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Federico Holm | March 3, 2025

CRA By the Numbers 2025: Update for 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

Trump Administration Sets Out to Create an America its People Have Never Experienced — One Without a Meaningful Government

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

Congressional Review Act By the Numbers 2025: Update for February 25

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will shine a light on the harm that abusive use of the CRA causes to the public, and why, ultimately, the CRA should be repealed.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

With Latest Order on Regulations, Trump Gives Away the ‘People’s Government’ to the World’s Richest Man

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

Trump Continues to Build ‘Imperial Presidency’ with Executive Order on Independent Agencies

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 Trump’s War on Electric Vehicles: Part III

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

President Trump’s War on Electric Vehicles: Part II

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.”

Bryan Dunning, Joseph Tomain | February 7, 2025

A Trumped-Up Energy Emergency

On January 20 — otherwise known as Day One of Trump 2.0 — the president signed a barrage of executive orders, including one declaring a national energy emergency. While it is unsurprising that his policy priorities will reflect his long-standing antipathy toward climate protections and renewables — not to mention the fossil fuel industry’s financial support during his campaign — his attempt to frame this policy by declaring a “national energy emergency” is beyond disingenuous. We have faced real threats to energy security in the past and have weathered them through democratic processes, not by executive fiat, and this isn’t one.

U.S. Capitol at night

James Goodwin | February 7, 2025

With Last Night’s Vought Confirmation, Senate Republicans are Now Complicit in Trump Authoritarian Push

On February 6, the U.S. Senate confirmed Russell Vought as the next director of the powerful White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which has been at the epicenter of the Trump administration’s push to remake the federal government in an authoritarian image.