The Claim

Ordered the automatic recission of outdated regulations on American energy production and innovation.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

That the president issued an order requiring the automatic removal of outdated energy regulations — regulations that, by implication, were holding back American energy production and innovation. The word “automatic” suggests a self-executing mechanism: regulations disappear without further action.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That the regulations targeted were genuinely outdated — relics that no longer served any purpose. That the energy sector was being held back specifically by these outdated rules. That removing them will unleash energy production and innovation. That “automatic rescission” is a clean, simple, legally sound mechanism. That this represents a distinct accomplishment separate from the administration’s broader deregulatory agenda (items 90, 233, 234, 279). The word “recission” (the White House’s own misspelling of “rescission”) implies surgical removal of obsolete rules, not a wholesale threat to sunset potentially thousands of active regulations.

What is conspicuously absent?

That the actual mechanism — Executive Order 14270, “Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting to Unleash American Energy” (April 9, 2025) — does not target only “outdated” regulations. It applies conditional sunset dates to all covered energy regulations issued under 22 specified statutes across 10 agencies, regardless of whether they are outdated, current, or essential. That the “automatic” mechanism is legally fraught — NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity, Columbia’s Sabin Center, and Resources for the Future all concluded the mass sunsetting approach likely violates the Administrative Procedure Act. That the energy industry itself expressed alarm about regulatory uncertainty threatening capital-intensive investment. That FERC — the agency that has moved furthest on implementation — interpreted the order narrowly, sunsetting only 53 genuinely obsolete regulations out of its entire code, precisely because broad implementation would destabilize energy markets worth $500 billion annually. That this is the sixth entry in a deregulation cluster (items 90, 233, 234, 244, 279, 292) all describing facets of the same underlying program. That the EO contains an internal contradiction — exempting “regulatory permitting regimes authorized by statute” while simultaneously covering regulations under the Outer Continental Shelf Act, which is itself a statutory permitting regime.

Padding Analysis: The Deregulation Cluster Expands Again

This item is the sixth entry in a cluster of claims about the administration’s deregulatory agenda:

• Item #90: “Launched the largest deregulation initiative in U.S. history, delivering $5 trillion in savings” — the headline claim.
• Item #233: “Slashed job-killing regulations to unleash innovation, lower costs, and put American workers first” — the rhetorical framing.
• Item #234: “Killed federal regulations at an astonishing 129-to-one rate” — the metric.
• Item #244: “Directed the administration to take all necessary steps to defend Americans’ constitutional rights from overreach” — the constitutional framing.
• Item #279: “Directed the Office of the Federal Register to speed up publishing time” — the procedural support.
• Item #292 (this item): “Ordered the automatic recission of outdated regulations on American energy production and innovation” — the energy-specific sunset mechanism.

While this item involves a distinct executive order (EO 14270, signed April 9, 2025) that introduced a novel legal mechanism (conditional sunset dates), it is part of the same deregulatory program. EO 14270 exists within the framework established by EO 14192 (the 10-to-1 mandate) and EO 14154 (“Unleashing American Energy”). The “365 wins” list turns one deregulatory program into six separate “wins” by slicing it along different dimensions: headline, rhetoric, metric, constitutional principle, publishing process, and now energy-specific sunset mechanism.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

Executive Order 14270, “Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting to Unleash American Energy,” was signed April 9, 2025. Published in the Federal Register on April 15, 2025 (90 FR 15643), the order directs 10 agencies and subagencies to insert “Conditional Sunset Dates” into all energy regulations issued under 22 specified statutes. Covered agencies include the EPA, Department of Energy, FERC, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Army Corps of Engineers. Each agency was directed to issue a sunset rule effective no later than September 30, 2025, with covered regulations receiving a one-year conditional sunset date from the effective date of the sunset rule. If not affirmatively extended, regulations expire no later than September 30, 2026. New regulations must include sunset dates of no more than five years. ¹

The order targets all covered energy regulations, not merely “outdated” ones. Despite the claim’s framing of “outdated regulations,” EO 14270 applies conditional sunset dates to every regulation issued under the covered statutes, including current, essential, and actively used rules. The covered statutes include the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, Federal Power Act, Natural Gas Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Energy Policy Act of 2005, and 15 others. The White House fact sheet states these regulations “will expire no later than September 30, 2026” unless agencies “extend only those regulations that affirmatively serve American interests.” The default is expiration, not preservation — a fundamentally different mechanism than targeted removal of obsolete rules. ²

FERC interpreted the order narrowly, sunsetting only 53 genuinely outdated or duplicative regulations. On October 1, 2025, FERC issued Order No. 913, using a direct final rule to add sunset provisions to 53 existing regulations it deemed “outdated, seldomly used, or duplicative.” These included regulations governing paper filings that FERC had already replaced with electronic filing years ago, procedural rules no longer in use, and administrative provisions duplicated elsewhere in the code. FERC explicitly declined to apply sunset dates to the substantive market regulations that govern the $500+ billion annual electricity and natural gas markets. FERC received a significant adverse comment on one provision (18 CFR 2.27, regarding NAESB Smart Grid Standards) and rescinded that amendment in December 2025. ³

Legal scholars across the ideological spectrum concluded the mass sunsetting mechanism likely violates the Administrative Procedure Act. NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity published “A Squall, Not a Sunset” (April 2025), concluding that “adding a sunset date to an existing rule is a substantive change that qualifies as a new rulemaking itself” and that “mass sunsetting of all the existing rules [agencies] have issued under twenty-two different statutes simultaneously would almost inevitably run afoul of APA standards.” Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law reached similar conclusions. Resources for the Future warned that “courts are unlikely to allow agencies to terminate a regulation through sunsetting without going through the rulemaking process.” Even Holland & Knight, an industry-oriented firm, noted that former FERC General Counsel Matthew Christiansen identified “the conundrum of achieving compliance with the EO in a manner consistent with the Administrative Procedure Act.” ⁴

Strong Inferences

The NRC similarly took a narrow approach, sunsetting only a handful of obsolete regulations. The NRC’s direct final rule, effective January 8, 2026 (with January 8, 2027 sunset date), targeted regulations including Subpart F procedures (last used in the 1970s) for hearings on site suitability matters. When the NRC received significant adverse comments on its proposed sunsetting of aircraft impact assessment requirements (10 CFR 50.150), it withdrew that provision entirely and will address it in a separate rulemaking — demonstrating that even within agencies sympathetic to deregulation, mass sunsetting encounters resistance when it touches substantive safety regulations. ⁵

The energy industry’s own reaction reveals the tension between deregulation rhetoric and market reality. Mayer Brown’s analysis (May 2025) noted that “the remarkably broad nature of the Executive Orders introduces regulatory uncertainty and increased risk for energy project developers who rely on a stable regulatory environment for the development of capital intensive energy projects with long-term development horizons.” Resources for the Future warned that major FERC regulations like Order 888 (open access transmission) and Order 636 (natural gas pipeline restructuring) “have structured energy markets worth approximately $500 billion annually in electricity sales alone,” and that “abrupt regulatory changes could introduce substantial regulatory uncertainty that could discourage the new investments” needed for grid modernization. An offshore energy industry analyst called the order “impossible to implement, blatantly illegal” and warned it “will promote confusion and uncertainty, not sustainable regulatory reform.” The paradox: an order intended to unleash energy production may inhibit the investment that energy production requires. ⁶

The order contains an internal contradiction that undermines its own coherence. Section 3(c) exempts “regulatory permitting regimes authorized by statute” to maintain certainty for long-term development projects. But Section 3(a) specifies that the order “applies to all regulations issued pursuant to the Outer Continental Shelf Act of 1953” — which is itself a statutory planning and permitting regime. Bud’s Offshore Energy identified this contradiction directly: the exemption clause and the coverage clause cannot both apply to the same statutory regime. Similar ambiguities exist across other covered statutes where permitting and substantive regulation are intertwined. These contradictions forced implementing agencies into interpretive gymnastics — which is one reason FERC took such a narrow approach. ⁷

The “automatic” mechanism is designed to shift the burden of proof from deregulators to regulators. Traditional regulatory repeal under the APA requires the agency to justify the repeal — explain why the regulation is no longer needed, respond to public comments, and survive judicial review. EO 14270 inverts this: regulations expire by default unless the agency affirmatively justifies their continuation. As the White House fact sheet states: “Zero-based regulation uses the bureaucracy against itself. If bureaucrats move slowly, the default is deregulation and free markets.” This is not a neutral process reform; it is a mechanism designed to achieve deregulation through administrative inaction rather than through the deliberative process Congress established in the APA. ⁸

What the Evidence Shows

Executive Order 14270 is a real executive order that was actually signed and published. It introduced a genuinely novel legal mechanism — conditional sunset dates — to the energy regulatory landscape. In that narrow sense, the claim is true: the president did order a mechanism for the “automatic rescission” of energy regulations.

But every word of the claim beyond “ordered” distorts what the order actually does. Start with “automatic rescission.” The mechanism is not self-executing in any legally durable sense. Adding sunset dates to existing regulations constitutes substantive rulemaking under the APA, requiring notice-and-comment procedures, reasoned justification, and surviving judicial review. Every major legal analysis of the order — from NYU to Columbia to RFF to major law firms — concluded that mass sunsetting without individual justification for each regulation likely violates the APA. The “automatic” framing obscures the legal reality that regulations cannot be automatically repealed by executive fiat; they must be individually justified through the same process that created them.

Then consider “outdated regulations.” The order does not target outdated regulations. It applies to all regulations under 22 statutes across 10 agencies, including rules that are current, essential, and actively governing markets worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually. FERC’s implementation reveals the gap between the order’s rhetoric and regulatory reality: facing the choice between sunsetting all of its energy regulations (as the order directs) and sunsetting only genuinely obsolete ones (as administrative law requires), FERC chose the narrow path — 53 rules, nearly all genuinely obsolete, out of its entire regulatory code. The NRC did the same. The agencies closest to implementation understood that the order’s maximalist vision could not be reconciled with the APA, and acted accordingly.

The deepest irony is that the order may harm the energy production it claims to unleash. Capital-intensive energy projects — pipelines, power plants, LNG terminals, offshore platforms — require decades-long regulatory certainty to justify investment. The prospect of fundamental market rules sunsetting annually creates precisely the uncertainty that discourages investment. Multiple energy industry analyses flagged this concern. An order that threatens to sunset the regulations structuring $500 billion in annual electricity markets does not “unleash” energy production; it introduces a new and unnecessary source of risk into an industry that already faces enormous capital allocation challenges.

The Bottom Line

Steel-man first: regulatory sunset provisions are a legitimate governance tool with bipartisan intellectual support. Texas has operated a successful sunset review process since 1977. Periodically reviewing regulations to determine whether they remain necessary is sound governance — agencies should not defend rules they cannot justify. To the extent EO 14270 forces agencies to systematically review their energy regulatory codes and identify genuinely obsolete provisions, it serves a constructive purpose. FERC’s removal of 53 outdated rules is the kind of housekeeping that makes regulatory codes cleaner and more navigable.

But the claim dresses up a legally dubious, maximalist deregulatory mechanism as simple housekeeping. “Automatic rescission of outdated regulations” implies targeted removal of obsolete rules. The actual order threatens to sunset all energy regulations across 22 statutes at 10 agencies unless each is individually justified and extended — a mechanism that legal scholars across the spectrum concluded likely violates the APA. The agencies that have moved furthest on implementation interpreted the order as narrowly as possible, sunsetting only genuinely obsolete rules and declining to touch the substantive regulations that govern energy markets. The energy industry itself warned that the order’s regulatory uncertainty could discourage the investment it claims to promote. And the item adds a sixth entry to a deregulation cluster that has now filled nearly 2% of the “365 wins” list with different descriptions of the same underlying program. The order is real; the claim’s characterization of what it does is not.

Footnotes

1. Executive Order 14270, “Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting to Unleash American Energy,” April 9, 2025. White House: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/zero-based-regulatory-budgeting-to-unleash-american-energy/. Federal Register (90 FR 15643, April 15, 2025): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/04/15/2025-06466/zero-based-regulatory-budgeting-to-unleash-american-energy. ↩

2. White House Fact Sheet, “President Donald J. Trump Pushes the Reset Button on America’s Energy Regulations,” April 2025: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-pushes-the-reset-button-on-americas-energy-regulations/. EO 14270, Sections 2-3 (definitions and sunset mechanism). ↩

3. FERC, “FERC Acts to Sunset Outdated Regulations” (October 2025): https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/ferc-acts-sunset-outdated-regulations. Gibson Dunn, “In Response to Executive Order, FERC Phases Out 53 Regulations” (October 2025): https://www.gibsondunn.com/in-response-to-executive-order-ferc-phases-out-53-regulations/. FERC, “Implementation of EO 14270; Partial Rescission” (December 18, 2025): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/18/2025-23294/implementation-of-the-executive-order-entitled-zero-based-regulatory-budgeting-to-unleash-american. ↩

4. NYU Institute for Policy Integrity, “A Squall, Not a Sunset” (April 2025): https://policyintegrity.org/publications/detail/a-squall-not-a-sunset. Resources for the Future, “If/Then: Sunsetting Energy Regulations” (2025): https://www.resources.org/common-resources/if-then-sunsetting-energy-regulations/. Holland & Knight, “Trump Executive Order Requires FERC, Other Agencies to Add Sunset Rule” (April 2025): https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/04/trump-executive-order-requires-ferc-other-agencies-to-add-sunset. Columbia Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, “President Trump Seeks to Sunset All Existing Energy Regulations” (2025): https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/president-trump-seeks-sunset-all-existing-energy-regulations. ↩

5. Morgan Lewis, “NRC Confirms Effective Date of Direct Final Rule Adding Conditional Sunset Dates to Certain Regulations” (January 2026): https://www.morganlewis.com/blogs/upandatom/2026/01/nrc-confirms-effective-date-of-direct-final-rule-adding-conditional-sunset-dates-to-certain-regulations. SBA Advocacy, “Comments on NRC’s Sunset Rule” (January 15, 2026): https://advocacy.sba.gov/2026/01/15/advocacy-comments-on-nrcs-sunset-rule/. ↩

6. Mayer Brown, “Unleashing American Energy: Deregulatory Executive Orders” (May 2025): https://www.mayerbrown.com/en/insights/publications/2025/05/unleashing-american-energy-deregulatory-executive-orders. Resources for the Future (cited above). Bud’s Offshore Energy, “Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting is Not Meaningful Regulatory Reform” (April 15, 2025): https://budsoffshoreenergy.com/2025/04/15/zero-based-regulatory-budgeting-is-not-meaningful-regulatory-reform/. ↩

7. EO 14270, Section 3(a) and Section 3(c). Bud’s Offshore Energy (cited above). Mayer Brown (cited above). ↩

8. White House Fact Sheet (cited above). NYU Policy Integrity, “A Squall, Not a Sunset” (cited above). Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. Sections 551-559. ↩