Trump executive orders target Biden’s regulatory big bang

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Joe Biden wrapped up his term with a parting regulatory surge, epitomized by today’s 872-page Federal Register—marking the apex of his aggressive midnight-rule push.

Biden’s final publication showcased 243 new rules across 7,641 pages for only the first three weeks of 2025, cementing Biden’s legacy as a prolific regulator, as highlighted below.

Newly inaugurated Donald Trump had a surge of his own, though, issuing dozens of directives on Inauguration Day with more to come.  

On the regulatory front, yesterday’s directives abolish DEI across agencies, ease access to energy resources, formally establish the long-anticipated Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and froze the Biden regulatory pipeline embodied in the above chart. Echoing and building upon his first term’s deregulatory ambitions. A Trump “one-in, ten-out directive” is prominent among those still anticipated.

Claiming that “The previous administration has embedded deeply unpopular, inflationary, illegal, and radical practices within every agency and office of the Federal Government,” a separate Trump Inauguration Day move revoked 67 Biden Executive Orders, as well as 10 Biden presidential memoranda—on topics ranging from DEI to energy policy to immigration.

Importantly, Biden’s Executive Order 14094 (Modernizing Regulatory Review), was revoked, setting the stage for reversing Biden’s revisions to Office of Management and Budget Circular A-4 that weakened rigor in already inadequate cost-benefit analyses.

Midnight rules and the CRA reset

Alongside Trump’s regulatory streamlining via executive order, many of Biden’s late-term regulations are eligible for disapproval under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows Congress to rescind rules finalized within 60 legislative days. This presents a clear opportunity for the incoming administration to unwind Biden’s 2025 actions above as well as many 2024 actions—a year that saw a record-breaking 107,262 Federal Register pages and 3,248 rules.

Addressing regulatory dark matter

Beyond formal rules, Trump’s team is expected to tackle regulatory dark matter—guidance documents, policy statements, and other informal measures that have been increasingly used to advance policy and laundering regulation with suspect legal authority. Trump’s likely restoration of transparency measures, such as requiring agencies to maintain online guidance document portals, will be will be the low-hanging fruit with respect to these shadowy cryptic chronicles. The Internet of Things raises the urgency of addressing dark matter, since it increasingly enables remote click-and-swipe regulation via new forms of digital control, such as financial deplatforming, remote vehicle disabling, and invasive energy monitoring.

Confronting Congress’s role in overreach

Trump’s flurry of initial executive actions is as head-spinning as promised. A broader fix will require addressing not only the excessive congressional over-delegation of legislative authority to federal agencies emphasized so far, but Congress’s own lack of respect for enumerated powers, embodied most plainly in hyper-spending and interventions it ought not be doing in the first place. As we often note, recent mega-laws like the CHIPS and Science Act and CARES Act have fused subsidies and regulation and merged business and government—thereby enabling progressive priorities to proliferate in ways that even Trump’s first-week actions are not yet enough to reverse.  

Jumpstart on regulatory liberalization

While Trump’s first term saw the lowest annual rule totals ever recorded, Biden leaves behind the largest Federal Register in history. To restore order, meaningfully reduce government scope, and eliminate what Trump called “harmful executive orders and actions,” the 119th Congress and the president must confront not solely Biden’s regulatory legacy, but also Congress’s spending-fueled complicity in overreach.

For more see:Biden’s Regulatory Big Bang: A Parting Gift Trump Is Set To Return,” Forbes.