As of Monday, March 10, legislators have introduced 57 Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions, including several that were introduced before the specified time cutoffs. We have continued to see some movement around some of the resolutions.
Congress has already voted on eight CRA resolutions
Legislators have voted on the following resolutions:
Looking ahead, the Senate has placed three more resolutions on its legislative calendar. In the Senate, S.J.Res.7 targets a Federal Communications Commission rule retaining to "Addressing the Homework Gap Through the E-Rate Program," S.J.Res.30 targets a National Park Service rule relating to "Glen Canyon National Recreation Area; Motor Vehicles," and S.J.Res.4 targets a Department of Energy rule relating to "Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Gas-fired Instantaneous Water Heaters."
In the House, there is currently one resolution on the calendar that hasn’t yet been considered: H.J.Res.25, an Internal Revenue Service rule relating to "Gross Proceeds Reporting by Brokers That Regularly Provide Services Effectuating Digital Asset Sales." As noted above, that resolution has been included in the House calendar for Tuesday, March 11. This resolution is the House companion of S.J.Res.3.
Which agencies are being targeted and how does this compare with Trump’s first term?
So far, resolutions have targeted 19 federal agencies, with the EPA being the most frequent. So far, there are 15 CRA resolutions targeting EPA regulations. At a distant second are the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) with 6 resolutions, and the Department of Energy with 5 resolutions.
Since it is common to see CRA resolutions targeting the same regulation being introduced in the House and the Senate, the following analysis focuses instead on the individual regulations under attack, instead of the CRA resolutions. The graphs below show the number of targeted rules by agency (so far):
This graph shows the alignment in policy priorities between the executive and Republicans in Congress. There are currently 38 rules that have been targeted by CRA resolutions, with half of them (19) pertaining to energy and the environment (from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the Department of the Interior (DOI), the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), and the National Park Service (NPS)). These span a range of issues, from energy efficiency to land use and archaeological resources, and the entire deregulatory program is consistent with a relentless push for upending natural resources and land management (in favor of the extractive industry and non-conservation goals) and climate and energy regulations.
The number of rules under threat by CRA resolutions in this Congress already surpassed the number of rules targeted during the first Trump administration. The graph below shows the number of targeted rules (by agency) in 2017.
In 2017, 36 rules were targeted by CRA resolutions, of which 16 were signed by President Trump. Energy and the environment were also a big focus during the first Trump administration, with 22 rules being the focus of CRA resolutions, and we can observe some consistency between both administrations (in particular regarding land use, emissions standards, and oil and gas activities). The pace with which these resolutions move through the pipeline will be critical, since once a resolution is introduced, the Senate has 60 session days to pass it.
This intense focus on energy- and environment-related regulations underscores the extent to which this area of policy has become politically polarized in recent decades. Opposition to the rules remains popular within the conservative base, but unpopular with the broader public. This would explain why conservatives in Congress have turned to the CRA to advance their policy priorities — which allows them to do so with bare partisan majorities — rather than avail themselves of the regular-order lawmaking process to amend the underlying statutes that authorized these rules. In turn, this dynamic underscores how the CRA reinforces partisan-induced congressional dysfunction at a time when we need to alleviate it.
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Federico Holm | March 10, 2025
As of Monday, March 10, legislators have introduced 57 Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions, including several that were introduced before the specified time cutoffs. We have continued to see some movement around some of the resolutions.
Catalina Gonzalez, Rachel Mayo | March 6, 2025
It is no coincidence that since taking office on Martin Luther King Day, the Trump administration’s most aggressive actions have targeted historically marginalized groups. In fact, the many blatantly illegal, unconstitutional, and bizarre actions we saw during the first month of Trump 2.0 — during which we also observed National Black History Month — are specifically harmful to Black Americans.
Daniel Farber | March 4, 2025
If you were looking for data-driven regulatory policy, you’re not going to find it in this administration. On the contrary, President Trump has marginalized economic analysis and wants to bulldoze environmental science. Thus, we are likely to get policies that are bad for the environment without being cost-justified while ignoring policies whose environmental benefits outweigh economic costs.
Federico Holm | March 3, 2025
As of February 28, legislators have introduced 45 Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions, including several that were introduced before the specified time cutoffs. As expected, we have started to see some movement around some of the resolutions.
Joseph Tomain, Sidney A. Shapiro | February 28, 2025
The U.S. government is attempting to dismantle itself. President Donald Trump has directed the executive branch to “significantly reduce the size of government.” That includes deep cuts in federal funding of scientific and medical research and freezing federal grants and loans for businesses. He has ordered the reversal or removal of regulations on medical insurance companies and other businesses and sought to fire thousands of federal employees. Those are just a few of dozens of executive orders that seek to deconstruct the government. More than 70 lawsuits have challenged those orders as illegal or unconstitutional. In the meantime, the resulting chaos is preventing the government from carrying out its everyday functions.
Federico Holm, James Goodwin | February 25, 2025
On February 25, we launched the Center for Progressive Reform’s CRA By the Numbers 2025 tracker. With this tool, we will monitor every Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution and document the threats they pose to our public protections, as well as the benefits that would be lost if they pass. The data presented in the tracker will shine a light on the harm that abusive use of the CRA causes to the public, and why, ultimately, the CRA should be repealed.
James Goodwin | February 20, 2025
I could tell you what Trump’s latest executive order on “Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Deregulatory Initiative” says. I could tell you that it purports to give the illegally constituted “DOGE Team Leads” assigned to every agency nearly unchecked authority to choose which of the agencies’ existing rules get to remain on the book and whether and what kind of the regulations the agency may issue in the future. I could also tell you that it is now official Trump administration policy that existing regulations that are too inconvenient for the business community – no matter what kind of benefits they deliver – will no longer be enforced, purportedly rendering them a dead letter. I could tell you all these things, but they wouldn’t convey what the import of what this order actually means.
James Goodwin | February 19, 2025
On February 18, President Donald Trump issued another seemingly technocratic executive order regarding the structure of our government. This one purportedly asserts presidential control over so-called independent regulatory agencies — or administrative offices that Congress has intentionally designed to be insulated against direct day-to-day control from the president.
Alice Kaswan | February 19, 2025
President Donald Trump seeks to halt Congress’ support for tax credits, grants, and loans that are supporting a transition to clean transportation, a transition necessary to achieving public health standards and reducing the transportation sector’s substantial contribution to increasingly catastrophic climate change. It will be up to Congress to stand up to the president’s pressure and preserve its support for critical environmental and economic investments.