A newly released report by the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards accuses the Trump administration of attempting to sidestep the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to fast-track deregulation and limit public participation in the federal rulemaking process.
🧩 What’s happening: The report details how the administration is encouraging federal agencies to broadly interpret narrow exceptions in the APA to avoid the legally required public notice and comment process.
- Agencies are being directed to use the APA’s “good cause” exemption in cases that don’t meet the threshold of emergency or necessity.
- The administration has argued that public input isn’t required when the president orders a rule’s repeal.
- It has also claimed that certain regulations, including those related to immigration and tariffs, are exempt from the APA entirely, contradicting decades of judicial rulings.
🛑 Why it matters: The notice and comment process under the APA is a core mechanism for democratic accountability in federal rulemaking. Eliminating or weakening it would reduce transparency, limit input from affected stakeholders, and increase the legal vulnerability of new rules.
📌 Key areas of concern:
- Use of emergency exemptions: The administration is using the “good cause” clause, which is typically reserved for emergencies, to push through regulatory changes without public input.
- Foreign affairs loophole: Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a determination vastly expanding the definition of “foreign affairs” in an effort to exempt broad categories of rulemaking from public scrutiny.
- Reversing decades of practice at HHS: The administration rescinded the “Richardson Waiver,” which since 1971 had voluntarily applied APA procedures to HHS rulemakings concerning loans, grants, and benefits.
💬 What they’re saying:
“The Trump administration’s goal is to ensure that the public will have no say when it rolls back regulations that protect them,” said Berger.
“Trump is unlawfully taking that away,” added Rachel Weintraub, executive director of the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards.
🎯 The bottom line: The administration’s effort to limit notice-and-comment rulemaking could affect a wide range of industries, including healthcare, financial services, consumer lending, and collections, by accelerating regulatory rollbacks without the usual opportunity for public feedback or industry input. Legal challenges are likely.
