While the Trump administration is loudly, illegally, calamitously lobbing a series of explosive attacks at the very foundations of the federal government, it is simultaneously readying a staggering demolition of the rules and regulations by which our society abides. While currently flying under the radar, this effort threatens a similarly cataclysmic impact on health, safety, well-being, and basic rule of law.
In a brief three-page executive order (EO) titled Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Deregulatory Initiative (EO 14219), the Trump administration attempts to legal-wash what effectively amounts to a permission slip for each agency to strike or ignore any regulation—and to do so for scores and scores and scores of regulations at a time, all in service of boosting the bottom line of corporate donors at the expense of everyone else.
Despite the attempted assertion of authority, this is, without question, a preposterously illegal endeavor, undercutting agencies’ obligation to implement laws passed by Congress.
And yet.
As witnessed with the administration’s opening salvo of illegal maneuvers, the costs and consequences of such actions can outpace the speed at which the law can eventually bring them to heel, meaning regardless of its future likelihood of faceplanting in the courts, this action could still have significant near-term impact.
Moreover, this EO is specifically, deliberately—and disingenuously—invoking recent Supreme Court decisions as an overt attempt at currying judicial favor, despite its blatant departure from the law.
Finally, and most alarmingly, this EO also includes a backdoor option for regulated industries looking for permission to pollute. While the focus of the EO is on designing a framework to fully knock out vast numbers of regulations at once, the administration also clearly recognizes the lack of legal authority it actually has to do that. And so, the EO provides a back-up option to arrive at what is, in effect, the same outcome.
Specifically, the administration directs agencies and favored industries to ignore any disliked rule or regulation by “deprioritizing” its enforcement and terminating any related enforcement proceedings. Without enforcement, industries can effectively behave as if regulations are merely suggestions rather than mandatory rules that come with penalties for non-compliance. As a result, people will be left with no recourse to hold companies accountable for polluting their air and water, for poisoning their food, for selling unsafe goods.
Agencies have until mid-April to draw up and submit their plans to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)—meaning straight into the hands of OMB Administrator Russell Vought, chief architect of the most radical, unlawful, unconstitutional elements of Project 2025.
Already, EPA has previewed its approach, with Administrator Lee Zeldin announcing on March 12th an intention to reconsider 31 bedrock rules and safeguards and, alongside, a wholesale pivot away from enforcement. This is just the start.
Below, a closer look at the three key pieces of EO 14219: 1) a multi-pronged framework for teeing-up the slashing of regulations, 2) a permission structure for agencies to abandon regulatory enforcement, and 3) a set of brief but illuminating caveats and clarifications.
Rescinding regulations
In Section 2 of the EO, the administration directs agency heads, in coordination with their DOGE “Team Leads” and OMB’s Vought, to review all regulations under their jurisdiction for “consistency with law and Administration policy” and classify them according to seven different screens. The ensuing lists are to be submitted to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), a part of OMB, after which OIRA will issue an administration-wide plan for moving forward with striking or modifying all flagged regulations.
Given that agency heads are to do this work in coordination with DOGE and OMB’s Vought, the end goal is clear from the start: by whatever means possible, smash and shatter rules and regulations.
This end goal is further reinforced by the specific selection of screens the EO directs agencies to compare regulations against, citing frameworks from recent and pending Supreme Court cases that effectively enable arbitrary judicial constraint on agency actions. These frameworks—long fringe, suddenly “mainstream” with the Court majority’s seismic shift toward judicial interference—include the major questions doctrine, via 2022’s West Virginia v. EPA; the overruling of the Chevron doctrine, via 2024’s Loper Bright; and the nondelegation doctrine, which will feature in this term’s FCC v. Consumer’s Research. The list also includes nods to limiting agency authority in the face of states’ rights; attempting to assess the appropriateness of regulations on the basis of industry-influenced, industry-biased cost-benefit analysis; and references to conflict with “Administration policy,” despite administration policy having no legal relevance to whether or not a regulation accords with existing law.
Here’s why citation of these specific cases and issues is so revealing. This EO has no power on its own. The threat lies in the overt attempt at devising a justification framework for agencies to use in rescinding regulations completely independent from facts and evidence. By invoking decisions that challenge the very ability of agencies to act at all, this EO is attempting to establish a means by which agencies can classify vast swaths of existing rules and regulations as definitively, permanently outside the bounds of law. Implied is the ability for agencies to substitute the required rulemaking process—where facts exist, where laws are followed, where the public has a say—with a massive regulatory eraser, striking rules entirely simply by citing, for example, the major questions doctrine.
To say this is preposterous fails to sufficiently capture the magnitude of brazenness on display. These actions will be challenged in court—and across every dimension, agencies should lose.
But whether or not this lawless Hail Mary succeeds ultimately may not matter. That’s because the Trump administration has made vividly clear its abject disdain and disregard for any law or regulation that attempts to hold it—or its favored corporate actors and billionaire friends—to account.
And as a result, the administration has coupled this prong of the EO with a non-enforcement back-up plan.
Enforcement “discretion”
Enforcement, at its core, is what gives a rule power. If enforcement is taken off the table, explicitly or implicitly, then the rule effectively ceases to exist.
For that reason, though just two short paragraphs, Section 3 of the EO is, incredibly, even more astounding in its audacity than Section 2—and in its capacity to cause real harm.
Specifically, the Trump administration lays out a framework by which agencies are to “de-prioritize” enforcement of regulations—meaning, not enforce regulations—if those regulations are based on anything other than the “best reading” of a statute. That language is notable because prior to 2024’s Loper Bright, for the decades and decades while Chevron deference was still in place, it was common for agencies’ regulatory approaches to be framed as based on “reasonable interpretation,” not “best reading,” simply because that was the operational framework in play. This manufactured screen could capture scores of regulations, completely divorced from whether or not a regulation is actually lawful.
Section 3 of the EO also requires agency heads to determine “whether ongoing enforcement of any regulations identified in their regulatory review”—as in, those flagged in Section 2 above—is “compliant with law and Administration policy.” Given that Section 2 is entirely designed as a means of casting lawful regulations as unlawful, the EO thus attempts a permission framework by which agencies can effectively decline enforcement of any regulation they don’t like.
Finally, Section 3 includes a note that in parallel, agency heads shall, in consultation with OMB’s Vought, on a case-by-case basis direct the associated “termination of all such enforcement proceedings.” For all the imperiled special interests who threw their weight behind a Trump presidency, behold the quid pro quo.
Now, three notes.
First, the section does accept that agencies have legal obligations to enforce regulations. This should present as a check on the reach and scope of the EO’s order to deprioritize enforcement. However, OMB Administrator Vought has repeatedly and aggressively disparaged the existing rule of law, meaning from this administration’s perspective, current “legal obligations” are, in practice, nonexistent.
But there’s a second check that has the potential to hold a lot more power.
Specifically, while this administration may practice a period of non-enforcement, the statute of limitations for regulatory violations will stretch into whatever administration next follows. That means regulated entities following the Trump administration down the path of lawlessness will be undertaking a high-stakes gamble.
Finally, it bears noting that in introducing the EO, President Trump attempts to justify the need to abandon regulatory enforcement on the basis of “limited enforcement resources,” which is the direct result of the Trump administration’s own drastic and indiscriminate slashing of agency staffing and capacity alongside parallel attacks on the Department of Justice. Shameless.
Caveats, exemptions, and additions
There are two final pieces of the EO that merit consideration.
First, the issuance of new regulations, covered in Section 4. As expected from such a stridently anti-rules, anti-regulations administration, the EO effectively warns against agencies advancing any new regulations. The tell is clearest when the EO directs agency heads to consult with their DOGE Team Leads in evaluating the potential need for any new requirements, given DOGE’s patent lack of expertise on agency authorities and obligations, as well as its sole focus on crippling agency capacity and reach.
Second, the EO includes a notable set of exemptions, covered in Section 7. It states that nothing in the order shall apply to: “any action related to a military, national security, homeland security, foreign affairs, or immigration-related function of the United States; any matter pertaining to the executive branch’s management of its employees; or anything else exempted by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.”
Here’s why these exemptions are so noteworthy. First, they make clear what the administration doesn’t want intervention around—and the fact that, quite evidently, this EO nominally creates a catch-all mechanism for erasing or ignoring any rule or regulation. Meaning without exempting specific items, this EO could in fact be wielded to justify slashing the niche rules and guidance they’re still attempting to prop up.
Moreover, exemptions around OMB-related issues underscore OMB Administrator Vought’s jealous wielding of power; he intends for this EO to centralize power in his hands—not for others to use it against him. Rules for thee, not for me.
What comes next? Consider the EPA
Agencies have until April 20th to draw up their lists and sketch out their plans. Already, the EPA has previewed a subset of what we can expect.
On March 12, EPA announced its intention to reconsider dozens of regulations, priorities, and safeguards, as well as a wholesale pivot away from enforcement. Notably, the announcement did not include the regulatory screen required by the EO, meaning that part—and possibly many more flagged regulations—is still to come.
But just from the enforcement pivot alone, the implications are chilling.
This is no longer an agency considering what is a priority for enforcement, but rather what is not. Including, for example, any angle on environmental justice—meaning any angle on considering whether a community is bearing disproportionate pollution harms. Same too for now avoiding enforcement for any stage of energy production or power generation absent “an imminent and substantial threat to human health.” Which effectively translates to—in complete defiance of the law—coal plants getting the all-clear to turn off the equipment that scrubs mercury and other hazardous air pollutants from their smokestacks; oil and gas producers free to release heat-trapping methane directly to the atmosphere; frackers disposing of toxic fluids wherever it’s cheapest to dump.
Moreover, with plans to terminate ongoing enforcement proceedings, suddenly PFAS polluters could be back on the loose; toxic leaks from coal ash ponds into water systems could be going unchecked; and drinking water could go untested.
This is unhinged. And—as of now—unchecked.
But it won’t go unchallenged, and it will be checked as these actions are lawless, their justifications baseless, their motivations amoral.
This administration will try, but we will fight, and we will win.