This post was originally published on Legal Planet. Reprinted with permission.
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. Raise your hand if you think this sounds like a good idea.
Let me start with the economic side of things. Since President Ronald Reagan, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has reviewed all major agency regulations with the aim of ensuring that their benefits exceed their costs. Trump has blown up that process in his executive order entitled, “Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Deregulatory Initiative.” As the title of the executive order indicates, the DOGE initiative controlled by Elon Musk has muscled into OIRA’s territory. There’s no question about who will win if they disagree.
Moreover, cost-benefit analysis is only one in a longer list of factors that OIRA considers. The list includes two other factors which are basically short for “Trump’s policy preferences.” As the title also indicates, the goal is not “smart regulation” but rather, in Trump’s word, “deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state.”
As to environmental science, recall that an earlier executive order asked the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to report back on whether to overturn the agency’s earlier finding that climate change is real, cause by human activities, and harmful. This is somewhat like asking RFK, Jr., to report back on whether the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should reconsider the theory that infectious diseases are caused by germs. (Maybe they’re caused by vapors.) And in fact, the head of EPA has dutifully reported back in favor of embracing climate change denial.
If there were any doubts about how the regulatory process will work under Trump, they should be dispelled by his reported selection of Jeffrey Clark to head OIRA. Clark is the former Justice Department lawyer who is best known for his plan to be named Attorney General to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. That Clark was even considered for the position speaks volumes. There are many adjectives that could apply to Clark, but “data-driven” and “analytic” are not among them. And his new partner in regulatory affairs, Elon Musk, has so far been much more interested in “moving fast and breaking things” than in thoughtful decisions. (And of course, his DOGE team includes neither scientists nor economists).
Science and economics aren’t going to count for much as the administration rushes to put its agenda into effect. That might not matter much to Trump’s followers, but it ought to concern more traditional conservatives who have advocated cost-effective government. The one silver lining is that running roughshod over science and economics is likely to lead to judicial reversals.
Showing 2,879 results
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.
Alice Kaswan | February 18, 2025
As described in Part I, President Trump’s attack on clean vehicles, introduced in his executive order on “Unleashing American Energy,” will undermine progress in achieving healthy air and reducing climate emissions. The executive order requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Transportation (DOT) to consider regulatory changes to vehicle emission standards that would eliminate what he calls the “EV mandate.”
Alice Kaswan | February 17, 2025
President Donald Trump’s attack on electric vehicles threatens not only the nation’s progress in fighting climate change, but torpedoes our ability to achieve healthy air. The Inauguration Day executive order on “Unleashing American Energy” calls for eliminating the “electric vehicle (EV) mandate” and “unfair subsidies and other ill-conceived government distortions that favor EVs ….” Slowing our transition to clean vehicles will have the worst consequences for vulnerable frontline communities living near highways, ports, and warehouses, communities that already experience a disproportionate share of environmental harms.