Changing the Rules

The government makes — and unwinds — rules slowly.

An agency proposes a regulation — say, establishing minimum staffing levels for nursing homes. Then economists analyze it, the public comments on it, lawyers revise it and, finally, the agency enacts the rule. It generally takes a few years, start to finish, and the same is true for the process to repeal a rule.

President Trump has no patience for that pace. During his first term, he wanted to erase hundreds of rules on the environment, financial oversight and more. But he grew frustrated when some of the rollbacks took almost the entirety of his term to complete. Then, to his chagrin, the Biden administration restored many of them.

So this time around, Trump plans to quickly and permanently kill rules across the more than 400 federal agencies that regulate almost every aspect of American life, from flying in airplanes to processing poultry.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how his plan works and which agencies it might affect.

Government, slashed

Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget and an architect of the Project 2025 blueprint, is overseeing the White House’s deregulation effort. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is executing it.

In some cases, the administration believes it can simply revoke rules outright, without following the traditional yearslong process. In others, it plans to effectively nullify rules by directing agencies to stop enforcing them while the slow, legal unwinding process plays out.