Where Congress Stands on Undoing Trump’s Last-Minute Rules

Like presidents before him, Donald Trump raced to finalize new rules before he left office in January. The U.S. Congress, using a law designed for just such occasions, is moving to repeal as many as three of those rules. But the window to repeal even more probably has closed.

The Congressional Review Act, enacted in 1996, empowers Congress to overturn rules issued by a federal agency if lawmakers decide those rules veer from the congressional legislation that spawned them. Congress can use the act to undo regulations issued during the waning days of the past administration. Success typically requires one-party control of both chambers of Congress and the presidency. For those reasons, the law generally draws attention only in the immediate months after a change of party in the White House -- which happened in January, when Democrat Joe Biden replaced Trump, a Republican.