Who Decides What Gets Deregulated? Meet the Players

Last updated 2 weeks ago ago. Our resources are updated regularly but please keep in mind that links, programs, policies, and contact information do change.

Deregulation involves reducing or removing government rules within specific industries to foster dynamic business environments, enhance economic efficiency, and remove restrictions that may stifle competition and innovation.

The decision to deregulate is not made by a single person or entity. Instead, it results from complex and often contentious processes involving intricate ecosystems of actors, each with distinct powers, motivations, and limitations. The fate of regulations gets decided in federal agency halls, congressional chambers, the Oval Office, and federal courtrooms.

Influencing these official players is a powerful constellation of outside forces, including industry lobbyists, agenda-setting think tanks, and the American public.

The Executive Branch: Engine Room of Regulation

The executive branch, led by the President, serves as the primary driver of both federal regulation creation and removal. While Congress passes broad laws, the vast machinery of federal agencies writes specific rules to implement them. This makes the executive branch the central arena where day-to-day deregulation battles get fought.

Federal Agencies and the Administrative Procedure Act

The power to regulate and deregulate originates with Congress, which passes laws often granting broad rulemaking authority to federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, or Department of Health and Human Services. These agencies employ experts who use specialized knowledge to translate general statutory intent into detailed, legally binding regulations governing everything from air pollution standards to drug safety protocols.

Once finalized and published, regulations carry the full force and effect of law. They cannot be simply erased by new Presidents or political changes. To formally reverse or amend existing rules, agencies must typically undertake entirely new rulemaking processes.

This process is governed by a foundational law of American administrative government: the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946. The APA establishes deliberate, transparent, and public-facing procedures agencies must follow.

Key APA steps include:

Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Agencies must first publish notices in the Federal Register, the official daily journal of the federal government. These notices announce agency intentions to repeal or change rules, cite legal authority, and describe proposed changes.

Public comment period: After publishing notices, agencies must provide periods for public review and written comment submission. These periods typically last 30 to 60 days, though they can be longer for complex rules. This represents critical opportunities for individuals, companies, advocacy groups, and other stakeholders to provide feedback, data, and arguments.

Final rule and response to comments: After comment periods close, agencies are legally required to consider all “relevant matter presented.” If deciding to proceed, they publish final rules. These publications must include not only new rule text but also “concise general statements” explaining rules’ “basis and purpose,” including responses to significant issues raised during public comment periods.

A crucial check on this process comes from courts. Agencies cannot justify repealing rules simply by stating presidential administration changes or policy preference shifts. To withstand legal challenges, agencies must provide “reasoned explanations” for new courses of action, grounded in administrative records. This means building new evidentiary cases demonstrating why changes are necessary or appropriate.

The APA’s procedural requirements—notice, comment, and reasoned explanation needs—were designed to make agency actions deliberate, evidence-based, and publicly accountable. When administrations seek to deregulate, they cannot simply issue decrees. They must navigate entire processes, building new administrative records to justify old rule repeals.

This structure inherently slows deregulation pace and creates multiple challenge points, both politically during public comment periods and legally in courts. This procedural friction serves as powerful institutional stability, acting as brakes on rapid, whiplash-inducing policy shifts driven solely by election results.

The President’s Role and Executive Orders

While federal agencies formally execute rulemaking processes, the President acts as the conductor of the executive branch orchestra. The Constitution empowers Presidents to ensure laws are “faithfully executed,” including directing priorities and actions of agencies under their command.

Although Presidents cannot unilaterally create or revoke regulations with pen strokes, they wield immense power to drive deregulatory agendas through Executive Orders, presidential memoranda, and policy statements. These directives, which have the force of law for government officials and agencies, set tone and priorities for entire executive branches.

Common presidential deregulation strategies:

Regulatory “budgets” and caps: Some executive orders establish “regulatory caps” or budgets, directing agencies to ensure total incremental costs of all new regulations issued in fiscal years are “significantly less than zero.” This effectively means that for every dollar of new regulatory cost imposed, more than a dollar of existing costs must be eliminated.

The “X-for-Y” rule: A prominent tactic requires agencies to identify certain numbers of existing regulations for repeal for every new one they wish to issue. Recent examples ordered agencies to identify at least ten existing regulations for every new one promulgated.

Regulatory “freezes”: New Presidents, particularly from different parties than predecessors, commonly issue memoranda immediately upon taking office freezing all pending regulations not yet in effect. These pauses allow new political appointees to review rules and decide whether to proceed, modify, or withdraw them.

Directives for comprehensive review: Presidents can issue sweeping orders commanding agency heads to conduct full reviews of all existing regulations under their jurisdictions. These orders often provide criteria lists for identifying rules to be rescinded, such as those deemed inconsistent with administration policy, unconstitutional, burdens on economic development, or based on unlawful congressional power delegations.

These executive actions are more than policy statements; they’re powerful tools for bureaucratic re-engineering. Orders like the “10-for-1” rule fundamentally alter internal mechanics and incentive structures within federal agencies. Agency leadership and career staff, bound to follow presidential directives, must divert significant time, personnel, and resources away from potential new rulemakings or enforcement activities. Instead, efforts get channeled into laborious processes of searching for, analyzing, and building legal justifications for old rule repeals.

This creates powerful institutional biases toward deregulation permeating agencies’ daily work, effectively advancing presidential agendas without needing to pass single new laws through Congress.

Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

Deep within the White House Office of Management and Budget sits one of the most powerful yet least-known entities in federal government: the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, universally known as OIRA. Created by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, OIRA’s original mission was reducing government paperwork burdens on the public. However, its authority was vastly expanded through executive orders, beginning with President Ronald Reagan, transforming it into the central clearinghouse for all “significant” federal regulations.

OIRA acts as a critical gatekeeper in regulatory processes. Before agencies can publish proposed rules for public comment, they must first submit drafts to OIRA for review. Rules are typically deemed “significant” if they’re likely to have economic impacts of $100 million or more, are inconsistent with other agency actions, or raise novel legal or policy issues important to presidential priorities.

During reviews, which can last up to 90 days or longer, OIRA scrutinizes rules to ensure they align with presidential agendas, that agencies have performed adequate cost-benefit analyses, and that they’ve been coordinated with other relevant agencies to avoid policy conflicts.

This gatekeeper function gives OIRA and the White House immense power. OIRA can approve rules, send them back to agencies with required changes, or effectively block them from ever seeing daylight. This entire review process happens largely behind the scenes, before the public has any opportunity to weigh in.

It centralizes enormous control over expert agencies within the White House, allowing presidential political and ideological priorities to be imposed on regulations before they’re subjected to public notice-and-comment processes mandated by the APA. The OIRA Administrator, a presidential appointee who must be confirmed by the Senate, thus holds one of the most influential positions in federal policymaking.

While the APA was designed to make rulemaking processes transparent and public-facing, the OIRA review system functions as political “pre-clearance.” Major political and economic battles over proposed regulations are often fought and decided within closed executive branch doors before the public is aware rules are being considered.

OIRA serves as the enforcer of presidential policy visions, ensuring both new regulations and proposed deregulatory actions are consistent with White House goals. This makes OIRA a pivotal, if often invisible, player in determining what gets regulated and deregulated in America.

The Legislative Branch: Setting Rules and Wielding Vetoes

Congress plays a dual role in deregulation. Its most fundamental power is legislative: writing, amending, and repealing laws that form the regulatory state’s foundation. This represents the broadest and most permanent way to deregulate. Congress has also armed itself with more targeted and rapid-response weapons—special legislative vetoes allowing it to nullify specific agency rules it dislikes, with powerful and long-lasting consequences.

Deregulation by Statute

The ultimate authority to deregulate rests with the United States Congress. By passing new laws, Congress can fundamentally reshape or entirely eliminate regulatory frameworks, a power far more sweeping and durable than any action executive or judicial branches can take. This approach requires building legislative majorities in both the House and Senate and securing presidential signatures, making it the most difficult but also most definitive deregulation method.

The quintessential example is the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Before this act, the airline industry was heavily regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board. The CAB controlled which airlines could fly which routes, what fares they could charge, and when new airlines could enter markets.

By the 1970s, broad, bipartisan consensus emerged that this system was failing. Leading economists argued regulation was protecting incumbent airlines from competition, leading to inefficiency and artificially high consumer prices. With the country grappling with high inflation, arguments for market-based approaches gained traction. Political champions from both parties, most notably liberal Senator Ted Kennedy, spearheaded legislative pushes.

The resulting act dismantled the CAB and removed federal control over domestic fares and routes, leaving airlines free to compete on price and service. The impact was transformative, leading to dramatic average airfare drops and passenger traffic surges, but it also ushered in an era of fierce competition, bankruptcies, mergers, and new challenges like airport congestion and service cuts to smaller communities.

The era that produced sweeping, bipartisan deregulatory laws like the Airline Deregulation Act appears to be a feature of bygone political environments. The unique conditions of the 1970s and 1980s—common economic enemies in the form of stagflation and less ideologically polarized Congresses—created space for such grand legislative bargains.

In today’s hyper-partisan climate, achieving broad consensus needed to pass major statutory reforms is exceptionally difficult. As a result, while passing new laws remains the most powerful deregulation tool in theory, practical focus of political conflict has largely shifted to other players and mechanisms: the executive branch’s use of the APA, the judiciary’s evolving standards of review, and Congress’s more targeted weapon, the Congressional Review Act.

The Congressional Review Act

Enacted in 1996 as part of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, the Congressional Review Act provides Congress with powerful legislative vetoes to overturn final rules issued by federal agencies. It creates special, streamlined processes designed to overcome usual legislative process hurdles, particularly in the Senate.

The CRA process works as follows:

Federal agencies are required to submit all final rules to Congress and the Government Accountability Office before they can take effect. Once rules are submitted, clocks start ticking. Members of Congress have limited windows—typically 60 days of continuous session—to introduce and act on “joint resolutions of disapproval” to overturn rules.

What makes the CRA so potent are its special Senate procedures. CRA resolutions cannot be filibustered, and after limited debates of no more than 10 hours, they’re guaranteed final up-or-down votes requiring only simple majorities to pass. If resolutions of disapproval pass both houses and are signed by Presidents (or if Congress overrides presidential vetoes), targeted rules are immediately nullified.

The CRA has two features making it particularly formidable:

The “Midnight Rule” killer: The act is most powerful during presidential transitions. The CRA includes “lookback” mechanisms that reset 60-day review clocks for any rules finalized in last months of congressional sessions. This allows newly elected Congresses and new Presidents from different political parties to easily review and overturn flurries of so-called “midnight rules” issued by outgoing administrations. Indeed, the vast majority of successful CRA resolutions have occurred during these transition periods.

The “substantially the same” prohibition: This is the CRA’s ultimate power. If rules are successfully disapproved via the CRA, the law explicitly prohibits agencies from reissuing those rules or any new rules that are in “substantially the same form” unless Congress passes new laws specifically authorizing them. The CRA itself does not define what “substantially the same” means, creating broad and permanent prohibitions.

This “substantially the same” clause transforms the CRA from simple oversight tools into potent “scorched earth” partisan weapons. It does more than veto rules; it creates permanent policy vacuums that executive branches cannot fill on their own.

For example, if Republican-controlled Congresses and Republican Presidents use the CRA to eliminate environmental regulations issued by previous Democratic administrations, future Democratic administrations are barred from simply reissuing similar rules through normal APA processes. Any similar actions are blocked.

This elevates the CRA from tools for checking agency overreach to mechanisms for achieving long-term policy victories that are exceptionally difficult for opposing parties to reverse. It effectively “salts the earth” where old regulations once stood, forcing any future attempts to address issues back into legislative processes, where they can be stymied by partisan gridlock.

The Judicial Branch: The Ultimate Umpire

The federal judiciary serves as the final arbiter in disputes over federal regulations. Armed with judicial review power, courts act as crucial checks on executive and legislative branch authority. They ensure agencies act within legal boundaries, follow proper procedures, and don’t make decisions that are arbitrary or unconstitutional.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has initiated significant shifts in power balance, moving away from deferring to agency expertise toward more assertive roles for judges in interpreting law, changes with profound implications for regulation and deregulation futures.

Judicial Review of Agency Actions

The authority for courts to oversee the administrative state is rooted in the Administrative Procedure Act, which establishes “strong presumptions that Congress intends judicial review of agency action.” Any person or organization that has suffered “legal wrongs” or been adversely affected by final agency actions can file federal court lawsuits to have those actions reviewed.

Under the APA, courts are empowered to “hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions” found deficient on several key grounds:

Unconstitutional or exceeds statutory authority: Courts can invalidate rules if agency actions violate the Constitution or if agencies did something Congress did not give them power to do in underlying statutes.

Procedural failure: Rules can be overturned if agencies failed to follow procedural steps required by the APA or other laws. This could include providing inadequate public notice, cutting comment periods short, or failing to respond to significant comments.

“Arbitrary and capricious”: This represents one of the most important review standards. Courts must invalidate rules if they find agency decisions to be “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” To make this determination, courts examine whether agencies considered all relevant factors and whether they made “clear errors of judgment.” Agencies must demonstrate rational connections between facts they found in records and final decisions they made.

Over time, the “arbitrary and capricious” standard has evolved into what legal scholars call the “hard look” doctrine. This means courts don’t simply rubber-stamp agency decisions. They take “hard looks” at administrative records to ensure agency decisions are products of reasoned analysis, not just raw political preference.

When agencies want to deregulate—for instance, by repealing clean water rules—they cannot just say, “Our policy has changed.” They must build new records with evidence and analysis justifying why old rules are no longer appropriate. If justifications are weak, ignore key scientific evidence, or fail to consider reasonable alternatives, courts can strike down deregulatory actions as arbitrary.

This doctrine serves as vital checks against politicization of often highly technical and scientific decisions, forcing agencies to justify changes with facts and reason.

Overturning Chevron Deference

For four decades, a single Supreme Court decision governed how courts reviewed agencies’ interpretations of laws they administer: Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (1984). The Chevron doctrine established two-step tests. First, courts would ask if law texts passed by Congress were clear. If they were, courts and agencies had to follow them. But if laws were silent or ambiguous on specific issues, courts would proceed to step two and defer to agency interpretations, as long as those interpretations were “reasonable.”

This deference was grounded in ideas that agencies possess greater subject-matter expertise than judges and that legislative ambiguities represent implicit delegations of interpretive authority from Congress to agencies.

In a landmark decision in June 2024, the Supreme Court overturned this long-standing precedent in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The Court declared that the APA requires courts to exercise their own independent judgment when determining federal statute meanings. Deference to agency views is no longer required simply because law texts are ambiguous.

This ruling represents seismic power shifts within federal government, transferring significant authority from the executive branch (federal agencies) to the judicial branch (federal courts). Agency interpretations of laws may still be considered for their persuasive value, especially if based on deep technical expertise, but they’re no longer entitled to controlling weight.

This change dramatically increases risks that agency rules—both regulatory and deregulatory—will be struck down by courts that simply arrive at different law interpretations. It injects new levels of uncertainty into rulemaking processes and is likely to spur increases in litigation challenging agency actions.

While the Chevron doctrine was politically neutral on its face and could be used to uphold actions of both Republican and Democratic administrations, in practice it often benefited agencies seeking to regulate in new and complex fields like environmental protection or financial services, where statutes are often written in broad, ambiguous terms.

By dismantling Chevron, the Supreme Court has handed powerful new tools to regulation challengers. Industry groups suing to block new rules no longer have to meet high bars of proving agency legal interpretations are unreasonable. Now, they merely need to persuade federal judges that their own law interpretations are better.

This significantly lowers thresholds for successful legal challenges and is likely to have chilling effects on agencies’ willingness to tackle complex problems under ambiguous statutory authority, potentially leading to “deregulation by judiciary.”

The Major Questions Doctrine

Working alongside Chevron’s fall is the rise of another powerful judicial tool: the “major questions doctrine.” This doctrine, which the Supreme Court has applied with increasing frequency, states that in “extraordinary cases” involving issues of “vast economic and political significance,” agencies cannot rely on general or ambiguous statutory language. Instead, they must point to clear, specific, and direct authorization from Congress for their actions.

The Court has invoked this doctrine to strike down some of the most significant regulatory initiatives in recent years. It was used to invalidate the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which aimed to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s nationwide eviction moratorium during the COVID-19 pandemic. In both cases, the Court ruled agencies were claiming transformative powers that Congress had not clearly and explicitly granted.

The rise of the major questions doctrine and overturning of Chevron deference are not isolated legal developments; they represent coordinated pincer movements on administrative state power. The major questions doctrine creates exceptionally high, and in gridlocked Congresses often impossible, bars for agencies to clear when addressing large-scale national problems. Meanwhile, Chevron deference’s end empowers courts to second-guess thousands of smaller, day-to-day legal interpretations agencies make when implementing their programs.

Together, these judicial shifts constrain agency authority from two directions. On “major” questions, agencies are stymied by needs for explicit congressional permission that are rarely forthcoming. On “minor” questions, they’re threatened by prospects of federal judges substituting their own law interpretations.

This combination represents the most significant judicial curtailment of federal regulatory power in generations.

Outside Influencers: Powerful Voices Beyond Government

Formal deregulation processes don’t occur in vacuums. They’re profoundly shaped by dynamic and powerful ecosystems of players operating outside official government structures. These influencers—including industry lobbyists, corporate-funded think tanks, and public advocacy groups—work tirelessly to shape political, economic, and intellectual environments in which decisions are made.

They deploy vast financial resources and sophisticated messaging campaigns to influence policymakers and public opinion, ensuring their perspectives are central to debates.

Lobbyists and Industry Groups

Industries subject to federal regulation have direct and significant financial stakes in deregulatory effort outcomes. To protect and advance their interests, they invest enormous sums in lobbying and political campaigns, seeking to influence policy at every government level. Lobbying involves directly communicating with members of Congress, their staff, and executive branch officials to advocate for specific policy outcomes. This is often paired with substantial campaign contributions to politicians supportive of their agendas.

The connection between this financial influence and policy outcomes can be direct. A groundbreaking study of the 2008 financial crisis found that mortgage lenders who lobbied most aggressively on mortgage lending issues and against anti-predatory lending laws were the same lenders who engaged in riskier lending practices, such as issuing loans with higher loan-to-income ratios. These loans subsequently had higher delinquency rates, contributing to broader financial collapse. This suggests lobbying can successfully create lax regulatory environments allowing pursuit of short-term profits, even at risks of long-term systemic harm.

The scale of this spending is immense. Data compiled by OpenSecrets.org provides clear pictures of financial power wielded by these interests. A 2017 Public Citizen report, using OpenSecrets data, found that a sample of corporate groups opposing various public protections spent combined totals of over $812 million on lobbying and $513 million on federal campaign contributions in single election cycles.

Year after year, top spenders include powerful trade associations and industries with significant regulatory concerns, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, American Hospital Association, and oil and gas industry.

This massive financial outlay should not be viewed as series of simple transactional bribes for specific votes. It represents far more sophisticated, long-term investments in creating and sustaining political ecosystems that are philosophically, ideologically, and financially receptive to deregulatory arguments.

The money funds campaigns of friendly politicians, helping ensure they’re elected and remain in office. It buys access for lobbyists to meet with policymakers and their staff to present industry-funded research and arguments. It also helps fuel “revolving doors,” where former government officials and congressional staffers take lucrative lobbying jobs, leveraging their connections and insider knowledge to benefit new corporate clients.

The cumulative effect of this investment is that when specific deregulatory battles arise, political groundwork has already been laid. Key decision-makers are often already sympathetic to industry worldviews, having been supported by and immersed in them for years.

Think Tanks and Policy Advocacy

Lobbying is most effective when paired with compelling intellectual arguments. This represents the crucial role played by think tanks—non-profit organizations conducting research and advocacy to influence public policy and shape public opinion. Powerful and well-funded networks of libertarian and conservative think tanks have for decades provided ideological foundations for modern deregulation movements.

Organizations like the Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, and Heritage Foundation are dedicated to promoting principles of free markets, limited government, and individual liberty. They produce constant streams of policy reports, academic-style studies, articles, and even draft legislation championing deregulation benefits.

The campaign for airline deregulation represents a classic case study. The intellectual push for reform was driven by economists and scholars, many affiliated with think tanks, who argued for years that regulated systems were inefficient and anti-consumer. Today, think tanks like Cato and AEI continue to be the most vocal defenders of that legacy, publishing research highlighting deregulation benefits, such as lower average fares and massive increases in numbers of Americans who can afford to fly.

At the same time, counter-narratives have emerged from other policy groups, such as the American Economic Liberties Project, which argue deregulation has ultimately failed to deliver on its promises. They contend it has instead led to rampant industry consolidation, creation of powerful oligopolies, service quality degradation, and abandonment of air service to smaller and rural communities.

Think tanks and lobbyists don’t operate in separate spheres; they often work in concert to form what scholars term “discourse coalitions.” Think tanks, often funded by the same corporations and foundations that employ lobbyists, provide seemingly objective, academic-sounding justifications for particular policies, such as industry deregulation.

This intellectual cover gives politicians rationales for supporting policies, allowing them to claim they’re following expert advice rather than simply yielding to industry pressure. Lobbyists, in turn, use studies and reports produced by these think tanks in their meetings with policymakers to bolster their arguments.

This creates powerful, self-reinforcing echo chambers where deregulatory policies that may primarily benefit narrow sets of corporate interests are successfully framed as principled, evidence-based reforms serving broader public good. The history of airline deregulation, with its influential coalition of economists, think tanks, and industry advocates, stands as a textbook example of this dynamic in action.

The Public’s Role in Rulemaking

While the world of deregulation can seem dominated by powerful and well-funded players, the American system of government provides formal and important roles for the public. Federal law guarantees every citizen the right to participate in processes of creating and changing rules that affect their lives. To be effective, however, this participation requires knowing how systems work and where to find reliable information.

Empowered with these tools, the public can act as crucial checks on other players and ensure wider ranges of voices are heard.

Making Your Voice Heard: Public Comment Periods

The Administrative Procedure Act is not just a set of rules for government agencies; it’s also a charter of rights for the public. One of its most fundamental provisions is the guarantee of public comment periods for most proposed rules. This means any individual or organization—regardless of their expertise or resources—has the right to submit their views on proposed regulations or deregulatory actions.

The process for participating is straightforward:

Find proposed rules: The central, one-stop shop for the entire federal regulatory system is Regulations.gov. This website serves as a public docket for all proposed rules from participating agencies. You can search for rules by keyword, agency, or docket number. You can also monitor the Federal Register, where all official notices are published daily.

Submit your comment: Once you find rules open for comment on Regulations.gov, you can click “Comment” buttons. The site provides text boxes where you can type comments directly, or you can write more detailed comments in separate documents and attach them as files. You have options to submit comments as individuals, on behalf of organizations, or anonymously.

While agencies are legally required to read and consider all relevant comments they receive, they’re ultimately persuaded by substance, not sheer submission volume.

To make comments as effective as possible:

Be specific and relevant: Clearly identify specific parts of proposed rules you’re addressing. Comments that are off-topic will not be considered.

Provide evidence and personal experience: The most helpful comments provide concrete data, evidence, or real-world examples. Explain in detail how proposed rules would impact you, your family, your community, or your business. Agencies in Washington, D.C., may not be aware of specific, on-the-ground consequences of their proposals, and your unique perspectives can be invaluable.

Suggest constructive alternatives: If you disagree with proposals, your comments will be more powerful if you suggest different approaches. Explain how alternative policies could achieve agencies’ stated goals more effectively or with fewer negative side effects. Simply stating support or opposition is not nearly as persuasive as providing well-reasoned arguments.

It’s important to recognize that while public comment processes are democratically open to all, there are often significant asymmetries of power and resources. Single, thoughtful comments from concerned citizens compete for attention with thousands of comments, many of which may be parts of sophisticated, well-funded campaigns organized by industry groups that can flood dockets with form letters.

For this reason, the true power of public comments often lies not just in individual persuasion but in two other areas. First, organized efforts by non-profit and advocacy groups can pool resources to submit highly detailed, expert analyses that can rival those of industry. Second, personal stories and unique, qualitative data from individuals can highlight unintended consequences and human impacts that agencies’ quantitative models might completely miss. This type of information can be uniquely powerful in shaping final rules.

Finding Reliable Information

To participate effectively in democracy and hold its key players accountable, citizens need access to reliable, unbiased information. In complex policy debates like deregulation, where different actors present competing narratives and “facts,” the ability to consult primary sources and objective data is essential.

Official government sources provide the raw material of law and policy:

GovInfo.gov: Maintained by the U.S. Government Publishing Office, this website is a digital repository providing free public access to official publications from all three government branches. Here you can find full texts of the U.S. Code, Federal Register, and Code of Federal Regulations, allowing you to read laws and rules for yourself.

Non-partisan data hubs work to make government information more accessible and understandable:

USAFacts.org: This not-for-profit, non-partisan organization is dedicated to making government data accessible to all Americans. It collects vast amounts of data directly from over 90,000 government entities at federal, state, and local levels and presents it in clear, understandable formats like charts, articles, and data guides. USAFacts provides comprehensive data on government finances, economic indicators, and policy outcomes without taking political stances, allowing users to see facts for themselves. Their resources include detailed guides on federal finances and annual reports providing data-driven snapshots of the nation.

In policy arenas filled with spin and advocacy, these resources serve as powerful tools for citizen accountability. Access to raw, unbiased data from sources like USAFacts.org and primary legal documents from GovInfo.gov empowers citizens to become their own fact-checkers.

You can look up actual texts of proposed regulations, examine government’s own data on potential economic and social impacts, and compare official records to narratives being pushed by lobbyists and think tanks. This ability to access and analyze primary source material is fundamental to understanding forces shaping deregulation and to holding powerful players in the process accountable for their actions.

Power Dynamics and Institutional Checks

The deregulation process reveals complex power dynamics between different government branches and outside influencers. The executive branch, led by the President and filtered through OIRA, has the most direct day-to-day control over regulatory decisions. However, this power is constrained by procedural requirements of the APA, which force deliberate, evidence-based processes rather than purely political decisions.

Congress retains ultimate authority through its legislative power but faces practical constraints in today’s polarized environment. The Congressional Review Act provides a more targeted tool, but its “substantially the same” provision creates permanent policy vacuums that can be difficult to fill.

The judicial branch has recently asserted more authority through decisions like overturning Chevron deference and expanding the major questions doctrine. These changes shift power toward courts and away from agency expertise, potentially making regulation and deregulation more dependent on judicial interpretation rather than technical knowledge.

Outside this formal structure, well-funded industry groups and think tanks wield significant influence through lobbying, campaign contributions, and intellectual framework setting. However, the public comment process and access to government information provide counterbalancing opportunities for citizen participation.

Understanding these players and their interactions is essential for anyone seeking to influence regulatory policy or simply understand how rules affecting their lives get made and unmade. The process is neither purely democratic nor entirely captured by special interests, but rather a complex interplay of institutional rules, political power, and public participation that shapes the regulatory landscape governing American society and economy.

Our articles make government information more accessible. Please consult a qualified professional for financial, legal, or health advice specific to your circumstances.