First Trump Administration Rule Submitted to OMB

Yesterday, the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had received a notice of proposed rulemaking from the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) on “National Performance Management Measures; Assessing Performance of the National Highway System, Greenhouse Gas Emissions Measure”. This is the first rulemaking submitted to OIRA since President Trump took office on January 20^th and announced a temporary freeze on federal rulemaking.

There is no entry for this rulemaking in the Fall 2024 Unified Agenda, but I suspect that this rule will be a start to the process of overturning the Biden Administration’s 2024 “National Performance Management Measures; Assessing Performance of the National Highway System, Greenhouse Gas Emissions Measure” final rule. That rule essentially overturned a Trump 45 rule from 2018 that overturned an Obama January 2017 rule.

While I have no intention of covering this rulemaking in this blog, it will be interesting to see how quickly OIRA processes this rulemaking. This is obviously a high-profile rulemaking for the incoming administration and there are only four other rulemakings currently in OIRA pending review. This rule will provide the first measure of how effective the new administration is on bureaucratic process of rulemaking.

Trump Regulatory Freeze – Steady State

It looks like the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has finally reached a steady state of no new rulemakings introduced and no new withdrawals of previously submitted rulemakings. The last withdrawal was done on January 24^th, 2025. No new rulemakings have been submitted since Trump took office on January 20^th, 2025. The five remaining rulemakings (EO Review Search Criteria: Agencies=All;   Review Status=Pending Review) still under OIRA review are:

INSERT Current Rulemakings graphic

The most interesting one from a Republican perspective is the last; “Energy Conservation Standards for Portable Electric Spas”, RIN 1904-AF36. Given the knee jerk reaction against these energy conservation standards amongst many Republicans in the Congress, it seems odd that this rulemaking (pending since 2023) has survived the Trump mandated regulatory review.

Now we just get to wait and see how long it takes the new Administration to start initiating (or reinstating) rulemakings.