Trump's EPA Skips Waiting Period for Rules, Making It Harder for Biden to Repeal

Source: Yahoo/Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- The Trump administration is rushing to impose industry-backed regulations using a tactic that will make it harder for President-elect Joe Biden to repeal them.

Federal agencies, including the EPA, have skirted the customary waiting period of at least 30 days for new regulations to take effect and put several into force immediately. It’s a new twist on midnight rulemaking that undercuts the ability of Biden to freeze regulations his first day in office.

The law permits an agency to skip the waiting period for certain regulations if they have good cause to believe that waiting would be “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” But experts say some of Trump’s recent regulations don’t appear to meet the criteria -- and that they haven’t seen an outgoing administration make such widespread use of the exemption.

“We’re seeing essentially a new and unprecedented tactic to get last-minute regulatory actions on the books so that it ties the hands of the incoming administration,” said Amit Narang, a regulatory policy expert with the watchdog group Public Citizen.

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