Federal rule makers, already hit with layoffs since President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, face another fast-growing threat to their roles in Washington’s “swamp”: record deregulation.
In its first report card on how agencies are complying with Trump’s demand that 10 regulations be eliminated for every new one added, officials have just revealed that they are cutting costly regulations at a record rate throughout the government.
The emerging pattern is so staggering that the regulators tasked with meeting Trump’s demands could end up putting themselves out of a job.
“Agencies have been closing offices, trimming staff and shrinking reporting burdens,” said Clyde Wayne Crews, who charts federal regulations for the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The new trend was outlined in the Trump administration’s first Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory Actions report, published twice yearly. It details regulations in the federal pipeline.
Multiple federal agencies reported cuts in rules and regulations, which Trump hopes will slash costs for businesses and consumers. He also expects deregulation to open the door to more industrial innovation.
Trump’s executive order calling for a reduction in regulations was a beefed-up version of a similar initiative in his first term, when he demanded that two regulations be cut for every new one his team proposed.
At his recent Cabinet meeting, several agency heads bragged about their deregulatory actions. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said, for example, “When you add up the dozens of different actions that we have announced and that we’re working through in one agency in one year, we’ll do more deregulation than entire federal governments have done across all agencies, across entire presidencies.”
Crews said that he pored through each agency report in the Unified Agenda and found that the president’s team, egged on by recommendations from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency set up by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, is succeeding early.
“Rulemaking is at record lows. Even counting rules written to repeal old ones, just 1,767 rules have been finalized in 2025 as of today. On pace for about 2,570 by year’s end—that would mark the lowest ever recorded, beating Trump’s own first-term benchmark of 2,964 in 2019,” he reported in a CEI blog post.
“The baseline is shifting. After decades of regulatory expansion, Trump’s agenda is documenting something novel: a federal government pulling back. If offices run out of rules to regulate, shuttering whole departments may move from unthinkable to obvious,” he added.
While the numbers appear high, Crews noted that killing a regulation takes a regulation, so some included in the Unified Agenda actually represent eliminated rules.
But Crews, the regulations czar at the Washington institution that promotes free enterprise, said the administration’s laudable actions are being challenged by Trump’s investments in private companies such as Intel.
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“Only when agencies have nothing left to regulate, and are accordingly terminated, will deconstruction be a permanent reality. Trump’s paradoxical empowerment of the federal state, even as he downsizes portions of its bureaucracy, leaves levers of power intact for the next progressive administration,” Crews warned.
“As our founder, Fred L. Smith Jr., always liked to say, ‘A pruned weed is a healthy weed.’ Deconstruction alone won’t suffice. Pruning without uprooting only strengthens the weed. To prevent regrowth, the rubble of the administrative state must be hauled away, not left on-site with roots intact,” he added.
