President Donald Trump‘s much-anticipated deregulation executive order, signed last week, goes further than anything he did in his first term. Not only does it require agencies to eliminate 10 regulations for every new one, but it also directly targets guidance documents, the unaccountable tools federal bureaucrats have long used to impose regulations without going through formal rulemaking.
And there’s plenty of guidance that needs to go.
For years, agencies have misused guidance to sidestep public input and impose sweeping mandates without congressional approval. Trump’s executive order takes aim at this practice, ensuring that guidance is treated as the regulatory action it truly is. One example? The Department of Education’s last-minute guidance on name, image, and likeness, the policy that allows college athletes to earn money through sponsorships and endorsements.
Just before leaving office, the Biden administration issued a directive forcing schools to apply Title IX equity rules to NIL deals—a move with major implications for college athletics, made without public input.
