Trump executive order establishing a portal for regulatory dark matter

Even at the insistence of Congress in 2018, 46 federal agencies could only uncover only about 13,000 of their guidance documents and policy statements between 2008 and 2018.

Alongside their notice and comment rules (as of today there are 25,872 pages and 1,089 rules in the 2025 Federal Register) agencies influence policy with such guidance documents. Yet no one knows how many interpretations, memoranda, circulars, bulletins, directives, letters and so forth there really are.

A tweak in the form of Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13891 (“Promoting the Rule of Law Through Improved Agency Guidance Documents”), which required that agencies establish online portals housing all their guidance documents, rapidly increased the known inventory to over 100,000.

Even today we can point to 108,023 guidance documents—despite Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s order (see the latest non-all-inclusive “Darklore Depository,” if you dare).

Far more guidance documents than that exist, however—so much so that we took to referring to the unknowable corpus as regulatory dark matter. But the Trump order shows the potential for even executive action at the margins to boost disclosure in a manner that can greatly inform the public.

Of the more than 160 Trump executive orders in only five months (a record pace), none have yet restored EO 13,891 portals directly. However several Trump orders, including some of the eight that directly invoke or instruct the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), do address guidance documents.

For example, Trump’s one-in, ten-out directive (EO 14192, “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation”) curiously enough fails to mention DOGE—however an important innovation is the order’s inclusion of guidance documents in what counts as “regulation.”

Many of the 1,089 rules issued by Trump are rescissions or delays of Biden actions (such as Energy Department proposals to slash several dozen rules). But since Trump’s guidance document portals have been abolished and since guidance documents are not published in the Federal Register as rules are, the status of guidance document relief under Trump 2.0 is difficult to gauge.

The most prominent hub for tracking guidance deletions has been DOGE’s own landing page. There, along with 171 “Regulation repeals and modifications,” DOGE lists 221 “Agency guidance document rescissions” from five departments and agencies, as shown here:  

Unfortunately, the DOGE tally has been stuck at 221 now for several weeks—not to mention that there are 441 departments, agencies and commissions—not just five. And of course, 221 rescissions are a statistically insignificant pittance compared to more than 108,000 active documents we can locate.

What DOGE missed requires more scanning of agencies’ landing pages for their guidance documents, which is cumbersome to say the least. And of course, many are not disclosed online at all.  

We call here therefore, for the Trump administration to reissue a version of EO 13891 on Improved Agency Guidance Documents; but this time not merely for agency portals, but for a centralized one housed at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under the leadership of Director Russell Vought.

We stress the urgency of such a step. Congress sets the multi-trillion fiscal budget and otherwise sometimes enacts a few hundred laws each year, and agencies issue several thousand regulations. So it is understandable that most eyes are on DOGE-driven spending cuts, agency defunding, and slashing regulation.

Increasingly, Congress’s massive enactments and sweeping delegation of authorities to regulatory agencies deliver an economy and society governed largely by guidance documents instead of the laws and regulations that get the attention.

Therefore a centralized portal is the most elementary step to take. It must be supplemented by executive order and ultimately legislation to significantly constrain guidance abuse, not just disclose the documents. This means the administration and Congress should also implement an emergency legislative vehicle to incorporate guidance into the “Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions,” to designate guidance as regulatory or deregulatory, to  update the Congressional Review Act reporting template to acknowledge guidance, and to affirm that future agency guidance is null unless submitted to Congress and the GAO—among other steps.

Apart from the nascent DOGE efforts, one should give credit elsewhere where due. Some of the aforementioned agencies have separately noted DOGE-highlighted recissions. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for example, issued a rule announcing withdrawal of dozens of policy statements, interpretive rules, advisory opinions and other guidance, that correspond fairly well to the DOGE tally.

In addition, there have been some important guidance recissions not (yet, at least) noted by DOGE. For instance, DOGE pointed to the Energy Department’s DEI guidance recissions, and a joint notice from several US Department of Agriculture agencies on removing references to DEI programs. Such rescissions have appeared in fulfilment of a Trump executive order. However, not noted in the DOGE compilation are an announcement from the USDA on termination of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative, and an Energy Department policy memorandum on stewardship of taxpayer dollars heretofore wasted on energy programs. Both these are notable given a prominent fusion of federal spending with regulation, affirmed by the phenomenon of rescinded climate guidance documents getting reinstated when green groups sued.

Other rescissions independent of the DOGE roundup in the Trump administration Department of Health and Human Services’ axing of ten Biden-era guidance documents, including policies on gender-affirming care, clinical trial diversity, and elimination of  the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity. At the Department of Labor (DOL), new guidance restores pre-Biden treatment of independent contractor as opposed to employee status. The DOL also declared its intention to rescind Biden-era ESG and crypto-in-retirement investment guidance, as well as guidance related to voting access through American Job Centers.

DOGE noted 105 guidance rescissions at the Department of Transportation (DOT), which included climate change adaptation and resilience and environmental justice programs. The DOT, however—much as it did in the first Trump administration under Elaine Chao—also took affirmative steps with its March 2025 “Policy Procedures for Rulemaking” order governing fairness and disclosures in regulatory policy.

We wish to be proven wrong, but so far other federal agencies have had minimal prominent rescissions or additions not associated with Trump executive orders on DEI and climate initiatives. Overall, a quick scan found roughly an additional 40 rescissions independent of the DOGE framing, along with a few guidance additions.

So—our enthusiasm aside—a tally of 221 guidance documents plus a handful more are drops in the bucket of the dark matter universe. Granted, we feel confident that some agencies will be found to be undercounting both their existing guidance inventories, and perhaps even their guidance removed. But plenty more work needs doing regarding guidance disclosure and containment. The upcoming “Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions” may lay out considerably more detail based on DOGE, agency and OMB engagement following Trump’s “commence deconstruction” executive order.

It will be compelling to monitor DOGE’s continued influence or lack thereof now that Elon Musk has departed from the administration. DOGE’s remit is temporary (it expires with the America 250 celebrations), so re-energizing DOGE’s agenda to expand regulatory dark matter transparency from 221 to the tens of thousands is the low-hanging fruit. Given the prominence and importance of guidance in the administrative state, aggressive action by DOGE confronting dark matter may represent one of the stickier advances in controlling growth of the administrative state—just as the Trump portals survive in a sense despite their termination.

Longer-term success beyond the DOGE spotlight will require stronger and specific executive orders from Trump. Most importantly though, legislative backup is necessary, which should begin with the “Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD) Act” to implement Trump-like portals. The GOOD Act has already passed the House, but the portals it would create are just the start of a range of actions to constrain the abuse of guidance.