Congressional Republicans capped off 2025 with one notable accomplishment: overturning a record number of regulations enacted under former President Joe Biden. [some emphasis, links added]
Republicans undid 22 regulations issued in the final months of Biden’s presidency that restrict fossil fuel production, phase out the sale of gas-powered cars, and limit access to credit in the name of capping overdraft fees.
The record number of resolutions of disapproval used to block regulations and signed into law by President Donald Trump is the most of any Congress since the Congressional Review Act (CRA) was enacted in 1996.
GOP lawmakers rescinded 14 Obama regulations during Trump’s first term in 2017.
The CRA allows Congress to rescind recent administrative rulemakings with a simple majority vote in both chambers, along with the president’s stamp of approval.
“By reining in Biden’s heavy-handed bureaucrats, we are saving Americans $180 billion,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said in a floor speech on Dec. 17. “That pencils out to over $2,000 in savings for each and every family.”
1. Banning New Gas-Powered Cars
Congressional Republicans successfully undid a Biden-era waiver in May, allowing California and any state that adopts its stringent standards to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.
The Republican-controlled Congress also rescinded two California vehicle emissions rules that required the sale of zero-emission heavy-duty trucks and effectively banned diesel engines.
Republicans — and some Democrats — warned that California’s aggressive electric vehicle (EV) mandate would undermine consumer choice and devastate Americans employed in the automobile industry.
“These job losses will not be confined to California, but they will be spread all across the nation,” Republican West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said in a speech on the Senate floor before the upper chamber voted to nix the waiver.
Trump frequently called for the repeal of EV mandates during his 2024 presidential campaign.
Though the push to rescind the rules hit several procedural roadblocks, Senate Majority Leader John Thune kept his conference united before the window to nix the waivers closed.
2. Ending Coal Leasing In America’s Top Coal Region
GOP lawmakers voted in October to repeal a Biden-era rule restricting millions of acres of land in the Powder River Basin — spanning Montana and Wyoming — from future mining.
Republican Montana Sen. Steve Daines argued the Biden administration’s move to end coal leasing in the resource-rich region following the 2024 election amounted to a “midnight rule” with little political support among the affected states.
Daines alongside fellow Republican Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy and Reps. Troy Downing and Ryan Zinke spearheaded the successful effort to nix the heavy-handed resource management plan.
“The American people have rejected the left’s radical climate hysteria, and removing this harmful rule will help protect our energy dominance and our national security,” Republican Montana Sen. Steve Daines told the DCNF before the resolution of disapproval’s passage in the Senate.
Biden sought to restrict coal production and pledged to shut down coal plants “all across America” in 2022.
More than 40% of the country’s coal production comes from the Powder River Basin, according to analysis published by the Energy Information Administration in 2019.
The Republican-controlled Congress also overturned a Biden plan restricting coal leasing on Wyoming public lands in November.
3. Blocking Energy Production In Alaska
In December, Trump signed into law two resolutions of disapproval overturning Biden-era rules restricting energy production in Alaska.
The Biden regulations, finalized after the 2024 election, blocked oil and gas leasing across 13 million acres across Central Yukon in the name of conservation and restricted future energy production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain (ANWR).
“When we unlock Alaska, we are strengthening America’s national security and economic posture in this generation and for generations to come,” Republican Alaska Rep. Nick Begich told the DCNF in December. “These bills are not isolated. They are representative of a long-term strategy to rebuild our energy strength, reconstruct our critical mineral inventory, and ensure that America — not China — controls the supply chains that power our economy.”
Alaska’s congressional delegation and many tribal communities within the Last Frontier State argued that the Biden-era regulations limiting energy production were economically devastating.
“The economy in the North Slope is oil and gas activity,” Begich also told the DCNF. “The building blocks of communities — schools, healthcare, roads, and running water — exist due to the economic base our early leaders ensured that we had access to.”
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