and-comment “Unrules” action or more unilaterally using the Administrative Procedure Act’s own “good cause” provisions. 

The notice-and-comment rules that tend to get targeted by the CRA and even the new emphasis on Unrules are just part of the story. Agency guidance, memoranda, and other variants of regulatory dark matter escape CRA review entirely (with an exception here and there). Add in antitrust enforcement, tariffs, and the strings attached to federal contracting and subsidies, and the scope of government intervention remains vast.

Still, the 2025 resolution of disapproval wave is one of the rare reminders that Washington can undo as well as do.

For more including the full chronological list of the16 CRA resolutions enacted so far in 2025, see “Trump 2.0 Has Signed 16 Congressional Review Act Resolutions Of Disapproval – So Far,” Forbes